Privacy Policy

Last updated November 7, 2026

Your data is yours. We collect the minimum we need to run a free, welcoming developer community - and we're upfront about who we share it with, including our event sponsors.

Who we are

Global AI Community ("we", "us") is run by Stichting Global AI Community, a non-profit foundation registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce under number 96447265, Dennenhorst 3, 3972 GL Driebergen, The Netherlands. We run free AI events, local chapters, Global AI Learn and the Global AI Weekly newsletter, and we are the data controller for the information described here.

Information we collect

  • Your email address - to sign you in (passwordless), send you the emails you ask for and contact you about essential responsibilities if you hold a chapter organizer role.

  • Account and profile details - your first and last name, country, city and timezone, and optionally a profile photo, company, job title, mobile phone number and social profile links. When you set up your account we also ask for your date of birth, which we use only to confirm that you are at least 18.

  • Optional community profile - your community profile at /people/your-handle starts private, and publishing it is your choice. If you make it Public or Members only, it shows your first and last name, profile photo and the handle you choose, together with: your bio, city and country, company and job title, the year you joined, social links, the chapters you organize or have joined, your community awards, earned badges, completed courses and certificates, your next public event, and the number of events you have organized and checked in to. One setting covers the whole profile: there is no way to show only part of it. These details come from your account, so leaving a field empty keeps it off your profile, and new records, such as a badge you earn later, appear automatically. Your profile photo also shows a community role label: Board member or Advisor if we list you on our public board page, or Chapter lead if you organize a chapter. Your profile never shows your email address, mobile phone number, date of birth, your event registrations or which events you attended, speaking history, unfinished learning or test scores. We store your handle, bio, who can see your profile, when you changed it and any moderation decision. Profiles are not listed in a member directory or sitemap, we ask search engines not to index them, and profile pages don't run our analytics. Site admins can hide a profile that breaks our rules and we record who did so and when.

  • Event registrations and activity - the events you register for, your registration status (for example pending, approved, waitlisted, declined or cancelled), answers to any extra questions the organizer asks, the profile details an organizer requires (such as your mobile phone number or GitHub and LinkedIn links), RSVP confirmations, check-in, and any post-event evaluation ratings and comments you give. An event's organizers and site admins can see and download the registration details for that event, including whether you agreed to sponsor sharing, and can read your evaluation. Average event ratings may appear on public chapter pages.

  • Call for speakers sessions - when you submit a session to an event's call for speakers, or an organizer adds one for you, we store the title, abstract, session type, your answers to the organizer's questions, the co-speakers on the session, its status (for example submitted, accepted, confirmed, declined or withdrawn) and when it changed. To submit, join as a co-speaker or confirm, you need a profile photo, job title, company, at least one social link and a bio. That event's organizers and site admins can see and download your session together with your name, email address, profile photo, job title, company, country, bio and social links, whether or not your community profile is published. Co-speakers on the same session see each other's names. Organizers can keep private notes about a session and email the speakers of their event. If you withdraw a session, you write a short message to the organizers. We store it with the session and email it to that event's organizers. Submitting a session doesn't make it public. When the organizers publish their event's schedule, each confirmed session is shown on the public event page with its title, abstract, time and track, and its speakers' names, profile photos, job titles, companies, bios and social links.

  • Event tickets in your wallet - if you add a ticket to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, the pass contains your name, the event details and your ticket code, and Apple or Google handles it under their own terms.

  • Reimbursements - if you request an event-related reimbursement, we store your name, email address, PayPal email address, the amount, your message, the receipts you upload and the payment status. Site admins review and pay requests.

  • Learning activity - courses you start, pages and modules you complete, final-test scores and attempt times, points earned, completion dates, the certificates issued to you and any badges issued. We store assessment outcomes, not the answers you selected. A certificate page is public to anyone with its link and shows your name, the course and the completion date. We ask search engines not to index certificate pages, preview images or PDFs. This does not make public certificate links private or prevent others from sharing them.

  • Learn AI access - when you activate a course AI key or an admin gives you standalone AI access, we store your key securely, its course or purpose label, access dates, token balances, extension requests and a record of access changes. Site admins can review access across Learn, and course authors can manage access for their own courses. Only you can reveal your key. Prompts and responses pass through our service to the AI provider for the model you choose, shown on your AI access page. We don't store the content of your prompts or responses. We record which model you used and how many tokens each request took. Don't send secrets or personal information in your prompts.

