Privacy Policy

Last updated: 23 October 2026

This privacy policy explains which personal data meetMyRC processes, for what purposes, and what rights you have. meetMyRC is a service that lets RC car hobbyists manage their models, keep a diary and show their models in a public showroom.

Controller

The controller responsible for the data processing within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:

meetMyRC by Marcel Kraus
Marcel Kraus
Bonner Straße 88
50374 Erftstadt
Germany
E-mail: mail (at) meetmyrc.com

Please get in touch by e-mail first.

What data we process

Account and master data

When you register and use your account, we process:

your username,
your e-mail address,
your password (only as a cryptographic hash, never in plain text)—if you sign in with Google only, we store none at all,
your language setting (German or English),
your settings: whether we notify you of new comments by e-mail and in which currency your costs are kept (currently the euro),
your avatar, if you upload one—it is publicly visible next to your comments and on the cards of your models,
the model that represents you in shared images,
timestamps about your account: when you created it and last changed it, when your account was confirmed, when we warned you about a deletion and when you last signed in, as well as the number of your sign-ins.

The legal basis is the performance of the usage contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR); for the time and number of your sign-ins see “Usage and security data”.

Signing in with Google

You can register and sign in to meetMyRC with your Google account instead of using a username and password. When you click “Sign in with Google”, you are taken to Google; you sign in there and confirm that Google may pass data on to us.

From Google we receive only:

your e-mail address,
whether Google considers that address verified,
a permanent identifier under which Google knows you.

We request no name and no profile picture from Google. You choose your username here yourself; it is merely proposed to you from your e-mail address. We store the identifier Google sends so we recognize you the next time you sign in. If the e-mail address of your Google account changes, your meetMyRC account stays reachable.

Conversely, the sign-in tells Google that and when you sign in to meetMyRC. What Google processes for its own purposes is governed by Google's privacy policy, over which we have no influence.

The provider is Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. This may involve a transfer to the USA; Google LLC is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, so an adequacy decision of the European Commission serves as the basis.

The legal basis is the performance of the usage contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR)—the sign-in is the service you call up with that click. No consent is required for it, and you are not obliged to use this route: registering with an e-mail address and a password stands unchanged beside it.

You can undo the link at any time in your account settings, once you have set a password there. We then delete the link together with the stored identifier. Without a password it cannot be undone—you would no longer be able to get into your own account.

Profile and showroom data

Every account has a public profile page whose address contains your username and which, once your account is confirmed, anyone—including without signing in—can open. It shows your username and every model you add. If you have not added any models yet, the page is empty accordingly. The legal basis is the performance of the contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Content data

meetMyRC stores the data you enter yourself: models, model photos, your inventory (the parts in your models and in your parts bin, with their photos), costs and receipts, build-diary entries with their photos, and the links to external sites you add (forums, videos, manufacturer pages). This data remains your data. Uploaded photos are stripped of embedded metadata before storage (in particular EXIF information, including any GPS location data, is removed).

Every model you add gets a showroom page that is publicly reachable and indexable by search engines once your account is confirmed—the data recorded for that model is then visible: name and key facts, photos, the diary, the equipment (the installed parts with their descriptions and photos), the current drive time, the links you added, as well as the four-letter model code with its QR link. Your models also appear as a card with their cover photo and like count in the service's overviews: on the home page, in the overview of all models including its search and in the “Liked models” overview of the members who liked them, each with your username and avatar, and under “More from this showroom” on your other model pages.

As long as your account is not confirmed, none of this is publicly accessible—neither your profile page nor your models, their preview images or short links (a request returns a “not found” response); only you see your pages, as a preview. Whether a model is shown publicly is decided by whether you add it; if you delete a model, its public page is no longer reachable. Your costs and receipts, your parts bin, your e-mail address and your settings are never public—only you ever see them. The legal basis is the performance of the contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR)—showing your models publicly is the service you call up by adding them.

The links you add lead to third-party websites that we neither operate nor control. Only when a visitor actively clicks such a link and opens the target page does its provider process their data on its own responsibility under its own privacy policy; we are not responsible for the linked content.

Insofar as you voluntarily enter personal data of third parties, we process it on your behalf; you are responsible for being entitled to provide that data.

Referrals

You can invite others to meetMyRC via a personal referral link that contains your username. If you use it, we process the connection between the referring and the referred account (who referred whom). We temporarily hold the username contained in the link in your session during registration in order to attribute the referral to the new account. If you sign up through such a link, we show you the referrer's username on the registration page. The public showroom pages also link to registration with their owner's username as the referral—if you sign up from there, the referral is attributed to that account. A referral is attributed to the confirmed account that holds the username in the link at the moment of registration.

