Privacy in the Hosting Space

Alright, now it feels like every site is trying to collect your info, with this now spreading more and more in our industry too, even to people who don't even know they're being watched.

Watched From Every Angle

We already know that most of what we do online is being collected. There has been a big rise in people trying to get back some of their privacy with encrypted chat messages, ad blockers, VPNs, and browsers dedicated to keeping your data yours.

Whatever your feeling about this is, or where you draw the line, I'm sure everyone can at least agree you always should be able to consent to your data being collected.

AI in the Hosting Space

Kinetic is by no means an anti-AI company. We see it as a tool, a tool that should be used responsibly, and shouldn't impact our team or our customers. That's why we still have 100% human support. But like in all industries, AI is moving more and more into the hosting space, and to tell the truth, this does have me worried a bit.

AIs in hosting panels are getting access to more and more information: your console, logs, files, and mods, all with the idea of helping customers more. This is where the issue lies.

That console, those logs, they have your in-game chat messages, your IGN, your IP addresses. All of this is being fed into their support AI. So even if you're not a customer of that host, just joining a server hosted by them could hand over your messages, your IP, and your IGN to an AI, without you ever consenting to this.

While server chats should never be seen as secure, on the surface, this might not seem that bad. But the chats you have with your mates on a server, or even on a public server, that you think are just between you and your mate, might no longer be. With your IP address giving an AI your rough location, and your IGN having some form of personal attachment for most people, this does get a bit more worrying.

If you want to use a bot to help troubleshoot your server, then I feel that's fine. There might be a day where we do add something like that to Kinetic. But no personal information should be handed over without any consent.

Privacy At Kinetic

So today, we've locked in a promise. Not to never add an AI helper bot, but if we ever do, to never allow it access to personal info. In any part of Kinetic, we will never let an AI touch your information without consent, and of course always follow our rule of offering human support

This already lines up with our strong privacy rules:

• We follow both UK GDPR and EU GDPR.

• We allow for you to enable and disable cookies you don't want.

• Our panel never tracks what you're doing on it.

• We reset any activity logs after 3 months.

Final Note

Final note. Its always a good idea to have a VPN on when you're joining a random server, but now that might be true more than ever. If you can see the host that a server is hosted on, its always good to check if they have an AI bot or AI support in their panel. As if they do, you might be being watched without knowing it.