Privacy Policy

• Your account. Your email address and password when you sign up. Passwords are stored as a secure hash by our sign-in provider, Supabase; we never see them. If you choose “Continue with Google,” Google shares your name and email address with us.
• Your profile. What you choose to add: your name, username, photo, STEM field, career stage, job title and organization, school and major, bio, LinkedIn link, city, state or province, country, and whether you're open to mentoring or looking for a mentor. Photos are cropped and re-saved in your browser before upload, which removes hidden details such as the GPS location phones add to pictures.
• What you share in the community. As these features open: posts, images, comments, likes, connection requests, and reports you send to our moderators.
• Security information. Your IP address, browser type, and timestamps when you sign in or submit forms. We use these only to keep accounts safe, stop spam and bots, and enforce limits like how often a username can change.
• Analytics, only if you agree. If you accept analytics cookies, Google Analytics measures visits to our public pages (the home page, sign-in, sign-up, and these policy pages). It never runs on member profiles, the directory, the feed, or any page behind sign-in.

We don't ask for your birthday, phone number, home address, clan, or immigration status, and you never have to share them.

• To create and run your account and keep you signed in.
• To show your profile to other members so you can find each other, connect, and find mentors.
• To keep the community safe: reviewing reports, removing content that breaks our rules, and suspending accounts when needed.
• To prevent spam and abuse, including bot checks and rate limits.
• To send account emails, such as confirming your email address or resetting your password. We don't send marketing emails without asking.
• To understand, in aggregate, how people find HmongSTEM, only if you accept analytics cookies.

We never sell or rent your information, and we don't use it for advertising.

• Signed-out visitors and search engines can't see member profiles, the directory, or the community feed. Those pages require an account and are excluded from search engines.
• Signed-in members can see your name, username, photo, field, career stage, work or school details, bio, and mentoring badges.
• Your location and LinkedIn link follow your choices in Settings → Privacy: visible to all members, or only to your connections. Directory searches by location never reveal a location you've hidden.
• Your email address is never shown to other members.
• Our moderators and administrators can see content that's been reported and account details needed to keep the community safe.

We use a small number of trusted providers to run the site. They process information only to provide their service to us.

• Supabase stores our database, sign-ins, and uploaded photos, in the United States (AWS us-east-1).
• Hostinger hosts the website.
• Cloudflare Turnstile checks that forms are submitted by people, not bots.
• Google provides “Continue with Google” sign-in if you use it, and Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics on our public pages if you accept analytics cookies.

Because these providers are based in the United States, your information is processed there. If you live elsewhere, including the EU, UK, Canada, or Australia, those providers use standard safeguards for international transfers.

• Your account and profile, for as long as your account is open.
• When you delete your account, we delete your profile, photos, and account within 30 days. Copies may remain in encrypted backups for a short time until they're overwritten.
• Anti-spam records (such as how many times you changed your profile) are kept for 7 days.
• Reports and moderation records may be kept longer when needed to protect the community or meet legal obligations.

• Edit or remove anything on your profile at any time in Settings.
• Choose who sees your location and LinkedIn in Settings → Privacy.
• Change your cookie choices any time with “Your privacy choices” at the bottom of every page.
• Ask us for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete your account by emailing privacy@hmongstem.com. We'll respond within 30 days.

Depending on where you live (for example, under the EU and UK GDPR or California's CCPA), you may also have the right to object to or restrict how we use your information, and to complain to your local data protection authority. We honor these rights for everyone, wherever you live.

HmongSTEM is for people 13 and older. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us at privacy@hmongstem.com and we'll delete it.

We protect your information with encryption in transit (HTTPS), database rules that let members change only their own data, bot protection, and rate limits. No system is perfect; if we ever learn of a breach that affects you, we'll tell you promptly.

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in and secure, and analytics cookies only if you agree. See our Cookie Policy for the full list.

If we make important changes, we'll update the date at the top and let members know on the site or by email before the changes take effect.

Questions or requests about your privacy? Email privacy@hmongstem.com.