Privacy Policy

We may collect personal information about you from the following sources:

Information you provide:

We may obtain your personal information when you provide it to us. For example, if you contact us by email or phone, have a business relationship with us, you require any bespoke recruiting for a specific project, use any features or resources available on or through our Site, or register to use our Network or its related Site and services.

User:

We may collect or obtain your personal information when you apply to become an expert, client or vendor.

Data related to our Site:

your operating system, IP address, browser type, your browser's language settings, the dates and times you are connected to our Site, your User name and email, your hashed passwords with a strong algorithm, and clickstream data.

Third party information:

We may collect or obtain personal information from third parties such as Stripe or other outside vendors who are associated with our Network. Our Site may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. We do not have access to or control over the information practices of these third-party websites and they are not covered by this Privacy Policy.

Information you make public:

We may collect or obtain the personal information that you have made publicly available, including via the internet, social media or business networking platforms and profiles.

We collect your personal information for the following purposes:

• To help us determine your potential suitability for participation in our services and Site.
• To identify projects that may be within your field of expertise and of interest to you.
• To schedule interactions and communications between you and our employees or clients.
• To ensure payment for the services you provide or receive.
• To manage our relationship with you, which includes: interacting with you proactively and in response to requests from you, and notifying you about material changes to our policies.

We may process or use the following categories of personal information:

Personal details:

given name(s); preferred name; and photograph (if provided).

User data:

When you sign up to be an expert, we ask for personal data from you to enable you to participate in various services, including those that allow you to be paid for your services.

Professional information:

we may collect your professional biography, details of your public business networking profile or online biography, and other profile information pertaining to your professional experience and expertise.

Contact details:

address; telephone, mobile number; wireless device and email address.

Consent records:

records of consents, dates and times, means of consent and related information.

Payment details:

billing address, payment method, payment amount, payment date, bank account number, credit or debit card number and details; invoice records; payment records.

Employer details:

the name, address, telephone number and email address of experts' current and former employers, only to the extent relevant.

Views and opinions:

any views and opinions that you choose to send to us, or publicly post about us on social media and other platforms.

Legal basis for processing personal information

In processing personal information, we may rely on one or more of the following legal bases, depending on the circumstances:

Consent:

we may have obtained your prior, express consent to process certain information.

Contractual necessity:

processing may be necessary in connection with a contract that you may enter or have entered into with us.

Compliance with applicable law:

We may process your personal information if required by court order, subpoena, a law enforcement agency's request, applicable law or regulation, or where we believe it is necessary to protect the confidentiality and security of our records pertaining to you, to limit our legal liability or to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, or as otherwise required or permitted by law.

Vital interests:

We may process your personal information if it is necessary to protect the vital interests of any individual.

Legitimate interest:

When we have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information we conduct a balancing test to ensure our processing is lawful and proportionate, and that there is no material likelihood of any adverse impact on your interests, fundamental rights, or freedoms as a result of our processing.

Purposes for which we may process and use your personal information

We may process your personal information for the following purposes, subject to applicable law:

Communication regarding services:

providing services and communicating with you in relation to those services; to send you communications about products, services, offers and other things we think are relevant to you.

Communications and IT operations:

management of our communications systems; operation of IT security systems; and IT security audits.

Financial issues:

if you participate in compensated services on the Site, we will process the personal data necessary to complete and audit these transactions.

Surveys:

engaging with you for the purposes of obtaining your views on our services and if requested, your views on other projects.

Security:

electronic security including login records and access details.

Legal proceedings:

establishing, exercising and defending legal rights.

Legal compliance:

detecting and investigating potential breaches of our ethics and compliance policies, applicable laws, rules and regulations.

Feedback:

to request feedback from users to endeavor to improve our services or to respond to any inquiries, feedback or requests submitted by you via the Site.

Clients and Experts:

To complete client projects, address questions and inquiries about our clients and experts, to contact our experts and clients in response to a specific inquiry from others.

