Privacy Policy

01Who is responsible

Level Up is run by Martin Marinov, an individual based in Bulgaria. For the purposes of the GDPR, that means I am the data controller — the person who decides what is collected and why, and the person answerable for it.

Contact: privacy@levelupskills.life. That address is read by me.

If you believe your data has been mishandled, you may also complain to the Bulgarian Commission for Personal Data Protection (Комисия за защита на личните данни), or to the supervisory authority in your own country.

02What this covers

Four things:

• This website, levelupskills.life.
• The Network — the Level Up areas of the Discord server, and the Gatekeeper bot that tracks progress inside them.
• The Founding Reader application, and the manuscript shared with Founding Readers.
• The Level Up book itself, where it points you at any of the above.

The Discord server also contains private areas that have nothing to do with Level Up and that no member of The Network can see or reach. Those are not part of this policy.

It does not cover Discord itself, Google, or any other service you use to reach these. Those have their own policies and their own relationship with you.

03What is collected

This website has no analytics and no cookies

There are no analytics, no tracking pixels, no advertising, and no cookies. The site makes no requests to any third party when a page loads — the fonts and everything else are served from this domain.

My host records a standard access log for every request — the IP address and browser — as every web server does. I can see roughly the last seven days of it. I do not use it for analytics and do not consult it except to investigate a fault or an attack.

Three things are stored in your own browser, on your own device, and never transmitted:

• Your theme choice — auto, light or dark.
• Your language choice.
• Any reflection you type into a chapter page, so a reload does not lose your work.

Clearing your browser data removes all three. I cannot see them and they never reach a server.

The Network collects what the system needs to work

When you take part in Level Up inside The Network, the Gatekeeper records:

• Your Discord ID — the numeric identifier Discord gives your account.
• Your Discord username, stored alongside the ID so @Team can recognise you without working from a number.
• Whether you are currently a member, and the date you left if you leave.
• Your XP and HP, per chapter and per book.
• Your Specializations, character role and Seal tier.
• Your Checkpoints.
• Your submissions — Reflection Logs and Field Applications, and when they were posted.
• Which Gatekeeper question you were served, when, and whether your answer was correct.
• A chapter lockout after a wrong answer, and when it expires.
• Grants and corrections made by @Team, and who made them.
• Two small internal records that stop the system prompting you twice for the same thing.
• An audit log of actions taken, used to investigate disputes and abuse.

Your avatar stays in Discord. The content of your messages stays in Discord too — except in the tracked channels, where a Checkpoint, Reflection Log or Field Application is recorded here as described above.

Two other things happen inside the server

• Verification. Wick, shown in the server as "The Hand", runs the check that lets you in. See section 05.
• A departure message. If you leave, a bot posts a short message to a private log channel noting that someone left, containing your Discord ID. It stays there until deleted. See sections 08 and 09.

Some roles — Founding Reader among them — are assigned by hand by @Team rather than earned automatically.

The Founding Reader application

The application form collects your name, email address, Discord handle, country and time zone, a second email address for the manuscript link if you give one, your answers to the three questions, and which wave you prefer. It runs on Google Forms, so the responses are held in Google's systems. The form carries its own notice, which says the same things this section does.

If you take a seat, you receive the manuscript as a Google Drive link shared to one address, with commenting on and download, print and copy off. Your comments on that document, and the Google account you make them from, are visible to me.

Your written verdict at the end of your read may be published with your first name and country. That is one of the two conditions of the seat, stated in the application before you apply and accepted there.

04Why, and on what basis

• The Network data — to run the thing you joined: to track your progress, award Specializations and Seals, and make returning possible. Processed to perform the agreement set out in the Terms.
• The audit log — to keep the system honest, resolve disputes about scores, and detect abuse. Processed on the basis of legitimate interest.
• The Founding Reader application — to select and contact Founding Readers. Processed on the basis of your consent, given when you submit the form.
• The manuscript, and your feedback on it — to improve the book, and to publish your verdict as agreed. Processed to perform the agreement you accepted when you took the seat.
• Contact about future books and products — only if you ticked the separate, optional box on the application. That is its own consent, it was not required in order to apply, and you can withdraw it at any time by email.
• Browser storage on this site — strictly necessary to provide features you asked for. No consent is required and none is requested.
• Server access logs — to investigate faults, diagnose problems and detect attacks. Processed on the basis of legitimate interest.

Nothing is sold. Nothing is shared for advertising. There is no profiling and no automated decision-making that produces legal effects.

05Who else handles it

These providers process data on my behalf, under their own terms.

Infrastructure:

• Supabase — the database holding your progress. EU region, Frankfurt.
• Discord — the platform The Network runs on.
• Hostinger — this website, and the server the Gatekeeper runs on. EU, Lithuania.
• Porkbun — domain registration and DNS.
• Proton — email. Switzerland.
• Google — two things only: the Founding Reader application form, and the Google Drive document the manuscript is shared from.

