JonKazama-Hellion
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Markdown
214 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
# Privacy notice
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HellionChat is a Dalamud plugin for FINAL FANTASY XIV, focused on giving the user explicit control over what their chat
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client stores locally. This document describes what the plugin does with your data, what it does not do, and how you
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exercise the rights the GDPR gives you over data you generate yourself.
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This document is informational. The maintainer of HellionChat is **not** a controller or processor of your data in the
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GDPR sense, because no data ever leaves your machine on the maintainer's infrastructure. Independently of that, the
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plugin is built so that you can act on your own data the way the GDPR expects.
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Last reviewed: 2026-05-05 (HellionChat v1.1.0).
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---
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## TL;DR
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- All chat data the plugin stores stays on your machine, in your Dalamud `pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` directory.
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- The plugin does not phone home. No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporter, no usage counter, no remote update
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check beyond what Dalamud itself does.
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- One outbound network call exists by design: the BetterTTV emote service (for chat emotes). It is documented in detail
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below and can be reasoned about per request.
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- You can export every message the plugin has stored, in Markdown, JSON or CSV, and you can wipe stored history per
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channel, per date range, or globally.
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---
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## What the plugin stores locally
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HellionChat keeps three kinds of state on your machine, all under `%appdata%\XIVLauncher\pluginConfigs\HellionChat\` on
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Windows (`~/.xlcore/pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` on Linux/macOS via XIVLauncher Core):
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1. **Configuration** (`HellionChat.json`). Plugin settings, channel whitelist, retention values, layout state, theme
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colours. Contains no chat content.
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2. **Message database** (SQLite file in the same directory). Chat messages from the channels on your whitelist, stored
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as MessagePack-encoded blobs. The default whitelist out of the box covers only your own conversations: tells, party,
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free company, linkshells, cross-world linkshells, alliance, ExtraChat. Public chat, NPC dialogue, system messages and
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battle logs are dropped on the storage layer and never written to disk.
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3. **Cached emote images** (`EmoteCacheV1/` directory). Image files downloaded from BetterTTV when an emote appears in a
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message you receive. See "Outbound network calls" below.
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There is no shared state with the upstream Chat 2 plugin. `pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` is independent from
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`pluginConfigs/ChatTwo/`.
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### Retention defaults
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- Tells: 365 days
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- Your-conversation channels (party, FC, linkshells, cross-world LS, alliance, ExtraChat): 90 days
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- Global default for anything else: 30 days
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**Retention is off by default.** The plugin does not delete anything on its own until you explicitly turn the retention
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sweep on in the settings. Until then, stored messages stay until you clear them.
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---
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## What the plugin does not store
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- Public chat (`/say`, `/yell`, `/shout`), NPC dialogue, system messages and battle logs. These are filtered before they
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reach the storage layer.
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- Anything from channels you remove from the whitelist. The privacy filter runs on the way in, not on the way out.
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- Login credentials, character IDs, account IDs. The plugin uses whatever Dalamud already exposes about the local
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character to attribute messages. Nothing of that is sent anywhere or persisted beyond the message itself.
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---
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## Outbound network calls
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HellionChat makes two kinds of automatic outbound network requests. Both are inherited from upstream Chat 2 and both are
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documented here because "GDPR-by-design" means you should know what your client does on your behalf.
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### 1. BetterTTV emote service (`api.betterttv.net`, `cdn.betterttv.net`)
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- **What it does:** When a chat message arrives that references a BetterTTV emote, the plugin asks the BetterTTV API for
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the emote metadata and downloads the image from the BetterTTV CDN to display it inline.
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- **What is sent:** A standard HTTPS GET request. Your IP address reaches BetterTTV (unavoidable for any HTTPS request);
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the request itself contains no identifying user data, no character name, no message text. Only the emote ID being
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looked up is in the URL path.
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- **When it triggers:**
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- The emote _list_ (global emotes plus the top-1500 community emotes over fifteen API pages) is fetched from
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`api.betterttv.net` once per session at plugin startup, provided the **Show emotes** option is on. This first
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list-fetch happens before any chat message has arrived. BetterTTV's edge therefore sees your IP as soon as the
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plugin loads, not only after an emote is mentioned.
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- The individual emote _images_ on `cdn.betterttv.net` are fetched on demand, only when an incoming chat message
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contains a token matching one of the cached IDs. These are cached locally (`emoteCache/`) and reused across
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sessions.
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- **Cached:** Yes, in `emoteCache/`. A given emote is downloaded once per machine and reused.
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- **How to opt out:** Turn off the **Show emotes** option in Settings → Chat. With it disabled, the emote cache does not
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load and no requests to BetterTTV are made for the rest of the session.
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- **BetterTTV's privacy policy:** <https://betterttv.com/privacy>
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Source: `HellionChat/EmoteCache.cs`.
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### 2. Square Enix Lodestone font (removed in v1.0.4)
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Earlier versions of HellionChat (and upstream Chat 2) downloaded `FFXIV_Lodestone_SSF.ttf` from
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`img.finalfantasyxiv.com` once during font setup. That code path was a leftover from upstream's removed webinterface
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feature and was no longer consumed anywhere. The in-game symbol glyphs (job icons, item glyphs, status effects) come
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from Dalamud's bundled symbol-font helper, not from the downloaded TTF.
