ConnectED Privacy Policy

Effective date: 10/20/2026 · Last updated: 10/20/2026

ConnectED ("ConnectED", "we", "us") is a web platform at connected.co.ke where university students complete practical challenges, receive reviewed feedback, build a portfolio of their work and appear on leaderboards. ConnectED is operated by OMURI DANIEL, University of Kabianga, Kericho, Kenya. This policy explains what personal data we collect, why, who can see it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. Questions? Email kengereomuri@gmail.com.

1. Data we collect

Account and profile

• Username, email address, first and last name, and your role (student, campus admin, super admin or employer).
• A password, stored only as a salted hash. Accounts created with Google have no password.
• A profile photo, if you upload one.

Academic details (students)

• Your university (worked out from your university email domain), year of study, optional discipline, registration number, and an optional personal email for notifications.

Google user data (only if you choose "Continue with Google")

• We request only the basic scopes openid, email and profile.
• From Google we receive your name, your email address, whether Google has verified that email, and your unique Google account ID.
• We store your name, email address and Google account ID. We use them to create your account, confirm that you belong to a university on ConnectED, and sign you in next time.
• We do not request access to Gmail, Google Drive, Contacts, Calendar or any other Google service, and we never see your Google password.

GitHub data (only if you choose "Connect GitHub")

• Your GitHub username and numeric ID, used to confirm the account is yours. We do not store your GitHub access token.
• When you submit a repository link, we read public information about that repository (owner, contributors, whether it is empty, last commit date) from GitHub's public API.

Submissions and reviews

• Repository links, external links, written answers and uploaded files (with file name and size), plus the score, written feedback and timestamps added by reviewers.

Employer accounts

• Company name, contact email, website and industry, and the interest requests and sponsorship enquiries employers send.

Settings and technical data

• Notification preferences, in-app notifications and appearance settings.
• Technical data such as IP address, browser type and request logs, kept by our hosting provider and used for security, rate limiting and troubleshooting.

2. How we use your data

• To create and secure your account and confirm you are a student of a university on ConnectED.
• To run challenges, reviews, scoring, leaderboards and portfolios.
• To send notifications and emails you can switch off in Settings (for example when a submission is reviewed or a new challenge is posted).
• To let campus admins manage their students and handle introductions from employers.
• To prevent abuse and to find and fix bugs.

We do not use your data, including Google user data, for advertising, and we do not sell it.

3. Who can see your data

• Reviewers and campus admins at your university can see your profile and submissions.
• Platform administrators can see account data in order to run the service.
• Verified employers can see your portfolio (name, university, year, field, GitHub username, completed challenges, scores and reviewer feedback) unless you make it private in Settings. They cannot see your email address or phone number. They send requests through your campus admin, who decides whether to pass them on to you.
• Anyone with your portfolio link can view it while it is public. Leaderboards show your username and points.
• Service providers that process data on our behalf: Railway (hosting and database), Cloudinary (profile photos), Google (Google sign-in and Gmail email delivery) and GitHub (repository checks and GitHub sign-in).
• Legal requirements: we may disclose data if the law requires it.

We do not sell, rent or trade personal data.

4. Google API Services User Data Policy

ConnectED's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

5. Security

Data travels over HTTPS. Passwords are hashed. Access is limited by role. Uploaded files are checked for type and size and can only be downloaded by the student who submitted them, their campus admin and platform administrators. Login and registration are rate limited. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data.

6. How long we keep data, and deleting it

We keep your data while your account is active. To delete your account and the data tied to it (profile, submissions, uploaded files, feedback and notifications), email kengereomuri@gmail.com from your registered address and we will delete it within 30 days, except anything the law requires us to keep.

You can also stop ConnectED accessing your Google account at myaccount.google.com/permissions and disconnect GitHub in your GitHub account settings (Applications).

7. Your rights

Under Kenya's Data Protection Act, 2019, you have the right to be informed about how your data is used, to access it, to correct it, to ask for it to be deleted, and to object to or withdraw consent for its processing. You may also complain to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. To use any of these rights, email kengereomuri@gmail.com.

8. Cookies and local storage

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in and to protect forms from forgery. We do not use advertising cookies. To stop you losing what you typed, forms save unsent text in your browser's local storage for up to 24 hours. That text stays on your device and is never sent to us until you submit the form.

9. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date above and, for significant changes, tell you in the app or by email.

10. Contact

OMURI DANIEL, ConnectED, University of Kabianga, Kericho, Kenya · kengereomuri@gmail.com