Privacy Policy

1. Scope and Notice at Collection

This Privacy Policy applies to information processed through Six Degrees, including the public website, graph interface, sign-in flows, profile tools, invite and request workflows, administrative workflows, and any analytics, advertising, sponsorship, or partnership features we make available.

By using Six Degrees, you acknowledge that some information is public by design and that we may collect, use, disclose, license, transfer, and otherwise process information for the purposes described here. If applicable law requires additional notice, a specific opt-in, or a separate opt-out mechanism for a particular practice, that additional notice or mechanism will control.

2. Categories of Information We Collect

The information we collect depends on how you interact with Six Degrees and which features are enabled. We may collect the following categories of information:

• Identifiers and account information, such as your name, email address, account identifiers, role or eligibility status, and Google sign-in details made available through Supabase Auth.
• Public profile and graph information, such as display name, university, graduation year, interests, experiences, social links, group memberships, relationship edges, and connection paths displayed in the graph.
• Optional profile and preference information, such as phone number, birthday, hometown city, current city, food preferences, and other profile details you choose to provide.
• User submissions and workflow records, such as invitee email addresses, group submissions, relationship requests, request notes, approvals, rejections, moderation history, privacy requests, and related audit records.
• Communications and engagement information, such as transactional email events, support messages, campaign responses, survey responses, and interaction history.
• Technical, device, usage, cookie, session, and diagnostic information, such as browser and device details, IP address, cookies, log data, authentication events, referral data, and infrastructure logs generated by us or our service providers.
• Derived insights and inferences, such as analytics, audience segments, usage trends, fraud signals, relationship-strength scores, tie-strength estimates, social proximity signals, affinity rankings, connection-likelihood predictions, and other information inferred from the data we collect.

3. Sources of Information

We may collect information from the following sources:

• Directly from you when you sign in, create or edit a profile, respond to an invite, submit a request, email us, or otherwise interact with the service.
• From other users, group admins, super admins, and invite senders who submit, approve, or reference information about you or your relationship to others.
• From authentication, hosting, infrastructure, email, analytics, and security providers that support the service.
• Automatically from your browser, device, and use of the site through cookies, logs, pixels, and similar technologies.
• From publicly available sources, widely distributed media, research sources, data partners, business counterparties, and other third parties to the extent permitted by law.

4. How We Use Information

We use information to operate, secure, improve, and grow Six Degrees and its related products and business. That includes the following purposes:

• To authenticate users, manage account access, maintain session security, and enforce eligibility rules.
• To render the public graph, publish profiles, display relationship paths, and support member, group, and admin workflows.
• To send invites, approvals, updates, legal notices, transactional emails, and other communications related to the service.
• To monitor reliability, prevent abuse, investigate misuse, detect fraud, maintain audit trails, and protect users and the service.
• To personalize content, measure engagement, perform analytics, generate graph-derived relationship-strength and social proximity scores, build predictive connection and affinity models, create derived insights, and improve features, operations, and product decisions.
• To market, advertise, sponsor, partner, license, and otherwise commercialize Six Degrees, its audience, its datasets, and related business opportunities, subject to applicable law.
• To support diligence, financing, restructuring, mergers, acquisitions, asset sales, or other corporate transactions.

5. Public Information on Six Degrees

Six Degrees is built around a public social graph. Information associated with graph participation or published profiles may be visible to anyone who visits the site.

Depending on the feature and approval state, publicly visible information may include names, group memberships, connection paths, profile details, social links, and relationship information. Please do not provide information you do not want displayed publicly or that you are not authorized to share.

6. How We Disclose, License, Sell, or Share Information

We may disclose, license, make available, transfer, or otherwise communicate information to third parties for business, commercial, operational, legal, analytics, advertising, sponsorship, research, graph-derived scoring, predictive modeling, and transaction-related purposes.

Some disclosures may be treated under applicable law as a sale or sharing of personal information, including disclosures for monetary or other valuable consideration or disclosures for cross-context behavioral advertising. Where required by law, we will provide notice and a way to exercise applicable rights.