We store this link so we can reward referrers in the future—it tells us who has referred how many new users. No further data of the referring or the referred person is disclosed to the other. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in acquiring new users through referrals (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Comments

You can comment on other members' public models, and others can comment on yours. We store the comment text, who wrote it, which model it belongs to, and the time. When a comment is posted we notify the model's owner by e-mail—and, for a reply, additionally the author of the comment being replied to—so they stay informed and can moderate; you can turn these e-mails off under “My account”. Comments on a public model are publicly visible. A deleted comment is hidden and retained for a reasonable period before final deletion. You can likewise comment on public racetracks in the catalog; as long as a racetrack has no operator, the notification about a new comment goes to us (the platform operator) so we can moderate. The legal basis is the performance of the contract and our legitimate interest in a functioning community (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR).

Likes

You can like other members' public models with one click. We store who liked which model and when. How often a model has been liked is publicly visible as a counter; who liked it is not. Your liked models live in a private overview under “Liked models”. A like can be removed again at any time. The legal basis is the performance of the contract and our legitimate interest in a functioning community (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR).

Feedback

As a signed-in member you can send us a note through the feedback button. We store your message, an optional category, the page you send the feedback from, the time, and the link to your account. Your feedback is e-mailed to us and kept in our database; we use it solely to improve meetMyRC and to reply to you where needed. It is not displayed publicly. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in improving the service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Racetrack catalog

Our public racetrack catalog lists places to drive—at first RC racetracks, indoor halls and clubs—as business-directory entries. We create these entries; they are not tied to any member. We only include publicly accessible facts the club or operator has published themselves: name, address, track type, a directions note and—kept separate—the club's own homepage and Facebook page. We deliberately do not store contact data such as a phone number or e-mail address.

Where an entry concerns a natural person, the legal basis is our legitimate interest in a complete, useful directory of the RC scene (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We do not notify the individual entries separately (Art. 14(5) GDPR): we process only public self-published facts, state that origin on every entry and provide a simple report/remove path there (a prepared e-mail to us). On objection we review and remove the entry.

For each entry we store coordinates (latitude and longitude) for the map view. We derived these from the address using OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL) and, as a postal-code-level fallback, GeoNames data (CC BY 4.0). We render the map image itself server-side via the Geoapify service (based on OpenStreetMap) and serve it from our own server. Opening a racetrack page therefore establishes no connection from your device to any map service, sets no cookies and transfers no data to third parties. Below the map, a click opens it in Google Maps (for route planning); this link, too, loads nothing on page view—only your click opens Google Maps, where Google's privacy policy then applies.

Usage and security data

To secure the service and prevent abuse, we technically limit the number of registration, verification and code-resend attempts per IP address. Registration is additionally protected against automated sign-ups; for this we compare the IP address against the public list of exit nodes of the Tor network, over which signing up is not possible. Every sign-up attempt—the turned-away ones and the successful ones alike—is recorded in a security log, with the IP address, the browser identification (user agent), the chosen username and the time. The successful attempt is there because the effect of a defense can only be read from what it lets through. These entries are overwritten automatically after 14 days at the latest. When a technical error occurs during operation, the server records it in a log for troubleshooting; such entries may contain the page address concerned and technical details about the request, and are overwritten after 14 days at the latest. For your account we also record when you last signed in and how often in total—not when the individual sign-ins took place—to tell whether an account is in use. We do not keep any further usage profile; in particular there is no activity or change log of your content (except the anonymous link reach, see below). The legal basis is our legitimate interest in secure, abuse-free operation and in telling whether an account is in use (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Reach of your shared links

When someone opens the short link of one of your models (“meetmyrc.at/…”), we count that open so the reach of your shared links becomes visible. We store only the host of the referring page (e.g. “rctech.net”, never the full address) and the time—no IP address and no browser identifier (User-Agent). Automated opens by bots and link previews are not counted. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in reach statistics (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Posts on Instagram

On meetMyRC's Instagram channel we present individual models of confirmed accounts. For this we publish photos and details of a model together with its owner's username on Instagram and thereby transfer them to Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, Merrion Road, Dublin 4, Ireland. This may involve a transfer to the USA; Meta Platforms, Inc. is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, so an adequacy decision of the European Commission serves as the basis. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in making meetMyRC known (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

You can object to this for any model (Art. 21 GDPR); an informal message to the e-mail address given above is sufficient—we will then no longer show the model and remove existing posts. This also applies after you have deleted a model or your account: posts already published otherwise remain, because we do not necessarily notice a deletion.

