Privacy Policy
This document outlines important considerations for how your data will be used by Acquaint when you interact with the Acquaint organization, platform, and community.
Age Restrictions
Age under 15 (or under 16 outside of the US): Children under this age are not allowed to have any information entered into the website about them. Only with a parent/guardian's supervision may members of this age use the software as long as no PII or sensitive information about them is entered.
Ages 15-18 (16-18 when outside of the US): Members may use the platform with parental consent.
Data we collect about you
Email Newsletter:
If you subscribe to our newsletter, we will store your email, and name as well as a record of your consent to be emailed by us.
If you sign up for an account, you will automatically be signed up for our newsletter, which includes important, but optional updates
If you wish to stop receiving emails from us, simply hit the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email.
NOTE: if you continue to use the application as an account holder, we may continue to send you emails we deem necessary for using the app and staying up to date with our community guidelines, terms and conditions, and privacy policy, regardless of whether you are subscribed/unsubscribed to this mailing list.
We use our email tool (Mailjet) to track email statistics. This includes email open rate and link clicks corresponding to specific email addresses.
Volunteer Onboarding Information:
Some volunteers may connect with Acquaint via various volunteer job postings. During these flows we will request for information via a form or verbal interview. Data collected may include information on your reasons for wanting to volunteer, your contact information (name, email, phone number, timezone etc.). We will retain this data as long as we continue to evaluate volunteers for participation in Acquaint or when it is requested that we delete that data.
Certificates/Achievements:
You may earn certificates/achievements on the platform. You will have the option to share these publicly and it may include your full name when you share it.
Anonymized, aggregated statistics:
Any anonymized data in the table below may be aggregated and used to present the impact of Acquaint in analysis of the platform, formal or informal
Donations:
We keep records of donations made to Acquaint. We keep these records indefinitely for accounting and compliance with tax laws.
Traffic Source:
We may store website/source that referred you to our website if you apply to volunteer. This is to assess the success of our outreach campaigns. This is accomplished through URL parameters. Anonymized data is retained indefinitely
When Logged in/ After Creating An Account:
Consent to use the app:
When you create an account you will be asked to consent to the necessary data collection and processing we may do. Some data collection may be purely optional for use of the app, and we will make this clear when we ask for this information. Once you have consented, we may collect the data in the table below. To revoke consent, you can simply stop using the app and email info@acquaint.org with subject line: "Request For Account Termination".
What? |
How is it used/Why Is It Collected? |
Who can see it? |
Optional (not automatic or required for account) |
Default Retention* |
|
Consent to T&C and Privacy Policy |
To use the app, we need to collect your consent (via checkbox) to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy (this document) |
Acquaint Admin |
No |
18 months after Account Termination |
Email Address |
Unique identifier for your account, coordinating the scheduling of sessions, providing support for the app, other necessary communications related to the platform, and fixing issues. |
Acquaint Admin, Your Assigned Mentor |
No |
18 months after Account Termination |
Email Address Verified |
Ensuring you have access to the email address associated with your account |
Acquaint Admin |
No |
3 months after Account Termination |
Full Name |
Correspondence with Acquaint, identifying member, Certificates. |
Acquaint Admin |
Yes |
3 months after Account Termination |
Phone Number |
Coordinating the scheduling of sessions and providing app support. |
Acquaint Admin |
No, unless phone numbers not supported for location |
3 months after Account Termination |
Alternative means of contact |
When a phone number is not supported, we may need an alternative means of contacting you in real time e.g., "Whats app" or "Signal" identifier. |
Acquaint Admin |
Yes, unless phone numbers are not supported for location. |
3 months after Account Termination |
IP Address |
We may collect IP addresses for identifying malicious internet traffic/users and fixing bugs. We will use IP for no other purpose. |
Acquaint Admin |
No |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
Onboarding & Training Data |
We may collect quiz scores, quiz answers, meeting attendance, device compatibility test results, and other non-PII related data. This allows us to assess volunteer's readiness to perform various functions on the platform or offer a record of trainings. |
Acquaint Admin |
Onboarding data/training is required but some trainings are optional |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
First Name/Nickname |
Name shown to other community members. |
All Members |
Yes |
3 months after Account Termination |
Matchmaking Information |
We may request info about you for the purpose of pairing you with other members, this could be anything from personality based questions to general geographic location (e.g., zip code). It will be clear that this is optional and requested for the purpose of matchmaking or icebreakers. Additionally, we may use this information to enhance diversity on the platform by identifying gaps in our membership. |
Acquaint Admin |
Yes |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
Session Comments/Chat Messages |
Used to allow members to communicate with other Acquaint members and Acquaint Admin/Facilitators. |
Members included in your sessions, Acquaint Admin/Facilitators |
