Privacy Policy

Who we are

ISSC (International Space & Science Coalition) is a student-run, volunteer community, not a registered company. The data described here is collected and controlled by ISSC's organizers. For Swedish members, an additional, separate legal registration happens directly with Astronomisk Ungdom, governed by their own privacy policy, not this one.

What we collect

Ask an Expert

Your name, email address, question topic, and question text, submitted voluntarily when you use the Ask an Expert form.

Join ISSC

Your name, email address, Discord handle, and anything you choose to add in the optional notes field, submitted when you use the Join ISSC form. If you indicate you're under 15, we also collect a parent or guardian's email address. We email them a one-time confirmation link, and full Discord access is held back until they click it, this is the only field where someone other than you is the one confirming.

Once you complete Discord verification, your Discord user ID and username are added to your membership record automatically, linking your Discord account to it. Your membership Role (if any) is assigned by ISSC staff, not by you.

Why we collect it, and on what basis

We use this data to answer your question, administer your membership, connect your Discord account to it, and (for Swedish members) support the separate Astronomisk Ungdom registration. This is necessary to provide the community programs you're actively signing up for, and by submitting a form you're agreeing to that use, as described on the form itself.

Who it's shared with

We don't sell or publish your data. It's processed by a small number of service providers acting on our behalf:

• Google (Sheets, and for members, Contacts and Gmail via an authorized Apps Script) stores membership and question records and sends automated emails like Discord verification links.
• Discord holds whatever you've already put in your own Discord account; verification only adds or removes a server role, it doesn't share your email or form answers with Discord.
• Cloudflare hosts the site and its forms, and its Turnstile service checks that a submission came from a human, not a bot.

None of these providers get more than what's needed to run the feature they support, and the underlying Sheets are shared only with ISSC's service account and sheet owner, never made publicly link-shareable.

How long we keep it

Ask an Expert submissions are kept only as long as needed to route and answer the question. Membership records are kept for as long as you're an active member, and for a reasonable period afterward in case you rejoin or a record needs correcting, after which they're deleted. You can ask us to delete your record sooner at any time, see Your rights below.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, or delete your data, object to or restrict how it's used, receive a copy of it, and complain to your local data protection authority (in Sweden, IMY).

Deletion is self-service: use Leave ISSC to permanently remove your membership record, Discord role, and any Ask an Expert questions tied to your email, no waiting on staff required. For anything else (access, correction, or a question about how your data's used), reach out to ISSC staff in the Discord server, currently our only support channel, and we'll handle it directly.

Security

Both forms are protected against bots and abuse (Cloudflare Turnstile plus a hidden honeypot field), validate and length-limit input server-side, and store submitted text as literal values so it can never execute as a spreadsheet formula. Credentials used to write to our Google Sheets never reach your browser.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially, we'll update the date at the top of this page.