265 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
265 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
# Privacy notice
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HellionChat is a Dalamud plugin for FINAL FANTASY XIV that focuses on
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giving the user explicit control over what their chat client stores
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locally. This document describes what the plugin does with your data,
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what it does not do, and how you exercise the rights the GDPR gives
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you over data you generate yourself.
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This document is informational. The maintainer of HellionChat is
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**not** a controller or processor of your data in the GDPR sense,
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because no data ever leaves your machine on the maintainer's
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infrastructure. Independently of that, the plugin is built so that
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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
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Dalamud `pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` directory.
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- The plugin does not phone home. There is no telemetry, no analytics,
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no crash reporter, no usage counter, no remote update check beyond
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what Dalamud itself does.
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- One outbound network call exists by design: the BetterTTV emote
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service (for chat emotes). It is documented in detail below and
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can be reasoned about per request.
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- You can export every message the plugin has stored, in Markdown,
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JSON or CSV, and you can wipe stored history per channel, per date
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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
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`%appdata%\XIVLauncher\pluginConfigs\HellionChat\` on Windows
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(`~/.xlcore/pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` on Linux/macOS via XIVLauncher
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Core):
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1. **Configuration** (`HellionChat.json`)
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Plugin settings, channel whitelist, retention values, layout state,
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theme colours. Contains no chat content.
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2. **Message database** (SQLite file in the same directory)
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Chat messages from the channels on your whitelist, stored as
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MessagePack-encoded blobs. Default whitelist out of the box covers
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only your own conversations: tells, party, free company, linkshells,
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cross-world linkshells, alliance, ExtraChat. Public chat, NPC
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dialogue, system messages and battle logs are dropped on the
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storage layer and never written to disk.
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3. **Cached emote images** (`EmoteCacheV1/` directory)
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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.
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`pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` is independent from `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,
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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
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on its own until you explicitly turn the retention sweep on in the
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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
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messages and battle logs. These are filtered before they reach the
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storage layer.
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- Anything from channels you remove from the whitelist. The privacy
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filter runs on the way in, not on the way out.
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- Login credentials, character IDs, account IDs. The plugin uses
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whatever Dalamud already exposes about the local character to
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attribute messages; nothing of that is sent anywhere or persisted
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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.
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Both are inherited from upstream Chat 2 and both are documented here
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because "DSGVO-by-design" means you should know what your client does
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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
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BetterTTV emote, the plugin asks the BetterTTV API for the emote
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metadata and downloads the image from the BetterTTV CDN to display
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it inline.
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- **What is sent:** A standard HTTPS GET request. Your IP address
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reaches BetterTTV (unavoidable for any HTTPS request); the request
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itself contains no identifying user data, no character name, no
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message text. Only the emote ID being 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
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over fifteen API pages) is fetched from `api.betterttv.net` once
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per session at plugin startup, provided the **Show emotes** option
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is on. This first list-fetch happens before any chat message has
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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
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on demand, only when an incoming chat message contains a token
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matching one of the cached IDs. These are cached locally
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(`emoteCache/`) and reused across sessions.
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- **Cached:** Yes, in `emoteCache/`. A given emote is downloaded once
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per machine and reused.
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- **How to opt out:** Turn off the **Show emotes** option in
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Settings → Chat. With it disabled, the emote cache does not load
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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
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`FFXIV_Lodestone_SSF.ttf` from `img.finalfantasyxiv.com` once during
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font setup. That code path was a leftover from upstream's removed
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webinterface feature and was no longer consumed anywhere — the in-game
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symbol glyphs (job icons, item glyphs, status effects) come from
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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
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makes no automatic network call to Square Enix or to any
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`finalfantasyxiv.com` host.
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Cached `FFXIV_Lodestone_SSF.ttf` files left over from earlier versions
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remain in `pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` until manually deleted; they
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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
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your browser when you click them: the upstream Chat 2 GitHub repo,
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the upstream maintainers' Ko-fi pages, the HellionChat issue tracker
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and `hellion-media.de`. Nothing happens until you click. They are
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documented here for completeness, not because they generate background
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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,
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PostHog, Plausible, Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity or any
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comparable service exist in the codebase, nor in the direct
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dependencies the plugin pulls in. See `docs/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md`.
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- **No crash reporting.** Crashes go to Dalamud's local `xllog`,
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not to a remote endpoint controlled by HellionChat.
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- **No usage counters.** The plugin does not count installs, sessions,
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feature usage, channel activity or anything else for the maintainer.
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- **No phone-home update check.** Updates are delivered through
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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
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GitHub's privacy policy; the plugin code does no separate update
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check.
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- **No background sync.** Messages stay on your machine. There is no
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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
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HellionChat stores everything locally, those rights translate
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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
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**Markdown**, **JSON** or **CSV**, filtered by channel, date range
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or sender substring. The export goes through a Dalamud file dialog
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and writes wherever you point it, on your 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
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apply your current whitelist to the existing database. It shows a
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preview of what will be removed before you confirm with
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Ctrl+Shift, runs in the background, and calls `VACUUM` afterwards
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to actually shrink the file.
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2. **Full deletion** — close the game and delete the
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`pluginConfigs/HellionChat/` directory. 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
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human-readable and machine-parseable. Nothing is locked into a
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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
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take effect immediately on new messages; existing data needs the
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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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| GitHub (Microsoft) | Plugin distribution via custom repo, issue tracker | Whatever GitHub sees from any HTTPS request to a public repo | <https://docs.github.com/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement> |
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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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GitHub and the Dalamud/XIVLauncher loader are unavoidable for anyone
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playing FFXIV through Dalamud at all. BetterTTV is the only third
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party HellionChat introduces on top of that baseline, and it is
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opt-out via 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
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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
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emote pipeline), no network on its own.
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The single network call listed under "Outbound network calls" is
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written directly in HellionChat's own source, not delegated to a
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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,
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this document will be updated and the change called out in the
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changelog block of that release. The "Last reviewed" date at the top
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tracks the version this document 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 (e.g. the plugin storing or sending
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something this document says it does not) go through the private
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advisory in `SECURITY.md`, not a public issue.
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