What we collect, why, and for how long.

The data controller is Asia Internship Program (the registered AIP company operating Ethos Commons), Bangkok, Thailand. For anything about your data, write to daniele@internsinasia.com. We answer within 30 days.

Students come from many countries and go to many others, so this policy is written to the strongest rule that applies: the EU and UK GDPR, Thailand's and Singapore's PDPA, Japan's APPI, South Korea's PIPA and similar laws. Where they differ, you get the stronger protection. The simplest protection of all is that we collect little and keep it briefly.

If you are a student

• Account: your email address and name (from your sign-in), your university if your email domain belongs to a member. Purpose: to sign you in and to know which university may confirm your placement.
• Placements: the company, your role, the dates, and how it was verified. Purpose: to check that reviewers were really there.
• Documents: a placement agreement you upload, if your university cannot confirm you. Purpose: verification only. It is read by one moderator and then deleted, and never kept longer than 30 days. It is never used for anything else, never shared, and never sold.
• Reviews: five scores, whether you would return, inclusion signals, your comment, the kind of placement, its length, and (optional) your level of study and language context. Purpose: the company page and aggregate statistics for your university. Level of study and language context appear only in aggregates, never next to your words.
• Pulse: three numbers a week and an optional note. Purpose: your own record during the placement, and a safety check on the note. Your three numbers each week are shown to your university's placement office, for you and for the cohort, so they can see how you are doing. The note is yours: the office reads it only if you tick “share this note”, or if the automated safety check finds signs of harassment, exploitation, danger or crisis, in which case it goes to the office as a concern.
• Concerns: what you marked as serious, or what the Pulse check flagged, with its status. Purpose: so your placement office can act, and so a company can respond through them.
• Feedback about who placed you: read by your university only.

If you are a placement officer or a company representative

• Your email address and name, your university or company, and what you do on Ethos (verifications, decisions, replies, statements). Purpose: to run the service and to keep a record of decisions.

Everyone

• Technical logs (IP address, browser, time) kept briefly by our hosting provider for security. We do not use advertising cookies or trackers. We use only the cookie that keeps you signed in.

Some of what students write is sensitive: it may describe harassment, discrimination, health or mental state. We process it only with your explicit consent, given when you accept these terms and again each time you write a note or tick the “something serious” box. You can withhold it: Pulse works with numbers only, and a review works without a comment. Sensitive content is never published. It is read by your placement office and, where a comment is published, by one moderator first.

• Consent for sensitive content and for the Pulse note.
• Contract (these terms) for running your account, verifying placements and showing your review.
• Legitimate interest for security, fraud and fake-review prevention, and for anonymous aggregates. You can object by writing to us.
• Legal obligation when a court or authority validly requires disclosure.

• The public sees averages, would-return rates, inclusion signals, a count of concerns, and moderated comments with a role and a period. Never a name, never an email, never who placed you.
• Your university's placement office sees your placements for confirmation, serious concerns you raised or that Pulse flagged, and your feedback about who placed you. It sees your weekly Pulse numbers. It does not see your ordinary reviews, and it does not see a Pulse note you did not share unless the safety check flagged it.
• Companies see their public page and can reply. They are never told who wrote a review. When a concern is raised they learn the category and the period, not the person.
• Ethos moderators see documents once (then deleted), comments once before publication, and takedown requests. They cannot read Pulse.
• If you are not attached to a member university, there is no placement office to receive your concerns. Ethos moderators then act as the placement office of last resort: they receive the concern, tell the company one exists, record the reply and decide. They do not represent you or give legal advice.

These companies handle data on our behalf, under contracts that bind them to our instructions:

• Supabase: Database, sign-in and file storage. Location: Singapore (AWS ap-southeast-1).
• Vercel: Hosting of the website. Location: Global edge network, US-based company.
• Anthropic: Reads a Pulse note or a company description once to decide if a person needs to look at it. Does not train on this data.. Location: United States.
• Resend: Sends emails (alerts to placement offices, claim codes, notices). Location: United States.

Data is stored in Singapore. If you are in the EU or UK, your data leaves your region. The transfer rests on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, which each of these providers has signed with us. We do not sell data to anyone, and we do not share it with advertisers or with placement providers.

• Uploaded documents: deleted the moment a moderator has checked them, and in any case after 30 days. Only the fact that a check happened is kept.
• Pulse notes: cleared after 30 days unless they became a concern. Pulse numbers stay with your account.
• Concern text: cleared 30 days after the concern is closed. The category, dates and outcome stay, so the count on a company page remains honest.
• Reviews and placements: kept while your account exists, so the aggregates stay true. Delete your account and they go with it.
• Emails we send (alerts, claim codes) are kept by our email provider for a short period for delivery and then removed. Copies in the recipient's inbox are outside our control.
• Takedown requests and moderation decisions are kept for as long as the related review exists, as a record of how it was handled.

You can, at any time:

• See and download everything we hold about you, from your profile page, as a file.
• Correct your name, role or dates.
• Delete your account, from your profile page. Everything tied to you is removed and averages are recomputed. This cannot be undone.
• Withdraw consent for the Pulse note or sensitive content, simply by not writing it.
• Object or complain: write to us first. You can also complain to your data protection authority. In Thailand this is the Personal Data Protection Committee; in the EU, the authority of your country.

One automated step exists: a language model reads a Pulse note, or a company description written by a reviewer, and decides whether a person needs to look at it. It never decides anything about you on its own. It never replies to you. If it flags a note, a human at your university reads it and decides. You are told when this happens. We use AI to decide when not to use AI.

Ethos is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe a minor has an account, tell us and we will remove it.

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access is limited by role: the database itself enforces that a placement office cannot read an ordinary review and that nobody can read a Pulse note. Moderator access is logged. If a breach ever affects you, we tell you and the authority within the time the law requires.

When this policy changes in a way that matters, you are asked to agree again the next time you sign in. See also the Terms of Use.