E-mail dispatch

We only send you e-mails that belong to operating the service:

the e-mail to confirm your account—upon registration, when you correct your address, and again on your request,
the reminder before your account is deleted,
the confirmation after a deletion,
a notice when a Google account has been linked to your existing account,
the notifications about new comments (see “Comments”), which you can turn off under “My account”.

The legal basis is the performance of the contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Cookies and consent

meetMyRC uses technically necessary cookies and—only with your consent—marketing cookies. Both groups are listed separately in the consent banner that appears on your first visit. Using meetMyRC does not require a decision: you can leave the banner standing and read on, and the marketing cookies stay switched off.

Technically necessary are:

a session cookie that maintains your sign-in for the duration of a session,
an optional “remember me” cookie that keeps you signed in beyond individual sessions if you select it at login—it contains only your username, an expiry time and a signature, and becomes invalid when you change your password,
a “language” cookie that remembers your chosen display language (German or English) for future visits,
a “consent” cookie that holds your decision about the marketing cookies for 180 days, so that we do not have to ask you again on every visit. It contains nothing but that decision.

These cookies are strictly necessary for operating the service; storing them rests on § 25 (2) no. 2 TDDDG, and processing them on Art. 6 (1) (b) and (f) GDPR.

We only set marketing cookies once you agree in the banner. What they do is described below under “Google Ads conversion tracking” and “Meta pixel”. The legal basis is your consent (§ 25 (1) TDDDG, Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR).

You can change your decision at any time: the “Cookie settings” link in the footer of every page reopens the selection. A withdrawal takes effect for the future: we instruct Google and Meta to stop storing anything, and we delete the marketing cookies that were set on meetmyrc.com. Cookies Google or Meta set on their own domains are technically out of our reach—you remove those through your browser settings.

Fonts, icons and the site's own scripts are served directly from our server; no external content providers (CDNs) are embedded.

Web analytics with Matomo

For reach and usage analysis we use the privacy-friendly analytics software Matomo, which we self-host on our own infrastructure (analytics.krausgebaut.de). The data collected is processed solely by us and not passed on to third parties.

We use Matomo with as little data as possible: without cookies and with an IP address that is anonymized server-side. Nothing is stored on your device. What is read is your device's time of day, the page you came from and, on a model's page, how much of its content you have seen. In addition, the script checks whether Matomo cookies exist on your device and deletes old ones of its own; it sets none itself. We do not ask for your consent for Matomo—the consent banner concerns only the marketing cookies. For visitors who are not signed in, the analysis stays anonymous.

What is recorded is the pages visited and a small number of events we evaluate to improve the service: that a registration was completed, an account confirmed, a first model created, something copied for sharing or a comment written. For these events, only that it happened is counted—not which model or which comment it concerned. Clicks on links to other websites and on downloads are recorded as well, each with the target address. From what your browser sends with every request and from the shortened IP address, Matomo derives your browser, operating system, type of device, language and approximate location.

On a model's page we also record how much of its content you have seen and which invitations and links you click—for another model, with its public model code—and we count that a registration was started. What you type into the registration form is not transmitted with it. When you are signed in, all of this carries the same pseudonymous identifier as a page view; what that means is described two paragraphs below.

When you are signed in, we additionally send Matomo a pseudonymous identifier: a string derived from your account identifier by a one-way procedure (a hash). Neither your username nor your account identifier itself is transmitted. Its sole purpose is to recognize related visits across several sessions as a single usage (e.g. returning visitors) so we can improve the service more precisely.

This identifier is expressly pseudonymous, not anonymous: as the operator, a deliberate attribution would in principle be technically possible; we do not carry it out and do not identify you by name in the statistics. The identifier is transmitted only with the analytics data and is not stored on your device; for it, too, we do not ask for your consent.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in the statistical evaluation of usage to improve the service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Google Ads conversion tracking

We advertise meetMyRC through Google Ads. To measure whether an ad led to a registration, we use the Google tag—and only with your consent. The provider is Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.

Without your consent the tag is not loaded: no request goes to a Google server, and no cookie is set. If you withdraw your consent, that takes effect immediately; the script already loaded stays in the document until your next page view, but stores nothing further and sends nothing further. If you agree, your browser loads the tag from Google, and Google sets a cookie through which a later visit can be attributed to an ad click. When you complete a registration, the tag reports to Google that a registration took place—with no details about you personally. In particular we transmit neither your e-mail address nor your username to Google; the “enhanced conversions” feature is deliberately switched off in our Google Ads account.

In doing so we use Google Consent Mode v2: your consent status is passed to Google so that Google only stores to the extent you have agreed to. As long as you have not agreed, that status reads “denied”.

