The terms, "forum" and "boards", are indicative of the collective areas which together make up the PC Pals Forum. Registration and use of the forum implies acceptance of the following terms and conditions:You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually offensive, racist, sectarian, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also explicitly forbidden on this forum.
You agree that you will at no time post in a manner designed or intended to demean, humiliate or mock any other user, or member of staff of this forum. You will at all times observe "Good forum etiquette", be polite and respectful towards all members, administrators, moderators and the forum owners. You agree that you will at no time create posts/threads intended to be deliberately contentious, malicious, critical of and/or harmful to the community, its members, staff and the board owners, or that would create, foment or otherwise cause ill feeling amongst the membership. All queries or comments about the running of the board should, unless otherwise invited by the staff in a thread or poll, be made via PM contact with an administrator.
We reserve the right to remove or edit objectionable messages or images, including those which may have health implications, e.g. images likely to affect those suffering from epilepsy or migraine. We will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, so please realise that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately.
You agree that you will at no time act in any way which may bring the forum, its members, staff or owners into disrepute.
You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyrighted material is owned by you, or you have the copyright holder's permission. It is permissible to post a short quote with a link to the original source. Although forum staff do not and cannot guarantee to review all messages posted and are not responsible for the content of any of these messages, we reserve the right to delete any message on receipt of a complaint, or for any other reason at our discretion.
If you are ever unsure of whether a post would breach the rules, then please send a personal message (PM) to a forum staff member, requesting guidance. Equally, if you feel that a post another member has made breaches the rules, use the 'Report to moderator' button which appears at the bottom of each post and PM. All reported posts will be considered by a forum administrator, but we do not guarantee that every complaint will be upheld, and in all cases, the decision of the forum administration team is final.
You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold the forum’s administrators and moderators harmless from and against any liability (including libel and slander), claims, damages, losses, costs and expenses (including solicitor's fees) relating to any acts or omissions by users or to materials or information transmitted by users in connection with the use of the discussion forum. You understand that each message expresses the views of its author, and not necessarily the views of PC Pals Forum, the forum administrators or moderators. The owners of this forum also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or any other related information collected on this service) in the event of a formal complaint or legal action arising from any situation caused by your use of this forum. Please note that, with each post, your IP address is recorded. Posts may be edited for a limited time after posting. Once this editing period has expired, editing or removal of posts may be requested by contacting a member of forum staff.
We ultimately reserve the right to decide what is acceptable or not, and the decisions of moderators and administrators are final. Working around the technicalities of these rules will not be tolerated. If a short ban is imposed for infringement of the rules, rejoining the forum under a new name will be dealt with by a permanent ban. Similarly, joining the forum with multiple accounts is prohibited. We further reserve the right to impose restrictions on a member's usage of any given part(s) of the forum, for any reason. If a restriction is imposed, any steps taken to circumvent this, will result in a full and permanent ban.
These rules apply to public posts, personal messages, signatures, profiles and any other comments you make on our forum. Please note that the content of any personal message you receive is confidential and may not be revealed to a third-party, or posted in the forums (however, if you consider a message to be offensive or in other ways against the rules of the forum, you may forward it to a member of staff for action to be considered against the sender).
You agree to provide a valid, contactable, email address in your profile at all times. Without such an address, it will be impossible for your password to be reset or a reminder sent. If an email address is changed after registration, to a non-contactable or invalid address, access to the forum may be withdrawn. You may note that there is a 'Birthdate' field available in your Profile. This information will only be used to highlight your birthday on our forum calendar, viewable only by forum staff. You may leave this field blank if you wish. You may also note that there is a ‘Gender’ field available in your profile, which may also be left blank.
These boards are intended to be a friendly environment and to this end we do not accept foul language, or links to sites of an adult nature.
You may not post home addresses, personal phone numbers, mobile phone numbers, email addresses or other personal information about any individual, regardless of whether the information is in the public domain elsewhere, with the exception of formal contact email addresses to assist other members in resolving problems. You should also not post any of your own personal details, such as those listed above, in any public posts. Although you may request an account deletion in accordance with the GRPR, in these cases, your user ID will be anonymised, and your IP address will be removed, but actual post content is not subject to GDPR, so may remain.
SecurityWe urge all members to use a strong password, i.e. alpha-numeric with a mixture of upper and lower case letters and, ideally, one or more punctuation marks. We reserve the right to 'lock' accounts unused for a period of 90 days or more, or where there is evidence that attempts have been made to access the account illegally by a third-party. In the event of such a lock, an email address will be provided to request that access be re-enabled.
EU Privacy and Electronic Communications DirectivePlease note that the forum software places a cookie, a text file containing bits of information (such as your username and password), in your browser's cache. This is ONLY used to keep you logged in/out (if you so choose), and to enable the forum to function correctly for you, while you are logged in, by monitoring which posts remain unread by you. The software does not collect or send any other form of information to or from your computer nor does it exchange information with other web sites. If you choose not to allow cookies to be saved, via your browser settings, you will need to log in each time you use the forum. If you choose to reject cookies, via your browser settings, functionality of this forum will be extremely limited. We suggest that you allow the forum cookie to be saved in your browser's cache, but this may be cleared at the end of each browser session.
Data ProtectionYou have the right to: be informed, access, rectify, erase, restrict processing, data portability and object. Details on your rights, in a accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulations, can be found in our
GDPR Compliance Statement.
The only data we collect is data in which you supply, with the exception of your IP address, hostname and your most recent click. As we are an anonymous forum, little personal data is collected and we do not require you to provide any additional personal data, with the exception of your email address. We also collect your IP address/hostname (in the event of a ban needing to be placed on your account, for the purposes of dealing with hacking, and if we are required to contact your ISP), and your username (for post identification). Further, the forum automatically uses a cookie, a text file containing bits of information (such as your username and password), in your browser's cache. This is ONLY used to keep you logged in/out. The software does not collect or send any other form of information to your computer.
We reserve the right to reveal information we hold about you (or any other related information collected on this service) in the event of a formal complaint or legal action arising from any situation caused by your use of this forum, in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom. In accordance with GDPR, if we become aware of a data breach, we are obliged, within 72 hours, to notify any users involved.
Complaints ProcedureOn occasion, you may disagree with a decision made by a member of staff in the course of their duties on the forums. In the first place, you should contact the individual concerned by Personal Message, and ask for clarification of the reasons for their decision. If you do not accept the reasoning behind their action and you wish to complain or appeal against their decision, you should contact a forum administrator by emailing admin@pc-pals.com. Starting a new public thread in direct response or opposition to a staff decision, or any other moderation action, may result in the thread being removed, and the member responsible may be banned.
GDPR RequirementWe reserve the right to update this agreement from time to time. You will be required to agree to any such policy changes before continuing to use this forum, in accordance with GDPR legislation. This policy is effective from 20th May 2018.