Yes |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely |
Session Statistics |
Displaying a history of your sessions to you and Acquaint Admin. This is also important for determining eligibility for future sessions and matchmaking. Includes any interactions made with the website when conducting sessions. Does NOT include any audio during sessions, which we currently do not, and can not track. |
Acquaint Admin, anonymized data may be used for research purposes and published. |
No |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
App Statistics |
We track anonymized statistics on what links or buttons are clicked on the app in order to understand how the app is being used (or misused) so we can make improvements on the app or address issues members are having using the app. |
Acquaint Admin |
No |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
Referral Statistics |
If you refer others, we will keep a record of this. |
Acquaint Admin |
Yes |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
Member Availability |
Times you have indicated to Acquaint that you are free to volunteer. |
Acquaint Admin |
Yes |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
Appreciation From Other Volunteers |
You can opt-in to receiving positive feedback from fellow volunteers. We will share appreciation with you that meets our standards and may use this information to highlight your impact on Acquaint e.g., in a recommendation letter. We may use appreciations in an Anonymized and aggregated format for presenting the results of Acquaint |
Acquaint Admin, the member who created the feedback |
Yes |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
AI Icebreaker Data |
You can share information about you to help our AI tools facilitate dialogues you participate in on Acquaint. This information may be shared with other volunteers you are connected with in some form. This data is input into AI models like ChatGPT and anonymized versions are used by our team to improve quality. |
Acquaint Admin, other volunteers you connect with, team members helping develop the AI tools |
Yes |
3 months after Account Termination. |
AI Training Simulator |
We use ChatGPT to run communication trainings. "AI Training/Challenges." None of your personal info is sent to ChatGPT, although your input as part of the training is sent to ChatGPT. Your answers and feedback are used to improve the quality of the training and may be used, anonymized, for research purposes. |
Acquaint Admin, other volunteers you connect with, team members helping develop the AI tools |
Yes |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
Referral Data |
We track which sign up link you used to sign up. This helps us understand how you found out about Acquaint and attribute referrals to specific volunteers. |
Acquaint Admin |
No |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
Research Data |
You may be asked to contribute to a study. If so you will be asked to consent to the study and the data collected will be used for the purposes of the study, generally to improve our content (trainings, icebreakers) or demonstrate the impacts of volunteering with Acquaint. |
Acquaint Admin; anonymized data may be analyzed by Acquaint or its research partners and published |
yes |
Anonymized data retained indefinitely. |
* Legal obligations notwithstanding, this is how long the data will be retained.
Privacy between members
Currently, we ask that members do not exchange contact information or personally identifiable information. This is to ensure privacy and safety of all of our members.
Chats
Chats are not actively monitored but they may be joined by Acquaint Admin or Facilitators or reviewed for the purpose of providing tech/logistics support, technical analysis, or upholding the community guidelines.
Partners
We do not share your data with any other organizations.
Data Storage
Data is stored in the cloud across a few services with excellent security reputations.
We store your data in a few secure locations:
- RDS - a database on AWS that is generally inaccessible to the internet. Application usage and account data is stored here. (Stored in USA)
- Splunk - log storage and query system in Microsoft Azure where we store pseudo-anonymized data related to application usage. (Stored in USA)
- Other GDPR compliant third party providers that manage storage for us: Mailjet (e-mailer), Auth0 (login/auth), Twilio (telephony/webrtc/whatsapp), AWS (cloud services), Paypal (donations), Sentry (bug tracking), G-suite (forms/spreadsheets).
Policy Elements Subject To Change
Some elements of this privacy policy may change from time to time. If changes relate to what required data we collect and how it is used, we'll let you know and ask you to accept our privacy policy again before using the Acquaint app.
Cookies
We only use the following essential cookies:
_revo_session - This is a cookie generated by the Acquaint website. It stores data provided by our authentication provider (Auth0) that is used to keep you signed in to the website. This includes your email address and whether or not you have verified your email address. It may also include other transient information about application state necessary for the functioning of the website.
We may embed content from other websites and those websites handle cookies independently of Acquaint. See section below.
You may choose to disable cookies through your browser's preferences, however, Acquaint features that require an account will be inaccessible.
Embedded content from other websites
The Acquaint website may include embedded content (e.g. videos, charts, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor had visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
We encourage you to read the privacy policies for any embedded content from other websites:
Currently, we embed content (videos) from youtube.com.
Your rights pertaining your data
You can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any personal data you have provided to us. You can also request that we rectify or erase any personal data we hold about you. Please send your request to info@acquaint.org.