Contents
This notice explains what happens to information about you when you visit collectoh.com, create a Collectoh account, or run the Collectoh software. It's written to be read, not skimmed past, so it's short.
"We", "us" and "Collectoh" mean Collectoh, the company that makes Collectoh and runs this website. For anything in this notice, write to privacy@collectoh.com.
Your server is yours
Collectoh is software you run on your own computer or NAS. Your media, your libraries, the accounts on your server, your watch history, your photos and every face, tag and note in them are kept on that server, under your control. They are never sent to us, and we can't see them. The one thing of your libraries that passes through us is the catalogue lookups described below — and, only if you switch on Collectoh Relay, what people away from home watch, encrypted so that we can't read it.
The software doesn't report what anyone watches, and it contains no advertising or tracking code.
To do its job, your server talks to a few outside services, and you can see and change which ones:
- Catalogues such as TMDB, TheTVDB, MusicBrainz, fanart.tv, TheAudioDB, Deezer, iTunes, Audible, Open Library and Google Books. Your server sends them what it needs to find a match, such as a title, a year or an ID, and fetches artwork and details. Each library's metadata agents decide which are asked, and a library can use only the files beside your media.
- Through us, for the catalogues that need a key. TMDB, TheTVDB, fanart.tv, TheAudioDB, Google Books and OpenSubtitles each want a key from whoever asks them. So that you never need one, your server asks them through collectoh.com, which holds ours: we pass on its lookup, such as a title, a year or an ID, and the catalogue's answer. We keep no record of which server asked what. We keep a catalogue's answers for up to a day, by the lookup alone, so the next server asking the same thing is answered at once. Pictures come to your server straight from each catalogue. If you give your server a key of its own for a catalogue, it asks that catalogue directly, and nothing of it goes through us.
- Subtitles and lyrics: OpenSubtitles, through us as above or with an account of your own, and LRCLIB when someone asks for lyrics.
- Models for search by meaning, sonic similarity, photo tags and faces, downloaded once from the Hugging Face Hub the first time they're needed. After that, the work happens on your server, and no photo, track or transcript is sent anywhere.
- Maps: when someone opens a photo library's map, their browser fetches map tiles from OpenStreetMap.
- Your own cloud storage, if you connect OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox, or an S3-compatible bucket such as Backblaze B2, to your server.
- Casting: in Chrome and Edge, the app loads Google's Cast library from Google's servers each time it starts, so that it can find a Chromecast. Google sees your browser ask for it, as with any file fetched from Google.
Your server also checks in with your Collectoh account, to confirm it's yours and whether Plus is on. It sends the server's name, platform and version, and nothing about your media or the people you share it with.
If you have Plus and switch on off-site backups, your server also sends us a copy of its database and settings each night. It is sealed on your server with a key made from a passphrase only you know, which is never sent to us, so we can't open it: all we can see is how big it is, when it arrived and which of your servers sent it. It never includes your media or your artwork. We keep each one for 30 days, and delete them all when you delete your account.
If you switch on Collectoh Relay, people away from home can reach your server through a relay of ours, for when nothing else can reach it. Your server keeps a connection open to the relay, and each visitor's connection is passed along it. What passes is encrypted from the visitor's device to your server, so the relay can't read it: it sees only your server's relay address, the address the visitor connects from, which it passes on to your server and never records, and how much passes. It keeps how much it carried for each server this month, to keep to a monthly allowance where there is one, and nothing else: no record of who connected, and nothing of what they watched. Apps try your server's own addresses first, and use the relay only when those can't be reached. Switch it off, and the connection closes at once.
Each of those services has its own privacy policy. When you run a server, you're responsible for the information about the people you share it with; we have no access to it.
This website
collectoh.com uses no analytics and loads nothing from other companies: its fonts, pictures and scripts are served from this site. It sets no cookies until you sign in to your Collectoh account. Then it sets one, which keeps you signed in and does nothing else, and your browser also notes that you're signed in, so that every page can show your account's menu instead of Sign in. Both go when you sign out. When you sign in to one of your servers with your Collectoh account, one more cookie lists the addresses of the servers this browser was sent back to, so that such a server can ask quietly whether you're signed in and hear the answer without a page in between. It holds those addresses and nothing else, is read only by our account service, and stays in your browser, not with us; signing out leaves it, since it says nothing about who you are. Pages that show the founder deal ask our account service how many founder licences are left: that question carries no cookie, and isn't logged. Like any website, our hosting provider receives the address your request came from and what was requested, and keeps those logs for a short time to keep the site running and secure.
If you arrive by one of our affiliates' links — people and sites who recommend Collectoh, for a share of what the people they send pay us — the link's referral code goes along in the page's address and fills in the sign-up form, where you can see it and take it out. Nothing is stored in your browser, and the visit isn't recorded.
