Privacy and Data Protection Policy

1. Scope and platform boundary

Ettle is a professional education, collaboration, and knowledge-continuity platform. It is not a healthcare provider, clinical record system, emergency service, or substitute for professional medical advice. Members must not use Ettle to provide patient-specific care or store clinical records.

2. Information Ettle may collect

Ettle may collect the information members provide when creating or using an account, including name, email address, member type, discipline, professional or educational affiliation, general location, introduction, optional profile photo, community posts, replies, private messages, reports, and technical information needed for security and reliable operation.

3. Information members must not provide

Members must not post patient, client, student, employee, or other confidential information; protected health information; Social Security numbers; financial-account credentials; passwords; government identification numbers; or information they do not have permission to share.

4. How information may be used

Information may be used to authenticate members, create and display profiles, support cross-disciplinary conversations, operate The Circle and other community features, communicate about accounts, moderate content, investigate safety concerns, prevent misuse, improve Ettle, and comply with law. Ettle does not sell members' personal information.

5. Visibility and member responsibility

Profile information, posts, and replies may be visible to signed-in Ettle members. Private messages are intended for their participants, but no online communication should be treated as absolutely private. Members should share only what is appropriate for a professional learning community and should never upload confidential or identifying case information.

6. Service providers and vendors

Ettle may use carefully selected providers for hosting, authentication, data storage, communications, analytics, moderation, security, and other operations. Contracts should limit each provider's use of personal information, require appropriate safeguards, address breach notification and deletion, and prohibit unauthorized sale or reuse of Ettle data.

7. Privacy choices and rights

Members may review and update profile information and may request access, correction, deletion, or other available privacy choices. As Ettle expands nationally, its notices and procedures will be reviewed for applicable state privacy laws and other requirements. Ettle will not discriminate against a member for exercising an applicable privacy right.

8. Retention and deletion

Ettle should retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described here, security, legal obligations, and dispute resolution. Account deletion may remove or de-identify associated community data, subject to legitimate security, legal, backup, and recordkeeping needs.

9. Security and incident response

Ettle will use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards appropriate to the platform's size and risk. These should include access controls, secure authentication, vendor review, backups, logging, vulnerability management, staff or contractor confidentiality, an incident-response plan, and legally required notifications. No system can guarantee perfect security.

10. Age eligibility and future youth access

The initial Ettle pilot is limited to people who are at least 18 years old. People under 18 may use publicly available educational and career information but may not create an account or participate in member communications during the initial pilot.

Ettle may later explore a protected experience for ages 16 and 17 only after legal, privacy, safety, moderation, technical, and insurance review. Any future youth experience should use age-appropriate notices, structured and moderated communication, strong reporting and blocking tools, limits on adult-minor private messaging, restrictions on contact and location details, careful vendor controls, and review of any school-record obligations before launch.

11. Community safety

Members are expected to communicate respectfully, protect confidentiality, avoid professional misrepresentation, and report concerning conduct. Ettle may review, restrict, preserve, or remove content and accounts when reasonably necessary to enforce its agreements, protect members, investigate abuse, or meet legal obligations.

12. Legal requests and organizational changes

Ettle may disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with law, respond to valid legal process, protect rights and safety, or investigate fraud or misuse. If Ettle undergoes a financing, merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale, information may be transferred subject to appropriate notice and safeguards.

13. Policy changes and questions

This policy may be updated as Ettle's features, vendors, membership, and legal responsibilities change. Material changes should be communicated in an appropriate way. During the pilot, members may direct privacy questions through the support contact provided with their invitation.