Privacy Policy

TECHi (techi.com) is a product published by TechAbout LLC, registered at 30 N Gould St Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States. There is no TECHi Media LLC. When this policy says “we,” that is TechAbout LLC. When it says “you,” that is anyone visiting the site, reading the newsletter, or holding a TECHi account.

TECHi is an AI and markets publication with reader accounts, a personalized dashboard, watchlists, analyst subscriptions, paid Stripe checkouts, and TECHi Learn courses. It is not only a news site. This policy describes those products.

There are five buckets. Anything not in one of these is not collected.

1. Account, sign-in, and newsletter

Creating a reader account asks for a name, email address, and password. The password is stored as a one-way hash and used only to sign you in. Google or GitHub sign-in sends us the basic profile those providers share: name, email, avatar URL, and account ID. A newsletter subscription stores the email you typed and whether you are still subscribed. Writing to us stores the message. Email is collected from registration, sign-in, newsletter signup, checkout, Learn, and contact forms. It is not collected only through comments or a direct email.

2. What you do while signed in

Comments, follows, bookmarks, stock votes, watchlist entries, reading history, and dashboard preferences. Two-factor backup codes are stored hashed. An analyst application stores the form you submit. An analyst subscription stores the subscription state. None of this is used as a silent marketing list.

3. TECHi Learn

A paid or free Learn seat stores the enrollment: which course, who paid, progress, and certificate state. We do not store the card number. A TECHi account is for someone 16 or older. A younger learner does not get a login.

• The TECHi account belongs to a parent or guardian who is at least 16. The child does not get a login.
• The guardian confirms they are the parent or legal guardian and consent to the child taking the course.
• The child is a profile on that account: first name and age band only.
• The guardian chooses whether the child profile, projects, or certificate can be shown publicly.
• Instructors message the guardian account. They do not contact the child directly.
• Live sessions follow the classroom safety rules: no private child contact, no public chat with strangers, and a guardian can sit in.
• The guardian pays. A child cannot check out.
• A certificate or public profile is published only with a separate guardian consent.
• The guardian can ask for the child profile and course records to be deleted.
• Child course records are kept only while the guardian account keeps the enrollment, then deleted with that account unless a longer legal hold applies.

A learner under 16 does not get a TECHi login. The parent or guardian account owns consent, payment, and messages.

4. What your browser sends automatically

IP address, user-agent (browser and device), referring URL, the pages you visit, and the timestamp. This is standard server-log data. Ours stays on servers we operate with OVH in Virginia, United States, behind Cloudflare, and is kept for about 30 days.

5. Payment information

Analyst subscriptions, membership, and Learn checkout run through Stripe. Stripe holds the card. We see the confirmation that a charge succeeded, the last four digits, and the subscription or enrollment state (active, cancelled, past-due). We do not use that payment record to build an advertising profile.

Different data, different reason. We don’t pool all of it into a giant marketing graph.

• Account data — to authenticate you, prevent duplicate sign-ups, and let you log back in if you forget your password.
• Newsletter email — to send the messages you asked for. Every send has an unsubscribe link. We do not treat a comment email as permission to market to you.
• Learn and analyst records — to deliver the course or subscription you bought, including progress, certificates, and refunds.
• Activity data (comments, follows, watchlist) — to render your dashboard, send notifications you opted into, and personalise the home feed when you’re logged in.
• Server logs — to diagnose crashes, rate-limit abusive traffic, and meet our security obligations to Cloudflare and our hosting provider, OVH.
• Payment data — to charge subscriptions and pay analysts their share.

Optional Google Analytics 4 measurement starts only after you accept it in Privacy choices. Rejection and withdrawal keep it off. The same choice applies worldwide, and Global Privacy Control keeps it off. We configure Google signals and advertising personalization off; we do not use account identifiers, search queries, private pages, or full referring URLs for this measurement. Analytics cookies are pseudonymous identifiers, not a guarantee of anonymity.

For details on cookies (including how to turn them off), see our cookies policy.

We don’t sell your data. Full stop. The only third parties that touch your information are vendors we hire to help run the site:

• OVH — hosting. Our servers and our Postgres database run on OVH infrastructure in Virginia, United States. Sees your IP and the pages you request.
• Cloudflare — DNS, CDN, and edge security in front of those servers. Sees your IP and the pages you request.
• Neon — until August 2026 our managed Postgres provider. A frozen copy of the database from before that migration is retained on Neon (US East) as a rollback backup. It is no longer written to.
• Vercel — our previous host. Historical copies remain in Vercel Blob storage as an archive. Live media files are stored and served from our OVH server; the site does not fetch media from that archive.
• Stripe — payment processing. Sees card data we never do.
• Resend / SMTP provider — sends transactional and digest emails. Sees your email address and the messages we send you.
• Google Analytics 4 — optional readership and performance measurement after acceptance.

