PRIVACY POLICY

• The company responsible for your information under this privacy policy is Neurodivergent Futures Co-op (our legal name).

• Website:

  https://www.ndconnect.app

• Email:

  support@ndconnect.app

• This privacy policy applies to websites, apps, events, and other services we operate under Neurodiversity Connect/ND Connect, as well as how we generally handle information within our organization (our “services”). If you agree to use any third party platforms that we use (e.g., Slack, Google Calendar, Stripe, etc.), you also need to agree to their privacy policies and their privacy policies apply - not this one.

Information we get from you

• When you register for the platform you share your full name, email address, and confirm you are over 18 years old to create an account.

• You can also choose to share your self-disclosed neurotype, disability/accessibility related experiences, LGBTQ+ status, gender, race/ethnicity, and industry, as well as share additional information with us like your bio, interests, and profile photo. These are optional to provide but helps us tailor your experience and make meaningful connections between you and others on our platform.

• When you subscribe to our app, you provide us with information related to the purchases you make. You also give our payment processors information such as your debit or credit card number or other financial information.

• When you participate in surveys, focus groups, give us feedback/suggestions, leave us testimonials, etc., you give us insights into our products and services.

• When you choose to participate in promotions, events, or contests, we collect the information that you use to register/enter you.

• When you contact us (e.g., through our help and feedback button, email, social media, etc.), we collect the information you give us during that interaction.

Information we get from others

• We might get information from other community members on our platform about you as they use our services. For example, as they interact with you or if they submit a report that involves you.

• If you choose to link your calendar with us, we also get access to your availability for meetings through that calendar system so that we can schedule calls between you and others on our platform.

Information generated/automatically collected when you use our services

• Using our services generates technical data about which features you’ve used and how you’ve used them. For example, usage information like when you logged in, features you’ve been using, actions you've taken, information shown to you, and your interactions with other users (e.g., when you match with someone and schedule a call).

Cookies

• We only use essential cookies to make our app not annoying to use (e.g., keeping you signed in when you open another tab instead of logging you out each time).

The main reasons we use your information are to deliver our services and improve them. We also use your information to help keep you and our community safe. More specifically, we use your information:

1. To create and administer your account, and provide our services to you

Examples:

1. Provide you with customer support and respond to your requests

2. Communicate with you about our services - like sending you notifications like meeting reminders

2. To help you connect with other users and provide our features

Examples:

1. Recommend you to other users and/or recommend other users to you

2. Show user’s profiles to each other. Information you disclose that appears on your profile (e.g., neurotype, opinions, etc.) also helps others on the platform decide whether or not they would like to match with you.

3. To improve our services and develop new services/features

Examples:

1. Running surveys

2. Reviewing interactions with our support team

3. Understanding how people on our platform typically use features and what people like/don’t like, interact with/don’t use, etc.

4. Analyzing industry/lived experience data to better understand the impact of our platform at a high-level and improve equity/inclusion

4. To market/advertise

Examples:

1. Perform and measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns on our services and marketing our services off our platform

2. Communicate with you about products or services that we believe may interest you

5. To prevent/stop fraud and other activities that violate our Terms of Service

Examples:

1. Find and address violations or potential violations of our Terms of Service through reviewing reports and from members

2. Better understand and design our platform to prevent violations of our Terms of Service

3. Communicate to people who submit a report, including what we’ve done to address their submission

6. To ensure legal and regulatory compliance

Examples:

1. Data about transactions to help us with our accounting, taxes, etc.

• Since our goal is to make awesome mentorship and peer support connections between people, the main way we share your information is with other users. You share information with other users when you voluntarily disclose information on the service (including your public profile). Please make sure that the information you are sharing on your profile is stuff that you’re comfortable being visible.

• If someone submits a report involving you (e.g., that you violated our Terms of Service), we might communicate what actions we took, if any, with the person who filed the report.

• We use vendors to help us operate, distribute, market, and improve our services (e.g., data hosting and maintenance, analytics, payment processing, etc.). Any vendors we work with must agree to strict confidentiality obligations.

• Law enforcement requests/when required by law.

• We will only disclose information to law enforcement if they have a warrant, subpoena, or other order unless we think there is a significant danger for user(s) on our platform, in which case we may respond to investigative requests as long as they comply with applicable law.

• With your consent or at your request

• We might ask for your consent to share information outside of the other cases we’ve described. In any case like this, we’ll make it clear why we want to share the information. If we ever want to do things like feature you for a story or share a testimonial you give us, we will explicitly ask you for your consent and how you would like to be attributed.

