1. Information We Collect
We collect information you provide directly when using the Technical Art Awards platform:
- Account Information: Email address, name, and password (hashed) when you create a nominee, judge, or admin account.
- Nomination Data: Nominator email, nominee name and email, award category, work links, nomination reasoning, and any uploaded files (images, videos, PDFs, ZIP archives).
- Newsletter Subscriptions: Email address and confirmation status.
- Live Event Data: Display name, chat messages, emoji reactions, and votes during live events.
- DMCA Requests: Contact name, email, reason, and evidence for takedown requests.
2. Automatically Collected Information
- IP Addresses: Collected with nominations and DMCA requests for security and abuse prevention.
- User Agent: Browser and device information collected with nominations.
- Cookies: Session cookies for authenticated users (admin, judge, nominee). These are HTTP-only, secure, and SameSite=Strict.
3. How We Use Your Information
- Processing and reviewing award nominations
- Communicating with nominators and nominees about their nominations
- Facilitating the judging process
- Operating the live awards ceremony (chat, voting, reactions)
- Sending newsletter updates (with your explicit consent and double opt-in)
- Preventing abuse, spam, and fraudulent submissions
- Responding to DMCA takedown requests
- Improving and maintaining the platform
4. Third-Party Services
We use the following third-party services:
- Zoho Mail: For sending transactional emails (nomination confirmations, password resets, newsletter). Zoho processes email addresses for delivery purposes.
- Object Storage (MinIO/S3-compatible): For storing uploaded nomination files. Files are stored privately and not publicly accessible.
- PostgreSQL Database: For storing all platform data, hosted on our deployment infrastructure.
5. Data Retention
- Nominations: Retained indefinitely as part of the awards archive. You may request deletion.
- Uploaded Files: Retained as long as the associated nomination exists. Orphaned files are periodically cleaned up.
- Account Data: Retained until you request account deletion.
- Chat Messages & Reactions: Retained for the duration of the awards season.
- Session Data: Expires after 7 days and is automatically cleaned up.
- Newsletter Subscriptions: Until you unsubscribe or request removal.
6. Your Rights
You have the right to:
- Access: Request a copy of all personal data we hold about you.
- Correction: Request correction of inaccurate information.
- Deletion: Request deletion of your personal data and account.
- Portability: Request your data in a machine-readable format.
- Opt-out: Unsubscribe from newsletters at any time.
- Withdraw Consent: Withdraw consent for data processing at any time.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected].
7. Security
We implement industry-standard security measures including: encrypted passwords (bcrypt), HTTP-only secure cookies, CSRF protection, rate limiting, input validation, content security policies, and private file storage. However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure.
8. Children's Privacy
The Technical Art Awards is not intended for individuals under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have inadvertently collected such information, please contact us for immediate removal.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify registered users of significant changes via email. Continued use of the platform after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.