Privacy and site rules
This page is a draft and is under legal review. It may change, and we'll update the date at the bottom when it does.
1. About this site
Neighbourhood Notice Board is an experimental community noticeboard. It is currently free to use, has no adverts, and does not sell your data. Contact: [email protected].
The noticeboard application, database, uploaded photos and content-checking models currently run on the operator's home computer. Cloudflare provides the domain's DNS and the HTTPS tunnel that carries website traffic to that computer; it does not host the noticeboard database. Google provides sign-in. Cloudflare and Google process information as described below and under their own privacy terms.
This is a trial and has no guaranteed uptime. The home computer, its power and internet connection must be available; the site may be slow, unavailable or discontinued while it is being tested. We may later move it to paid hosting and may introduce a modest charge to help cover hosting costs. No fee is being charged now. We will explain any change before it takes effect and update this page.
2. Site rules
- Be sensible and kind. No abusive, offensive or threatening language, and nothing illegal, hateful or adult.
- Post real local notices: events, services, items for sale or free, lost and found, announcements.
- Selling animals and livestock is under review; the rules on this may change.
- Flag anything that breaks these rules. Moderators may remove notices or comments, and suspend or delete accounts.
- Moderators' decisions are final.
3. Suspended accounts
A suspension applies only to your account on this noticeboard. It has nothing to do with your Google account, which keeps working as normal everywhere else. While suspended you can't sign in here. Contact us at [email protected] if you think it's a mistake.
4. What Google tells us when you sign in
We use "Sign in with Google" to authenticate you and request the basic profile scope. The app uses your Google account identifier to recognise your account and your first name to suggest an initial display name. We store the identifier and the display name you use on this noticeboard; we do not store your Google password, access tokens, email address or profile picture. The sign-in exchange is handled by Google and our app. Google's privacy information is available in its Privacy Policy.
5. What we keep
- Your Google account number (so we recognise you next time)
- Your name on this site: your first name to start with, which you can change
- Your town (Coventry until you choose your own)
- The date you joined and the date you last visited
- Whether your account is active or suspended on this site
- What you post: notices (with any photo), comments, favourites and flags
Your name and town are shown with your notices and comments. Notices marked "members only" are shown only to signed-in members. Flag counts are shown, but not who flagged.
6. Information handled by the site and its providers
The noticeboard application does not save your IP address, device details or browser details in its account database or activity log. However, because Cloudflare carries the public website traffic through its DNS and tunnel service, Cloudflare necessarily handles connection information (which can include your IP address and technical request details) to deliver and protect the connection. Google handles information when you use its sign-in service. Their handling is subject to their own privacy terms: Cloudflare Privacy Policy and Google Privacy Policy.
We do not use advertising or analytics tracking. When you upload a photo, the app re-saves it and removes hidden details such as GPS location. We do not sell your personal data.
7. Automatic checks
Notices and comments are checked for unsuitable content when you save them. The word list and offline language, text and image checks run on the operator's home computer. The separate optional AI service is currently switched off. Content used for these checks is not sent to an external AI provider. Website requests still pass through Cloudflare as described in section 6.
8. Activity log
For security and to deal with abuse, we log actions such as signing in, posting, editing, deleting and flagging. Each record holds what happened, when, and the account, notice or comment number. We never log your IP address or the full text of your posts; when the filter blocks a post, the log notes the blocked word that was matched. Log records are deleted after 12 months.
9. Moderator notes
Moderators can keep notes about an account (for example after a complaint). Notes stay while the account exists and for 12 months after it is deleted, so we can help with genuine legal enquiries. Then they are deleted.
11. How long we keep things
- Notices disappear from the noticeboard on their expiry date (7, 14 or 30 days, as you choose), and are deleted from our records a little later.
- Accounts not used for 180 days are deleted, together with their notices and comments.
- Log records: 12 months. Moderator notes: 12 months after the account is deleted.
- Both databases are backed up daily to a second internal drive in the operator's home computer. Backups older than 14 days are removed. This can help if the main drive fails, but the backup is not off-site: theft, damage, or failure of the computer or both drives could still result in data loss.
12. Your choices and rights
- Change your name or town in My Account at any time.
- Delete your account in My Account: it removes your account, notices, comments, favourites and flags straight away.
- Email us for a copy of what we hold about you, or with any question.
- If you're unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
13. Deleted means deleted
Deleting your account, notices or comments removes them from the live database. A copy may remain in a backup until it expires and is removed; backups are for whole-site recovery after a breakdown, never to restore a single account, notice or comment or to provide a copy. Backups older than 14 days are removed. The exceptions are the activity log and moderator notes described above, which are kept for their stated periods.
Last updated: 9 November 2026.