If you download Collectoh, the file comes from our download server, which logs the same kind of request information.
Your Collectoh account
You need a free Collectoh account to set up Collectoh: you sign in with it when you set up your server. It's also where you buy Collectoh Plus and look after your licence. Only a server's owner needs one: the people they invite can sign in to that server alone, and an email address they add when they accept an invitation stays on that server.
Your Collectoh account is also how you sign in to the Collectoh community forum, at https://community.collectoh.com, which has no sign-in of its own: anyone who wants to post there signs in with a Collectoh account, or creates one. Each time you sign in to the forum, once you've confirmed your email, we tell it your account's ID, your name and your email address, and it keeps them with your profile there. What you post on the forum, and the name you post under, are public. When you delete your Collectoh account, your forum profile loses your name and email address, and your posts stay, under a made-up name.
You can also sign in to a Collectoh server with your Collectoh account, whether it's yours or one you were invited to, if your account there has the same email address. The first time a server asks, at each address you use it at, we ask you whether to allow it. Once you have, each time you sign in there we tell that server your account's ID, your name and your email address, and it signs you in to its own account with that email. We keep which servers you've allowed, at which addresses, and when each last signed you in, until you delete your account. What a server keeps is up to whoever runs it.
When you create an account, we keep:
- your name and email address, and a securely hashed version of your password;
- your plan and its billing history;
- your servers: each one's name, platform, version and when it last checked in, and your licence key if you have Plus;
- if you switch on off-site backups, each backup your servers send, which we can't open, with its size, when it arrived and which server sent it, for 30 days;
- if you switch on Collectoh Relay, how much it carried for each of your servers this month;
- if you switch on two-step sign-in, its secret, sealed with a key only the account service holds, your recovery codes, kept only in a form that cannot be turned back into them, and which half-minute the last code you used belonged to, so that no code works twice;
- the servers you've allowed to sign you in with your account, at which addresses, and when each last did;
- whether you asked us for occasional news by email;
- if you kept an affiliate's referral code when you signed up, which affiliate it was, so that we can pay them their share.
If you apply to our affiliate program from your account, our staff look at your application (your name, your email, the code you chose and where you'll recommend Collectoh) to decide whether to approve it. We keep those, with when you agreed to the affiliate terms, where to send your money, and what you earned and what we paid you. Where your money goes is sealed with a key only the account service holds; our staff open it only to pay you, and every time they do is recorded. Deleting your account closes your affiliate account, and we keep what we need to pay you what's due, and the payment records the law makes us keep.
Payments are handled by our payment provider, who receives your card details directly. We never see or store your full card number.
We use this information to run your account, to switch Plus on for your servers, to send you receipts and messages about your account, and, only if you ask for it, news about Collectoh. We don't sell it, and we don't use it for advertising. Our staff look at an account only to help its owner or to keep the service running, and every change they make to one is recorded, with who made it and why. To see how Collectoh is doing, we also count each day how many accounts are made, sign in, pay and the like: totals for the day, which say nothing about anyone in particular.
When you write to us
If you use the contact form or email us, we keep your message, your name and your email address so we can answer and follow up, and for as long as that takes.
Why we're allowed to use it
We use your information because we need it to provide the account and the services you've asked for (a contract with you), because we have a legitimate interest in keeping our website and services secure and working, because the law requires us to keep some records (such as for tax), or because you've agreed to it, such as for news by email, which you can withdraw at any time.
Who else sees it
Only the companies that help us run things: our hosting provider, our email provider and our payment provider, Stripe, which takes the payment when you buy Collectoh Plus and sends its receipt. Each can use your information only to do that job for us. An affiliate whose referral code you kept learns only when someone signed up with it, whether they pay for Plus and on which plan, and what it earned them; never your name or your email. A server you allow to sign you in with your account learns your account's ID, your name and your email address, as above. We'd share information with the authorities only if the law required us to.
Some of these providers may store information outside the United Kingdom. Where they do, we make sure it's protected by safeguards the law recognises, such as the UK's approved contract terms.
How long we keep it
We keep your account for as long as you have it. When you delete your account, we delete your information within 30 days, except records we must keep by law, such as payment records, which we keep for as long as the law requires. Website and download logs are kept for no more than 30 days.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it, delete it, limit what we do with it, or give it to you in a form you can take elsewhere. You can object to how we use it, and you can withdraw your agreement to anything you agreed to. To do any of these, write to privacy@collectoh.com. We'll answer within a month.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We'd appreciate the chance to put it right first.
Children
Collectoh accounts are for adults. Children can use a Collectoh server that a parent or carer runs, with the restrictions the server's owner sets, and that information stays on that server.
Changes to this notice
When we change this notice, we'll update the date at the top, and tell account holders by email about anything important before it takes effect.