We’ll also disclose data when a court order forces us to. If that ever happens, we’ll let you know unless the order itself prohibits it.

If you live in the EU, UK, California, or any of the other jurisdictions with modern privacy laws on the books, you have the right to:

• See what we hold — request a copy of your account data via Settings → Export, or by emailing us. We respond within 30 days.
• Correct it — most fields are editable from your dashboard directly. For the rest, email us.
• Delete your account — Settings → Delete account. Comments and analyst reports written under your name are anonymised (replaced with “Former TECHi member”) so the public archive stays coherent. Hard-delete of personal records happens within 30 days.
• Object to processing — write to us. We’ll stop unless we have a legitimate operational reason (such as fraud prevention) and we’ll explain that reason if so.

California residents have additional rights under the CCPA — see our CCPA notice for the full list.

• Account data — Kept while the account is active. After you delete it, 30 days of cold storage in case the deletion was a mistake, then a permanent purge.
• Comments and posts — Kept while the account is active. Anonymised when the account is deleted.
• Server logs — About 30 days, on the OVH servers that host the app.
• Payment records — 7 years, because the IRS requires that window. Card numbers stay at Stripe.
• Email logs — 90 days at the SMTP provider.
• Newsletter addresses — Removed after 90 days without a send you opened or a click, or sooner if you unsubscribe.
• Child course records — Kept only while the guardian account keeps the enrollment, then deleted with that account unless a longer legal hold applies. Payment records that name the guardian follow the 7-year rule.
• Recruitment data — Kept for 24 months after the application is closed, then deleted, unless a hiring dispute or a legal hold requires longer.
• Anything else — Deleted within 12 months of its last useful purpose.

Database connections are TLS-encrypted; passwords are hashed with bcrypt; two-factor backup codes are hashed before they hit the database (we can’t recover them, only verify them); session cookies are HTTP-only, secure, and SameSite=Lax. Payment data never reaches our servers — Stripe handles it.

We’re a small team and we don’t pretend to be SOC 2 certified. But we use mainstream, well-audited infrastructure (OVH, Cloudflare, Stripe) and we don’t roll our own crypto.

A careers application is a separate record from a reader account. The form asks for your name, email, phone, location, LinkedIn URL, portfolio URL, work experience, a cover letter, salary expectation, the date you can start, and work authorization. We use that only to consider you for a role.

Kept for 24 months after the application is closed, then deleted, unless a hiring dispute or a legal hold requires longer.

• Visitor — Someone reading the public site without an account. A visitor is not a user and cannot enroll in Learn.
• Child learner — A person under 16 named on a Learn enrollment. A child learner does not get a login, a password, or a public profile.
• Registered user — A person who created a TECHi account. The account holder must be at least 16. There is no 13–15 opt-in account.
• Subscriber — A registered user who pays for an analyst subscription or another paid TECHi product. Paying requires the legal capacity to contract, which we treat as 18.
• Guardian — A registered user, at least 16, who owns a child learner’s Learn seat, payment, consent, and messages. The child does not sign in.

A TECHi account requires the holder to be at least 16. We don’t knowingly let a child create one. Learn courses for younger students are taught through a parent or guardian account:

• The TECHi account belongs to a parent or guardian who is at least 16. The child does not get a login.
• The guardian confirms they are the parent or legal guardian and consent to the child taking the course.
• The child is a profile on that account: first name and age band only.
• The guardian chooses whether the child profile, projects, or certificate can be shown publicly.
• Instructors message the guardian account. They do not contact the child directly.
• Live sessions follow the classroom safety rules: no private child contact, no public chat with strangers, and a guardian can sit in.
• The guardian pays. A child cannot check out.
• A certificate or public profile is published only with a separate guardian consent.
• The guardian can ask for the child profile and course records to be deleted.
• Child course records are kept only while the guardian account keeps the enrollment, then deleted with that account unless a longer legal hold applies.

A learner under 16 does not get a TECHi login. The parent or guardian account owns consent, payment, and messages. If a child has created an account anyway, email info@techi.com and we’ll delete it.

If we change anything material — a new analytics vendor, a new retention window, a new data category — we’ll email everyone with a TECHi account at least 14 days before the change goes live. Minor edits (rephrasings, typos) don’t trigger an email but the “Last updated” date at the top of this page always reflects the latest revision.

For privacy questions, data requests, or anything else covered above, email info@techi.com. A real person reads the inbox and we aim to reply within 2 business days.

For urgent legal notices: TechAbout LLC, 30 N Gould St Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA.