New Privacy Policy

Privacy Questions and Answers

This notice describes how RStudio Inc., RStudio for short, collects and uses data about you on community.rstudio.com.

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What is RStudio?

RStudio is the primary developer of the RStudio IDE, open source software for data science, focused on the R statistical computing language.

Community.rstudio.com is hosted by the Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc’s (CDCK) Discourse forum software. See their privacy policy here.

How does RStudio collect data about me on community.rstudio.com?

RStudio collects data about you:

RStudio collects data when you use community.rstudio.com or other RStudio websites and services.

What data does RStudio collect about me on community.rstudio.com, and why?

RStudio collects data about visits to community.rstudio.com.

When you visit community.rstudio.com, whether you have an account or not, the forum uses cookies, server logs, and other methods to collect data about what pages you visit and when.

RStudio uses data about how you use the website to:

  • optimize the forum, so that it’s quick and easy to use
  • diagnose and debug technical errors
  • defend the forum from abuse and technical attacks
  • compile statistics on forum and topic popularity
  • compile statistics on the kinds of software and computers visitors use
  • aggregate discussion information about how R-users use R, RStudio pro and unpaid products.
    RStudio usually stores data about how you use the forum in identifiable form for just a few weeks. In special circumstances, for example extended investigations about technical attacks, RStudio may preserve log data longer, for analysis.

RStudio collects account data.

Many features of community.rstudio.com require a forum account. For example, an account is required to post and reply to topics.

To sign up for a forum account, RStudio requires your name, a user name, and an e-mail address.

RStudio uses your account data to identify you on the forum, and to create pages specific to you, like your profile page. If the forum is public, RStudio publishes your account data. If the forum is access-restricted, RStudio makes your account data available to everyone who can access the forum, according to the forum administrator’s configuration.

RStudio uses your e-mail address on community.rstudio.com to:

  • notify you about posts and other activity on the forum
  • reset your password and help keep your account secure
  • contact you in special circumstances related to your account
  • contact you about legal requests, like DMCA takedown requests

You may provide additional data for your account, like a short biography, your location, or your birthday, on the profile settings page for your account. RStudio makes that data available to others who can access the forum. You don’t have to provide this additional information, and you can erase it at any time.

RStudio stores your account data as long as your account remains open.

RStudio collects data about posts and other activity on the forum.

RStudio collects the content of your posts, plus data about bookmarks, likes, and links you follow in order to share that data with others, through the forum. If the forum is public, RStudio publishes your activity. If the forum is access-restricted, or access restrictions apply to the specific post, RStudio makes your activity available only to users permitted to see it.

RStudio also collects data about private messages that you send through the forum.

RStudio makes private messages available to senders and their recipients, and also to forum administrators.

RStudio stores your posts and other activity as long as your account remains open.

How can I make choices about data collection?

You can make choices about how data about is used on the settings page for your account. When a forum uses access restrictions that vary by category, you can choose who will see your post by choosing the appropriate category.

Note that on community.rstudio.com, RStudio does not respond to the Do Not Track HTTP header.

Where does RStudio store data about me from community.rstudio.com?

RStudio uses Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc hosting service. Most forums that CDCK hosts store all data in CDCK’s data center in San Jose, California, USA. Some forums that CDCK hosts store data in data centers in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union.

For more information, see CDCK’s privacy policy.

Does RStudio comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation?

RStudio respects privacy rights under Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Information that GDPR requires RStudio to give can be found throughout this privacy notice.

So can information about specific rights, like access, rectification, erasure, data portability, and objection to automated decision-making.

Where can I access data about me?

You can see your account data at any time by visiting your account page. Your account page also lists your posts and other activity on the forum.

Your account activity page also includes a link to download all of your activity in standard comma-separated values format.

How can I change or erase data about me?

You can change your account data at any time by visiting the profile settings page for your account. The settings for a particular forum may also allow you to close your account, on the settings page for your account. Closing your account starts a process of erasing or anonymizing community.rstudio.com records of data you provided for your account. Forum administrators can also erase and anonymize accounts.

You may also be able to edit, anonymize, or erase your posts. When you edit posts, community.rstudio.com will keep all versions of your posts. Forum administrators can view old versions of posts, and optionally make them visible to other forum visitors.

Does RStudio make automated decisions based on data about me?

RStudio classifies posts as spam automatically.

RStudio uses data about your posts and other activity on many forums to make automated decisions about whether your posts to community.rstudio.com is spam. When Akismet decides that a post is likely spam, the forum refuses to accept the post.

If you think a post has been wrongly blocked or removed, contact an administrator of your forum. They can override the decision that a post was spam.

RStudio uses data about posts and activity to set trust levels automatically.

The forum may use data about your posts and activity to award you badges and calculate a trust level for your account. Your trust level may affect how you can participate in the forum, such as whether you can upload images, as well as give you access to moderation and management powers in the forum. Your trust level therefore reflects forum administrators’ confidence in you, and their willingness to delegate community management functions, like moderation.

If you think your trust level has been set incorrectly, contact an administrator of your forum. They can manually adjust the trust level of your account.

Does RStudio share data about me with others?

RStudio shares account data with others as mentioned in the section about account data.

RStudio shares data about your posts and other forum activity with others as mentioned in the section about account data.

RStudio does not sell or give information about you to other companies or services. However, RStudio does use services from other companies. The companies behind those services may collect data about you on their own, for their own purposes. Some of these services may be used to collect information about your online activities across different websites.

Service Privacy Notice Description
Akismet https://automattic.com/privacy/ reduces spam posts on some forums
Google Analytics https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/ Compiles visitor statistics on some forums. You can opt out of Google Analytics using a browser extension.
Amazon Web Services https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/ Provides cloud servers and services, in service regions across the world, to host and back up some forums.
Digital Ocean https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/privacy/ Stores backups.
Fastly https://www.fastly.com/privacy Provides a content delivery network of servers that host copies of content like images and website files, so that users around the world can download them quickly, from servers close to where they are.
MaxCDN https://www.maxcdn.com/legal/#pp Provides a content delivery network.
Apple Push Notification Service https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/ Sends push notifications to users of the Discourse iOS app.
Google Cloud Messaging https://policies.google.com/privacy Sends push notifications to users of the Discourse Android app.

Other individuals and companies may also reuse data about you that RStudio publishes, such as your posts to public forums.

For a list of all Third Party Services that connect with RStudio and community.rstudio.com, see the Third Party Vendors section of the RStudio.com Privacy Policy.

How can I contact RStudio about privacy?

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our treatment of the information you provide us, please write to us by email at privacy@rstudio.com or by mail at:

RStudio, Inc.
250 Northern Avenue
Suite 420
Boston, Massachusetts 02210
Attn: “Privacy - community.rstudio.com

For complaints under GDPR more generally, European Union users may lodge complaints with their local data protection supervisory authorities.

How can I find out about changes?

This version of RStudio’s community.rstudio.com privacy questions and answers took effect May 21, 2018.

RStudio will post the next version at the #meta category. RStudio may change how it announces changes in future versions.

In the meantime, RStudio may update its contact information without announcing a change.

Please refer to https://forum.posit.co/privacy and https://www.rstudio.com/about/privacy-policy/ for the latest contact information at any time.