Overview

Our promise to you is that security is our top priority. DaniWeb stores up to three cookies in your web browser: one to manage the user session for logged in users, and two to prevent against cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. On occasion, some usage of DaniWeb may require additional session cookies as you navigate the site (e.g. to flag if you've already seen an important notice so we don't keep showing it to you). These cookies begin with the prefix tmp_ and are purged as soon as you close your web browser. All cookies are accessible only over an SSL connection to www.daniweb.com and are not accessible via javascript. None of the cookies store any user-identifying information.

DaniWeb does not directly collect or store personal information from visitors who have not created user accounts within our platform. However, we do use Google Analytics to collect non-personally-identifying information, as well as Google Ad Manager to mange our display advertising. Both Google Analytics and Google Ad Manager may store and use cookies to track user behavior and display more relevant ads. A DaniWeb Premium subscription restricts you from seeing any advertising, and therefore Google Ad Manger is not invoked when logged into a Premium account.

Additionally, we work to continually improve DaniWeb's user experience by utilizing Microsoft Clarity to see how you interact with our website. Note that Clarity uses cookies to obtain user session data. Sensitive content, personal information, and anything typed into input boxes is never captured nor uploaded to Clarity's servers.

User Information

The minimum amount of data we require for a user registration record is a username and email address. Users who don't opt to build their accounts by connecting via Facebook or Google will additionally be prompted for a password. When signing up or logging in via Facebook or Google, we request access to a user's basic profile data for the purposes of creating or updating their user profile. With the exception of a user's email address (which we request a separate permission for), only data that the user has specified as visible on their public Facebook or Google profile is accessible to us. Information collected from Facebook and Google is solely used to populate a user's public profile. At some point after registration, we may prompt for the completion of the user's profile.

Profile Access

User profiles may be accessible programatically through DaniWeb Connect, our API used to power third-party apps ("Daniapps"). Users connect to Daniapps through a single sign-on with their DaniWeb profile. The OAuth 2.0 authorization framework is used to authenciate these API requests. As part of the login flow, they must grant permission to the Daniapp to gain access to their account.

Daniapps are granted API access tokens for a specific user which must be sent with every API request they make. The tokens allow the Daniapp to authenticate itself as the end-user, and retrieve information and perform operations from the perspective of the end-user. Access tokens have a shelf life of 24 hours. Every 24 hours, the Daniapp must programatically request a new access token from the API by authenticating themselves along with the token they received from the API during the first time the user granted them access. A user may deauthorize a Daniapp at any time. Doing so will immediately invalidate all tokens associated with the Daniapp for that user.

Profile Data

Public profile information currently available via DaniWeb / DaniWeb Connect includes: a user's community profile (username, member badge, avatar, about me, post signature, location, birthday, PC specs, and interests), full name, generalized geolocation, headline, industry, career summary, skills and interests, website, company name, job position, company size, joined timestamp, last activity timestamp, and online status. All profile fields (with the exception of timestamps and online status) are always fully editable from the user control panel. DaniWeb does not collect or store any personally identifiable information (PII) other than what is manually submitted, and can be viewed, edited, and removed at any time, by the end-user. Users can optionally choose to share their geolocation, and always have the ability to delete all location history from the user control panel.

While users can always edit and delete all personal data, on their own, through their user control panel, users can alternatively request modification or deletion of all personal data by contacting us directly. We may require proof of account ownership, such as access to the email address associated with your DaniWeb account.

Depending on the permissions a Daniapp requests, and the user explicitely grants, the Daniapp may gain the ability to access additional private components of the user's DaniWeb profile (which may include their last used IP address, geographic coordinates, matching preferences, birthday, gender, email address, and user settings), make changes to their user profile, read their conversations, write messages on their behalf, access their groups, write group messages on their behalf, and/or set and retrieve their CV. A Daniapp may additionally access the CV of any user that the end-user is in a conversation with.

Throughout normal interaction with DaniWeb, or with Daniapps that utilize the DaniWeb Connect API endpoints, we record behavior that may be used to help us further improve our algorithms, such as our user matching algorithm. For example, we take into consideration data points such as degrees of separation between two users, and we look for patterns to help us further gauge and deliver on a user's needs. No public profile information, including any information gathered from logging in via Facebook or Google, or any information entered into the Community Profile or Business Card areas of the control panel, are ever collected or used for the purposes of data mining. Information manually entered into the Professional Networking Matches area of the control panel is fed into our user recommendation engine to match you with other users you may have synergy with.

Message Privacy

Conversations follow a user across the multiple Daniapps that they associate with. There is one single conversation for each pair of users. Therefore, if User A and User B are both using Daniapp 1 and Daniapp 2, both Daniapps will be able to gain access to the entire conversation. Additionally, User A and User B may simultaneously engage in the conversation across multiple Daniapps. The Daniapp is required to only have the user it is currently authenticated against to grant permission to view their conversations. The conversation will be accessible even if the other user has not granted access to the Daniapp to access their conversations.

Group conversations have a privacy setting which must be specified when they are created. By making a group private via the API, the group may only be joined via a passphrase.

All messages are permanently stored in the DaniWeb Connect servers as plain text.

Account Deletion

A user may choose to permanently delete their account from the User Settings page. Deleting an account will immediately log the user out, prevent them from being able to log back into DaniWeb, prevent all access to the user's profile, remove all previously logged behavioral data, and invalidate any DaniWeb Connect API tokens currently existing in the wild. However, deleting an account will not affect any user data that has already been shared with a third-party Daniapp in the past, which the third-party chose to store in their own database. You may wish to keep this in mind, and only grant permission to trusted Daniapps. Additionally, deleting an account may not erase all non-identifiable data pertaining to the user from the DaniWeb servers. Previously contributed forum posts and chat messages may remain in place so as to not break the logical flow of discussions.