Privacy Policy

Authentic Career Network is a trade name of Bjorn Prins 3D Art, based in the Netherlands, and is the data controller for this service. We connect students and early-career professionals with individual mentors who share relevant career experience.

Who operates the service

For privacy questions or requests, contact support@authenticcareernetwork.com. Our operator and contact details are listed on the Contact page.

Information we collect

Depending on how you use ACN, we collect your email address, account and role information, name, student profile details (including education, professional background, career goals, current challenge, interests, work preferences and languages), mentor profile details (including career experience, current role and company, countries experienced in, languages, session preferences, profile image and mentor biography), session requests, proposed or agreed prices, messages, session statuses, completion and dispute information, and reviews and ratings.

We also process authentication codes, session and security information, notification delivery records, support communications, and technical logs needed to operate and protect the service. Profile images are stored with our infrastructure provider. We only ask for information needed for the relevant feature.

Payments and payouts

Stripe handles paid-session payments and mentor payouts. ACN does not store full payment-card or bank-account credentials. We may receive and store Stripe identifiers, payment status, amounts, currency, payout and refund information needed to operate the service and keep accounting and dispute records.

Who can see information

Active mentor profiles are public and may include the mentor's name, profile image, professional information, biography and reviews. Public review attribution uses only the student's first name where available; it does not publish the student's email address or full name. Students and mentors can see information shared for a request or conversation. ACN administrators can access information needed for support, moderation, security, payment, dispute and legal or accounting work.

Cookies and technical information

ACN uses a necessary HttpOnly session cookie to keep you signed in and protect authenticated requests. We may also receive ordinary technical and security information needed to deliver and protect the service. We do not currently use advertising trackers or known marketing analytics services, and we do not add a cookie-consent banner for essential authentication cookies.

Why we use information

We use personal information to create and secure accounts, provide profiles and platform functionality, facilitate mentor requests and sessions, enable messaging, process payments and payouts, publish verified session reviews, prevent fraud and abuse, provide support, resolve disputes, and meet legal and accounting obligations.

Depending on the purpose, the GDPR legal basis may be performance of a contract, taking steps at your request before a contract, our legitimate interests in operating and securing ACN, compliance with a legal obligation, or consent where consent is genuinely required. Legitimate interests include fraud prevention, moderation, service safety, dispute handling and maintaining reliable records. A privacy acknowledgement is not itself consent to every processing activity.

Service providers and international processing

Our known production providers are Stripe for payments and payouts and Cloudflare for infrastructure, hosting, database, profile-image storage, email delivery and related platform services. These providers or their infrastructure may process information internationally. The applicable safeguards depend on the service, current provider terms and data-processing arrangements; we do not claim that every provider agreement or transfer mechanism has been independently verified in this policy. Contact us if you want more information about a transfer.

Retention

We retain information according to its purpose: authentication and security records while needed to secure accounts; profiles and messages while needed to provide the service and handle safety or disputes; reviews while they remain part of the public or session history; and payment, payout, refund and transaction records for as long as needed for accounting, tax, legal claims and applicable retention duties. Closed-account information is scrubbed or restricted where the service supports it, but linked reviews, transaction records and dispute evidence may remain where deletion would conflict with legal, accounting, fraud-prevention or claims obligations. We do not currently promise fully automated deletion on a fixed schedule. When information is no longer needed, we delete or anonymise it through the available operational process.

Your rights

Subject to applicable law, you may request access, correction, deletion, restriction, objection, and portability where applicable. If processing relies on consent, you may withdraw it at any time; this does not affect earlier processing. Contact support@authenticcareernetwork.com and provide enough information for us to verify and locate the request. We generally respond within one month, subject to lawful extensions or exceptions. You may also complain to the Dutch supervisory authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or another competent supervisory authority.

Security incidents

We use access controls, authentication protections and service-provider safeguards appropriate to the service, but no system can be guaranteed secure. We investigate suspected personal-data incidents, record the response, and notify the Dutch supervisory authority and affected people where GDPR rules require it.

Changes

We may update this policy when the service or legal requirements change. We will publish the new version here with a new last-updated date.