Timber House | Privacy policy and rights for site visitors

Privacy Policy (version 2)

“Your privacy is important to us.” How many times have you read this phrase only to be faced with a data breach or – perhaps worse – your counter-party outright selling your personal data?
We have been in that very situation many times and consider it fundamentally wrong to not consider privacy, including online privacy, as a fundamental human right.
Therefore, this site has been created with privacy at its core.

Personal Data that we collect

Firstly, timberhouse.cz (and all its legalese-related variants like www.timberhouse.cz or https://www.timberhouse.cz) does not collect any personal information and this is easily verifiable. There are ZERO options for our visitors to input personal details. timberhouse.cz has ZERO ways for visitors to leave comments. There are no contact forms. There are no reservation systems.

Non-Personal Data that we collect

This is where the majority of sites start listing all the personal information that they actually collect on you, but such sites argue that these pieces of information are anonymized – which is actually not true – and so you have nothing to worry about.
We try our best to be better than that.
We are firm believers in supporting any and all FOSS alternatives to popular closed-sourced solutions, as can be evident from the following parts of this Privacy Policy.

Website

Our website is based on the open-source WordPress platform that is hosted along with our domain with Wedos.cz, which we believe to be a company run by decent people and what is more important, they are a company that is registered in the Czech Republic and which has their linux servers – that host this site – located in the beautiful town of Hluboká in South Bohemia. The Czech Republic is globally one of the best places when it comes to online freedoms and rights (check out EFF.org and privacytools.io for more information).

Third-party Tracking

With the sole exception of the open-source analytics service Plausible.io that respects user privacy from its core, there are ZERO third-party trackers on this site. We do not use any of the trackers available from companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Seznam or Yandex. Again, this is easily verifiable. Visit our site in any browser that supports the NoScript plugin (or better yet, visit us with Tor Browser) and you will see only one script. Sadly, there is one small exception here. WordPress uses Google web fonts. Privacy-wise, this is an issue, and switching to a better alternative is unfortunately something that we have yet to accomplish.

This paragraph is outdated as of version 2 (June 2022) There are ZERO third-party trackers on this site. We do not use any of the trackers available from companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Seznam or Yandex. Again, this is easily verifiable. Visit our site in any browser that supports the NoScript plugin (or better yet, visit us with Tor Browser) and you will see only one script. Sadly, there is one small exception here. WordPress uses Google web fonts. Privacy-wise, this is an issue, and switching to a better alternative is high on our to-do list.

On-site Tracking

Instead of Google Analytics or other closed-source alternatives, we use Plausible.io, which we migrated to from Matomo in June 2022 (see outdated paragraph below). Plausible is a GDPR-compliant “free and open source web analytics application”. This service is not self-hosted, which means it runs the EU-based servers of the Plausible team (specifically in Germany, based on the information found here). Plausible does not use cookies and respects by-default the privacy rights of its users (more information can be found on their site here). Unlike Matomo, Plausible is a solution that gathers the absolute minimum of information (an example of this is their own site’s analytics, which is publically accessible here, and looks just like ours with the small exception that the numbers are a little different) For visitors that do not wish to be tracked even in this limited way, there is a simple option; disable javascript (ideally through NoScript) or visit our site with a browser like Tor Browser (see above).

This paragraph is outdated as of version 2 (June 2022) We do have first-party tracking. Instead of Google Analytics or other closed-source alternatives, we use Matomo (formerly Piwik), which is a GDPR-compliant “free and open source web analytics application”. This service is self-hosted, which means it runs on our site. We thought about not having any web analytics, but curiosity got the better of us. What use is a website if it is not visited and there is no better way to see that than with web analytics. We have Matomo set-up so that it does not use cookies, anonymizes all visitor data and auto-deletes old logs (currently at 365 days, but this will probably be shortened). For visitors that do not wish to be tracked even in this limited way, there are two simple options. First, disable the timberhouse.cz javascript (ideally through NoScript) or visit our site with a browser that has the Do Not Track option active. This is in the privacy settings of the browser and while the vast majority of the internet ignores it, Matomo offers the option to auto-disable tracking for visitors that have DNT on and so we have this option active.

There are ZERO ads on our site. We do not run Adsense, Sklik or anything of the kind. Technically, the only ad on the site is the site itself.

Commitment

We hope that by this point you approve of our stance towards respecting the privacy of our visitors. That said, no one is perfect and we try to better ourselves. If you have any questions, criticism or suggestions regarding our Privacy Policy and privacy-related decisions, please get in touch with us at privacy@timberhouse.cz.

Thank you

Congratulations to all that made it this far. For you, we have as a bonus a couple fun facts:

Did you know that the default DNS servers for anyone staying at Timber House and using our free wi-fi are provided by the great folks over at CZ.NIC? They are our national non-profit administrator of the .cz TLD and a great supporter of Open Source solutions as well as online privacy. Therefore, their DNS servers are some of the best out there when it comes to security, privacy and reliability.
We support cryptocurrencies. Currently, we accept Bitcoin and Monero, but if there is one you think we should also use, let us know.

Versions

This version 2 of our Privacy Policy is current from 24th of June 2022. It differs from the first version in that we replaced Matomo with Plausible (see sections on-site and third-party tracking above)
Version 1 of our Privacy Policy was valid from 9th of June 2019 until 24th of June 2022.

Did you read through all that and feel like you need a break?
If yes, just press play and enjoy some Königgrätzer Marsch, composed in 1866 in commemoration of the Battle of Hradec Králové of the same year.