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The download was removed in v1.0.4. As of that version HellionChat makes no automatic network call to Square Enix or to
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any `finalfantasyxiv.com` host.
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Cached `FFXIV_Lodestone_SSF.ttf` files left over from earlier versions remain in `pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` until
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manually deleted. They are no longer read.
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### Links you click yourself (no automatic traffic)
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The settings panel contains a few buttons that open external pages in your browser when you click them: the upstream
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Chat 2 GitHub repo, the upstream maintainers' Ko-fi pages, the HellionChat issue tracker and `hellion-media.de`. Nothing
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happens until you click. They are documented here for completeness, not because they generate background traffic.
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---
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## What the plugin does not do
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- **No telemetry.** Source verified: no calls to AppInsights, Sentry, PostHog, Plausible, Google Analytics, Microsoft
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Clarity or any comparable service exist in the codebase, nor in the direct dependencies the plugin pulls in. See
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`docs/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md`.
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- **No crash reporting.** Crashes go to Dalamud's local `xllog`, not to a remote endpoint controlled by HellionChat.
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- **No usage counters.** The plugin does not count installs, sessions, feature usage, channel activity or anything else
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for the maintainer.
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- **No phone-home update check.** Updates are delivered through Dalamud's plugin installer, which polls the custom-repo
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`repo.json` on GitHub. That is GitHub's traffic and falls under GitHub's privacy policy. The plugin code does no
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separate update check.
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- **No background sync.** Messages stay on your machine. No cloud backup, no sharing feature, no remote viewer.
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---
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## Your data, your rights
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The GDPR gives you specific rights over data about you. Because HellionChat stores everything locally, those rights
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translate directly into plugin features:
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### Right to access (Art. 15)
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Use the export feature in the plugin settings. You can export to **Markdown**, **JSON** or **CSV**, filtered by channel,
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date range or sender substring. The export goes through a Dalamud file dialog and writes wherever you point it, on your
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machine.
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### Right to erasure (Art. 17)
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Two options:
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1. **Targeted deletion.** The "retroactive cleanup" feature lets you apply your current whitelist to the existing
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database. It shows a preview of what will be removed before you confirm with Ctrl+Shift, runs in the background, and
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calls `VACUUM` afterwards to actually shrink the file.
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2. **Full deletion.** Close the game and delete the `pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` directory. The next plugin start will
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produce a fresh, empty configuration.
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### Right to portability (Art. 20)
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The JSON and CSV exports are open formats. The Markdown export is human-readable and machine-parseable. Nothing is
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locked into a proprietary container.
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### Right to object / restrict processing (Art. 21, 18)
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Adjust the channel whitelist or set retention to a low value. Both take effect immediately on new messages. Existing
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data needs the retroactive cleanup to apply retroactively, by design.
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---
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## Third parties involved
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| Party | Why they appear | What reaches them | Their privacy policy |
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| ---------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------- |
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| BetterTTV (NightDev LLC) | Optional emote rendering | HTTPS request for an emote ID; your IP | <https://betterttv.com/privacy> |
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| Hellion Forge (Gitea, self-hosted by Hellion Online Media) | Plugin distribution via custom repo, issue tracker | Whatever the Gitea instance sees from any HTTPS request to a public repo | <https://hellion-media.de/datenschutz> |
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| Dalamud / XIVLauncher (goatcorp) | Plugin loader, font subsystem, repo polling | Whatever Dalamud reports for itself; out of HellionChat's scope | <https://github.com/goatcorp/Dalamud> |
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The Hellion Forge Gitea instance and the Dalamud/XIVLauncher loader are unavoidable for anyone using HellionChat through
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Dalamud at all. BetterTTV is the only third party HellionChat introduces on top of that baseline, and it is opt-out via
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settings.
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---
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## Dependencies that touch the network
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For a full dependency inventory see `docs/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md`. Of the direct dependencies the plugin pulls in:
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- `MessagePack`: local serialisation, no network.
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- `Microsoft.Data.Sqlite`: local SQLite access, no network.
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- `morelinq`: LINQ helpers, no network.
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- `Pidgin`: parser combinators, no network.
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- `SixLabors.ImageSharp`: image decoding (used for the BetterTTV emote pipeline), no network on its own.
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The single network call listed under "Outbound network calls" is written directly in HellionChat's own source, not
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delegated to a dependency.
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---
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## Changes to this notice
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If a future release changes what HellionChat stores, sends or caches, this document will be updated and the change
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called out in the changelog block of that release. The "Last reviewed" date at the top tracks the version this document
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is accurate for.
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---
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## Questions
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For privacy-related questions specific to HellionChat:
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- Email: `kontakt@hellion-media.de`
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- Discord DM: `@j.j_kazama`
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Security-relevant findings (for example, the plugin storing or sending something this document says it does not) go
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through the private advisory in `SECURITY.md`, not a public issue.
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---
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Maintained under **Hellion Forge**, the modding and plugin line of **Hellion Online Media** | Bad Harzburg |
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[hellion-media.de](https://hellion-media.de)
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