Who we are
informal is a collective of independent hardware professionals. Our website is informal.com. If you have any question about this policy or about the information we hold about you, email us at hello@informal.com.
What we collect
We only collect personal information that you choose to give us, plus the usage data described in the cookies section below.
Project inquiries. When you fill out our "Have a project?" form, we collect what you enter: typically your name, work email, location, company, what you need help with, a description of your project, your budget and timeline, and any files you attach.
Joining the collective. If you apply to become a member, we collect the details you provide about yourself, your experience and your work.
Member accounts. The Sign in link in our navigation takes informal members to Informal Work, our member platform at work.informal.com. There we collect the account and profile details members provide, such as name, email address and login credentials, along with the information members add while working on projects through the platform. Informal Work has its own terms of service, which members accept when they sign up; this policy applies to how we handle the personal information collected there. Payment and tax information for member payouts is handled separately by our payroll provider and is never stored on informal.com or Informal Work.
Newsletter. When you subscribe, we collect your email address and, if you provide it, your name.
Downloads and campaigns. If you request a resource such as the Hardware Handbook, or submit a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form attached to one of our advertising campaigns, we collect the information in that form, typically your name, work email, company and job title. Submissions made through LinkedIn are also subject to LinkedIn's privacy policy.
Email. If you email us, we keep the correspondence so we can reply and follow up.
How we use it
We use your information to respond to your inquiry, put together the right team for your project, send you the resource you requested, keep you informed about informal if you have subscribed, and understand how people use our website so we can improve it. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with other organizations for their own marketing.
Who we share it with
We work with a small number of service providers that process information on our behalf and only for the purposes above: the form tools that power our project and membership forms, the services that run Informal Work, our email and newsletter platform, our customer relationship management (CRM) software, our website host, and our analytics providers. Each of these providers is bound to protect your information and may not use it for their own purposes. Within informal, your project inquiry is shared with the members we are considering for your team, under confidentiality. We may also disclose information where the law requires it.
Cookies and analytics
We use Google Analytics and Vercel Web Analytics to understand how visitors use the site: which pages are viewed, how people arrive here, and how they move between pages. Google Analytics sets cookies and records an anonymized form of your IP address along with your browser and device type. Vercel Web Analytics does not use cookies and does not store personal information. Our newsletter provider, Klaviyo, sets a cookie when you interact with a signup form so it can recognize you if you return.
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings; the site will still work without them. You can also opt out of Google Analytics with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
Embedded content
Articles on this site may include embedded content such as YouTube videos. Embedded content behaves exactly as if you had visited the other website directly: that site may collect data about you, set its own cookies and track your interaction with the embed, especially if you are logged in to an account there. Our forms are embedded from our form provider in the same way.
How long we keep it
We keep project and membership inquiries for as long as we have a working relationship with you or a reasonable prospect of one, and we keep newsletter subscriptions until you unsubscribe. Analytics data is retained according to our analytics providers' standard settings. We delete information sooner on request, unless we are required to keep it for legal, accounting or security reasons.
Your rights
You can ask us at any time to tell you what personal information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it. Every newsletter we send includes an unsubscribe link. To make a request, email hello@informal.com and we will respond as quickly as we can. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under local privacy law, including the right to complain to a supervisory authority.
Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and the effective date at the top. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated policy.