Expert & Applicant Privacy Notice

This notice explains how Rustlabs LLC, doing business as RustLabs, handles personal information when you apply to join our expert network, use rustLabs, complete assessments, communicate with us, or contribute to a project.

Our general Privacy Notice also applies to visits to our public website and other business interactions.

Depending on your relationship with RustLabs, we may collect:

• Application and profile information: name, email, country and U.S. state, primary language, expertise, experience, prior annotation or platform experience, education, university and graduation year, LinkedIn and GitHub profiles, résumé and filename, availability, referral source, and an optional referrer email.
• Account and security information: account name and email, sign-in records from our authentication provider (including Google sign-in profile basics — name, email, and avatar — when you choose Google), account status, invite and claim records, login and session information, and security or rate-limit records. Where a legacy password exists, we hold only a password hash (never your password).
• Qualification and platform information: assessment answers and submission status, availability responses, project or domain interests, résumé versions, platform messages and reactions (including channel messages and direct messages sent through the platform), and project participation records.
• Codebase screening information: repository and code profile links, codebase metrics and history, test evidence, ownership and representative authority, licensing disclosures, referral attribution, and review and payment records. The initial COBOL form asks for descriptions, not source code or confidential documents.
• Agreement records: document name and version, acceptance status and date, typed signature, and technical evidence associated with an electronic acknowledgment.
• Communications information: support and project messages, email-list and unsubscribe status, and email send, delivery, bounce, delay, or spam-complaint status.
• Technical and attribution information: anonymous and referral cookies, IP address or a salted or otherwise derived hash, user agent, approximate country, referring page, link clicks, application starts, pages viewed, and site performance information.

We receive information directly from you; from your use of our application, website, assessments, and platform; from professional profiles or references you choose to provide; from people who refer you; and from clients and service providers involved in projects, communications, security, analytics, or payments.

We use expert and applicant information to:

• review applications and evaluate submitted qualifications;
• create and administer expert accounts;
• deliver assessments and record availability;
• match experts to potentially relevant projects;
• communicate about applications, accounts, projects, support, and service updates;
• administer contributor agreements, project assignments, and payments;
• protect the platform, prevent abuse, and meet legal obligations; and
• analyze and improve our application and platform experience.

RustLabs does not use applicant profiles or résumés to train AI models. Expert work product is treated separately as described below.

Authorized RustLabs personnel may review application, profile, assessment, availability, and project information to evaluate qualifications and identify potential project matches.

We may provide clients with relevant information about an expert when reasonably needed to assess or administer a project. We seek to limit that information to what is relevant. Where practical, project work may use a contributor identifier. We may provide a legal name or contact details when operationally or legally necessary and will provide additional disclosure where appropriate.

If you name a COBOL codebase referrer in your submission and agree to its terms, we may show them your codebase title, submission status and referral reward status. We do not show them your source code, repository URL, contact information or ownership evidence. Sharing a code sample with prospective licensees requires the separate written evaluation permissions and recipient restrictions described in the COBOL intake terms.

Before an expert receives project access, and periodically afterwards (at least annually, and whenever a project requires it), we may ask you to complete an identity check with our verification provider, Persona. The check captures an image of a government-issued identity document and a selfie, compares them, and may include a liveness check. Persona also screens the identity against sanctions, watchlist, and politically-exposed-person lists.

RustLabs receives and keeps the outcome of the check (verified or not), the type and issuing country of the document, the name on it, the screening result, the date, and a reference identifier. RustLabs does not store the document images, selfie, or biometric data on the rustLabs platform; Persona processes and retains those under its own privacy notice and our agreement with it. Where a project requires it, we may disclose to the client your legal name, date of birth, document type and country, work location, and screening result, and may provide the same to a client's auditors. We keep verification and screening records for as long as our client agreements require, typically seven years after your last engagement ends.

Your application, résumé, account profile, and similar records are personal information used to administer your relationship with RustLabs. They are not themselves expert work product.

Materials you create or submit while performing a project may be expert work product. Its ownership, licensing, confidentiality, and permitted uses—including possible use for AI training or evaluation—are governed by the applicable Contributor Agreement, Project Assignment, and project instructions.