Bots inside the Discord server:

• Wick (shown in The Network as "The Hand") — handles verification and moderation across the server. It holds administrator permissions, so it can reach every channel, including the ones where you post. It processes Discord account identifiers and server membership. See their privacy policy at wickbot.com.
• Xenon — takes a backup of the server so it can be rebuilt if it is lost. It also holds administrator permissions and can reach every channel. On the free plan in use here, its backups contain only channels, roles and settings — no members, no messages, no bans.
• ServerStats (shown in The Network as "Andromeda") — the member counters, and the message noting that someone has left. It stores the server's configuration rather than its members; counts are held temporarily and discarded. See their privacy policy at serverstats.bot.

Other bots are present in the server and are blocked from the Level Up channels. Like any bot in a Discord server, some of them can see that you are a member.

06Where it is stored

Your progress data is held in the European Union — Supabase in Frankfurt, the Gatekeeper on a server in Lithuania. Email is held in Switzerland, which the European Commission recognises as providing adequate protection.

Discord is a United States company and data reaching it may be processed outside the EU, under the transfer mechanisms in its own terms. The same applies to Google, which is involved in two places only: the Founding Reader application form and the Drive document holding the manuscript. This website sends nothing to Google or to any other third party.

07How long it is kept

• While you are a member of The Network — your progress is kept, because that is what makes it progress. There is no timer on an active member.
• After you leave — an archived snapshot is kept for 60 months. See section 08.
• The audit log — 12 months, then deleted.
• Founding Reader applications — if you were not selected, your application is deleted within 12 months. If you ticked the optional box about future books and products, your email address is kept until you withdraw that consent. If you took a seat, your application is kept while you are a Founding Reader, and deleted on request.
• Server access logs — website access logs are available to me through my hosting provider's rolling window of approximately seven days. I do not copy them, export them, or keep my own archive of them.

The first two periods are enforced by a job that runs nightly and deletes what has expired. It is not a policy someone has to remember to apply.

One honest caveat: the database is backed up daily and those backups are kept for seven days. Data deleted today may therefore still exist in an encrypted backup for up to a week before the backup itself expires.

A second one: if you drift away without ever leaving the Discord server, your account stays a member and nothing expires. There is no automatic sweep for inactivity. If you want your record gone, ask — see section 09.

08If you leave The Network

Leaving is not the same as asking to be deleted, and it is worth being clear about that.

When your departure is processed, a snapshot of your progress, submissions, grants and Seals is copied into an archive, and your live values are reset to zero. The snapshot includes the text of anything you posted in the tracked channels. The archive exists so your record can be recognised if you come back, and so it is not simply lost.

Your departure is processed by @Team, and it is not instantaneous. If you leave and your record has not been reset, contact @Team.

That archive is kept for 60 months — five years — chosen to cover a reader returning at any point across the four-book series. After that it is deleted automatically.

Three things are not archived and not reset. The audit log of actions taken is kept separately for twelve months and is unaffected by your departure. A message noting that you left, containing your Discord ID, is posted to a private log channel and stays there until erasure. And if you have minted a Seal to the blockchain, that is outside my control entirely — see section 11.

If you want the archive gone sooner, ask. See section 09.

09Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask me to:

• Show you what I hold about you.
• Correct anything wrong.
• Delete it.
• Export it in a portable form.
• Restrict or object to how it is used.
• Withdraw consent, where consent is what you gave — including the optional box about future books and products.

Email privacy@levelupskills.life. I will respond within one month, as the law requires.

On deletion specifically: erasure removes your record from the live database and from the departed-reader archive. It is a real deletion, not a flag.

A few traces of your activity survive, with your identity removed, because deleting them outright would corrupt records belonging to other people:

• In the audit log, your identifier is replaced with an irreversible hash. The entry survives; you are not identifiable from it.
• Where @Team granted you points, the record of the grant stays, but the grantor's identity is replaced with a marker meaning "a person did this, their identity has been erased."
• Where a Seal was granted to you, the record keeps whether it was issued by @Team or by the Founder, without naming anyone.

None of these can be reversed to recover who you were. The departure message in the log channel is deleted as part of erasure.

One thing erasure cannot reach: a verdict already published, or a quotation already printed in a book. Once something is in print it cannot be recalled from the copies that exist.

10Age

The Network is for people aged 15 and over. If you are younger, please do not join. If I become aware that a member is under 15, their data will be deleted.

11Not yet in operation

Two things described elsewhere on this site are not running yet, and are therefore not covered above.

• Minting a Seal to the Cardano blockchain. This policy will be updated before minting opens, and before anyone signs a transaction. It will explain exactly what goes on-chain and what that permanence means — including the part that cannot be undone by anyone, including me. That disclosure cannot be added afterwards, which is why it has to come first.
• An external backup of member progress. Planned, not built. This policy will be updated before it starts, because the backup would place member data somewhere this section does not currently describe.

12Changes

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Material changes will be announced in The Network.