Hi there!
Thanks for visiting Timo website.
My name is Jiutuo Sun (just call me Tim), the author of the website. By using the website, you agree to certain terms and conditions which are set out in the User Agreement and other legal documents that form part of it or are otherwise mentioned in it.
All the documents mentioned above (we will call them all “legal documents” below) can be found in the “Legal” webpage of the website.
For your convenience, below is a brief and user-friendly summary of the main terms and provisions of these legal documents in plain English.
Do note that, as this is a summary of the legal documents, it does not cover everything and it may not address matters with such a precision as the legal documents do. So under no circumstances should this summary replace or supersede the legal documents themselves.
Finally, a gentle reminder that it is your responsibility to read the legal documents carefully, as they may affect your rights and responsibilities in relation to using this website.
Ok, let’s begin.
What is the User Agreement?
The User Agreement is a legal contract that you enter with me once you start using the website. It contains the main terms and conditions for your use of the website, and also refers to policies and other important legal documents which we will mention here later.
You can find the up-to-date version of the User Agreement the “Legal” webpage of the website.
What is Timo?
Timo is my personal website – it is the website you are visiting right now. It is intended only for your personal and non-commercial use.
Can I use the website?
By default, the website is publically available to anyone. However:
- If you are not an adult or otherwise have limited legal capacity, please make sure your parents (or other legal guardian) are ok with you using the website.
- Also, since the website involves persons who must comply with certain legislations in their country prohibiting or restricting their engagement with certain persons or certain countries (such as sanctions or embargo laws), if you qualify as any such targeted person or reside in any such targeted country, you should not use the website. Sorry about that.
The website may become unavailable from time to time due to technical or other reasons. Further to that, I may at my own discretion change the content of the website from time to time, or terminate, suspend or restrict your access to the website. I don’t have to notify you about this ahead of time or afterwards.
How can I use the website?
You can use it in almost any legal, reasonable and respectful ways that do not harm anybody’s rights and legitimate interests.
That being said, there are several things you cannot do with the website, through the website or otherwise while using the website – all of them are fairly self-explanatory and generally applicable for any website. By ways of example, these include violating any law or third party rights, attacking any website, using for commercial purposes (without my prior written consent), tricking anybody, violating any person’s privacy, etc.
The website may also allow you to contribute to its contents, such as leaving a comment, giving a feedback or otherwise interacting with me or other users. In this case you should also make sure that the content you provide (or the way you provide it) is legal, respects any person’s rights and legitimate interests, does not contain any sensitive, protected, confidential, explicit or harmful information, are not related to any business, etc.
You are personally responsible and liable for improper use of the website. I may issue warnings to you, delete your improper user contents, limit or terminate your access to the website, and/or bring legal suit. I may also enable pre-moderation of your user contents to ensure compliance.
See the Acceptable Use Policy for more detailed guidelines about how you may not use the website.
Can I use the website content outside of the website?
You may of course share the website links (URLs) or make a reasonable quote from a website page for your personal non-commercial use, such as sharing with friends, mentioning the links or making the quotes in your own content. Please make sure that such sharing or quoting is not violating any law or any person’s rights or legal interest. In the case of quotes, please make an acknowledgement of me as the author and provide a URL to the relevant webpage.
However, if you want to copy, reproduce or otherwise distribute any significant content of the website in any third party media, please ask for my written consent first.
You should also be aware that the website contains third party intellectual property which may have its own terms of use, and you should respect them as well. See the Intellectual Property Statement for more details about such third party intellectual property.
Do you collect my personal data?
While the website is not intended for commercial use, due to technical nature of the internet, the fact of you using the website may result the it collecting, storing and otherwise processing certain information which may qualify as personal data – these are mainly your IP address and some essential and analytical cookies.
If you visit the website via a shortened URL beginning with “jsun.co”, “timo.lt” or “sjt.tj”, the website also collects anonymised IP address (which has the last part of the IP address changed to zero) and HTTP referer information (that is the URL of the web page where you clicked to the link to the website).