If payout functionality is offered, an approved payment provider may collect identity, tax, and bank information directly from you. RustLabs may receive and retain the provider's user or payee identifier; onboarding, tax-form, identity-verification, and payout-readiness status; and payment or transfer identifiers, amounts, and statuses.

RustLabs does not intend to collect full Social Security numbers or taxpayer identification numbers, tax-form documents, government-ID images, bank-account details, or full payment-provider compliance responses through the rustLabs experts platform. A payment provider's own privacy notice applies to information it collects directly.

We use contact information to send application updates, account and security messages, assessment reminders, project opportunities, support responses, and other service communications. We may also send relevant network or marketing updates. You can unsubscribe from marketing messages using the link provided, but we may still send non-marketing messages needed to administer an application, account, agreement, or project.

RustLabs uses first-party referral tools. The rl_anon cookie assigns an anonymous browser identifier and may remain for up to 90 days. The rl_ref cookie records referral attribution and may remain for up to 30 days. When you open an expert's referral link, a random rl_visitor value in your browser's storage lets us count that visit once; nothing else about you is stored with it. These are attribution tools, not account-essential cookies.

We use Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights for aggregated website usage and performance information. Vercel Web Analytics is designed to operate without placing cookies on your device, but it may process page, browser, device, approximate location, referrer, and performance data. You may remove or block cookies in your browser settings.

The Refer tab can read the connections file you download from LinkedIn and point out people who fit the projects we're staffing. The file is read in your browser. Nothing from it is sent to us unless you choose one of the two options below.

Send invites for me. If you pick people and ask us to invite them, we receive each person's name, email address and the project they fit. We send each of them one email in your name with your referral link, and we keep a record of the address, the date and that you invited them, so nobody is emailed twice and your referral can be credited. Each email has a one-click opt-out, and we honor it permanently. By sending invites you confirm that you know these people and ask us to contact them for you.

Save my list. If you choose to save your list, we store the connections from your file (name, company, job title, LinkedIn profile address and, where LinkedIn includes it, email) so we can tell you when a future project fits someone on it. We never contact anyone on a saved list unless you send them an invite, and we do not share the list with clients. A saved list is kept for up to 12 months, and you can delete it at any time from the Refer tab.

We use providers for hosting, database storage, analytics, email and communications, authentication, security, and payments. Our current core website providers include Vercel, Neon, Resend, Clerk (our sign-in and account-security provider), and Persona (identity verification and screening). Providers process information under their own contractual and legal obligations.

We may also disclose information to clients as described above; to professional advisers; when required by law or necessary to protect rights and safety; or in connection with a financing, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of all or part of our business, subject to appropriate protections. RustLabs does not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect personal information. Access is limited according to role and operational need. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We retain information for as long as reasonably needed to evaluate an application, administer an expert relationship or project, maintain business and agreement records, secure the platform, resolve disputes, and meet legal, tax, accounting, or contractual obligations. Retention varies by record type and context. A deletion request may not remove records that we are required or permitted to retain. A saved LinkedIn list is kept for up to 12 months or until you delete it. Records of invites sent on your behalf are kept so the same person is never invited twice.

RustLabs is based in the United States. We, our clients, and our service providers may process information in the United States and other countries where they operate. Those countries may have data-protection rules that differ from the rules where you live.

You may update certain account information through the rustLabs experts platform where that feature is available, and delete a saved LinkedIn list from the Refer tab at any time. You may also ask to access, correct, or delete personal information associated with you. Depending on where you live, local law may provide additional rights or exceptions.

Send a request to privacy@rustlabs.ai. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request and may retain information where required or permitted by law, including for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, tax and accounting, agreements, and dispute resolution.

You must be at least 18 to apply to the RustLabs expert network or use rustLabs. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a person under 18 has submitted personal information, contact us so we can review and address the situation.

We may update this notice as our services and practices change. We will post the updated notice here, revise the “Last updated” date, and assign a new version. If a change is material, we may provide additional notice when appropriate.

Questions or privacy requests can be sent to privacy@rustlabs.ai.