Privacy Policy

Personal information is any information you provide to us that personally identifies you, like your name or email address, or other information which could be reasonably linked to such identifying information by us. We will only collect, use, and share your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This policy applies whether you use TechStart through https://app.techstart.dev (the “TechStart Learning Platform”) or any of our other products or services that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Service”). In addition, this Privacy Policy also covers TechStart's treatment of any personal information about our users that our partners or other services might share with us.

This policy does not apply to websites or services or practices of companies that TechStart doesn’t own or control, such as third party services you might access through links or other features on the Service. These other services have their own privacy policies, and we encourage you to review them before providing them with personal information.

Please do take the time to get to know our privacy practices. We think they’re pretty clear and friendly, but if you have any questions, we’re here to help. You can send us an email at info@techstart.dev. By using the Service, you acknowledge that you accept and agree to this Privacy Policy.

TechStart is a company that provides top-level tech education to people who look for new opportunities in IT field. When we work with students to set up a TechStart account, we securely collect the minimal amount of information about people in the class, and they are asked to create a unique password.

TechStart collects the minimal amount of information from students necessary to create accounts on our Service: we ask the students to securely provide their first and last name, email. When they first login, we ask students to provide a password. We don’t ask students to enter any other personal information when setting up an account, or at any time while using the Service.

We do not disclose any personal information about students to third parties, except to service providers necessary to provide the Service, as required by law, or to protect the security of the Service or other users. Information collected from students (including personal information and information collected automatically) is never used or disclosed for third party advertising or for any first- or third-party behaviorally targeted advertising, and students' personal information is never sold or rented to anyone, including marketers or advertisers.

We only keep a students' personal information for as long as his or her account is active, unless we are required by law to retain it, need it to ensure the security of our community or our Service, or to enforce our Terms. More specifically, TechStart operates on the following policies to protect all students’ information:

1. Minimal information: As mentioned before, TechStart collects the minimal amount of information from students necessary to create accounts on our Service. Beyond this information, the TechStart student account does not allow students the ability to enter any additional personal information.

2. Disassociating inactive accounts: One year after a course is completed we will disassociate the student’s account from the course. This enables the student to retain access to their coding files and assignments for future use (e.g. an online portfolio or code repository in applying to a job or taking another course). This step separates student’s account from all other course information.

TechStart does not sell or rent student's personal information to any third party for any purpose - including for advertising or marketing purposes. Targeted advertising is not permitted on TechStart. Furthermore, we do not share personal information with any third parties.

• Please keep in mind that information or content that you voluntarily disclose to others can be viewed, copied, stored, and used by the people you share it with. We cannot control the actions of people with whom you choose to share information.

• Service Providers: Targeted advertising is not permitted on TechStart. We do work with vendors, service providers, and other partners to help us provide the Service by performing tasks on our behalf - we can’t build everything ourselves, after all! We may need to share or provide information (including personal information) to them to help them perform these business functions, for example database management services and database hosting (e.g. Amazon Web Services, Mongo DB, Azure DevOps). These service providers do not have the right to use your personal information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us. Additionally, these service providers must adhere to confidentiality and security obligations in a way that is consistent with this Privacy Policy.

• Testimonials: We post testimonials on our Service which may contain personal information such as the first name, photo and/or a video of the individual in the testimonial. We obtain the individual’s consent in advance to ensure we have permission to post this content publicly. To request removal of your personal information from our testimonials, please contact us at info@techstart.dev.

• Aggregated Information and Non-Identifying Information: We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly, including with users, partners or the press in order to, for example, demonstrate how TechStart is used, spot industry trends, or to provide marketing materials for TechStart. Any aggregated information shared this way will not contain any personal information.

• Legal Requirements: We may disclose personal information if we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to comply with the law, such as complying with a subpoena or other legal process. We may need to disclose personal information where, in good faith, we think it is necessary to to protect the rights, property, or safety of TechStart, our employees, our community, or others, or to prevent violations of our our Terms of Service or other agreements. This includes, without limitation, exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection or responding to government requests.

• Sharing with TechStart Companies: Over time, TechStart may grow and reorganize. We may share your personal information with affiliates such as a parent company, subsidiaries, joint venture partners or other companies that we control or that are under common control with us, in which case we will require those companies to agree to use your personal information in a way that is consistent with this Privacy Policy.

• Change of control: In the event that all or a portion of TechStart or its assets are acquired by or merged with a third party, personal information that we have collected from users would be one of the assets transferred to or acquired by that third party. This Privacy Policy will continue to apply to your information, and any acquirer would only be able to handle your personal information as per this policy (unless you give consent to a new policy). We will provide you with notice of an acquisition within thirty (30) days following the completion of such a transaction, by posting on our homepage.

• In the unlikely event that TechStart goes out of business, or files for bankruptcy, we will protect your personal information, and will not sell it to any third party.

• With your consent: Other than the cases above, we won’t disclose your personal information for any purpose unless you consent to it. Additionally, as discussed above, we will never sell or rent your personal information to advertisers or other third parties.

Your TechStart account is protected by a password. You can help us protect against unauthorized access to your account by keeping your password secret at all times. The security of your personal information is important to us. We work hard to protect our community, and we maintain administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect against unauthorized use, disclosure of or access to personal information. In particular:

• Our engineering team is dedicated to keeping your personal information secure.

• We periodically review our information collection, storage and processing practices, including physical security measures, to guard against unauthorized access to systems.

• We continually develop and implement features to keep your personal information safe.

• We ensure passwords are stored and transferred securely using encryption.

Although we make concerted good faith efforts to maintain the security of personal information, and we work hard to ensure the integrity and security of our systems, no practices are 100% immune, and we can’t guarantee the security of information. Outages, attacks, human error, system failure, unauthorized use or other factors may compromise the security of user information at any time. If we learn of a security breach, we will attempt to notify you electronically (subject to any applicable laws) so that you can take appropriate protective steps; for example, we may post a notice on our homepage (www.techstart.dev) or elsewhere on the Service. Depending on where you live, you may have a legal right to receive notice of a security breach in writing.

We may occasionally update this Privacy Policy. We won’t reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. If we make any significant changes, we’ll provide prominent notice by posting a notice on the Service.

We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy from time to time, to stay informed about our collection, use, and disclosure of personal information through the Service. By continuing to use the Service after the revised Privacy Policy has become effective, you acknowledge that you accept and agree to the current version of the Privacy Policy.

TechStart is hosted in the United States. If you use the Service from the other parts of the world with laws governing data collection, protection and use that may differ from United States law, please note that you may be transferring your personal information outside of those jurisdictions to the United States. By using the Service, you consent to this, and to the use and storage of personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Do Not Track: TechStart does not track its users over time and across third party websites to provide targeted advertising and therefore does not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals. For more information on “do not track”, please visit ​www.allaboutdnt.org​.