About biketravel.photos

biketravel.photos (hereafter “the service”) is a not-for-profit donation-based service run by Jan Penfrat (hereafter “I” or “me”) that provides Pixelfed accounts to people who want to publish photos about their own bicycle touring adventures (“you”). For the purpose of connecting and interacting with other Pixelfed or Fediverse accounts, biketravel.photos processes personal data from you and users of other instances with whom you interact. This data protection notice describes what kind of personal data I process and on what legal basis, how long I keep it and why, as well as your rights with respect to your data.

Please do not hesitate to contact me via email to for any question you might have with regard to this document or the processing of your personal data.

Data protection summary

This policy has been last updated on 5 December 2022.

I dedicate this Pixelfed instance biketravel.photos to the bicycle touring community. I provide this service on a 100% voluntary basis without any guarantees to offer privacy-friendly photo sharing social network accounts that users typically employ for sharing their travel photos, socialising and discussing bicylce touring.

For the purpose of ensuring a secure interaction, the website of biketravel.photos stores three local cookies with a temporary identifier in the browser of website visitors to store their login status. For security and debugging purposes, our server logs and stores visitor IP addresses for a maximum of 14 days. After that time, all IP addresses are removed.

biketravel.photos processes profile data in the form of posts, comments, subscriptions (following), subscribers (follower), content appreciations (likes) and promotions (boosts) for publication. For registered users I process your profile data to deliver the service. For users of other instances, I store and display public profile data and rely here on legitimate interest until they object and in any case when they delete their post or other data (unsubscribe, unlike, unboost).

If you contact me via email, I use any personal data that your message may contain (such as your email address or name) only to respond to your message. I archive your message for at most 12 months. You are of course free to use a nickname and a pseudonymous email address. I process messages from registered users to deliver the service and rely for users of other instances on their consent. I may also process messages to comply with any legal obligations under EU law or the national laws of Belgium (where I reside) or Germany (where this Pixelfed server resides).

The following information is provided according to Articles 12, 13 and 14 of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Data protection notice

For the purposes of this notice:

“User” means the natural person who interacts with biketravel.photos directly via the website or indirectly via third-party applications.

“Registered user” means the users with a Pixelfed profile on biketravel.photos.

“Profile data” means their posts, comments, subscriptions (following), subscribers (follower) content appreciations (likes) and promotions (boosts), bookmarks and profile settings.

“Subscribers” mean the accounts who follow a registered user.

“Subscriptions” mean the accounts followed by a registered user.

Scope and purpose of the processing This data protection notice applies to the processing of personal data for the provision of biketravel.photos. It offers information on what personal data is processed and how it is processed, and on your rights.

Responsible for the processing I'm the data controller in my capacity as the provider of this service.

Processing of personal data

Personal data processed by biketravel.photos is, in princple, accessible to me to ensure a secure operation. Except in extraordinary circumstances and when necessary to ensure the proper function of the service, however, I don't access any data that is not already published by a user.

biketravel.photos is hosted on servers from Strato AG, Germany, who act as data processors solely on my written instruction.

(a) Website Visitors

The biketravel.photos website and APIs process the IP addresses and other metadata (as specified below) of its visitors. When accessing the service, an encrypted connection to its web server is established. To display the content correctly on the visitor’s computer or other terminal devices, the following data is processed in accordance with the HTTP and TCP/IP protocol:

• IP address of the visitor’s internet connection
• Operating system and operating system version of the visitor’s terminal
• Web browser and browser version
• Date of access to the website
• HTTP cookies as described above

This is required for the request, processing, and display of profile data and other content on the service. After each page visit, some of the data are stored in the account profile (if logged in) and server logs. These logs serve the purpose of maintenance and security of the server and personal data herein is deleted after 14 days.

(b) Contributors from third-party services

biketravel.photos processes personal data when users of third-party services with ActivityPub support interact with its accounts. To enrich public profile pages with profile data, the following data is processed in accordance with the requirements of the ActivityPub protocol:

• IP address of the third-party service
• Name of the user’s terminal software
• Display name, account name, and profile picture
• Current date and time
• Profile data

Direct messages are not end-to-end encrypted and are therefore in principle accessible to me as administrators.

This processing is necessary to provide a federated Pixelfed instance and therefore based on Article 6 (1) (f) GDPR (‘processing is in our legitimate interest’) with the exception of personal data that is not required such as the display name and profile picture, the processing of which is based on Article 6 (1) (a) GDPR (‘consent’). biketravel.photos stores profile data from subscriptions from compatible third-party services until it receives via that service or directly from the user a request for deletion or objection (unsubscribe, unlike, unboost).

(c) Registered users

biketravel.photos limits registrations to users that apply for an account and that I assume to be travelling by bicycle at least sometimes. I reserve the right to refuse the provision of the service to any given user for any reason. To set up accounts and manage them subsequently, the following data from registered users is processed:

• Display name, account name, profile picture and header image
• Login credentials consisting of an email address
• Account description/biography
• Content (toots), promoted, and appreciated content
• direct messages (sent and received)
• Subscriptions and their recent content
• Logged-in sessions (terminal software, time and date, IP address)

If registered users post profile data, the previous section applies accordingly. Note that updating subscribers and posting profile data (including profile mentions) requires disclosure of personal data to the service of the recipients. Depending on their Pixelfed server’s geographic location, the disclosure can possibly involve international data transfers that are outside of my control.

The registered user’s name and display name, profile picture and header, description, subscriptions, the own and promoted content, the content of their subscriptions, as well as their given feedback is published on their profile page.

This processing is based on Article 6 (1) (b) of the GDPR (‘processing is necessary for the performance of a contract’) with the exception of personal data that is not required such as the display name and profile picture, the processing of which is based on Article 6 (1) (a) GDPR (‘consent’). Profile data is retained until the account is deleted.

Registered users are responsible for the use of their accounts and their own compliance with the GDPR as separate controllers when they post personal data of other people.

(d) Donations

You can make donations for the operation of biketravel.photos; I still to need set this up though.

(e) Contacting me by email

If you contact me via email or a Pixelfed direct message, any personal data that your message may contain (such as your email address or name) will only be used to respond to your message and may be stored as part of an email archive. You are of course free to use a nickname and a pseudonymous email address. Such personal data will be deleted after a maximum of 12 months.

Exercise your rights

You have the right to request from me access to and rectification or erasure of your personal data or restriction of processing concerning you or, where applicable, the right to object to processing or the right to data portability. Where applicable, you also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Please note that withdrawing your consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

Please find more information on your rights on the website of the European Data Protection Supervisor.

You have, in any case, the right to lodge a complaint with the Belgian data protection authority as a supervisory authority.