Privacy policy

Last updated: June 14 2024

Who are we?

Codewars is owned and operated by Andela Inc. Andela Inc., its subsidiaries and affiliates (“Andela”, “we”, “our”, and/or “us”) are committed to upholding the privacy rights of individuals (“you”, “Users”). Andela provides this Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) to let you know our policies and procedures regarding the collection, use and disclosure Personal Information from Users of our website https://www.codewars.com/ (the “Site”), and any other related websites, features, applications, widgets or online services that are owned or controlled by Andela and that post a link to or incorporate the terms of this Codewars Privacy Policy (together with the Site, the “Services”), as well as any information Andela collects offline in connection with the Services and through other means such as our events, sales and marketing activities. If you are a California resident, our California Resident Privacy Notice provides more information about your California privacy rights and explains how you can exercise those rights.

This Privacy Policy applies to the activities for which Andela is a “data controller” which means that Andela decides why and how Personal Information is processed.

Andela does not require you to register or provide Personal Information to visit our Site. By accessing our Site or using our Services, you agree to this Privacy Policy in addition to any other agreements we might have with you.

Andela may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting a new version to this Site. It is your responsibility to review this Privacy Policy periodically as your continued use of the Site represents your agreement with the then-current Privacy Policy.

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What Is Personally Identifiable Information?

“PII”, “Personally Identifiable Information”, and/or “Personal Information” means any information which may identify an individual, directly or indirectly or, if you are in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or United Kingdom (“UK”) any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual. Examples of PII include, but are not limited to, first and last names, home address, billing address or other physical address, email address, telephone number, etc. PII does not include information which is anonymized, and other information which is excluded from the scope of applicable privacy and data protection laws.

How we use your information

Certain visitors to our websites choose to interact with Codewars in ways that require Codewars to gather Personally Identifiable Information. The amount and type of information that Codewars gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up at codewars.com to provide an email address, and other information necessary for processing payments. In each case, Codewars collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Codewars. Visitors can always refuse to supply Personally Identifiable Information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

We use the Personal Information we collect:

To provide, maintain, improve, and enhance our Services.
To communicate with you, provide you with updates and other information relating to our Services, provide information that you request, respond to comments and questions, and otherwise provide customer service and support.
For marketing purposes, such as developing and providing promotional and advertising materials that may be useful, relevant, valuable, or otherwise of interest to you, to market events, promotions, competitions, webinars, reports, our services, news, or relevant industry updates.
To personalize your experience of our Services such as presenting tailored content.
To conduct research to understand and analyze how you use our Services and develop new products, services, and features.
To facilitate your interest in one of our education partners we will send your information to the partner with your permission.

To identify your contributions to a coding challenge (kata) by username and profile link. If you delete your account the solution will become anonymized.
To process payments for subscriptions via a third-party payment service.
To find and prevent fraud and respond to trust and safety issues that may arise.
For compliance purposes, including enforcing our legal rights, or as may be required by applicable laws and regulations or requested by any judicial process or governmental agency.
To enforce and comply with legislations, including to conduct an investigation, to protect the property and rights of Codewars or a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, fraudulent, unethical or legally actionable activity.
For other purposes for which we provide specific notice at the time the Personal Information is collected.

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Legal Bases for Processing European Personal Information

If you are located in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we only process your Personal Information when we have a valid “legal basis,” including as set forth below.

● Consent. You have consented to the use of your Personal Information. For example, we may process your Personal Information to send you marketing communications or to use Cookies where you have consented to such use.

● Contractual Necessity. We need your Personal Information to provide you with our Services. For example, we may need to process your Personal Information to respond to your inquiries or requests.

● Compliance with a Legal Obligation. We have a legal obligation to use your Personal Information. For example, we may process your Personal Information to comply with tax and accounting obligations.

● Legitimate Interests. We or a third party have a legitimate interest in using your Personal Information. Specifically, we have a legitimate interest in using your Personal Information for product development and internal analytics purposes, and otherwise to improve the safety, security, and performance of our Services. We only rely on our or a third party’s legitimate interests to process your Personal Information when these interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.