  • Learn workshops - we also issue individual AI keys when you join an event-linked workshop or an admin assigns you as its trainer. We store the workshop, linked event, trainer and participant accounts, access window, keys (stored securely), token balances and a record of access changes. We check your event registration before giving you attendee access. The trainer and site admins can see participants' names, access status and token usage to run the workshop, but can't reveal another member's key or see prompt or response contents. Trainers get their own allowance to prepare the workshop. Joining a workshop doesn't opt you into sponsor marketing or give sponsors access to this information.

  • Personal API keys - if you create a personal API key under Settings, we store it in a form that can't be turned back into the key, plus a short prefix so you can recognize it and when it was created and last used. To protect the API we also log each request made with your key, including the outcome, IP address and client details.

  • Device sessions and sign-in history - for security we record each signed-in device (browser, approximate location from your IP address and last-active time) and each sign-in (email address, IP address, browser and time). You can review and revoke your devices at any time.

  • Security records - to protect sign-in and the rest of the site from abuse, we record IP addresses involved in suspicious activity, any restrictions we apply to them and which administrator applied them. Administrators may check a suspicious IP address with an external IP lookup service.

  • Account status - whether your account is active or has been disabled by an authorized administrator.

  • Partner account access - which partner organizations your account manages, when access was granted and which account granted it. Site administrators and accounts linked to the same partner can see your name and email to manage access. They cannot use partner access to view your event registrations or other private account information.

  • Partner agreements - agreement dates, descriptions and contract PDFs uploaded by administrators, which may contain business contact details and signatures, plus a record of who uploaded, changed or downloaded them. Administrators and linked accounts for that partner can read descriptions and download contracts, including expired agreements. These records are not public.

  • Emails we send you - we keep a copy of the emails we send you, such as tickets, reminders and announcements, in your Messages on the site so you can read them there.

  • Messages you send us - support or contact requests.

  • Chapter memberships - the chapters you join and any volunteer role you take on. A chapter's organizers can see its members' names, city, country and when they joined, and the names and email addresses of its organizers and volunteers.

  • Chapter applications - your proposed city, plans, local community context and leadership approach. If you invite a co-lead, we use their email to find their account and send the transactional invitation you requested.

  • Chapter organizer roles - your Lead or Co-organizer assignments, name and email address, to manage essential communications about running your chapters. Public chapter pages show organizers' names, profile photos and social links so people can find their local chapter.

  • Global AI Advisor nominations - when you nominate yourself or another member, we store the nomination round, nominee and supporter account IDs, the supporter's name and personal note, the nominee's application answers and commitments, review decisions, and any resulting advisor term. We use the nominated email only to find an eligible existing account and send the requested transactional notification. Nominees can see who supported them and the notes those supporters wrote. Authorized community administrators can review this information.

  • Badges - each badge you earn has a page that shows your name, profile photo, the badge and the date it was issued to anyone with its link.

  • Badge management settings - badge managers may provide an approval notification email so we can send operational alerts when a badge request needs review.

  • Blog contributions - site admins can credit a member as the author of a blog post. Published posts show the author's current member name, profile photo and the LinkedIn, GitHub and X links from their profile, the post and any images in it, its publication date and tags to everyone. Posts may include a cover image and photos, for example from community events. Drafts are not listed on the site. Site admins can share a private link to a draft, including its author's name, profile photo and those links, with people who need to review it. Anyone with that link can read the draft until an admin resets the link, publishes the post or deletes it. Images in a draft can be opened by anyone who has their link until they are removed. We do not publish the author's email address.

  • Event photos - site admins publish photo albums from community events. Photos can show people who took part. Each photo is shown to everyone with its caption, album, date and the name of the photographer, and anyone can share or download it. We remove location and camera details from photos when they are uploaded. Albums that are not published yet are visible only to site admins.

How we use your information

  • To sign you in and keep your account secure
  • To confirm that members meet our minimum age
  • To enforce our Terms of Service and protect the community by restricting account access when necessary
  • To let authorized partner accounts edit their organization's public profile and manage its linked accounts
  • To register you for events and manage tickets, waitlists, check-in, badges, community awards and reimbursements
  • To let event organizers run their events and use evaluations to improve future events
  • To let event organizers review the sessions submitted to their call for speakers, email speakers about their decision and other updates, and plan and publish their schedule
  • To show chapter organizers and the badges you earn on public pages
  • To show your optional community profile to the audience you choose, and let site admins hide profiles that break our rules
  • To save your course progress, apply assessment attempt limits, record course completion and award certificates, points and badges
  • To provide personal API keys and protect the API from misuse
  • To let members prepare, co-sign and submit chapter applications, and to let our community team review those applications
  • To let members nominate Global AI Advisors, let nominees accept or decline and submit an application, let our community team review applications, and administer approved advisor terms
  • To publish an accepted community award using your name, profile photo and award citation, after asking for your explicit consent
  • To send transactional emails (your one-time code, a one-time account welcome, registrations and tickets) and, if you opt in, the newsletter
  • To send essential chapter operations messages to chapter leads and co-organizers about their organizer responsibilities, separately from optional newsletters and promotions
  • To notify a badge's configured approval contact when a new badge request needs review
  • To understand aggregate traffic and improve the site

Legal bases (GDPR)

We rely on contract (to give you an account, event access and the features you use, including showing a session you confirmed on that event's schedule), legitimate interests (to keep the service secure, run and improve events and chapters, and show chapter organizers and earned badges), legal obligation (to keep financial records such as reimbursements), and consent - for the newsletter, for sharing your details with an event's sponsors, and for publishing an accepted community award - which you can withdraw at any time.

Partner account associations are used to provide the management service and keep access secure, on the bases of contract and legitimate interests. They are not published on partner profiles or used as consent for sponsor marketing. When your account is deleted, we remove its partner access and identifying grant attribution. Organization profiles are public only while the partner has an active agreement with an uploaded contract.

We show your community profile on the basis of your consent, which you give by choosing who can see it. You can withdraw it at any time by making your profile private, and it stops showing straight away. This doesn't remove chapter organizer listings, award, badge or certificate pages that are public on their own, or copies others have already made. You can change your handle once every 90 days and your old profile link then stops working. To prevent impersonation, a handle that has been used can never be taken by someone else, so we keep a record that it is reserved even after you change it. If your account is disabled or deleted, your profile stops showing. Deleting your account erases your profile, and the reserved handles are no longer linked to you.

We use blog author attribution on the basis of our legitimate interest in publishing community contributions and crediting their authors. Posts, their images and their member association remain until an admin deletes them. Deleting a post also deletes its cover image and the images uploaded for it, and we stop showing them. Copies already saved by browsers or networks may remain for a while. If your account is deleted or disabled, the byline shows "Community member" instead of your name, and your profile photo and links are no longer shown. This does not automatically remove personal information in the post itself. Contact privacy@globalai.community to correct attribution, object to publication or request removal of personal information, including a photo of you, from a post.

We publish event photos on the basis of our legitimate interest in sharing what happens at our free community events. Photos stay online until an admin removes them or deletes their album, and then we stop showing them. Copies that people have already downloaded or shared, or that browsers or networks have saved, may remain. If you are in a photo and want it removed, use the "Ask us to remove it" link next to the photo or email privacy@globalai.community and we'll take it down.

We process partner agreements to administer our contractual business relationships, relying on contract where applicable and legitimate interests in managing and documenting those relationships and protecting access. Contracts are stored privately. Agreements, contracts and their access records are kept after expiry until an administrator explicitly deletes the partner and its contracts. Deleting an individual member account removes access but does not delete the organization's agreement records. You can contact privacy@globalai.community to request access, correction, deletion or restriction of personal information in a contract.

Essential chapter organizer communications

If you are a Lead or Co-organizer of an open chapter, we use your name and email address through MailerLite to send you essential messages about running the chapter. We rely on our legitimate interest in coordinating chapter operations with you, not on marketing consent.

You receive these messages because of your organizer role, even if your account setup isn't finished or you turned off chapter newsletters. Volunteers and members who only join a chapter don't receive them. When you no longer organize any open chapter, we take you off this list.

These messages are not newsletters or promotions, and holding an organizer role or accepting our Terms doesn't count as consent to marketing. If you previously unsubscribed from our emails at MailerLite, we respect that. You can unsubscribe from these messages at any time, or contact us to object to or restrict this processing.

Analytics

We use Plausible Analytics, which is cookieless and collects no personal data. See our Cookie Policy for details.

Location tools

Event organizers can search OpenStreetMap location data through Photon. Event location previews use OpenStreetMap map tiles. Loading a map sends standard connection information, including your IP address, to OpenStreetMap. No advertising or tracking cookies are added by us for this feature.

Videos

Videos are embedded from YouTube in privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com). Loading a page with a video sends your IP address to YouTube, and when you play a video, YouTube may store cookies or similar data on your device under Google's privacy policy.

Event sponsors

Our events are free because sponsors support them. When an event has sponsors, the registration form names them and offers an unticked box to share your details with them. Sharing is optional and doesn't affect your ticket.

