Privacy policy

This policy explains what information home.social processes when you browse the site, search public Fediverse content or use an account feature.

Information we process

Public Fediverse content

home.social indexes public posts and public profile information received from participating Fediverse servers. This may include a display name, account address, avatar, biography, public post text, media links, hashtags and engagement counts. We use this material to provide search, discovery, trends and news features.

Account information

If you create a local account, we may store your email address, a securely hashed password, display name, avatar URL and login timestamps. If you sign in through a Mastodon-compatible server, we may store your server, account identifier, profile details and an access token needed for the requested connection. Mastodon sign-in requests read-only access.

Technical information

Like most web services, our hosting and security systems may process IP addresses, browser details, requested pages, timestamps and error logs. We use this information to deliver the site, prevent abuse, diagnose faults and protect the service.

Cookies and local storage

We use a session cookie to keep signed-in visitors authenticated. Sharing tools may save your preferred Mastodon server in your browser’s local storage. Advertising and notification providers may use cookies, device identifiers or similar technologies, subject to their own policies and the choices available in your browser or device.

Advertising and notifications

home.social loads Google AdSense and may offer browser notifications through SDK4Push. These third parties may receive technical information when their services load. Notification permission is controlled by your browser and can be withdrawn in your browser settings. We do not load the notification script on sign-in, sign-up, sign-out, authentication callback or account pages.

How we respect Fediverse privacy choices

• Only posts marked public are eligible for indexing.
• Accounts must permit discovery.
• We exclude posts or profiles using recognised opt-out signals such as #noindex, #nobot or #noscrape.
• Deletion events received from source servers trigger removal from the search index.

Why we process information

We process information to operate requested features, maintain accounts, provide public-interest discovery, secure and improve the service, comply with legal obligations and support advertising that funds the site.

Sharing and retention

We do not sell account information. We may share limited information with infrastructure, security, analytics, advertising or notification providers that help operate the service, or when required by law. Public Fediverse content remains attributable to its source and links back to the originating server.

Public post records are intended to be short-lived and are periodically pruned. Account and security records are kept only as long as reasonably needed for the purposes described above, subject to legal and operational requirements.

Your choices

You can restrict a post at its source, disable profile discoverability, use supported opt-out tags, delete source content, decline notification permission, block cookies in your browser or stop using an account connection. Because the Fediverse is distributed, changes may take time to reach services that previously received a public post.

Security and changes

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards, but no online service can promise absolute security. We may update this policy as the service, providers or legal requirements change. The date at the top shows the latest revision.