How We Share Personally Identifiable Information

Affiliates. We may share your Personal Information with our affiliates for any of the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

Vendors, Affiliate Partners and Service Providers. We may share any Personal Information we receive with vendors, affiliate partners and service providers retained in connection with the provision of our Services. Codewars actively engages third-party resources, applications, and websites. These services provided by third parties are established to enhance user experience, provide ease of navigation through Codewars’s sites, and to promote access to information. Codewars may provide PII of Users to only those of its personnel and third-party vendors that (1) need to know such information to process it on Codewars’s behalf or to provide services as described above, and (2) have agreed in writing not to disclose it to any other parties without Codewars’s consent. Some of those employees, contractors, vendors, affiliate partners and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using the Site and/or Services, you consent to the transfer of information to such individuals and organizations to accomplish these purposes.

Marketing. Codewars does not buy or sell PII for its business practices or for commercial purposes unless we have your permission. From time to time, Codewars may engage in joint marketing events with select business partners. If you register for a joint webinar or specifically express an interest in a jointly offered product, promotion or service, we may share relevant PII with those partner(s). Where you have given your consent to do so, these business partners may send you marketing communications about their own products and services.

Sweepstakes, Contests, and Promotions: We may offer sweepstakes, contests, and other promotions (any, a “Promotion”) that may require registration. By participating in a Promotion, you are agreeing to the official rules that govern that Promotion, which may contain specific requirements of you, including, except where prohibited by law, allowing the sponsor(s) of the Promotion to use your name, voice, likeness, or other indicia of persona in advertising or marketing associated with the Promotion. If you choose to enter a Promotion, your Personal Information may be disclosed to third parties or the public in connection with the administration of such Promotion, including, without limitation, in connection with winner selection, prize fulfillment, and as required by law or permitted by the Promotion’s official rules, such as on a winner’s list.

Social Networks and Other Online Services. Please note that Codewars does not control, moderate, or endorse any comments or opinions provided by visitors on third-party websites. The use and creation of official Codewars accounts may cause PII to become available or accessible to Codewars. Such information may become available to Codewars when a user provides, submits, communicates, links, posts, or associates information with designated Codewars accounts on social media (e.g., by using “hashtags”, “liking”, “friending”, “tweeting”, commenting on any content or media on our designated accounts). At times, Codewars, through its personnel, employees, officers, directors, agents, and assignees, may respond publicly to content or media made available though “share,” “retweet,” “friend,” “follow,” or similar activities, or respond publicly on content made on designated and official Codewars and Andela accounts. Codewars may disseminate any of such information or PII to law enforcement officials, as required by law or court order.

Analytics Partners. We use analytics services such as Looker, Braze, Zendesk, ipapi.co and DataDog and Sentry to collect and process certain analytics data. These services may also collect information about your use of other websites, apps, and online resources. You can learn more about Google’s practices by visiting https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/. To help us understand how you use our Services and to help us improve them, we automatically receive Personal Information about your interactions with our Services, like the pages or other content you view, the searches you conduct, purchases you make, your comments, any content you post, and the dates and times of your visits.

Advertising Partners. We work with third-party advertising partners such as BuySellAds and Ethical Ads to show you ads that we think may interest you If you do not wish to receive personalized ads, please visit their opt-out pages to learn about how you may opt-out of receiving web-based personalized ads from member companies. You can access any settings offered by your mobile operating system to limit ad tracking, or you can install the AppChoices mobile app to learn more about how you may opt-out of personalized ads in mobile apps.

As Required by Law and Similar Disclosures. We may access, preserve, and disclose your Personal Information if we believe doing so is required or appropriate to: (a) comply with law enforcement requests and legal process, such as a court order or subpoena; (b) respond to your requests; or (c) protect your, our, or others’ rights, property, or safety. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations, including law enforcement agencies, for the purposes of fraud protection and to prevent cyber or other suspected or alleged crimes. For the avoidance of doubt, the disclosure of your Personal Information may occur if you post any objectionable content on or through the Services.

Merger, Sale, or Other Asset Transfers. We may disclose your Personal Information to service providers, advisors, potential transactional partners, or other third parties in connection with the consideration, negotiation, or completion of a corporate transaction in which we are acquired by or merged with another company, or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our assets.

With Your Consent. We may also disclose your Personal Information with your permission.

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Your Privacy Rights

Marketing Communications. You have the right to object if we are processing your PII for direct marketing purposes. You can unsubscribe from Codewars own marketing emails at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link they contain or by accessing the Email Preferences Center. Depending on which jurisdiction you are in, we may be required to give you an option to “opt-in” and we will always provide you with an option to “opt-out” with each marketing communication. Even if you opt-out of receiving promotional messages from us, you will continue to receive administrative messages from us.