Only if you tick the box, and your registration is approved and not cancelled, can the event's organizers download your first and last name, email address, company and the time you agreed, for the sponsors named when you agreed, and pass them on to those sponsors. Sponsors act as independent data controllers and may contact you about their products or services.

You can withdraw your agreement at any time from your ticket under Tickets. This stops future sharing. To make a sponsor that already received your details stop contacting you or delete them, contact that sponsor or ask us.

Service providers

We also use a small number of trusted processors who handle data strictly on our behalf:

  • MailerSend - delivers our emails, including your one-time sign-in code and your welcome email. We turn off open and click tracking for these emails. Your welcome email may invite you to subscribe to Global AI Weekly, but never subscribes you automatically.
  • MailerLite - processes your name and email to deliver essential chapter organizer communications and, separately, optional marketing newsletters you opt into.
  • Cloudflare - bot protection (Turnstile) on our sign-in, sign-up, contact and newsletter forms, and content delivery.
  • Microsoft Azure - hosting and data storage, and Microsoft Foundry for the optional AI learning tools.
  • AI model providers - your AI requests go to the provider shown for the selected model on your AI access page, under that provider's terms. We only enable providers after reviewing how they handle data.
  • PayPal - when we pay an approved reimbursement, PayPal receives your PayPal email address and the amount.

How long we keep it

We keep your account data while your account is active. If you verify your email address but don't finish setting up your account, we delete the incomplete account and its sign-in data after 30 days, unless it has community activity or records we need to keep. Device sessions end when they expire or you revoke them, and we keep your sign-in history while your account is active. Security records are deleted after 7 days, and restrictions 7 days after they end. Email delivery records are deleted after 30 days.

When you change your newsletter preferences, we keep temporary records to apply the change at our email provider. We remove your email address from them as soon as the change is done and delete them within 7 days. During an email change or account deletion we may keep your previous address a little longer so we can remove its newsletter subscriptions.

We keep call for speakers sessions, including declined and withdrawn ones, as long as the event they belong to, so its organizers keep a record of their program. You can withdraw a session from My sessions at any time, and you can ask us to delete a session you submitted.

We delete abandoned chapter application drafts after 90 days. We retain approved and declined applications for 2 years so we can understand and audit the decision. After that, we remove the application answers and co-lead email while retaining the minimum status and chapter link needed for integrity.

For Learn AI tools, we delete request records after 30 days, except for any we still need to finish counting usage. Your keys, balances and a minimal record of access changes stay while your account is active, also after course or standalone access ends. An extension reason is removed once the request is decided. When you delete your account, AI access stops immediately and we remove your key, purpose label and any pending extension reason; scheduled cleanup then removes your remaining AI records and your account ID from our administration records. Microsoft may separately keep inference data under its service terms.

Workshop keys and participation records follow the same Learn AI retention rules. Deleting a trainer's account blocks the workshop; scheduled cleanup removes the workshop definition together with the trainer's key. Other participants' keys can no longer authorize requests for that workshop.

You can remove your account at any time from Settings > Account. When you do, we anonymize your account: your name, email, date of birth, profile details, profile photo, social links, active sessions, sign-in history, Messages, personal API keys and their logs, chapter memberships and partner access are removed, the personal details on your event registrations are anonymized, your name and email are removed from call for speakers sessions, sessions you submitted that are still open are withdrawn and your withdrawal messages are deleted, and you are unsubscribed from our newsletters. Records that must stay for others to make sense (your event attendance, course completion and points, accepted community awards and any badges you earned) are kept but shown as "Deleted user". Incomplete course progress and assessment attempt history are deleted. Certificates you earned stay as a record of the completion, but your name is removed and the certificate PDF is deleted. Award invitations that you declined remain private. This is permanent and cannot be undone. Financial records such as reimbursement requests are retained where we're legally required to keep them for accounting and tax purposes.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

  • Give you a copy of your data (email us; there's no self-service export yet)
  • Correct your data (you can edit your profile yourself) or delete it (you can remove your account yourself from Settings > Account)
  • Object to or restrict certain processing
  • Withdraw consent (for example, unsubscribe or withdraw sponsor sharing from your ticket)
  • Complain to your local data-protection authority

Security

Sign-in is passwordless (a one-time code sent to your email), you can see and sign out any of your devices from Settings, and we protect stored data with access controls and encryption.

Children

You must be at least 18 to create an account. We ask for your date of birth during account setup to confirm this, and we don't knowingly collect data from anyone younger.

Changes

We'll post any changes here and update the "last updated" date above.

Contact

Email privacy@globalai.community. See also our Cookie Policy and Terms of Service.