Privacy Policy

HATCon is a year-round DeepTech community operated by HCF Infosec Private Limited. This policy covers hatcon.org and the community platform available through it.

Account information. When you sign in we store your email address and, once you complete onboarding, your name. HATCon uses passwordless sign-in, so we never receive or store a password.

Profile information. What you choose to publish to the community: handle, name, role title, organisation, member type and domain, city, biography, photo, and the four prompts (what you are building, what you are exploring, what you can help with, and what you are looking for).

Community activity. Introduction requests you send or receive, conversations and messages, event pre-registrations, and city votes or requests.

Events and tickets. Orders and tickets associated with your account when you register for an event.

Technical information. Session records needed to keep you signed in, plus standard server logs such as IP address, browser type and timestamps.

• To create and secure your account, and to keep you signed in.
• To show your profile to the audience you have selected in your visibility setting.
• To power introductions and matching, if you have left matching enabled.
• To deliver messages and notifications you have asked for.
• To register you for events and issue tickets.
• To keep the community safe: moderation, enforcing the code of conduct, and investigating abuse.
• To understand which parts of the platform are used, so we can improve them.

We do not use the content of your private conversations to target advertising, and we do not sell personal data to third parties.

Depending on where you are, we rely on one or more of the following: performing our agreement with you (running your account and the community features you asked for), your consent (for example, the newsletter, or making your profile publicly visible), our legitimate interests (security, moderation, and improving the platform), and compliance with legal obligations.

Other members see what your visibility setting allows. HATCon supports profiles that are public, limited to signed-in members, or private, and you can change this at any time in your privacy settings.

Service providers process data on our behalf and under contract — for example hosting, database, email delivery and, where applicable, payment processing. They may only use the data to provide their service to us.

Legal and safety. We may disclose information where we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to investigate a credible threat to the safety of a person or the community.

Business transfers. If the platform is ever transferred as part of a merger, acquisition or restructuring, member data may transfer with it. You will be notified before your data becomes subject to a materially different policy.

HATCon sets a session cookie so you stay signed in between page loads. This cookie is strictly necessary — without it, the platform cannot tell that a request belongs to you, and sign-in cannot work.

We keep account and profile data for as long as your account is open. When you delete your account, we delete or irreversibly anonymise the associated personal data, except where we are required to retain records — for example transaction records for tax or accounting purposes, or moderation records needed to keep the community safe.

Messages you have sent may remain visible to the person who received them, in the same way an email you have sent remains in the recipient's inbox.

Traffic is encrypted in transit. Sign-in is passwordless, which removes an entire category of credential risk. Access to production data is limited to the people who need it to operate the service.

No online service can promise perfect security. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant authority as required by applicable law.

• Access and portability — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction — update your profile at any time from your settings.
• Deletion — delete your account and associated personal data.
• Visibility — change who can see your profile, from public to members-only to private.
• Matching — leave the matching pool while keeping the rest of your account.
• Communications — unsubscribe from the newsletter or notification emails at any time.
• Objection and restriction — where the applicable law provides these rights, you may exercise them.

To exercise a right that is not available directly in your settings, contact us using the details below. We may need to verify your identity before we act on a request.

HATCon records the storage region and the consent regime that applied when an account was created, so that data residency requirements can be honoured as the community grows into new markets.

HATCon is not directed at children, and accounts are intended for people who meet the minimum age stated in our Terms & Conditions. If we learn that we have collected personal data from a child below that age, we will delete it.

We update this policy when the platform changes or the law requires it. The effective date at the top always reflects the current version, and we will give notice in the product before a material change takes effect.

Questions about this policy, or about the personal data we hold, can be sent to our privacy contact.