In accordance with applicable law, you may have the right to:

Access Personal Information. You may request confirmation of whether we are processing your Personal Information and obtain a copy of the categories of Personal Information we may have collected on your behalf.
Request Correction. You may request correction of your Personal Information where it is inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated.
Request Deletion (“Opt Out”) or Withdraw Consent. You may request to remove your PII from our records. Note that if your Personal Information is deleted, you may no longer access or be able to use certain Services, and any account you have with us may become deactivated.

If you wish to access, correct, amend, or delete PII you have provided directly to us, please contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@andela.com. For deletion/opt-out requests, please include the subject line “OPT OUT”. We will respond to requests within thirty (30) days. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period for a response in writing.

How to Block Cookies. You can block Cookies by setting your internet browser to block some or all Cookies. You can withdraw your consent at any time by deleting placed Cookies and disabling Cookies in your browser, or as explained above. You can change your browser settings to block or notify you when you receive a Cookie, delete Cookies, or browse our Services using your browser’s anonymous usage setting. Please refer to your browser instructions or help screen to learn more about how to adjust or modify your browser settings. If you do not agree to our use of Cookies or similar technologies which store information on your device, you should change your browser settings accordingly. If you use your browser settings to block all Cookies (including essential Cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our Services, and some features of our Website may not function properly.

California Privacy Rights. If you are a California resident, you can review our California Resident Privacy Notice for information about your privacy rights and choices under California law.

Your European Privacy Rights. If you are located in the EEA or the United Kingdom, you have the rights described below:

When we process your Personal Information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time and free of charge. We will apply your choice going forward and this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before you withdrew your consent.
You may request access to and information about the Personal Information we maintain about you, update, and correct inaccuracies in your Personal Information, restrict or object to the processing of your Personal Information, have your Personal Information anonymized or deleted, as appropriate, or exercise your right to data portability to easily transfer your Personal Information to another company. Please note that there are exceptions and limitations to each of these rights.
If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us as specified in the “Contact Us” section below. Before fulfilling your request, we may ask you to provide reasonable information to verify your identity. Applicable law may allow or require us to refuse your request to exercise a right with respect to your Personal Information, or we may have destroyed, erased, or made your Personal Information anonymous in accordance with our record retention obligations and practices. If we refuse your request to exercise a right, we will inform you of the reasons why, subject to any legal or regulatory restrictions.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection authority of your habitual residence, your place of work or the place of an alleged infringement.

Security

Codewars uses reasonable efforts to protect the security, confidentiality, and integrity of information or data collected by us.

However, as no website, service, mobile application, database, or system is completely secure or “hacker proof,” we can make no guarantees as to the security or privacy of your Personal Information. You are responsible for taking reasonable steps to protect your Personal Information against unauthorized disclosure or misuse.

Links to External Sites

Our Services may contain links to websites created and maintained by other public or private organizations that we do not own or operate. We provide these links as a service to our Users. Please note that when you follow a link to an external site, you will be leaving Codewars’s Services and are subject to the privacy and security policies of the site to which you are visiting. Codewars is not responsible for the security and privacy practices of these third parties or the content of such external sites.

Retention

We take measures to delete your Personal Information or keep it in a form that does not permit identifying you when your Personal Information is no longer necessary for the purposes for which we process it unless we are required by law to keep your Personal Information for a longer period. When determining the specific retention period, we consider various factors, such as the type of service provided to you, the nature and length of our relationship with you, and mandatory retention periods provided by law and the statute of limitations.

Children's Privacy

We do not knowingly collect, maintain, or use Personal Information from children under 16 years of age (“Minors”), and no parts of our Services are directed at children. If you learn that a Minor has provided us with Personal Information in violation of this Privacy Policy, please alert us at privacy@andela.com.

Contact Us

Andela Inc. is the controller or entity responsible for the processing of your Personal Information pursuant to this Privacy Policy. We welcome feedback from all our Users and if you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy or the use of your Personal Information, please contact us. You can email our privacy officer at, privacy@andela.com or you can send mail to us at:

Andela Inc.

580 5^th Ave Suite 820

New York, NY 10036

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