Effective date: December 19, 2020
Thanks for entrusting GitHub Inc. (“GitHub”, “we”) with your source code, your projects, and your personal information. Holding on to your private information is a serious responsibility, and we want you to know how we're handling it.
All capitalized terms have their definition in GitHub’s Terms of Service, unless otherwise noted here.
The short version
We use your personal information as this Privacy Statement describes. No matter where you are, where you live, or what your citizenship is, we provide the same high standard of privacy protection to all our users around the world, regardless of their country of origin or location.
Of course, the short version and the Summary below don't tell you everything, so please read on for more details.
Summary
| Section | What can you find there? |
|---|---|
| What information GitHub collects | GitHub collects information directly from you for your registration, payment, transactions, and user profile. We also automatically collect from you your usage information, cookies, and device information, subject, where necessary, to your consent. GitHub may also collect User Personal Information from third parties. We only collect the minimum amount of personal information necessary from you, unless you choose to provide more. |
| What information GitHub does not collect | We don’t knowingly collect information from children under 13, and we don’t collect Sensitive Personal Information. |
| How GitHub uses your information | In this section, we describe the ways in which we use your information, including to provide you the Service, to communicate with you, for security and compliance purposes, and to improve our Service. We also describe the legal basis upon which we process your information, where legally required. |
| How we share the information we collect | We may share your information with third parties under one of the following circumstances: with your consent, with our service providers, for security purposes, to comply with our legal obligations, or when there is a change of control or sale of corporate entities or business units. We do not sell your personal information and we do not host advertising on GitHub. You can see a list of the service providers that access your information. |
| Other important information | We provide additional information specific to repository contents, public information, and Organizations on GitHub. |
| Additional services | We provide information about additional service offerings, including third-party applications, GitHub Pages, and GitHub applications. |
| How you can access and control the information we collect | We provide ways for you to access, alter, or delete your personal information. |
| Our use of cookies and tracking | We only use strictly necessary cookies to provide, secure and improve our service. We offer a page that makes this very transparent. Please see this section for more information. |
| How GitHub secures your information | We take all measures reasonably necessary to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your personal information on GitHub and to protect the resilience of our servers. |
| GitHub's global privacy practices | We provide the same high standard of privacy protection to all our users around the world. |
| How we communicate with you | We communicate with you by email. You can control the way we contact you in your account settings, or by contacting us. |
| Resolving complaints | In the unlikely event that we are unable to resolve a privacy concern quickly and thoroughly, we provide a path of dispute resolution. |
| Changes to our Privacy Statement | We notify you of material changes to this Privacy Statement 30 days before any such changes become effective. You may also track changes in our Site Policy repository. |
| License | This Privacy Statement is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license. |
| Contacting GitHub | Please feel free to contact us if you have questions about our Privacy Statement. |
| Translations | We provide links to some translations of the Privacy Statement. |
GitHub Privacy Statement
What information GitHub collects
"User Personal Information" is any information about one of our Users which could, alone or together with other information, personally identify them or otherwise be reasonably linked or connected with them. Information such as a username and password, an email address, a real name, an Internet protocol (IP) address, and a photograph are examples of “User Personal Information.”
User Personal Information does not include aggregated, non-personally identifying information that does not identify a User or cannot otherwise be reasonably linked or connected with them. We may use such aggregated, non-personally identifying information for research purposes and to operate, analyze, improve, and optimize our Website and Service.
Information users provide directly to GitHub
Registration information
We require some basic information at the time of account creation. When you create your own username and password, we ask you for a valid email address.
Payment information
If you sign on to a paid Account with us, send funds through the GitHub Sponsors Program, or buy an application on GitHub Marketplace, we collect your full name, address, and credit card information or PayPal information. Please note, GitHub does not process or store your credit card information or PayPal information, but our third-party payment processor does.
If you list and sell an application on GitHub Marketplace, we require your banking information. If you raise funds through the GitHub Sponsors Program, we require some additional information through the registration process for you to participate in and receive funds through those services and for compliance purposes.
Profile information
You may choose to give us more information for your Account profile, such as your full name, an avatar which may include a photograph, your biography, your location, your company, and a URL to a third-party website. This information may include User Personal Information. Please note that your profile information may be visible to other Users of our Service.
Information GitHub automatically collects from your use of the Service
Transactional information
If you have a paid Account with us, sell an application listed on GitHub Marketplace, or raise funds through the GitHub Sponsors Program, we automatically collect certain information about your transactions on the Service, such as the date, time, and amount charged.
Usage information
If you're accessing our Service or Website, we automatically collect the same basic information that most services collect, subject, where necessary, to your consent. This includes information about how you use the Service, such as the pages you view, the referring site, your IP address and session information, and the date and time of each request. This is information we collect from every visitor to the Website, whether they have an Account or not. This information may include User Personal information.
Cookies
As further described below, we automatically collect information from cookies (such as cookie ID and settings) to keep you logged in, to remember your preferences, to identify you and your device and to analyze your use of our service.
Device information
We may collect certain information about your device, such as its IP address, browser or client application information, language preference, operating system and application version, device type and ID, and device model and manufacturer. This information may include User Personal information.
Information we collect from third parties
GitHub may collect User Personal Information from third parties. For example, this may happen if you sign up for training or to receive information about GitHub from one of our vendors, partners, or affiliates. GitHub does not purchase User Personal Information from third-party data brokers.
What information GitHub does not collect
We do not intentionally collect “Sensitive Personal Information”, such as personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation. If you choose to store any Sensitive Personal Information on our servers, you are responsible for complying with any regulatory controls regarding that data.
If you are a child under the age of 13, you may not have an Account on GitHub. GitHub does not knowingly collect information from or direct any of our content specifically to children under 13. If we learn or have reason to suspect that you are a User who is under the age of 13, we will have to close your Account. We don't want to discourage you from learning to code, but those are the rules. Please see our Terms of Service for information about Account termination. Different countries may have different minimum age limits, and if you are below the minimum age for providing consent for data collection in your country, you may not have an Account on GitHub.
We do not intentionally collect User Personal Information that is stored in your repositories or other free-form content inputs. Any personal information within a user's repository is the responsibility of the repository owner.
How GitHub uses your information
We may use your information for the following purposes:
- We use your Registration Information to create your account, and to provide you the Service.
- We use your Payment Information to provide you with the Paid Account service, the Marketplace service, the Sponsors Program, or any other GitHub paid service