Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and what this policy covers

Tethrd is run by NovaHawk Labs LLC, Series Tethrd, organized under the laws of Texas ("we" or "us"). This policy covers the Tethrd website and app at tethrd.us and the emails we send. You can reach us at support@tethrd.us or by mail at 1122 Colorado St, Unit 1410, Austin, TX 78701.

2. Our promises

We do not show ads. We do not sell your information, rent it, or trade it for anything of value. We do not use third-party trackers. By that we mean code from another company that collects information about you for that company's own use, such as ads or following you from site to site. There are no ad pixels or social media buttons on Tethrd. We do not rank people or posts: lists of opportunities show the newest first, and the only filters are the ones you pick. We never suggest introductions between adults and members under 18. Profiles are not shown to search engines. We do not use your information to train AI models. If we ever want to change one of these promises, we will tell you first, and we will not apply the change to information we already have unless you agree.

3. What we collect

When you sign up, we collect your email address. If you sign in with Google, Google sends us your name, email address and profile photo. We use the name to start your profile; we do not use the Google photo.

We ask for your birth month and year once. We use them only to apply our age rules, and we never show them to other members.

Your profile is what you choose to add: your name, a profile address (handle), a photo, a headline and an about section, your current city and hometown (a city, never a street address), whether you are in school or working, your schools and jobs, skills, industries, what you are open to, a link to your LinkedIn profile, and, for adults, referral links.

We also keep the communities you join or ask to join, the introductions you request, the opportunities you post and apply to, the messages you send, the reports you file, your settings, and a record of each agreement you accepted and when.

If you upload a resume or a LinkedIn file to fill in your profile, we keep the file only long enough to read it (see section 12). You choose which details from it go on your profile.

For parents and guardians, we keep your email address, which member you supervise, and how your link was confirmed: by the community's roster, by a community admin who knows your family, or by a card check. For a card check, you enter your card on Stripe's page. We never see or store the card number. We keep only Stripe's reference number for the check.

Some information comes from others. A community may give us its member roster (family names and email addresses) so we can match members and parents. A member under 18 gives us their parent's email address. Other members may report something about you.

Our systems also record some technical information: the sign-in cookies described in section 10, your time zone (taken from your browser, so we can time emails), and, in our hosting providers' logs, your internet (IP) address, browser type and the pages requested.

We never ask for your phone number, street address, exact birth date, government ID numbers or photos of documents, and we do not collect your precise location. Please do not put sensitive details, such as health or religious information, in your profile or messages. Anything on your profile can be seen by the people listed in section 5.

4. How we use your information

We use your information to run Tethrd: to show your profile to members of your communities, deliver messages and requests, send the emails you have turned on, and let you post and apply for opportunities. We use it to apply our age and parent rules, to handle reports and stop abuse, fraud and bots, to find and fix errors, to count page visits from adult members (section 10), to follow the law, and to protect against or defend legal claims.

We do not use your information for advertising, we do not build profiles of you for anyone else, and we do not use it to make automatic decisions that have legal or similarly important effects on you.

5. Who can see your information

Your profile can be seen only by members of the communities you belong to, by your parents or guardians (and, if you are a parent, the member you supervise), and by the admins of a community reviewing your request to join. You can hide your employers and your hometown in Settings. A profile page for someone you are not allowed to see does not exist for you.

For members under 18, the hometown and LinkedIn link are shown only to the member, and referral links are never shown.

Community admins see what members see, plus requests to join, whether a person's email is on the community's roster, and reports about their community. Reports about child safety, intimate images or a user under 13, and reports about a community's own admins, go only to Tethrd staff.

Conversations open only after someone accepts an introduction or, for members under 18, after a parent approves. Only the people in a conversation can read it. Every parent or guardian of a member under 18 is added to each of that member's conversations and gets every message by email. Adults see a notice saying so before they send their first message.

If someone reports a conversation, the people handling the report can read it while the report is open, and each time they do, we log it. A Tethrd staff account can read reported conversations only after we record that the person passed a background check and completed training.

Opportunity posts are shown to members of the community they are posted in. Your application goes to the person who posted the opportunity; if you are under 18, it goes to them only after a parent approves it.

Our Explore page lists only communities that chose to be listed, with total member counts, never names.

We tell search engines not to index Tethrd's app pages. Profile photos and community logos are stored at web addresses that are hard to guess; anyone who has the exact address of a photo can open it.

6. Companies that process information for us

We use a few companies to run Tethrd. Each one gets only what it needs for its job, and our contracts with them say they may use it only on our instructions and must delete it when we ask. For members under 18, those contracts include the terms New York law requires.

Supabase stores our database, sign-ins and uploaded files. Vercel hosts the website, keeps short-lived request logs and runs our page counts. Cloudflare runs our domain name, our bot checks and our background jobs. Resend sends our emails, so it handles email addresses and the content of each email, including parents' copies of messages. Anthropic reads the resume or LinkedIn file you upload and returns the details for you to review; it does not use your file to train its models. Google Places suggests city names as you type; it receives the text you type from our server, never your name or account. Stripe runs the card check for parents who choose it.

When you choose to sign in with Google, or to verify with Stripe, you use that company's own page, and its privacy policy covers what it collects there.

7. When we share information outside Tethrd

We do not sell or share your information for advertising. Apart from the people and companies in sections 5 and 6, we disclose information only in these cases. When you ask us to. When the law requires it, such as a valid subpoena or court order, or to answer an emergency where someone's life or safety is at risk. When federal law requires us to report apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which we do. To protect our members and to establish or defend legal claims. And if Tethrd is merged or sold, to the new owner, who must keep the promises in this policy for the information collected under it.

8. Members 13 to 17 and their parents

Members 13 to 17 can join only communities that allow members under 18, and only after a parent or guardian is confirmed by the community's roster, by a community admin who knows the family, or by a card check. Until then, the member cannot join a community, message anyone, or apply for anything. If no parent is confirmed within 14 days of sign-up, we delete the account and everything in it.

Parents and guardians (up to three per member) can see their child's profile, get a copy of every message in their child's conversations, approve or decline introductions and applications, stop any conversation, and ask us to delete the account. If parents disagree, the most protective request wins. A parent can also email us for a copy of the information in their child's account. We send it to the parent's confirmed email address and tell the child we did.

A member under 18 has the same rights as every member in section 13. If they ask us to delete their account, we tell their parents. If a parent asks, we tell the member.

For members under 18, emails start off. The member can turn each type on. When they do, we send those emails only between 4 pm and 8 pm on school days (Monday to Friday, September through June) and between 8 am and 8 pm otherwise, in the member's time zone. Reminder emails, like "update your profile", stay off unless the member turns them on. Parents' copies are not affected.

We use the information of members under 18 only as needed to provide the service their parent agreed to, to keep it working, to protect against abuse or illegal activity, to follow the law, and to defend legal claims. We do nothing else with it today. If we ever want to, we will ask the member on a separate screen where "No" is the most prominent choice, we will not ask again that calendar year after a "No", and saying no later will be as easy as saying yes. The parent's agreement is needed too. Page counts (section 10) never run for members under 18.

Supervision ends on the first day of the month after the member's 18th birthday month. Before then, we email the member and their parents. When it ends, the protections in this policy for members under 18 no longer apply to that member, but conversations from before keep the retention dates in section 12.

9. Children under 13

Tethrd is not for children under 13. We ask for birth month and year without saying what age is required. If the answer is under 13, we block the account at once and delete it, with everything in it, within 24 hours. We also save a cookie on that browser, holding no personal information, so the age question cannot be answered again from that browser for one year. If we learn in another way that a member is under 13, for example from a parent, a community admin, a roster or a profile, we block and delete the account the same way. If you think a child under 13 has signed up, email support@tethrd.us.

10. Cookies, bot checks and page counts

We use only cookies needed to run Tethrd: one that keeps you signed in, one that remembers light or dark mode, and the age cookie in section 9. We do not use advertising cookies.

Cloudflare's bot check runs on sign-in and on a few forms. It reads technical signals from your browser, such as its internet address and browser type, to tell people from bots. Cloudflare states it does not use these signals to identify, profile or target anyone.