We may disclose your personal information to other entities, for legitimate business purposes, in accordance with applicable law. In addition, we may disclose your personal information to:

• you and, where appropriate, your appointed representatives;
• legal and regulatory authorities, upon request, or for the purposes of reporting any actual or suspected breach of applicable law or regulation;
• accountants, auditors, lawyers and other outside professional advisors, subject to binding contractual obligations of confidentiality;
• third party processors (such as payment services providers; survey partners, marketing outreach providers, cloud service providers, etc.), including PayPal and Stripe, located anywhere in the world;
• law enforcement agencies or courts, to the extent necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal rights;
• any relevant party for the purposes of prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offenses or the execution of criminal penalties;
• any relevant party if we believe disclosure is necessary and appropriate to prevent physical, financial, or other harm, injury, or loss;
• any relevant third party acquirer(s), in the event that we sell or transfer all or any relevant portion of our business or assets (including in the event of a reorganization, dissolution or liquidation); and
• third parties, such as former employers or vendors, for the purpose of verifying your background or to complete administrative tasks.

We do not sell your personal information for money.

Our Site uses cookies and might use similar tracking technologies (such as web beacons and pixels) to operate and improve the Site, remember your preferences, maintain your logged-in session, and analyze how the Site is used.

Cookies are small text files placed on your device. We may use both session cookies (which expire when you close your browser) and persistent cookies (which remain until they expire or you delete them).

Our Site is built on a third-party website platform (Vercel), and certain essential, functional, and analytics cookies may be set by that platform and by other service providers.

Most web browsers let you refuse some or all cookies, or notify you when a cookie is being set, through their settings. If you disable or decline cookies, some portions of the Site may not function properly.

We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to provide our services, maintain our business relationship with you, and comply with our legal, accounting, tax, and regulatory obligations.

The criteria we use to determine retention periods include the nature and sensitivity of the information, the purposes for which we process it, applicable legal or regulatory requirements, and whether we can reasonably achieve those purposes through other means.

When personal information is no longer needed, we take reasonable steps to securely delete, anonymize, or de-identify it.

We maintain reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect the personal information we collect against accidental, unlawful, or unauthorized loss, access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. For example, account passwords are stored only as salted, one-way cryptographic hashes and are never held in plain text; personal information is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest by our hosting and database providers; and access is restricted to authorized personnel.

No method of transmission over the Internet or of electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

In the event of a data breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and any applicable authorities as and to the extent required by law.

Depending on where you live and subject to applicable law, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, which may include the right to:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information;
• request deletion of your information;
• object to or request restriction of certain processing;
• request a portable copy of your information; and
• withdraw consent where our processing is based on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at tnecompliance@thenetworkeffect.io. We will respond to your request as required by applicable law, and we may need to verify your identity before fulfilling it. You will not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights.

Colorado residents

Under the Colorado Privacy Act, eligible Colorado residents may have the rights described above, including the right to opt out of the sale of personal data and of processing for targeted advertising. We do not sell your personal information for money.

California residents

If you are a California resident, you may have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA).

Other states

Residents of other U.S. states with comprehensive privacy laws may have similar rights, which we will honor as required by applicable law.

EEA / UK residents

If you are located in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you may have additional rights under the GDPR / UK GDPR, including the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. The legal bases on which we process your personal information are described in Section 3.

Our Site and services are intended for business and professional use and are not directed to children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will take reasonable steps to delete it.

We are based in the United States, and the personal information we collect may be processed in, transferred to, and stored in the United States or other countries whose data protection laws may differ from those in your country of residence.

Where required by applicable law, we take appropriate steps to ensure that transfers of personal information are subject to suitable safeguards.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date at the top of this policy. If we make material changes, we will provide additional notice as required by applicable law.

Your continued use of the Site after any update takes effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy.

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our handling of your personal information, please contact us at: