Privacy policy

The data controller is Ethos EPB, Cotonou, Benin. For any question about your data: ethosepb@gmail.com.

We only collect information that is useful for your programme. Depending on what you do on the site:

• Application: full name, email, the Google account used to sign in to the form, WhatsApp number, country, date of birth, French and English levels, field or profession, target career paths, LinkedIn or Facebook link, motivation, and for Ethos Campus your university, field of study, year and partner code.
• Interview: the slot you book and the admissions team's follow-up notes.
• Scholarship request: location, short personal presentation, ticked commitments and a copy of your ID document.
• Payment: amount, date, payment method, transaction reference and status. We never see or keep your Mobile Money PIN or card numbers: they are entered directly with our payment provider.
• Member and mentor areas: Ethos ID, password (encrypted), submitted missions, evaluations, points, mentoring sessions, certificates, opportunity applications, personal tasks and notifications.
• KERYX programme: your ambassador application and the applications that came through your link, to calculate your commissions.
• Security: date, IP address, browser and result of sign-ins to protected areas.
• Audience measurement (public pages): pages viewed, time spent, scroll depth, clicks on apply buttons, referring site, country and approximate city, device type, operating system, browser, phone model (when the browser provides it), language and screen size, linked to a random identifier kept in your browser (no cookie, no IP address stored, nothing shared with third parties). Kept for 6 months.
• Contact: the information you send us through the contact form, by email or on WhatsApp.
• Notifications (if you allow them): your browser's technical subscription address, to send you your interview reminder. You can turn them off at any time in your browser settings.
• Form started but not sent (application, scholarship): name, email, phone, step reached and field left to fill in, so the team can help you finish. Deleted as soon as the form is sent, or after 30 days.

• To review your application, organise your interview and reply to you.
• To review your scholarship request and verify your identity, so that scholarships go to eligible people and duplicates are avoided.
• To collect your fees, send your receipts and remind you of an expected payment.
• To create your member area, follow your progress, evaluate your missions and issue your certificate.
• To connect you with your mentors, your cohort, the Alumni community and opportunities offered by our partners.
• To send you emails related to your programme (confirmation, interview reminder, decision, payment, cohort information).
• To protect accounts against fraudulent access.
• To improve our programmes using aggregate statistics that do not identify you.
• To measure how well our Facebook and Instagram ads work and show them to people likely to be interested (see "Facebook and Instagram ads" below).

We never sell your data.

Within Ethos EPB, only team members who need it can access your data, with rights limited to their role (admissions, scholarships, payments, teaching). Your mentors only see what is useful for supporting you: your name, missions and progress.

Some providers process data on our behalf, only for the service they provide:

• Vercel and Railway: hosting of the site and database.
• FeexPay: Mobile Money and card payments.
• Google: sign-in with your Google account and interview video calls (Google Meet).
• Resend: sending the site's emails.
• Meta (Facebook, Instagram): measuring our ads, see below.

We may also share information when required by law or by a competent authority.

Our hosting and some providers are located outside Benin, notably in the United States and the European Union. We choose recognised providers that apply appropriate security measures, and we limit the data shared to what is strictly necessary.

• Unsuccessful applications and declined scholarship requests: 2 years after the decision, then deleted.
• ID document provided for a scholarship: while the request is reviewed and, if the scholarship is granted, until the end of the programme. It is then deleted.
• Learners: for the whole programme, then for as long as you are part of the Alumni community. Your certificate details are kept so that its authenticity can be verified.
• Payments and receipts: for the period required by accounting obligations.
• Sign-in logs: 12 months.

Exchanges with the site are encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are stored encrypted. Access to the administration is limited to the team, through Google sign-in, and every sign-in is logged. No measure is absolutely secure: if a data breach affecting you occurred, we would inform you.

The site stores in your browser what it needs to work: your sign-in session, a draft of your form so you do not lose what you typed, and some display choices.

On public pages, it also uses the Meta pixel cookies (_fbp, _fbc), described in the next section. No advertising cookie is used in private areas (member area, mentor area, administration).

Ethos promotes its programmes through ads on Facebook and Instagram. To know which ones work, we use the Meta pixel on the site's public pages and the Meta Conversions API from our servers.

They send Meta:

• the public pages visited and the fact that an application was submitted or a payment was confirmed (with its amount);
• technical information: IP address, browser, _fbp and _fbc cookie identifiers;
• your email, phone, name and country, in hashed form (SHA-256): Meta never receives them in clear text and only uses them to recognise whether you have a Facebook or Instagram account.

This information is only used to measure our ads and show them to people likely to be interested. The content of your application (motivation, background, ID document) is never sent to Meta. Meta processes this data under its own privacy policy.

You can limit this tracking in the "Ad preferences" settings of your Facebook or Instagram account, or by blocking third-party cookies in your browser. You can also ask us to stop sending your information to Meta by writing to ethosepb@gmail.com.

Our programmes and community are mainly for people aged 17 to 30. Applicants under 18 must have the consent of their parents or legal guardian before sending us their information, and may be asked to prove it.

At any time, you can:

• ask for a copy of the data we hold about you;
• have inaccurate or incomplete information corrected;
• ask for your data to be deleted, except what we must keep (payments, issued certificate);
• object to a use of your data or ask for it to be restricted;
• withdraw your consent to the publication of your photo or testimonial.

Write to us at ethosepb@gmail.com with your request. We may ask you to prove your identity. We reply within 30 days at most. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can contact the competent personal data protection authority, in Benin the APDP.

This policy may change, in particular when we add a service. The date of the last update is shown at the top of the page. In case of a significant change, we will inform you by email or in your member area.