• Non-personal information

• We may use and share non-personal information (i.e., information that by itself does not identify who you are like general demographics of people on our platform, general behavioural data, etc.). For example, we may share information with possible institutional customers/partners, investors, and community members about the impact of our mentorship platform and the performance of our product (e.g., how many users we have, mentorship outcomes, etc.). Any information we share about the impact of mentorship on certain communities for marketing or other purposes will be anonymized.

• We do not sell your data

• While we do our best to create a safe and respectful community, and to protect your privacy, we can’t guarantee users will always respect our confidentiality guidelines and Terms of Service. Please only share what you are comfortable with the possibility of others knowing on our platform and use your best judgment when interacting with others. In the rare case that information about you is shared externally, we will do our best to remove it but may not be able to fully depending on things like the guidelines of other platforms.

• Third Parties

• We do not use third party sources to learn personal information about you.

• We use a few third party tools to process your information such as Stripe to process your payments. We also integrate with Google Calendar, Google Meet, and Zoom to facilitate meetings. You also have the option of joining our Slack community to communicate with people on our platform.

• All information that you provide us with is opt-in except for name and email address.

• If you choose to provide us with information that might be considered “special” or “sensitive” in certain jurisdictions (e.g., neurotype, disability, sexual orientation, etc.), you’re consenting to us processing that information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

• Linking your Google Calendar

• Limited use disclosure

• ND Connect’s use of information received from Google APIs will comply with , including the Limited Use requirements. We do not transfer data from your Google account to any other party.

  Google API Services User Data Policy

• If you provide us with access to your Google Calendar data, we will only use our access to:

• Read when you are busy or free based on the time and length of events in your calendar. We will not read any other details of any of your events such as title, description, invitees, video conferencing, etc. We will only use this data and the general availability you give us to figure out time slots when you are available to meet, so that we don’t book you when you’re busy. We will not save this data or transfer it to any other party. No humans will be able to directly access your calendar event timings and event durations.

• Create new calendar events when other users schedule meetings with you through our platform, and create a Google Meet video conferencing link to share with the person you’re meeting with during this process.

• Usually, you can withdraw your consent to sharing personal information with other users of our services by changing the information on your profile. You can also withdraw your consent by contacting us at support@ndconnect.app.

• We will never use identifiable information about you for marketing purposes without your explicit consent (we’ll ask you directly before we share!). We send three types of emails: core notifications, product updates, and community/general information. You can opt out of product updates and community/general information we send at any time.

• You can delete your account at any time. When you do so, your personal information will stop being visible to other users.

• However, deleting your account does not automatically delete your information from our own files. We currently hold information indefinitely to help us understand more about our platform, to help us create a safe community, and to potentially make it easier for you to reopen your account in the future. If you would like your information deleted, you can request this at any time by emailing support@ndconnect.app with the subject line “Delete my data” after closing your account, and we will delete all of the information that we are able to.

• After requesting a data deletion, we may need to hold some limited data to comply with legal data retention obligations and to be able to support us legally as an organization (e.g., we keep transaction data for a minimum of 10 years to comply with tax and accounting legal requirements; we may need to keep “traffic data”/logs for one year to comply with legal data retention obligations; we need to keep records of consents users give us for at least five years to evidence compliance with applicable law; we maintain data necessary to prevent users who were banned or people under 18 from opening a new account for as long as necessary to ensure safety; if we get a valid legal subpoena or request asking us to preserve data we might need to keep the data to comply with legal obligations or otherwise need to keep and share data as part of legal proceedings).

• If you choose to provide us with information that might be considered “special” or “sensitive” in certain jurisdictions (e.g., neurotype, disability, sexual orientation, etc.), you’re consenting to us processing that information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

• We have users across Canada and other countries. Although all users have access to the information you share on your profile, data on the platform is stored in Canada.

• All user information will be encrypted when it is stored and when it is transmitted over the Internet.

• Please also help us keep a safe and secure community by keeping your password information private.

• You can send a request to see the personal information that we have collected about you by emailing support@ndconnect.app with the subject line “I want to see my personal information”. After you see what we have, you can request any information be corrected and we will get back to you in 30 days. For your protection and the protection of all of our users, we may ask you to provide proof of the account belonging to you before we can answer the above access and correction requests. We may reject requests if we are unable to authenticate you, if the request is unlawful or invalid, or if it may infringe on trade secrets/ intellectual property/privacy/other rights of someone else.

• You can also correct most information you provided to us by editing your profile directly in the service.

• Any complaints, questions, or concerns you have about our personal information management practices can be made to support@ndconnect.app. We will do our best to work with you to resolve whatever it is you’re worried about and/or answer any questions you have.

• We reserve the right to amend this privacy notice. If we do, we will send you an email with our updates. The amended version will come into effect at least two weeks after the notice so that we can give our community the chance to provide feedback before making changes.