Privacy and Legal Policy

Introduction and summary

These Terms of Service were originally written in English (US). We may translate these terms into other languages. In the event of a conflict between a translated version of these Terms of Service and the English version, the English version will control.

We recognize that privacy is extremely important to all visitors to our website. We do not share any individual information with anybody without your permission.

To download a whitepaper, you have to enter your name and email address. When you opt in for more information, we will send you news on other whitepapers, webinars and other information, using our marketing automation and CRM tool.

Our CRM is Odoo, an open source CRM/marketing automation tool developed by a Belgian company. We also use this for newsletters. From no tool will we hand over individual data to anybody else and any privacy breaches we will disclose as soon as possible. We also delete, anonymize and remove data regularly.

Our website occasionally embeds content, like YouTube videos (behind a click-through wall) and others. If you enable these external embedded content, there will be only connections to these services to retrieve the data but no cookies will be stored on the visitor’s browser. We do not share any of your data with the parties behind them, however, they can gather some information when you watch a video. We are always looking for ways to decrease data sharing here and input is welcome.

Our security scanner is strictly based on publicly available information, that is the list of known vulnerabilities relevant for ownCloud/Nextcloud releases as well as any applied hardenings/settings we can scan without having access to the server. We only scan on-demand and store the results, but do not update them automatically.

Our forums on help.nextcloud.com runs the open source discourse software. This is self-hosted and we do not share, disclose or otherwise distribute any data from it. You can disable your own account there if you need to. Note that this platform is meant for home users and home user questions! As enterprise visitor, please use our support portal. If you still use the forums, expect that we reach out to you at some point. To use our forums you must agree with our Terms of Service. See below for the complete TOS for the use of our forums.

Terms of Service

As we do not host Nextcloud for anyone else, this privacy policy can not cover what a Nextcloud installation does. In general, we can say the following:

Our software, be it the Nextcloud server or the Android or iOS apps, are designed to not sent any user data to us. The optional Usage Survey app can sent usage statistics like installed apps to us to help us improve our service. You can review and approve the data before it is sent. We store the data aggregated and not per user, so a theft of our data can not be used to get any information about any specific installation. The Updater app, if enabled, sends Nextcloud version, PHP version, install time and the channel it wants to the Nextcloud updater server to receive update information. We store the install time and version on the instance to track statistics, all other data is discarded right away. We run a push proxy for home users, details on what is sent can be found here. No data is stored on our side.

With regards to third party apps: we can not take any responsibility for third-party apps and the data they store or sent about users. We do have a policy in our app store against abusing private data and any app that is found to be in violation is removed and its author banned. However, we do not have the ability to check all code of all third party applications and thus we recommend you are careful when installing third party apps.

If you see any problems, please report it to abuse@nextcloud.com.

You can find details in our complete privacy policy below.

Nextcloud Privacy Policy

Our privacy policy is written to help you find out how Nextcloud handles “Personally identifiable information (“PII”). PII is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context. Please read our privacy policy carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect, use, protect or otherwise handle your Personally Identifiable Information in accordance with our website.

What personal information do we collect from the people that visit our blog, website or app?

Like most websites, nextcloud.com collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. nextcloud.com’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how nextcloud.com’s visitors use its website. From time to time, nextcloud.com may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website. Nextcloud.com can save some user personal information (if user enables the convenience cookies in the cookie banner) to save the content of the form fields such as name, email, phone and preferred language. These infos will be saved in the cookie called “nc_form_fields

nextcloud.com also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. nextcloud.com does not use such information to identify its visitors, however, and does not disclose such information to third parties unless legally obliged to do so.

We honour the do-not-track directive. nextcloud.com will not track anything if this is enabled.

Furthermore, our website visit statistics tool Matomo is configured to anonymize visitor IP addresses data by not storing the last digits of all IP addresses.

When registering or submitting a form on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your name, email address, phone number or other details. See below on what happens with that data.

When do we collect information?

On our websites:
We collect information from you when you subscribe to a newsletter, fill out a form or enter information on our site.

Nextcloud Files
Our apps only communicate with your own Nextcloud server and do not sent any personal data to us.  The server does communicate with Nextcloud servers, for example to retrieve update information or send push notifications (see below) but no personal data of any user is sent.

The Play Store version equal to or newer than 1.5.0 for Nextcloud supports push notifications which use the Google servers. However Google does not have access to the actual notification data. Only a header with a subject is sent via Google, but in encrypted form, and the rest of the content is retrieved directly from your Nextcloud server and not sent through Google. The iOS client works in a similar way.

How do we use your information?

We may use the information we collect from you when you register, sign up for our newsletter, respond to a survey or marketing communication, surf the website, or use certain other site features in the following ways:

  • To improve our website in order to better serve you.
  • To send periodic emails regarding your order or other products and services.
  • To follow up with them after correspondence (live chat, email or phone inquiries)

Podlove
We use the Podlove player to serve podcast on nextcloud.com/podcast.

