The Virtual Music Club website is a private site for the club’s members. This page explains what it keeps about you, the cookies it uses, and how signing in works. Questions? Ask one of the site’s admins.
What the site keeps about members
- Your login: your name, email address and an encrypted password (if you set one). Your email address is never shown on the site; it’s used for signing in, password resets and the occasional message about the club (such as a duplicate in a round you’re curating).
- Your profile: the name you’re listed under, your full name if you’ve added it, and any music profile links you add (Spotify, Bandcamp, Last.fm and so on). These are shown on your member page.
- What you contribute: your picks for each round, which songs made the Final Cut, your album, film and book recommendations with any notes, and edits you make to shared pages such as the Constitution (each edit is kept, with your name and the time).
Comments are switched off, and nobody can sign up on their own: only club members can have a login.
Signing in
- Claiming your profile. The first time, you find your name on the Members page and claim it. We email you a link to confirm your address; nothing is set up until you open it. The link works once and lasts 48 hours. An admin can also add you, in which case you get an email to set a password.
- Password. If you’ve set a password, choose “Use a password instead” on the Sign in page.
- Sign-in link by email. The usual way in, from the Sign in page: no password needed. If the address belongs to a member, we email a link you can use as often as you like, on any device, for 24 hours; after that it stops working. Asking again sends a new link, and earlier ones keep working until their own 24 hours are up. Setting a new password or changing your email address cancels any links already sent. Anyone with the link can sign in as you until it expires, so don’t forward the email. The site keeps only a scrambled fingerprint of each link, never the link itself, and it says the same thing whether or not an address belongs to a member. Opening the link asks you to confirm before signing you in.
- Changing your email address is confirmed the same way: by a link sent to the new address.
“Keep me signed in on this device”
You choose each time you sign in. Ticked, your browser stays signed in for 14 days. Unticked (the default), you’re signed out when you close the browser. Leave it unticked on a shared or public computer. “Sign out” (under My profile) signs you out straight away on that device.
Cookies and browser storage
The site only uses what it needs to work. There are no advertising or tracking cookies, and no analytics.
| Name | What it’s for | How long |
|---|---|---|
wordpress_logged_in_…, wordpress_sec_… | Keep you signed in. | Until the browser closes, or 14 days with “Keep me signed in”. |
wordpress_test_cookie | Checks your browser accepts cookies when you sign in. | Until the browser closes. |
__cf_bm, cf_clearance | Set by Cloudflare, which protects the site from bots and attacks. | 30 minutes to a year. |
vmcPlayer (browser storage, not a cookie) | Remembers whether you prefer the Spotify or Bandcamp player. | Until you clear your browser’s site data. |
vmcTitles (browser storage) | Remembers whether you’ve hidden titles on the song, album, film and book grids. | Until you clear your browser’s site data. |
| Alerts settings (browser storage) | Remembers whether you’ve turned browser alerts on or dismissed the invitation. | Until you clear your browser’s site data. |
Other services
- Spotify and Bandcamp players on song and album pages come from Spotify and Bandcamp, which may set their own cookies when the player loads or plays (see their privacy policies). The Bandcamp player only loads if you choose it.
- Fonts may be loaded from Google Fonts, which sees your IP address.
- Browser alerts, if you turn them on, are delivered through your browser maker’s push service (Google, Mozilla or Apple). The site stores your browser’s subscription address and its browser type (so admins can see which browsers alerts reach), and nothing that identifies you; turning alerts off deletes it.
- Looking things up. When songs, albums, films and books are added, the site itself asks Spotify, Bandcamp, IMDb, OMDb, Open Library and MusicBrainz for their details. Only the titles are sent, never anything about you.
Your choices
You can edit your name, email address and links on your profile at any time. To have your login or anything you’ve added removed, ask an admin.