If you make a user contribution (such as posting a comment or sending a feedback to me using the contact form), it may also contain your (or even others’) personal data (such as your full name, username, email address, plus any other personal data in the content of your comment or message). Should you make such a contribution, please do not include any third person’s personal data without first getting his or her consent.
Why and on what basis do you collect those personal data?
IP address
Your IP address is needed to ensure the security of the website and the content it stores.
The website utilises several security measures to counteract any potential cybercrimes against it, all of which require processing IP addresses of its users. These measures include an IP address blacklist (so the website can block any person using IP addresses known for unlawful cyber activities) and user activity monitor based on IP address (so the website can detect if a person using a particular IP address is trying to hack the website using brute force or multiple 404 errors etc.).
We process your IP address on two legal bases: (a) performing the User Agreement between you and me (because obtaining and processing your IP address is necessary in order for you to visit the website); and (b) necessary for the author’s or the user’s legitimate interests (because, as mentioned above, this is needed to ensure the security of the website and its contents, including any other personal data stored by the website).
Shortened URL and Google Analytics
A shortened URL for the website pages is more friendly for sharing on the social media. The anonymous IP address and HTTP referer information that it collects allow us to better understand the demographics of the website users.
The website, just like most websites, uses Google Analytics to help it analyse its traffic and demographics. Google Analytics may use certain cookies in order to identity you, and then collect various analytical data (such as the operating system and the browser you are using, your device’s screen resolution, your country and city based on the IP address etc.) and process them. It is important to note that Google Analytics process your data aggregately, so the analytical reports we see are general, and we cannot identify you or any other particular user directly based on these reports.
We process your personal data via shortened URL and Google Analytics on two legal bases: (a) performing the User Agreement between you and me (because the use of shortened URL and Google Analytics is part of the terms of the User Agreement); and (b) necessary for the author’s or the user’s legitimate interests (because use of shortened URL and Google Analytics is necessary to maintain and optimise the website in the future).
User Contribution
Finally, if you are make user contributions, in order for the website to publish your comment or transmit your feedback, it will need to process any personal data contained in your user contributions (all of which you are voluntarily providing yourself).
We process your personal data contained in the user contribution on the legal basis of performing the User Agreement between you and me (because the User Agreement contains conditions and requirements for creating and submitting a user contribution by you).
Who are involved in the processing of my personal data?
The hosting company (which owns the servers that physically stores the website’s data and maintains the website’s operations), StackPath LLC and NetDNA, LLC (which are owners and operators of MaxCDN, the content delivery network that the website uses to make it load faster for everyone) and Google Inc. (which is the owner and operator of Google Analytics) are involved in the processing of personal data.
The hosting company is registered in Spain, and the servers used for the website are located in the Netherlands, therefore it is subject to the Regulation on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (GDPR). GDPR is a piece of new advanced and pro-user legislation applicable to all EU persons and entities operating in the EU.
StackPath LLC, NetDNA, LLC and Google Inc. are United States persons. They are all certified under the EU – U.S. and Swiss – U.S. Privacy Shield frameworks, which makes sure that they deal with personal data with the same level of care as under GDPR.
I am also involved in the personal data processing as I am the owner of the website and I determine the policy of website in terms of personal data processing. I also maintain an active copy of the website’s database on a regular basis in order to comply with Russian personal data localisation requirements. Russia is a party to the Convention of the Council of Europe for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (ETS No.108) which ensures that its national legislation provides adequate level of personal data protection.
As all of the abovementioned persons (as well as you) are located in different countries, cross-border transfer of personal data is unavoidable (just like with any website). However, as mentioned above, all the persons involved are subject to advanced data protection legislation.
How long are my personal data retained?
Your personal data that are processed by the hosting company are retained indefinitely (unless they are deleted by me at any time).