How do we protect visitor information?
  • We only provide articles, white papers and other information. We never ask for credit card numbers or other financial data.
  • We use regular Malware Scanning.
  • Your personal information is contained behind secured networks and is only accessible by a limited number of persons who have special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential. In addition, all sensitive information you supply is encrypted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.
  • We implement a variety of security measures when a user places an order and enters, submits, or accesses their information to maintain the safety of your personal information.
Do we use “cookies”?

Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the site or service provider systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. Cookies are used to help us understand your preferences based on previous or current site activity, which enables us to provide you with improved services. We also use cookies to help us compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future.

We use cookies to:
  • Understand and save user preferences for future visits.
  • Compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interactions in order to offer better site experiences and tools in the future.
  • We do not use third-party services (like Google Analytics) that track this information on our behalf.

You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You do this through your browser (like Internet Explorer or firefox) settings. Each browser is a little different, so look at your browser Help menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies settings.

If you disable cookies, some minor features might be disabled.

Third-party disclosure

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information unless we provide users with advance notice. This does not include website hosting partners and other parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or serving our users, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release information when its release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property or safety.

However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Think aggregated statistics (number of website visitors in a particular month) or trends (“we see an increase in the number of visitors from Asia”).

Third-party links

Users are able to change their personal information:

  • By emailing us
  • By calling us
How does our site handle do not track signals?

We honor do not track signals and do not track, plant cookies, or use advertising when a Do Not Track (DNT) browser mechanism is in place.

Does our site allow third-party behavioral tracking?

We do not allow or employ third-party behavioral tracking. Our website features no third party ads or tracking tools.

CAN SPAM Act (United States)

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have emails stopped from being sent to them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

We collect your email address in order to:

  • Send information, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.
  • Market to our mailing list or continue to send emails to our clients after the original transaction has occurred.

We agree to the following:

  • NOT use false or misleading subjects or email addresses.
  • Identify the message as an advertisement in some reasonable way.
  • Include the physical address of our business or site headquarters.
  • Monitor third-party email marketing services for compliance, if one is used.
  • Honor opt-out/unsubscribe requests quickly.
  • Allow users to unsubscribe by using the link at the bottom of each email.
Unsubscribing

If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails follow the instructions at the bottom of each email and we will promptly remove you from correspondence by that tool. Note that you have to unsubscribe separately from our newsletter and our marketing automation tool.

Discourse forums ToS

If you wish to use our forums, you have to agree to the stipulations below.

  • You follow our Nextcloud community code of conduct
  • You must at least be 10 years old
  • You may no longer use the forum if Nextcloud GmbH or any of the admins contact you directly to say that you may not.
  • Keep in mind our forum is to discuss Nextcloud and related, technical issues. Political debates, complaints or such about things not directly related, or purely relevant for yourself, do not belong on the forums.
  • Respect the decisions of administrators – when asked to not discuss things, do not discuss them on the forums.

To contribute to our forums, you need an account. For that we need a real email address. You can ask us to close your account and delete all private data (but not the posts, see below) any time. Use the contact form on the bottom of this page. Note that YOU are responsible for all actions taken with your account, whether authorized or not, unless you ask us to close your account or notify us it is compromised. You agree to pick a secure password and keep it safe! You agree all content posted on the forums is owned by you and by posting on our forums is shared and licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

  • You may not break the law using the forum, use other users accounts, trade, buy or sell user names, advertise any products or use the forums to gather information for advertisement purposes.
  • Also, you may not imply you are affiliated with or endorsed by Nextcloud GmbH or impersonate others.
  • You may not automate access to the forum or monitor it with tools like browser plug-ins, web crawlers and the like, unless it is for the purposes of a search engine. You may not circumvent security or access restrictions or try to work around our moderation efforts.
  • Do not strain the forum with technical requests or requests designed to impose an unreasonable load on the forum infrastructure.
  • Respect copyright and privacy of others: do not remove any copyright marks, do not post copyrighted images and do not share personal details of other people or yourself.

Note that our forums contain content from our community. While we and our volunteer moderators do our best to keep dangerous or objectionable content off our forums, it is possible users break our rules. This also has privacy implications – if someone hotlinks an image, then the browser of the visitor will fetch the image and transfer the IP adresse (and some other data) to this server. You can configure your browser to not fetch any data from outside the forum, however.

If you do not wish to follow those rules or accept the above, please do not use our forums. We reserve the right to change, redact, and delete content on the forum for any reason.

Website source

The source code of the website can be found in our GitHub repository. It is licensed under the AGPLv3 license. Note that graphics and trademarks are of course not licensed freely, nor is text content. The license covers the code of the site.

Contact

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy you may contact us using the information below.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Nextcloud may change its Privacy Policy from time to time and at our sole discretion. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to our Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Legal Notice

Nextcloud GmbH
Hauptmannsreute 44A
70192 Stuttgart, Germany

HRB 227086 (AG München)
T +49 711 25 24 28 90
Contact form
Managing Director:
Frank Karlitschek

All product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners, which might in no way be associated or affiliated with Nextcloud.

Last Edited on 2023-08-10