Legal

Privacy policy

This policy explains what personal information the Guild of Digital Craft collects when you use guildofdigitalcraft.com, why we collect it, who we share it with and the rights you have over it.

Last updated: 1 October 2026

Who we are

Guild of Digital Craft (“the Guild”, “we”, “us”) runs this website and is the data controller for the personal information described here, under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. You can reach us about anything in this policy through our contact page.

What we collect

Your account: your name, username, email address and password (stored only in scrambled, hashed form — we can never see it).
Your profile: anything you choose to add, such as a headline, bio, profile picture and links to your website, GitHub, ArtStation, LinkedIn or YouTube.
Your work: portfolio pieces you upload, including images, YouTube links, descriptions and links to code or demos.
Courses and bookings: the courses you book, save and complete, the amounts paid, your Guild rank and the certificates you earn.
Membership: whether you are a member, when your membership started and when it renews or ends.
Payments: card payments are taken by Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe and never reach our servers. We keep a reference to your Stripe customer record, plus any billing name, address or VAT number you enter at checkout, so they can appear on your invoices.
Messages: your name, email address and message when you use our contact form, or the message box on a member’s profile.
Security records: when someone creates an account we briefly record the IP address and email address used, to stop automated mass sign-ups. These records are deleted automatically after about an hour.

Public member profiles

Every account has a public profile page at guildofdigitalcraft.com/members/your-username. It shows your name, username, headline, bio, profile picture, links, Guild rank and badge, and the portfolio work you publish. Your email address, bookings, payments and certificates are never shown on it. Published work can also appear in the public work gallery and may be featured on the homepage.

You decide what goes on your profile, and you can edit or remove it at any time from your dashboard. If you would rather not be visible at all, tick “Hide my public profile” in your profile settings: your page and work are then visible only to you. Anything you make public can be seen, and copied, by anyone on the internet, so please don’t add anything you would not want shared.

If you add an address under “Send profile messages to”, your profile shows a message box to other signed-in members. That address stays private: it is never shown on the site, and messages reach you from our mailbox. Sending a message needs an account; we email it to the member along with your account name and email address so they can reply, and replying shares their address with you. Remove the address at any time to turn the message box off.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

To provide your account, courses and membership — taking bookings, running courses, issuing certificates and invoices, and hosting your profile and work. This is necessary to perform our contract with you.
To answer your messages — based on our legitimate interest in replying to people who contact us.
To keep the site secure — preventing fraud, spam and abuse, based on our legitimate interest in protecting the Guild and its members.
To meet legal obligations — such as keeping financial and tax records.

We do not sell your information, use it for advertising or send you marketing emails. We only email you about your account, bookings and membership.

Who we share it with

We use a small number of trusted services to run the site:

Stripe — card payments, receipts, invoices and membership subscriptions. Stripe acts as an independent controller for payment data; see Stripe’s privacy policy.
Our web host — stores the website, its database and uploaded images.
Cloudflare — protects the site, delivers it quickly and provides our privacy-friendly visitor statistics. Your requests pass through Cloudflare’s network.
Our email provider — delivers messages from our contact form and member profiles, and account emails.
YouTube — videos in portfolios play from YouTube using its privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), which does not set tracking cookies until you play a video.

Some of these providers process data outside the UK. Where they do, the transfer is protected by UK adequacy regulations or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum. We may also share information where the law requires it.

Cookies and local storage

We use one essential cookie to keep you signed in. Your course basket is kept in your browser’s local storage so it is still there when you come back. Stripe sets its own cookies on its payment pages to prevent fraud. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, so we don’t ask for cookie consent.

To understand how the site is used, we use Cloudflare Web Analytics. It counts page views and records general information such as the page visited, the referring site, your country and your type of device. It sets no cookies, does not use your IP address to identify you and does not follow you across other websites.

How long we keep it

Your account, profile and work: until you ask us to delete your account.
Bookings, payments and invoices: six years after the end of the financial year they relate to, as UK tax law requires — even if you delete your account.
Contact form messages: up to two years, unless they become part of a booking.
Messages sent to members through their profiles: up to two years.
Sign-up security records: about one hour.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
ask us to delete your information, where we no longer need to keep it;
object to, or ask us to restrict, how we use it;
ask for your information in a portable format.

You can update most of your details yourself from your dashboard. For anything else, get in touch through our contact page. We will reply within one month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

Accounts are for people aged 16 and over. If you are under 16, please ask a parent or guardian to contact us about booking a course for you.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page if the way we use your information changes, and change the date at the top. If the change is significant, we will tell account holders by email.