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.
Participant: Hackers, sponsors, judges, speakers, and volunteers who participate in our event
The data we collect can be separated into three broad categories:
We collect anonymous usage data to improve our online experiences for people visiting our website. This data can be separated into two main categories: analytics data and bug reporting.
Analytics Data
We collect anonymized traffic and visitor data through Google Analytics and our DNS provider Cloudflare. This allows us to see aggregate information like the number of visitors we have and the types of devices that our visitors use. We encourage you to read through their privacy policies (linked below).
Google Analytics: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy
Bug Reporting
We collect error reports on our web and mobile properties through Bugsnag. This information includes data such as your browser and operating system to help us effectively find and remove bugs in our codebase. We encourage you to read and understand Bugsnag’s privacy policy at https://docs.bugsnag.com/legal/privacy-policy/
We collect two distinct categories of data from our participants:
Both categories of data are explicitly asked for and provided by you through our forms or email communications.
Primary data
We collect primary data in order to organize our event and meet the expectations of our participants. This includes data like long answer questions from student applicants, shift scheduling information from volunteers, and prize details from sponsors.
Survey data
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 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.
Hack the North does not generally use cookies in its web properties. Our analytics, bug reporting, and DNS provider however use cookies to facilitate their services. Please read their privacy policies linked under "Data we collect when you visit our website" to understand how these individual services may use cookies in the course of your browsing experience.
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 commit to notifying all affected parties in the unlikely event of a data breach within 72 hours unless otherwise required by law or extenuating circumstances. Our websites are hosted in the United States and Canada on Amazon AWS servers that comply with rigorous, globally recognized security and data protection standards.
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 until purged.
You have several options to limit how much information you share with us:
Limit how much information you provide on our forms
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.
Opt out of marketing emails
You may elect to stop receiving marketing and promotional material from us by clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of any promotional emails.
Disable your cookies or use a tracking blocker
Hack the North does not generally 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 disable your cookies or 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