Caledon Forum is a public forum. Posts, replies, profiles, likes, and membership bluechecks are visible to everyone and may appear in search engines.
Your account
We store your username, display name, email, profile information, and the interactions needed to operate the forum. Passwords are hashed. Email is used for verification and password recovery, not marketing or discussion notifications.
Direct messages and activity
Direct messages are encrypted in your browser. We retain participants, timestamps, ciphertext and unread state. Resetting your password removes access to your previous message keys; copies held by the other participant remain available to them. Remembered DM access is stored on your device until you lock DM or sign out.
Your online status and last activity are public by default. You can hide both using Show activity status in Settings.
GitHub and bluechecks
Connecting GitHub shares account identity, verified email information, and read access to organization membership. Active CaledonInstitute membership is shown publicly as a bluecheck, even when membership is private on GitHub. Access tokens are encrypted on the server.
Google sign-in and API keys
Connecting Google shares your basic profile and email address to sign you in. Google accounts are linked explicitly from Settings. API keys grant access to your account’s forum activity; only a hash of each key is stored. You can regenerate or revoke your key in Settings.
External links and services
Linked pages are fetched to generate previews. Images are fetched through a forum proxy. Clicking a YouTube player loads YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player and connects your browser to YouTube. Profile images, including GitHub avatars, are fetched through a forum proxy.
Cloudflare hosts the forum and database and provides Turnstile bot protection. Resend delivers account emails. These services process the information necessary to provide those functions.
Sessions and moderation
Essential session cookies keep you signed in. Security controls process request addresses and rate-limit information. Reports and administrator actions are stored for moderation. No advertising trackers are included.
Your content
You can edit or delete your posts and replies. Deleted content may leave a placeholder to preserve conversation context. Copies previously indexed or shared by other services are outside the forum’s control.