Privacy in your coverage #

This page is for reporters and editors. Stories about software touch people: site owners, editors, contributors, people who reported bugs. This documentation follows a simple rule for itself, and asks the press to follow it too: no personal data, and no names of private people or customers, without their consent.

Contents #

1. Customers and site owners
2. Contributors and community members
3. People who report problems
4. Images and recordings
5. What this documentation does

Customers and site owners #

• No customer list of 7x or users list of Exponential is published. If you learn that an organization uses Exponential, ask that organization before naming it as a user (What the sources do not say).
• A public site that shows "Powered by Exponential" says something about itself; still ask before you describe its internals or quote its staff.
• Partners publish customer stories only with written permission (Writing a case study); ask for that permission before you repeat details.

Contributors and community members #

• Contributors appear in the public Git history under the names or accounts they chose. Use those, and do not dig further into their private lives.
• Forum and chat posts are public, but a person posting a question is not a public figure. Ask before you quote them by name, or quote without the name.
• Advocates speak for themselves (Disclosure and conflicts of interest).

People who report problems #

• Someone who reported a vulnerability privately may not want to be named; respect their choice (Covering security fixes).
• Bug reports in the public trackers may contain personal data by mistake; do not reproduce it.

Images and recordings #

• Screenshots and videos must not show personal data of real people (Privacy on camera).
• Blur names, e-mail addresses, IP addresses and order details; better, use a demo installation (Taking your own screenshots).

What this documentation does #

• It describes people by their role ("the founder of 7x", "contributors") and names accounts only as they appear in the public history.
• It does not repeat telephone numbers or postal addresses, even where the organizations publish them (Press contacts).
• It contains no customer names and no personal data.

Data protection laws differ by country; your outlet's legal advisers know the rules that apply to you.

Related pages #

• Privacy on camera
• Protecting people's privacy
• Protecting customer data
• Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.