At Hack the North, we care about our privacy and personal data just as much as you do. We, like other Techyon events, are proud to be not-for-profit and respect your rights and privacy as a user. Our goal is simple: to bring together the best speakers, sponsors, and students from across the world for 36 hours to collaborate, create, and bring their ideas to life.
The data we collect can be separated into three broad categories:
Hack the North uses cookies to authenticate you across our services. Our analytics and DNS providers also use cookies to facilitate their services.
We collect anonymous usage data to improve our online experiences for people visiting our website through:
This allows us to see anonymous information like the number of visitors we have and the types of devices that our visitors use. It also allows us to better understand what our users are interested in as well as analyze the performance of our sites in the wild.
Please read their privacy policies linked to understand how these individual services may use your data in the course of your browsing experience.
We collect two distinct categories of data from our participants:
These categories of data are explicitly asked for and provided by you through our forms or email communications.
We collect primary data in order to organize our event and meet the expectations of our participants. This includes, but is not limited to, your name, age, long answer questions from student applicants, shift scheduling information from volunteers, and prize details from sponsors.
We may ask for optional survey data in our forms to help us better understand our participants and identify ways to improve our event and services. Survey data will always be explicitly labeled as such and will not influence individual decision making, such as your eligibility at the event.
We use the data we receive from third parties solely for identification purposes in order to provide sign-in access to our websites. If a participant chooses to sign in via a Google account, we receive the name, email address, and OAuth2 credentials of the account. We will not execute any actions on behalf of the user. You can review, adjust your privacy settings, or unlink your account from within your Google privacy settings.
We collect various data during our event to improve our event and ensure a great experience for everyone. This includes, for example, recording QR code scans for us to a) enforce quotas for limited resources such as food and b) better understand participation and popularity of activities.
To run Hack the North, we use third-party providers to help us operate our websites, event logistics, and other systems. These providers may process participant data on our behalf only as needed to provide their services to Hack the North.
We may add, remove, or change these providers over time as our systems and event needs evolve. A current list of major providers may be requested by emailing hello@hackthenorth.com.
We may share personal information with sponsors or partners when the participant provides that information for a partner-related purpose, or when the participant chooses to take part in an activity where sharing is clearly expected. For example:
We aim to explain, in plain English, when information is being collected for sponsor or partner use and, where sensitive personal information is involved, why it is being collected and how it may be shared at the point where it is provided.
We may share anonymous, de-identified, or aggregate data with partners or the public for purposes such as event reporting, research, transparency, marketing, sponsorship, and improving future events.
This includes the statistics we post on our website, information about which activities were popular, and information about how different event features were used.
When we share de-identified data, we remove direct identifiers such as names, email addresses, and other information that is intended to directly identify a participant.
We may, if required by law, disclose your information to law enforcement officials.
At Hack the North we take data security extremely seriously and make use of industry standards like SSL and PBKDF2 password hashing to ensure that your information stays private. We will notify affected individuals and regulators of breaches that create a real risk of significant harm as soon as feasible after discovery and assessment. Our data is hosted in the United States and Canada on Google Cloud and Amazon AWS servers that comply with rigorous, globally recognized security and data protection standards [1] [2].
We retain personal information for as long as reasonably needed to operate Hack the North, support current and future events, maintain event records, meet legal or operational requirements, and provide the services described in this policy, unless you request deletion earlier by emailing hello@hackthenorth.com.
You own your data. You may at any time, with proof of identity, email us at hello@hackthenorth.com and request that we provide, update, or delete any personal data we have that pertains to you. We will, barring legal requirements or exceptional circumstances, comply with your request within 30 days of receipt. Please note that deleted data may be retained in our backups for up to an additional 60 days, after which they are purged.
You have several options to limit how much information you share with us:
You may choose to not fill out any optional fields in our forms and communications with you. Fields that we mark as mandatory, however, are considered to be necessary to our operations and services that we offer to you. You may, in the event that you object to these mandatory fields, terminate your activities with us and request that we delete all data we have collected from you thus far.
You may elect to stop receiving marketing and promotional material from us by clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of any promotional emails.
Hack the North does require cookies to be enabled for our services to work. We do not, however, have individual control over cookies and other tracking activities done by the services outlined in Data we collect when you visit our website. You may elect to use a browser extension to block these anonymous analytics activities.
We are always looking for feedback on our practices and policies at Hack the North. If you have any questions, concerns, or complaints regarding our practices or policies, please contact us at hello@hackthenorth.com.