Data Security
Last Updated: May 17, 2018
Underlying all of our data practices at TechChange is a simple principle: we keep your data in as few places as possible. We accomplish this primarily by minimizing the number of pass-through points for our data flow, using only trusted third-party services, and only releasing the data that is absolutely necessary to accomplish our service needs.
You
When you access our platform from your computer, tablet, phone, or other device, you immediately make a request to our servers for the requisite information to load the page. This is done through a secure, encrypted connection to prevent third parties from sniffing your information.
You will also have some of your data passed through to two third-party services we use for data analysis and quality assurance respectively: Google Analytics and TrackJS. While they will collect cursory information regarding your location and browser, the data they collect is anonymized and insufficient to identify you.
Google Analytics is a service that tracks people’s use of websites. It uses anonymized data to track how long people visit websites, what pages they visit, and how they interact with the website. We do not provide any personal data to Google Analytics.
TrackJS is a service that tracks errors on a website. TechChange employees receive notifications about errors and can then review those errors to ensure the platform is functioning as intended. TrackJS deletes all data every 15 days.
To take a course with us, we require you to register an account with us. At that point, you must provide us with the following information:
- Your name (you could use a fake name)
- Your email address (you could use a throwaway account)
- A username
- A password
We immediately salt and hash your password using industry-standard cryptographic practices. It is impossible for TechChange employees or others to decrypt user passwords at any time.
At no point will we gather personal information about you without you explicitly providing that information to us.
Our Servers
We host all of our applications and databases through Digital Ocean, a leading cloud computing platform. By keeping our applications within a single platform, we minimize the number of through points your data can go. This also allows us to utilize a private network, further decreasing the likelihood your information will be compromised.
We use a handful of trusted third-party services for specific purposes:
Postmark provides us with a transactional email service. The only personal data we provide Postmark is your name and your email address.
MailChimp provides us with marketing emails. These emails are strictly opt-in upon your registration on the platform, and you can opt-out at any time. The personal data we provide MailChimp is your name and your email address.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub coordinates information across our various servers. Google Cloud Pub/Sub provides end-to-end encryption to ensure any data we send is secure.
Stripe and PayPal process payments on the platform. TechChange never stores payment information in our own databases or servers.
Our Databases
When you request information from our database, we return only the data needed to fulfill your request. If your request requires us to update our database, we ensure that you have permission to update the data you are trying to change. We save only the data needed to continue use of the service and avoid extraneous data whenever possible.
Overall, we take securing our databases seriously and do our best to ensure that nobody ever has access to somebody else’s data inappropriately.