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We’ve just made two adjustments to our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy:

  • For the Terms of Service, we moved Copyright and DMCA information to a dedicated page.
  • For the Privacy Policy, we updated some language, and added the Teams Integrations Notice in there; we also removed an old policy for an old product that was now a deadlink.

Terms of Service changes:
The entire section “11. Copyright Policy” has been changed to a summary and instead links to our specific DMCA takedown page that has further instructions on filing claims and counterclaims. It now reads:

If You believe that content residing or accessible on the Network infringes a copyright, please contact us in accordance with the reporting requirements outlined in our Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notice. Note that we reserve the right to pursue legal action for submitting false or frivolous notices of copyright infringement. As such, please consider all circumstances prior to submitting your request, including fair use and other licensing exceptions and limitations. We also reserve the right, at our discretion, to immediately suspend or terminate the account of any user who is the subject of repeated valid takedown notices.

Privacy Policy Changes:
In the “INTRODUCTION TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY” section, we've made a few minor changes.

Used to read Now reads
We have set out below an overview of how our privacy notices work. Depending on how you interact with us, we will collect and process your personal information as shown below. We have set out below an overview of how our privacy notices work. Depending on how you interact with us, we will collect and process your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and any applicable other privacy notice(s).
If you interact with us through our Collectives on Stack Overflow product, please read the Collectives Privacy Notice. If you interact with us through our Collectives on Stack Overflow, please read the Privacy Notice for Collectives.
For Teams Free, Basic, Business: Please read the Privacy Notice for Stack Overflow Teams Free, Basic and Business. For Teams Enterprise: Please read the Privacy Notice for Stack Overflow Teams Enterprise. If you interact with us through your organization’s Private Network on Stack Overflow for Teams and/or through one of our Stack Overflow for Teams Integrations, we will only process certain information as described in our Stack Overflow for Teams Privacy Notice and our Stack Overflow for Teams Integrations Privacy Notice, respectively.
Please read the Privacy Notice for Stack Overflow Talent and Jobs. This line has been removed.

These are the extent of the changes made today.

We are still working on a bigger overhaul of the entire Privacy Policy; I know it's been a wait, but we still want to make several fixes and edits there.

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  • 6
    Could you elaborate on the nature of the bigger overhaul mentioned at the end? Is it a more an "improving of wording", "updating to comply with law changes" or "actual changing of the privacy policies"?
    – A-Tech
    Commented Jul 31 at 14:47
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    @A-Tech it's an overhaul to improve readability and understanding. The goal is to make it more accessible to be read, so more in line of "improving of wording".
    – Cesar M StaffMod
    Commented Jul 31 at 14:51
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    @CesarM Does "improve readability and understanding" mean we're getting some clarity on whether the company is selling our information? meta.stackexchange.com/questions/401506/…
    – vandench
    Commented Jul 31 at 14:53
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    @vandench I'm still working to getting an answer on that one independently of the privacy policy updates, as I answered in the comments there.
    – Cesar M StaffMod
    Commented Jul 31 at 14:54
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    @CesarM While you're here is there any update on said inquiry/when we will get an answer?
    – A-Tech
    Commented Jul 31 at 15:00
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    @A-Tech no, still WIP no date I can commit to. Still want to answer it though and still planned to. It's sort of similar to the GA cookie situation where it needed to work with the privacy, legal, and product teams to get to a comprehensive answer that was a true representation of current practice (keep in mind sale is quite a broad term legally). So it may be a while before I can commit to a timeline. It's being worked on, though.
    – Cesar M StaffMod
    Commented Jul 31 at 15:03
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    Was the line "Note that we reserve the right to pursue legal action for submitting false or frivolous notices of copyright infringement" added as a passive aggressive threat about the ongoing unanswered community concerns about the existence and nature of the "second license" and its effect in regard to the change in the data dump distribution and possible violations of the creative common license?
    – SPArcheon - on strike
    Commented Jul 31 at 15:27
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    @SPArcheon-onstrike uh, no? these edits were drafted in 2023.
    – Cesar M StaffMod
    Commented Jul 31 at 15:48
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    @CesarM "no date I can commit to" is… not entirely reassuring. The company has a hard deadline (a little over two weeks, now) to provide a truthful answer to those who have asked: it can't wait until you have the answer we all want. Any organisation processing personal data under GDPR is obliged to know what it's using it for and why, so this is a "simple request". (I'm not saying this to pressure anyone: I respect those I know who will be working on this. But if the answer remains "we don't know", we're going to have to hear it. Management have to be held accountable sooner or later.)
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Jul 31 at 23:00
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    @wizzwizz4 I know you emailed a formal request to the privacy@ inbox so yes, there may be some deadlines involved there. Nothing I can elaborate further here.
    – Cesar M StaffMod
    Commented Aug 1 at 1:13
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    CesarM, I know you are not the responsible for this mess, so forgive me for having to go thru you. You may have noticed Journeyman's question about the procedure to request a data expert and I think we can agree it... is not that good. I also had posted multiple requests to clarify the intended usage of the Data Request page - the first one FIVE months ago, and those were simply ignored (outside a very out of touch now deleted answer). Is there any hope you will address that? I think you can see how @wizzwizz4 considerations go for this too...
    – SPArcheon - on strike
    Commented Aug 2 at 8:58
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    @SPArcheon-onstrike I can take a look, it's a good question, a huge part of it is that there are certain options that are default and must be present, and then processing depends on what the company does. So for example restrict has to be there, even if there is nothing that you can in fact restrict. So it gets complicated and contributes to the confusion, and then there's complying with multiple laws (GDPR and CCPA for example). OneTrust is one of the standard providers of compliance management. But I'll see what I can get in terms of explaining what each option does.
    – Cesar M StaffMod
    Commented Aug 2 at 15:30
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    @wizzwizz4 I am starting to think to send a request about "not selling my data" and "objecting to use as LLM train material". Probably multiple even since the page isn't clear at all
    – SPArcheon - on strike
    Commented Aug 5 at 16:18
  • 2
    @CesarM if no concrete date can be provided, could you (or another person working on that inquiry) maybe provide an update comment, maybe even an updating post on what is currently being done?
    – A-Tech
    Commented Aug 6 at 17:23
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    @CesarM "keep in mind sale [of personal information] is quite a broad term legally" - Legally, perhaps. But ethically, it's a remarkably straightforward question.
    – Ray
    Commented Aug 19 at 20:43