We may create, use, disclose, license, sell, or otherwise commercialize deidentified, aggregated, statistical, and other information that is not reasonably linkable to an identified person for any lawful purpose. To the extent graph-derived relationship-strength, affinity, proximity, or predictive outputs are reasonably linkable to an identified person, we treat those outputs as subject to applicable law.

• Service providers, contractors, and vendors that help us host the site, authenticate users, store data, send emails, monitor performance, detect abuse, run analytics, and support operations.
• Affiliates, sponsors, business partners, advertising partners, analytics providers, research collaborators, and data or audience partners that support or commercialize the service.
• Group admins or super admins when access to workflow data is necessary to review requests, invites, group membership, moderation decisions, or policy compliance.
• Investors, lenders, acquirers, merger counterparties, diligence providers, and other parties involved in an actual or proposed financing or business transaction.
• Law enforcement, regulators, courts, or other parties when required by law or reasonably necessary to protect rights, safety, or the integrity of the service.
• Other parties when you direct us to disclose information or intentionally interact with them through the service.

7. Cookies, Analytics, and Advertising Technologies

Six Degrees and its service providers may use cookies, pixels, local storage, SDKs, and similar technologies for authentication, session continuity, security, preferences, analytics, attribution, advertising, and audience measurement.

You can control some cookies and similar tools through your browser settings, but disabling required technologies may prevent sign-in or other features from working correctly.

8. Data Retention

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary to operate Six Degrees, maintain the public graph, support member and admin workflows, preserve business records, support analytics and derived products, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and preserve security or audit records.

Retention periods may vary depending on the type of data, whether an account remains active, whether content is public, whether a request has been made, whether the information has been deidentified or incorporated into aggregated materials, and whether we need the information for fraud prevention, abuse investigation, business planning, or legal compliance.

9. Your Choices and Rights

Depending on your location and the law that applies, you may have rights to access, know, correct, delete, or obtain a copy of certain personal information, and to opt out of certain sales, sharing, targeted advertising, profiling, or other uses of personal information.

You may also have the right to limit certain uses of sensitive personal information, withdraw consent where processing is based on consent, or object to particular processing activities. Rights are not absolute and may be limited by legal exceptions, public-interest considerations, security needs, recordkeeping obligations, or the public-by-design nature of the service.

• You can update certain public and private profile fields through the available account tools when those features are enabled for your account.
• You can contact us to request correction, review, deletion, portability, or restriction of certain information.
• You can use the Your Privacy Choices page or the contact email listed below to submit requests related to sale, sharing, marketing, or other privacy choices.
• You may opt out of promotional emails by following the unsubscribe instructions in those messages, but you may still receive transactional or legal notices.

10. Verification, Authorized Agents, and Request Handling

To protect privacy and security, we may require you to verify your identity before fulfilling certain requests. We may ask for information reasonably necessary to confirm the requestor's identity and authority.

Authorized agents may submit requests on behalf of another person where permitted by law, but we may require proof of authority and may still contact the person directly for verification. We may deny or limit a request if we cannot verify it, if an exception applies, or if the request would compromise the rights of others or the integrity of the service.

11. Children's Privacy and Minors

Six Degrees is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information to Six Degrees, contact us so we can review the matter.

We do not knowingly sell or share personal information of consumers we know are under 16 without the affirmative authorization required by applicable law.

12. Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures to protect information processed through Six Degrees. No method of transmission over the internet and no method of electronic storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

13. Business Transfers and Corporate Transactions

If Six Degrees is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, bankruptcy, reorganization, asset sale, or other business transaction, information may be disclosed to counterparties and transferred as part of that transaction, subject to applicable law.

If a third party materially changes how it uses or shares personal information in a manner that is materially inconsistent with the promises in effect when the information was collected, we will take additional steps as required by applicable law before applying the new practice to previously collected personal information.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will post the updated version here and revise the effective date above.

If we make a material change, we may provide additional notice or choices where required by law. Your continued use of Six Degrees after an updated policy takes effect means you acknowledge the revised policy, except to the extent applicable law requires a different form of consent or choice.

15. Contact and Non-Affiliation

Questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy may be sent to Yu Huang at yu_huang12@berkeley.edu.

Six Degrees is an independent project and is not affiliated with University of California, Berkeley.