Privacy policy

1. Who we are

The data controller is The Unknown Management Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales. For anything to do with your data, email hello@theunkn.com.

This policy covers theunkn.com, community.theunkn.com, and the community itself.

2. What we hold, and why

We hold different things depending on how you know us.

If you are on the waiting list

Your name, email address, city, social handles, the language you signed up in, how you heard about us, your personal referral code, and the code you arrived on if somebody referred you. We record when we invited you, when you opened it and when you joined, so that a wave can be measured and so nobody is invited twice or forgotten.

We also look up the public profiles behind the handles you gave us, and record the audience figures they show: your follower and following counts, how many posts you have published, and an engagement rate we calculate from your most recent posts. We do not keep your biography, your pictures, or the content of your posts.

We use this to run the waiting list you asked to join, to send invitations, and to decide who to invite as the community opens. Our legal basis is legitimate interest, and you can ask us to delete any of it at any time.

If you are a member

Everything above, and:

• your profile: bio, niches, city, and your handle and follower count on each platform;
• your founding number, and the version of the terms you accepted, with the date;
• your rate card: what you charge by deliverable and by platform, what you charge for usage, in which currency and for how many months;
• your portfolio: the work you upload, including images, the brand, and where it was posted, each with the visibility you chose for it;
• your applications: what you applied for, any rate you proposed, what was agreed, what was paid, our decision and the reason we gave you;
• the work you submit for a campaign: links to the work you submit, any note you add, and whether the brand or we approved it;
• if you ask us to check your audience figures: we read the public Instagram or TikTok profile behind the handle you saved, and keep your follower count, the account's id, and the typical engagement and views of your recent posts, with the date we checked. We do not keep your pictures, captions or post content. They appear on your media kit only if you choose to show them. The reading is done for us by Apify, a data processor based in the Czech Republic;
• what you tell us with the Feedback button, and which page you were on, the size of your screen and your browser, so we can find the problem; and whether you have watched or closed the welcome video;
• your brand wishlist: the brands you asked us to approach and any reason you gave. Other members see how many people asked for a brand, never who;
• your settings: whether your media kit is public, whether you appear in the member directory, and the private link token if you have created one.

We use this to run your membership, to match you to opportunities, to show you what you have earned, and to show other members what you have chosen to make visible. Our legal basis is performance of our agreement with you, and legitimate interest in running a curated community.

Your rate card and your earnings are treated as commercially confidential. They are never published, never shown on your public media kit, and never shown to another member. The only way a rate reaches a brand is if you attach it to an application yourself. We do not use your rate card to set anyone else's price.

If you registered as a brand

Your name, work email, company, website, category and what you told us you are looking for. We use it to decide whether to work with you and to contact you. Our legal basis is legitimate interest.

If you came to a workshop or a session

Your name, email, the session, your seat, your language and any note you gave us, so that we can confirm your place and let you in. Our legal basis is legitimate interest.

If we contacted you and you never signed up

We build lists of creators we think would suit the community, from publicly available profiles. We hold your email address, name, profile URL, follower count, category, where the list came from, and whether we have written to you, whether you replied, and whether you asked us to stop. Our legal basis is legitimate interest.

You can tell us to stop at any time and we will not contact you again: email hello@theunkn.com, or use the unsubscribe link in the message. We keep your email address on a suppression list afterwards, precisely so that we cannot contact you again by accident.

Automatically, whoever you are

When you sign in we record the email address the attempt was made from and the time, to stop the sign-in form being used to send someone unwanted email. Sign-in and invite links are stored only as a one-way hash, so the link in your inbox cannot be reconstructed from our database.

3. Who else sees it

We do not sell your data and we do not share it for advertising. It reaches these companies because they run parts of the service for us, each under standard data protection terms including safeguards for transfers outside the UK:

• Vercel hosts the site and stores uploaded portfolio images in a private store that is not publicly listable;
• Neon hosts the database;
• Resend sends email. We use two separate accounts on purpose: one for the email your membership depends on, and a separate one on a different subdomain for first-contact messages, so a problem with one cannot affect the other;
• Telegram receives operational alerts to our own team channel. Those alerts can include a brand registration's name and email address, and the email address of anyone whose confirmation email failed to send.

And brands. If you are confirmed for an opportunity, we share what that opportunity needs, which is normally your name, your handle, the work you have agreed to and where to send a product. We tell you what is being shared before it is. We do not send a brand your rate card, your earnings or your private portfolio items.

4. How long we keep it

• Waiting list: until invitations have concluded, or until you ask us to remove you.
• Members: for as long as you are a member, and for 12 months after you leave, except where we must keep something longer.
• Records of money and of agreements, including invoices and what was agreed on a campaign: six years, because HMRC requires it.
• Applications and decisions: 24 months after the campaign closes. They are the evidence behind our promise to answer everybody, and a creator asking why she was declined a year ago is a reasonable thing to be able to answer.
• Outreach and suppression: we keep a suppressed email address indefinitely, because deleting it is what would let us contact you again.
• Sign-in tokens and attempts: short-lived, and cleared routinely.

5. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you can ask us at any time to tell you what we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict what we do with it, to give it to you in a portable form, or to object to our using it. Where we rely on legitimate interest, including for anything we send you before you have signed up, you can object and we will stop.

One email to hello@theunkn.com is enough, and we will answer within one month. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

6. What we do not do

We do not sell your data. We do not share it for advertising. We do not profile you or make automated decisions about you: every decision on an application is made by a person.

7. Cookies and what your browser stores

We use no advertising cookies and no third-party tracking. Signing in sets one strictly necessary cookie, which holds an identifier for your account and nothing else, so that you stay signed in between pages.

On our marketing pages a small script stores one short text value in your browser's own storage, recording how you first arrived, for example the campaign a link came from. It never leaves your browser until you choose to sign up, at which point it is saved with your sign-up so we know which of our efforts brought you to us. It contains no identifier for you.