At php-net.pro, one of our main priorities is the privacy of our visitors. This Privacy Policy document describes the types of information that are collected and recorded by php-net.pro and how we use them.

If you have additional questions or require more information about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us via our contact form.

Information we collect automatically

If you visit our website to browse, read or download information, your web browser automatically sends us (and we may retain) information such as:

• the internet domain through which you access the internet,
• the IP address of the computer you are using,
• the type of browser software and operating system you are using,
• the date and time you access our site,
• the internet address of the site from which you linked directly to our site.

We use this information as aggregate data to help us maintain this site, e.g. to determine the number of visitors to different sections, to ensure the site is working properly and to make it more accessible and useful. We will not use this information to identify individuals, except for site security or law enforcement purposes. We will not obtain personally identifying information about you when you visit our site unless you choose to provide it.

Information you provide

If you choose to identify yourself (or otherwise provide us with personal information) when you use our online forms:

• We will collect (and may retain) any personally identifying information you provide, such as your name, street address, email address and phone number. We use this information to fulfill your request and may use it to provide you with additional information at a later time. We will not disclose such information to third parties, except as specified in this privacy policy.
• If you request information, services or assistance, we may disclose your personal information to those third parties that (in our judgment) are appropriate in order to fulfill your request. If you specify that you do not want us to disclose the information to third parties, we will honor your request. Note, however, that in this case it may be impossible for us to respond to or fulfill your request.
• If your communication relates to a law enforcement matter, we may disclose the information to law enforcement agencies that we deem appropriate.

How long we keep information

We delete any recorded information three months after your last provision. Your reader account is covered by its own section below.

Cookies

Without your consent we only set cookies that are required to operate the site: your decision about audience measurement (see below), the session cookie during a booking, the sign-in cookie of your reader account (up to 30 days, see below), and a token protecting the forms from abuse. Your language and colour-scheme preference stay in your browser (localStorage) and never reach us.

Reader account, comments and reading history

To comment on and rate articles you can create a reader account — you sign in via a link we send to your email address; there is no password. For this we store your email address, your chosen display name and the time of sign-in. Sign-in links and codes are short-lived and are only kept as cryptographic hashes on our side.

With your account we store the content you create yourself: your comments (publicly visible under your display name), your article ratings (public only as an anonymous total) and your reading history — which articles you opened as a signed-in reader, and when. The reading history is purely a convenience feature for the “Your reading history” profile page, visible only to you, and is neither used for advertising nor shared with third parties. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (providing the features you use).

We keep this data for as long as your account exists. You can delete your comments and withdraw your ratings yourself at any time; on request — via our contact form — we delete your account entirely, including ratings and reading history.

Audience measurement (self-hosted, cookie-free)

We measure which articles and pages are read so we can improve what we publish. Since July 2026 this runs entirely on our own server in the EU, using a self-hosted instance of the open-source tool Umami — no Google, no third parties, and no cookies or any other access to your device. That is why this site shows no cookie banner.

Recorded per page view: the page itself, language, section and article, reading progress, clicks on sources, job ads and conferences, the referring page, device and browser category, screen size, and country. Your IP address is used only transiently to derive the country and a daily-changing, irreversible identifier; it is never stored. Nobody — including us — can recognise you across days or link your visits to your person. Names, e-mail addresses, billing details and booking contents are never part of the measurement; a received payment is counted as an anonymous event (amount, country, payment method).

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in understanding how our journalism and our booking pages are used (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). § 25 of the German TDDDG does not apply, as nothing is stored on or read from your device.

You can object at any time: we automatically honour your browser’s “Do Not Track” and Global Privacy Control signals — or use this switch:

The switch merely stores an objection flag in your browser’s localStorage — its only purpose is to honour your choice.

Push notifications

On our news page you can subscribe to browser notifications for important stories (bell icon). This is voluntary and strictly opt-in: nothing is stored and nothing is sent without your consent, which you grant through your browser’s permission dialog.

When you activate the subscription, we store the subscription address generated by your browser (an endpoint URL at your browser vendor’s push service, e.g. Google, Mozilla or Apple), the associated technical keys, and your chosen language. We cannot link this data to any person; no name, email address or IP address is collected or associated with it.

Our notifications are deliberately content-free (“payload-less”): only the wake-up signal travels through the browser vendor’s push service — your browser fetches the actual story text directly from us. We notify sparingly: only for high-relevance stories, and at most once per story.

You can unsubscribe at any time via the same bell icon or your browser’s site settings; your subscription record is then deleted promptly. Subscriptions that become unreachable or fail permanently are removed automatically.

Children's information

Protecting children while they use the internet is important to us. We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in and/or monitor and guide their online activity. php-net.pro does not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best to promptly remove such information from our records.

Online privacy policy only

This privacy policy applies only to our online activities and is valid for visitors to our website with regard to the information that they share and/or that is collected on php-net.pro. This policy does not apply to any information collected offline or via channels other than this website.

Consent

By using our website, you hereby consent to our privacy policy and agree to its terms.