Bug and feature-request privacy
Reports are submitted from the reporter built into NextATC. It creates a local ZIP for your review before anything is sent. Bug reports remove known secrets, account identifiers, email addresses, IP addresses and personal filesystem paths from collected text; settings use a safe allowlist. Feature requests never collect logs or settings. Active paid supporters can also send a report from the New report page of Unicom: files attached there are stored as they are, so check them first.
Both report types can include a description and up to 10 screenshots selected by you. Screenshots are created by X-Plane in its own screenshot folder, are not sanitized and may show anything visible in the simulator. The reporter shows a preview and automatically selects new screenshots, but you can untick any image before building the ZIP.
For bugs, the reviewed ZIP and a separate sanitized Log.txt are sent only after confirmation. Feature requests send only their reviewed ZIP. Patreon email is used server-side for account linking and reply notifications; it is not returned to the plugin or written into either ZIP.
Reports are private. Closed reports and their server files are deleted automatically after six months. A signed-in reporter or an administrator can permanently delete a report immediately from its report page. Local ZIP files remain in the NextATC plugin folder until you explicitly delete them.
Unicom
Unicom is the NextATC community space. Reports stay private there too: only their author and the developer, with the AI assistants working for him, can read them.
What you write in Unicom is different from a report: your posts, your images and the name you choose are visible to other readers. The Public announcements and the Public forum can be read by everyone, also without logging in. An announcement can be Paid: paid supporters, donors and testers read it, others see only its title. Location data is removed from JPG photos when you add them. You can edit or delete your posts.
Members see who is online and who is typing, by the name chosen in Unicom. Your account menu has a setting to stay out of that list. By default the only email you get is when the developer answers one of your reports or closes it. Emails about replies, private messages and announcements are off until you ask for them, and every kind can be changed in Settings, from your account menu. A message from the Moderator always reaches you by email too, whatever you choose, and Antonello receives a copy of it. Unicom never shows your email address or your Patreon name, and it does not use tracking.
The AI ChatBot in Unicom answers from the plugin guide and from the Unicom posts the person asking can read, through an AI service. Your question goes to that service, and so can parts of your posts, signed with your Unicom name, when they match someone's question. Reports never do. You can attach images and text files such as logs. Files are not stored: they are read while your question is answered and then deleted. From a text file only a short excerpt reaches the AI service, without email addresses, IP addresses, home folders, keys and tokens. An image reaches the AI service as it is, so check that it shows nothing private. The conversation and those excerpts stay in your session for up to two hours; NextATC keeps no permanent chat history.
Private messages can be read only by the two people in the conversation: they do not show to the developer, in search or to the AI ChatBot. They are stored on the site's server and are not end-to-end encrypted. Deleting a conversation removes it for you, and when both people have deleted it nothing is left on the server. Blocking someone stops them from writing to you.
Beside a name, Unicom shows the role in brackets (Admin, Moderator, Bot) and, with a star, who supports the project. Anyone who can read a post sees it. The amount and the tier never show.
A conversation with the AI ChatBot is not kept unless you save it: it is gone when you close its page, and your session forgets it two hours after its last question. A chat you save stays on the server for one week from the day you save it, then it is deleted for good, and you can delete it sooner with its bin. It keeps its words, never its files, and only you can open it.
The developer moderates Unicom, sometimes through an AI assistant that works for him and signs as Moderator. It reads posts and reports, and it can rename, move, split, merge, close, lock, pin or hide what is posted, stop an account from writing for 30 days, reply in a thread or a report, and write to you privately. It never reads the private messages between members. Every action it takes is logged with its reason, and what it changes can be put back.
You can change your name in Settings and delete your own posts. To have anything else removed, write to the developer: paid supporters through a report, anyone else in a discussion.