We count visits to our pages with Vercel Web Analytics, which our host runs on our own web address. It sets no cookies. Each page address is cut down to the kind of page before it is sent (a profile counts as "a profile", never whose), and anything after a question mark is dropped. It records the referring site, your rough location (country, state and city), and your browser, operating system and device type. Vercel tells visits apart with a code made from the request, which it discards after 24 hours. Page counts never run for members under 18, or on sign-in, onboarding and invitation pages, where we do not yet know a visitor's age.

Because we do not sell data, show ads or use trackers, there is nothing for a "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control signal to turn off.

11. Emails we send

We email you about your account, your communities, your messages and requests, safety, and changes to our terms or this policy. Parents get a copy of every message in their child's conversations. We do not send advertising, and we never let other companies email you through us. You can turn off each type of email in Settings, except parents' copies, security emails and notices the law requires. Every email you can turn off has a link to those settings.

12. How long we keep information

Your account and profile: until you delete your account. After a deletion request from you or a parent, we delete the account within 30 days, usually the next day.

Messages in a conversation with a member under 18: until three years after the first day of the month after that member's 18th birthday month, even if accounts in the conversation are deleted. We keep them this long so they exist if a safety or legal question comes up later; the law gives young people extra time to bring claims after they turn 18.

Messages in a conversation between adults: until one year after the last person in it deletes their account.

When an account is deleted, its profile and personal details are deleted, but the messages it sent stay in other people's conversations, marked "Deleted member", until that conversation's date above. Copies already emailed to parents are in the parents' inboxes, and we cannot recall them.

An account under 13: deleted within 24 hours. An account under 18 with no confirmed parent: deleted 14 days after sign-up.

Resume and LinkedIn files you upload: deleted 7 days after we read them. Roster files: deleted once read into the community's roster, which stays until the community's admins replace it or the community is deleted. Your data download file: deleted 7 days after it is made.

Safety holds: when we report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or law enforcement asks us to preserve information, we keep a copy of the related information for one year, or longer if a court case or law enforcement requires, even if the account is deleted. A hold pauses the other deletion steps in this section for what it covers.

Records of admin, parent and safety actions (who did what, and when): seven years. Our hosting providers' request logs: a short time, usually a few days.

13. Your rights and choices

Wherever you live, you can do these things. Download a copy of your information (your profile, your history and the messages you sent) from Settings, in a file you can take elsewhere. Correct your profile at any time; to correct your birth month and year, email us. Delete your account from Settings. Turn off emails, hide your employers and hometown, or leave a community.

For anything else, such as a question about what we hold about you, email support@tethrd.us from your account's email address. We answer within 45 days. If we need more time, we will tell you why within those 45 days and take at most 45 more. Requests are free.

If we say no to a request, we will tell you why and how to appeal. To appeal, reply to our answer within 60 days. We will answer your appeal in writing within 45 days. If we still say no, we will tell you how to complain to your state's attorney general or consumer protection office (in New Jersey, the Division of Consumer Affairs).

We will not treat you differently for using these rights. Some state laws, including New Jersey's, give these rights only to residents of that state, or only above a certain size of business; we give them to everyone.

14. How we protect information, and what we do if something goes wrong

Information travels to and from Tethrd encrypted (HTTPS). Our database provider encrypts stored data. Rules inside our database decide who can read each record. Staff access is limited to the people who need it, and reads of reported conversations are logged. You sign in with an emailed link or with Google, so we store no passwords. Bot checks and limits on repeated requests slow down abuse. No system is perfect, and we cannot promise that information will never be exposed.

If information about you is exposed in a security breach, we will tell you, and the parents of a member under 18, by email as fast as we reasonably can and no later than 30 days after we discover it, unless law enforcement asks us to wait. By using Tethrd, you agree to get these notices by email. We will also notify the government offices the law requires.

15. Where information is stored

Tethrd is for people in the United States. We store information in the United States. Some of the companies in section 6, such as Cloudflare, handle web requests at locations around the world to deliver them quickly.

16. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change is important, we email members (and parents of members under 18) at least 30 days before it takes effect. If a change would let us use information you already gave us in a new way, we will ask for your agreement first.

17. How to reach us

Email support@tethrd.us, or write to NovaHawk Labs LLC, Series Tethrd, 1122 Colorado St, Unit 1410, Austin, TX 78701.