Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Account and Contact Information

Signing in requires only an email address — the Service has no passwords. We store your email address, the sign-in codes and one-time links we send to it, and, if you connect your account with "Sign In with LinkedIn" to have your real name appear on a certificate (see Section 3), the name and verified email address LinkedIn's OpenID Connect endpoint returns to us.

1.2 Purchase and Payment Information

When you or your organization buys a seat, we record the buyer's email address, the order amount, and the order's status (pending, paid, or canceled) so we can grant access and answer billing questions. We do not collect or store your full card number, bank account number, or routing number ourselves. Individual purchases are processed by Square; Team (B2B) purchases made by U.S. organizations are processed by Plaid, which handles ACH bank-transfer authorization through its own hosted interface (Plaid requires a U.S. bank account, so international Teams are invoiced directly and pay by Bitcoin instead — see our Terms and Conditions). In both cases, your payment credentials are entered directly with the processor, and we receive back only a payment/transfer reference and a status update (via webhook) — never the underlying card or bank account details. Square's and Plaid's own privacy policies govern the information you give them directly.

1.3 Course Activity and Completion Records

We record which lectures you've opened, your video-playback progress, your writing submissions and any feedback generated on them, and, once you finish every lecture in a course part, a completion/certificate record for that part (see Section 3). If a Team purchases seats for its members, the Team Owner provides us the member email addresses needed to send seat invitations, and can see aggregate seat and completion status for their organization.

1.4 Technical Information

Like most web services, our servers log standard technical data (such as IP address, browser/user-agent string, and request timestamps) for security, abuse-prevention, and troubleshooting purposes.

2. How We Use Information

We use the information above to:

• Send sign-in codes, magic links, and account-related notices;
• Process purchases, send purchase-link and purchase-confirmation emails, and provision course or Team access;
• Deliver course content, track your progress, and issue completion certificates;
• Operate Team seat management and invitations for organizations that purchase seats;
• Respond to support requests sent to us; and
• Detect, prevent, and investigate fraud, abuse, or security incidents.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your email address or course activity for third-party advertising.

3. Course Completion Verification Records

Finishing every lecture in a course part creates a certificate record — the part/course title, your completion date, and (if you've connected LinkedIn per Section 1.1) the name you chose to display. That record is reachable at a unique, unguessable public verification link, which exists so the credential can be independently verified — for example, by someone who sees it linked from your LinkedIn profile. Without a connected name, the certificate page shows a "Verified completion" badge rather than your email address or any other personal identifier. Because the point of a verification link is to remain checkable by third parties, we keep a completion record even if you later delete your account, unless you specifically ask us to take the public page down (Section 6).

4. Third-Party Service Providers

We share the minimum information necessary with the following providers to operate the Service; each processes it under its own privacy policy:

• Square — individual purchase checkout and payment processing;
• Plaid — Team (B2B) ACH bank-transfer checkout and payment processing;
• Mailgun — delivery of sign-in, purchase-link, and other transactional email; and
• LinkedIn — OpenID Connect sign-in, used only when you choose to connect your account.

We do not permit these providers to use the information we share with them for their own advertising purposes.

5. Data Retention

We keep account, purchase, and course-activity records for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period afterward, as needed for recordkeeping, tax, and legal purposes. Certificate verification records are retained as described in Section 3.

6. Your Choices and Rights

You may ask us to access, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you, or to take down a certificate's public verification page, by emailing intellect@scideology.com. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request, and we may retain information where required by law or for the legitimate purposes described in Section 5.

7. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from, anyone under 18 years old, consistent with the eligibility requirement in our Terms and Conditions.

8. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect the information we hold, including encryption of data in transit. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. International Users

We are based in the United States and process information there. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, which may have data-protection laws different from those of your home jurisdiction.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will update the "Last updated" date above when we do; continued use of the Service after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

11. Contact Us

Questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices can be sent to intellect@scideology.com.