Privacy Policy

## Who we are

VIRT Career Mentoring ("VIRT", "we", "us", "our") operates the website virtcareer.co.uk and provides career mentoring services, including one-to-one mentor sessions and a paid career community. **VIRT Career Mentoring is a trading name of VIRTCAREER C.I.C., a community interest company registered in Scotland under company number SC890195, with its registered office at 85 Bertha Way, Perth, Scotland, PH1 0AA.** You can contact us about privacy matters at info@virtcareer.co.uk or +44 7778 510597.

This policy explains what personal data we collect when you use our website, book a mentor session, or join our community, why we collect it, who we share it with, and what rights you have over it.

## What personal data we collect

Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect: your name, email address, phone number, and Telegram username, when you contact us, apply to become a mentor, or join our community; the reason for your enquiry, selected from the options in our contact form; payment and billing information, such as your payment status, the amount and currency of a payment, and Stripe checkout/subscription/invoice identifiers, when you pay for a mentor session or a community subscription (**we do not see or store your full card details — these are processed directly by Stripe**); your Telegram user ID, used to grant or remove access to our private community channel based on your subscription status; and standard website usage data collected through analytics and advertising tools, such as pages visited, device/browser type, and approximate location, via cookies and similar technologies (see "Cookies and tracking" below).

## How we collect your data

We collect data directly from you when you fill in a form on our site (which currently redirects to a Google Form we manage), book a mentor session, or pay via Stripe. We also receive data automatically from the third-party services we use to run this site, such as Stripe (payment and subscription events), Cal.com (session bookings, if you use a mentor's booking calendar), Telegram (your Telegram user ID, once you interact with our bot), and analytics/advertising tools such as Meta (Facebook) Pixel and, if enabled, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

## How and why we use your data

We use your personal data to: respond to your enquiries and match you with a mentor; process payments for mentor sessions and community subscriptions, and manage renewals, cancellations, and refunds; grant, maintain, or remove your access to our private Telegram community based on your subscription status; send you service-related emails, for example about a scheduled cancellation, a failed payment, or the end of your subscription; and measure and improve how our website performs, and, where enabled, run advertising campaigns (e.g. via Meta/Facebook).

We process your data on the following legal bases: performance of a contract (to provide the mentoring/community service you've paid for or requested), our legitimate interests (improving our website and services, preventing fraud), your consent (for non-essential cookies and advertising tracking, such as Meta Pixel), and legal obligation (for example, keeping financial records required by tax law).

## Cookies and tracking

Our website may use cookies and similar technologies from Meta (Facebook) Pixel, and, where enabled, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, to understand how visitors use our site and to measure the effectiveness of our marketing. Where these tools are not strictly necessary for the site to function, we will ask for your consent before they are activated, and you can withdraw that consent at any time.

## Who we share your data with

We share personal data with the following third parties, only as needed to provide our services: Stripe, Inc. — payment processing, subscription and invoice management; Cal.com — mentor session scheduling, if you use a mentor's calendar; Telegram — to manage access to our private community, via your Telegram user ID; Sanity.io — our content management system, used to store mentor, booking, and client records; Google — if enabled, for forms, analytics, and tag management; and Meta Platforms, Inc. — for the Meta (Facebook) Pixel used on our site. **We do not sell your personal data to third parties.**

## International data transfers

Some of the third parties listed above (including Stripe, Google, and Meta) may process your data outside the UK/EEA, including in the United States. Where this happens, we rely on the safeguards those providers offer, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or Standard Contractual Clauses, to ensure your data continues to be protected.

## How long we keep your data

We keep your personal data for as long as necessary to provide our services, and for as long afterwards as required by law — for example, UK tax law generally requires us to keep financial records for at least 6 years. Data used only for analytics or advertising is retained according to the relevant provider's own retention settings (e.g. Meta Pixel, Google Analytics).

## Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to: access the personal data we hold about you; ask us to correct inaccurate data; ask us to delete your data, in certain circumstances; object to or restrict certain processing; ask us to move your data to another provider (data portability); and withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent (e.g. cookies). To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@virtcareer.co.uk. If you're not satisfied with our response, **you have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)** at ico.org.uk.

## Children's privacy

Our services are intended for adults seeking career mentoring and are not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16.

## Data security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, and we work to ensure that only the people and systems that need access to it have that access. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, and we encourage you to contact us if you believe your data has been compromised.

## Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example when we start using a new service or change how we handle your data. We'll post the updated version on this page with a new effective date.

## Contact us

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your data, please contact us at info@virtcareer.co.uk or +44 7778 510597.