The cookies Google sets expire after 90 days at the latest. A transfer to the USA may occur in the process; Google LLC is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, so an adequacy decision of the European Commission serves as the basis.

The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR, § 25 (1) TDDDG). You can withdraw it at any time via the “Cookie settings” link in the footer; the lawfulness of the processing carried out until then remains unaffected.

Meta pixel

We also advertise meetMyRC on Facebook and Instagram. To measure whether an ad led to a registration, we use the Meta pixel—and only with your consent. The provider is Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, Merrion Road, Dublin 4, Ireland.

Without your consent the pixel is not loaded: no request goes to a Meta server, and no cookie is set. If you withdraw your consent, that takes effect immediately; the script already loaded stays in the document until your next page view, but stores nothing further and sends nothing further. If you agree, your browser loads the pixel from Meta, Meta sets cookies, and the pixel reports that a page was viewed. When you complete a registration, it additionally reports that a registration took place—with no details about you personally. In particular we transmit neither your e-mail address nor your username to Meta; we deliberately use neither “advanced matching” nor the “Conversions API”.

Meta sets two cookies on meetmyrc.com in the process: “_fbp” on every visit, and “_fbc” only if you came to us through an ad. Both expire after 90 days at the latest. A transfer to the USA may occur; Meta Platforms, Inc. is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, so an adequacy decision of the European Commission serves as the basis.

For collecting the event data and transmitting it to Meta we are a joint controller together with Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (Art. 26 GDPR). That joint responsibility covers exactly this step; for everything Meta does with the data afterwards, Meta is the sole controller. The essential terms are set out in Meta's “Controller Addendum”. You can exercise your rights as a data subject with us and with Meta alike; only Meta itself can tell you what it has stored about you.

Recipients and processors

Hosting

meetMyRC runs with a provider whose servers are located in Germany (Uberspace, owner Jonas Pasche, Kaiserstraße 15, 55116 Mainz). A data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR is in place with the host. Our e-mails are sent via this provider's infrastructure.

Signing in with Google

If you sign in with Google, Google Ireland Limited is the recipient of the data involved. The details are above under “Signing in with Google”. If you do not use that route, no transfer to Google takes place either.

Google Ads

If you have consented to marketing cookies, Google Ireland Limited is a recipient of the data involved there too. The details are above under “Google Ads conversion tracking”. Without your consent, no transfer takes place here either.

Retention period

We store your data only for as long as is necessary for the stated purposes:

We process account and content data for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account yourself at any time in your account settings; this happens immediately and finally, including all content—except posts already published on Instagram (see there).
Posts on Instagram remain even after the model or your account has been deleted, until you ask us to remove them.
If you do not confirm your account within seven days of registering, we delete it together with its content automatically. One day beforehand you receive a reminder at the address on file.
Regular backups of the database are made and rotated (overwritten) after a short time.
The security log of sign-up attempts and the technical server error logs are overwritten after 14 days at the latest.
Matomo deletes individual visits after 180 days; what remains is the aggregated statistics alone, which can no longer be attributed to any person.

Data security

Transmission is exclusively encrypted via HTTPS/TLS. Passwords are stored only as a cryptographic hash. Uploaded photos are stripped of metadata before storage (see Content data). Access to your data is strictly limited to your account; other users cannot view your non-public data.

Access by the operator

To solve a specific problem, the operator may access your data on request or with your consent, e.g. for troubleshooting. No access to your data takes place without cause and without consultation.

Your rights

You have the following rights regarding your personal data:

access to the data stored about you (Art. 15 GDPR),
rectification of inaccurate data (Art. 16 GDPR),
erasure (Art. 17 GDPR),
restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR),
data portability (Art. 20 GDPR),
objection to processing based on a legitimate interest (Art. 21 GDPR).

An informal message to the e-mail address given above is sufficient to exercise your rights.

Right to lodge a complaint

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. The competent authority is in particular the State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of North Rhine-Westphalia.

No automated decision-making

There is no automated decision-making, including profiling, within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR.

Free use, advertising and paid features

meetMyRC is currently free to use; we do not embed third-party ad space (banners, ad networks). Conversely, we advertise meetMyRC itself through Google Ads; on this site that concerns you only through the conversion measurement described above. It matters to us that the core features of meetMyRC—above all managing your models and showing them in your public showroom—stay free for good. At the same time, meetMyRC has to be economically sustainable. We therefore reserve the right to introduce further advertising or sponsored content in the future, and to offer paid subscriptions for new or extended features. Should that involve additional data processing, we will update this privacy policy before such content goes live.

Changes to this privacy policy

We adapt this privacy policy when changes to the service or the legal situation require it. The version published here applies in each case.