Last updated: 6 November 2026
This policy explains what personal data the BeatCancer forum at talk.beatcancer.eu collects, why, who can see it, and what you can do about it. The rest of beatcancer.eu is covered by our main privacy policy.
Who is responsible
Pagalbos onkologiniams ligoniams asociacija (BeatCancer EU), Kalvarijų g. 235, Vilnius LT-08311, Lithuania, is responsible for your data (the “controller”). For questions or requests, email info@beatcancer.eu.
The short version
- Everything you post in the forum is public, and discussions can appear in search engines. Please leave out your full name, city, hospital and doctors’ names.
- What you write about your health is sensitive data. We only use it because you choose to share it, and you can delete it at any time.
- We don’t sell your data, show ads, or use analytics or tracking tools on the forum.
- The forum runs on our server in Frankfurt, Germany.
- Posts and titles in public categories are machine-translated into all 24 EU languages, so everyone can read the forum in their own language.
What we collect
When you sign up. You sign up with your email address and a password, or with your Google account. If you use a password, we only store a scrambled (hashed) version of it. If you use Google, we receive your email address, name and profile picture from Google. You need an email address to have an account; everything else is optional.
What you add. Your posts, replies, reactions, flags, private messages, and anything you put in your profile (name, picture, bio, location, website).
Automatically. Your IP address, browser and device, the pages you open, which posts you have read (to show you what’s new), when you were last active, and what you search for on the forum.
Health information
Many posts are about cancer, treatment or mental health. Under the GDPR this is a “special category” of data. We process it only with your explicit consent, which you give when you join by ticking the consent box (Article 9(2)(a) GDPR). You can withdraw it at any time by deleting your posts or your account.
Why we use your data
| What for | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|
| Running your account and the forum, showing your posts, and sending the emails you asked for (replies, mentions, messages, summaries) | Providing the service you signed up for (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Health information you choose to post | Your explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a), 9(2)(a)) |
| Machine-translating your public posts and titles so members can read them in their own language | Your explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a), 9(2)(a)) |
| Keeping the forum safe: moderating posts, stopping spam and abuse, keeping server logs and backups | Our legitimate interest in a safe, working forum (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Showing the titles of public forum questions, with a link, on related beatcancer.eu pages | Our legitimate interest in helping people find support (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| In an emergency, when someone’s life may be at risk, sharing what is needed with emergency services | Protecting someone’s vital interests (Art. 6(1)(d), 9(2)(c)) |
| When the law requires it | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
Who can see what
- Everyone, including people without an account: your username, name (if you add one), profile picture and profile, and everything you post in the forum. Search engines such as Google can show a discussion once a member has posted in it, and beatcancer.eu may link to forum questions on related pages.
- Other members: also your reactions, and the private messages you send them.
- Moderators and administrators (the BeatCancer team): also your email address, IP addresses, flags and moderation history. Administrators can technically read private messages. We only do so when a message is reported, to stop abuse, or to protect someone’s safety.
- Anonymous posts: other members see a random name. Administrators can still see which account wrote them, for moderation and safety.
Moderation and safety
Moderators read new topics, reported posts, and posts that are flagged automatically. Posts containing certain words, for example about self-harm, are flagged for a moderator to check, so we can offer help quickly. A person always makes the decision.
Questions posted by the BeatCancer team
Many questions in the forum are posted by the BeatCancer team. We wrote them from themes that came up again and again in our former Discord community. No member’s posts were moved or quoted, and the copy of the Discord messages we analysed has been deleted.
Who we share data with
We don’t sell your data. We use these services:
- Hostinger hosts the forum server in Frankfurt, Germany, and sends our emails.
- Google (Google Ireland Limited), only if you sign in with Google. Your Google account is covered by Google’s privacy policy.
- OpenAI (OpenAI Ireland Limited) machine-translates new posts and topic titles in public categories into the forum’s other languages, after they are published. Private messages are never translated. OpenAI does this only on our behalf, does not use the texts to train its AI models, and keeps them for at most 30 days to check for abuse. The translations are stored on our server and deleted together with the original post. They are automatic and can contain mistakes, so every translated post links to the original.
- Your browser’s push service (for example Google, Mozilla or Apple), only if you turn on browser notifications.
- Websites you open from posts. For example, when you play an embedded video, that website receives your data under its own policy.
- Emergency services or authorities, only in an emergency or when the law requires it.
OpenAI can process the texts on its systems in the USA. That transfer is covered by the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses in OpenAI’s data processing agreement.
Cookies
The forum only uses the cookies it needs to work: to keep you logged in (for up to 60 days), to protect against forged requests, and to remember settings such as text size and language. Your browser also keeps drafts of replies you haven’t sent yet. There are no analytics or advertising cookies.
How long we keep data
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account, profile and posts | Until you delete them or ask us to |
| Sign-ups that were never confirmed | 14 days |
| Login sessions | 60 days |
| Records of emails we sent | 90 days |
| Server logs (IP address, browser, pages opened) | 52 days |
| Searches you make on the forum | 1 year |
| IP and email addresses blocked for spam or abuse | 1 year |
| Backups of the whole forum, kept on the same server | 5 weeks |
Your rights
You can access your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, get a copy to take elsewhere, and withdraw your consent at any time.
- Edit or delete your own posts and profile at any time.
- Download a copy of your posts from your profile.
- Change which emails you get in Preferences → Emails.
- Delete your own account in Preferences → Account if you have posted at most once. Otherwise, email info@beatcancer.eu: within one month we will delete your account and either delete your posts or anonymise them (remove every link to you), whichever you choose. If other members quoted you, we can remove those quotes too.
If you think we are using your data unlawfully, you can complain to the Lithuanian State Data Protection Inspectorate (vdai.lrv.lt) or to the data protection authority in your country.
Children and young people
The forum has no minimum age. If you are younger than the age at which you can agree to this yourself in your country (14 in Lithuania, between 13 and 16 in other EU countries), please ask a parent or guardian to agree before you join.
Changes to this policy
We will post any changes here and update the date at the top. If a change is important, we will tell members on the forum.
Contact
info@beatcancer.eu · Pagalbos onkologiniams ligoniams asociacija, Kalvarijų g. 235, Vilnius LT-08311, Lithuania