3 Answers 3

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Maybe a nitpick, but...

If you interact with us through your organization’s Private Network on Stack Overflow for Teams [...]

How does this apply to users that use Stack Overflow for Teams instances (SOfT) set up by SE, Inc. who are not employed by SE, Inc.? It's not clear to me what "your organization" means for users who are not employees of said organization.

I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but I'm wondering how that would apply to, for example, Stack Moderators SOfT, as the mod agreement states mods are "not an employee, agent, or representative of Stack". (same question for users who are not mods, yet still use SOfT instances created by SE, Inc. for SE-related purposes). Maybe it should say something to cover Teams where the end-user isn't (legally) part of the organization that created it...?

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  • 5
    Good catch, I'm going to relay it to the legal team. But yes, the Privacy Notice for Teams should apply whenever you use teams. It says in its opening "This Privacy Notice is applicable to users of our Stack Overflow for Teams (“SO for Teams”) platform, along with the Stack Exchange Privacy Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, and associated licensing terms."
    – Cesar M StaffMod
    Commented Aug 1 at 1:15
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    @CesarM Looking now at the page you linked, it includes the words "users are responsible for understanding their organization’s privacy policy" and "much of this data and applicable settings are within control of your company’s admins and/or users", so it might be worth asking SE's legal team to take a look at that wording too for the same reason. But, thanks for relaying it & the intention totally makes sense!
    – cocomac
    Commented Aug 1 at 1:32
  • @CesarM Hello - can we get a status update on this? Even a "yes, this is still on the to-do list" would be appreciated", as it's been a month. Thank you!
    – cocomac
    Commented Sep 2 at 1:52
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If You believe

The proper-casing of "you" is weird. Is this some legalese anti-pattern or just a typo?

The rest of the page where this occurs spells "you" normally.

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    Capitalizing words is a common convention in legal drafting to indicate that the word has an idiosyncratic definition listed in a Definitions section. It's common to do this with "You" so that the contract can specify exactly who is bound by the terms of the contract (similarly, "We" or "Us" meaning Stack Exchange, Inc., or perhaps some larger set of legal persons including the company.)
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Aug 5 at 8:17
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    But the rest of the page where this text occurs does not do that. (Updated to note this.)
    – tripleee
    Commented Aug 5 at 8:20
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If I came across this in the suggested edit review queue I'd be inclined to choose:

Reject

No improvement

The edit does not improve the quality of the post. Changes to the content are unnecessary or make the post more confusing.

In my opinion something more substantial is needed.

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    The user has more than 2k rep, no reviews are needed. Jokes aside, I don't get your point here. Are you against any of the changes (besides some housekeeping, nothing important changes IMO)? Do you think something is missing? Do you consider this to make the help page harder to navigate (making it "more confusing")? Would you elaborate on what you mean by "something more substantial"? p.s. I haven't downvoted yet, waiting to understand your POV better, but I understand the downvotes.
    – M--
    Commented Jul 31 at 21:00
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    Removing a dead link qualifies as an edit that improves the quality of a post.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Jul 31 at 21:28
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    They're working on the more substantial thing, as it says at the end of the announcement. Would you prefer they didn't make any improvements until then?
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Jul 31 at 23:28

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