Any personal data stored in MaxCDN servers are retained as long as the relevant content exist in the hosting company’s server.
Your personal data that are processed as part of Google Analytics are stored and retained by Google Inc. for 36 months (until they are deleted by Google).
What are my rights over my personal data?
Depending on the jurisdiction that applies to you, you may have the right to do one or several of the following with the personal data that you provided to us: (a) request access to your data; (b) request correction of your data; (c) request erasure of your data; (d) object to processing of your data; (e) request restriction of processing your data; (f) request transfer of your data; (g) withdraw you consent for processing your data.
You cannot do this for any personal data which we have to process to make the website operational or which the website just like all other websites automatically collects.
You may contact me using the contact page of the website to make such requests. I may undertake some additional measures before processing your requests and may deny your requests if justified, and it may take me one month (or more if needed) to consider and process any particular request with respect to your personal data.
More about my personal data
See the Privacy Policy for more details about how the website processes your data.
What cookies does the website use?
Cookies are small strings of data that the website sends to your browser when you access it, and are stored on your device.
The website uses first party cookies (those directly set by the website). There are essential first party cookies and analytical first party cookies.
Essential first party cookies are those necessary for the website to operate and display correctly – you cannot disable them without affecting the website’s normal functioning on your browser, so the website does not provide for a way to disable them. If you don’t like the idea of having those cookies, the only solution would be not to use the website.
Google Analytics also uses analytical first party cookies to identity you as the user. You may disable such analytical cookies in the privacy settings of the website. Disabling these cookies will also terminate the Google Analytics for the website on your browser unless and until you re-enable these cookies or clear the local storage data of your browser (which the website use to remember your privacy setting).
The website also uses Web Storage functions of your browser to keep track of your settings and preferences (things like disabling Google Analytics as mentioned above, as well as certain display options and whether you agreed to the terms of the User Agreement). Web Storage data are not transferred to the website’s database or servers. You can disable Web Storage functions in your browser, but in that case you will lose all the website settings and some website functionality.
More about cookies
See the Cookie Statement for more details about how the website uses cookies, Web Storage and similar technologies.
Do you have any other disclaimers?
Oh, yeah. A lot. Here are several of them:
- The website is provided “as is” and “as available”, so I make no warranties in relation to the website or its contents or use;
- The website contains no advice of any kind (including legal advice);
- If the website refers to third party websites or other resources, we are not responsible for their content;
- I cannot guarantee that the website is secure from any bugs, viruses or other malware;
- Unless law says otherwise, I bear no liability for any loss or damage you may incur as a result of using the website or relying on its content (and hopefully the chance of such loss incurring is very unlikely).
- I, however, may incur losses if you are violating the legal documents – in that case you should indemnify me against all such losses, damages and costs.
Boilerplates
Finally, some boilerplates:
- I may amend or otherwise change the content of any legal documents without having to notify you in advance of afterwards. You can always find the up-to-date legal documents in the “Legal” webpage;
- I can assign my rights on the legal documents to any other person; you, however, cannot;
- All the legal documents should be treated as part of the User Agreement, and together they form the entire agreement between you and me;
- If anything in the legal documents turns out to be illegal or unenforceable in your jurisdiction, this should not affect anything else in them;
- Our User Agreement and all other legal documents are governed by the law as identified in clause 17.1 of the User Agreement (it depends on where you are permanently residing);
- In the hopefully unlikely event if we have any dispute, we should try to resolve it between ourselves in 60 days – if this doesn’t happen, we can go to the right court according to the applicable law;
- The User Agreement and other legal documents may have several versions in different languages. The language that counts depends on the applicable law, but clause 17.1 of the User Agreement which helps identify the applicable law should be read and interpreted only by using the text in the English version.
Contact
And if you have any questions, any requests, or just want to say hi – go to the Contact page and leave me a message.
Wow, that is it.
Again, don’t forget that this is just a friendly summary of the legal documents – do read them and rely on them instead.