Effective date: December 19, 2020
Thanks for entrusting GitHub Inc. (“GitHub”, “we”) with your source code, your projects, and your personal information. Holding on to your private information is a serious responsibility, and we want you to know how we're handling it.
All capitalized terms have their definition in GitHub’s Terms of Service, unless otherwise noted here.
The short version
We use your personal information as this Privacy Statement describes. No matter where you are, where you live, or what your citizenship is, we provide the same high standard of privacy protection to all our users around the world, regardless of their country of origin or location.
Of course, the short version and the Summary below don't tell you everything, so please read on for more details.
Summary
| Section | What can you find there? |
|---|---|
| What information GitHub collects | GitHub collects information directly from you for your registration, payment, transactions, and user profile. We also automatically collect from you your usage information, cookies, and device information, subject, where necessary, to your consent. GitHub may also collect User Personal Information from third parties. We only collect the minimum amount of personal information necessary from you, unless you choose to provide more. |
| What information GitHub does not collect | We don’t knowingly collect information from children under 13, and we don’t collect Sensitive Personal Information. |
| How GitHub uses your information | In this section, we describe the ways in which we use your information, including to provide you the Service, to communicate with you, for security and compliance purposes, and to improve our Service. We also describe the legal basis upon which we process your information, where legally required. |
| How we share the information we collect | We may share your information with third parties under one of the following circumstances: with your consent, with our service providers, for security purposes, to comply with our legal obligations, or when there is a change of control or sale of corporate entities or business units. We do not sell your personal information and we do not host advertising on GitHub. You can see a list of the service providers that access your information. |
| Other important information | We provide additional information specific to repository contents, public information, and Organizations on GitHub. |
| Additional services | We provide information about additional service offerings, including third-party applications, GitHub Pages, and GitHub applications. |
| How you can access and control the information we collect | We provide ways for you to access, alter, or delete your personal information. |
| Our use of cookies and tracking | We only use strictly necessary cookies to provide, secure and improve our service. We offer a page that makes this very transparent. Please see this section for more information. |
| How GitHub secures your information | We take all measures reasonably necessary to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your personal information on GitHub and to protect the resilience of our servers. |
| GitHub's global privacy practices | We provide the same high standard of privacy protection to all our users around the world. |
| How we communicate with you | We communicate with you by email. You can control the way we contact you in your account settings, or by contacting us. |
| Resolving complaints | In the unlikely event that we are unable to resolve a privacy concern quickly and thoroughly, we provide a path of dispute resolution. |
| Changes to our Privacy Statement | We notify you of material changes to this Privacy Statement 30 days before any such changes become effective. You may also track changes in our Site Policy repository. |
| License | This Privacy Statement is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license. |
| Contacting GitHub | Please feel free to contact us if you have questions about our Privacy Statement. |
| Translations | We provide links to some translations of the Privacy Statement. |
GitHub Privacy Statement
What information GitHub collects
"User Personal Information" is any information about one of our Users which could, alone or together with other information, personally identify them or otherwise be reasonably linked or connected with them. Information such as a username and password, an email address, a real name, an Internet protocol (IP) address, and a photograph are examples of “User Personal Information.”
User Personal Information does not include aggregated, non-personally identifying information that does not identify a User or cannot otherwise be reasonably linked or connected with them. We may use such aggregated, non-personally identifying information for research purposes and to operate, analyze, improve, and optimize our Website and Service.
Information users provide directly to GitHub
Registration information
We require some basic information at the time of account creation. When you create your own username and password, we ask you for a valid email address.
Payment information
If you sign on to a paid Account with us, send funds through the GitHub Sponsors Program, or buy an application on GitHub Marketplace, we collect your full name, address, and credit card information or PayPal information. Please note, GitHub does not process or store your credit card information or PayPal information, but our third-party payment processor does.
If you list and sell an application on GitHub Marketplace, we require your banking information. If you raise funds through the GitHub Sponsors Program, we require some additional information through the registration process for you to participate in and receive funds through those services and for compliance purposes.
Profile information
You may choose to give us more information for your Account profile, such as your full name, an avatar which may include a photograph, your biography, your location, your company, and a URL to a third-party website. This information may include User Personal Information. Please note that your profile information may be visible to other Users of our Service.
Information GitHub automatically collects from your use of the Service
Transactional information
If you have a paid Account with us, sell an application listed on GitHub Marketplace, or raise funds through the GitHub Sponsors Program, we automatically collect certain information about your transactions on the Service, such as the date, time, and amount charged.
Usage information
If you're accessing our Service or Website, we automatically collect the same basic information that most services collect, subject, where necessary, to your consent. This includes information about how you use the Service, such as the pages you view, the referring site, your IP address and session information, and the date and time of each request. This is information we collect from every visitor to the Website, whether they have an Account or not. This information may include User Personal information.
Cookies
As further described below, we automatically collect information from cookies (such as cookie ID and settings) to keep you logged in, to remember your preferences, to identify you and your device and to analyze your use of our service.
Device information
We may collect certain information about your device, such as its IP address, browser or client application information, language preference, operating system and application version, device type and ID, and device model and manufacturer. This information may include User Personal information.
Information we collect from third parties
GitHub may collect User Personal Information from third parties. For example, this may happen if you sign up for training or to receive information about GitHub from one of our vendors, partners, or affiliates. GitHub does not purchase User Personal Information from third-party data brokers.
What information GitHub does not collect
We do not intentionally collect “Sensitive Personal Information”, such as personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation. If you choose to store any Sensitive Personal Information on our servers, you are responsible for complying with any regulatory controls regarding that data.
If you are a child under the age of 13, you may not have an Account on GitHub. GitHub does not knowingly collect information from or direct any of our content specifically to children under 13. If we learn or have reason to suspect that you are a User who is under the age of 13, we will have to close your Account. We don't want to discourage you from learning to code, but those are the rules. Please see our Terms of Service for information about Account termination. Different countries may have different minimum age limits, and if you are below the minimum age for providing consent for data collection in your country, you may not have an Account on GitHub.
We do not intentionally collect User Personal Information that is stored in your repositories or other free-form content inputs. Any personal information within a user's repository is the responsibility of the repository owner.
How GitHub uses your information
We may use your information for the following purposes:
- We use your Registration Information to create your account, and to provide you the Service.
- We use your Payment Information to provide you with the Paid Account service, the Marketplace service, the Sponsors Program, or any other GitHub paid service you request.
- We use your User Personal Information, specifically your username, to identify you on GitHub.
- We use your Profile Information to fill out your Account profile and to share that profile with other users if you ask us to.
- We use your email address to communicate with you, if you've said that's okay, and only for the reasons you’ve said that’s okay. Please see our section on email communication for more information.
- We use User Personal Information to respond to support requests.
- We use User Personal Information and other data to make recommendations for you, such as to suggest projects you may want to follow or contribute to. We learn from your public behavior on GitHub—such as the projects you star—to determine your coding interests, and we recommend similar projects. These recommendations are automated decisions, but they have no legal impact on your rights.
- We may use User Personal Information to invite you to take part in surveys, beta programs, or other research projects, subject, where necessary, to your consent .
- We use Usage Information and Device Information to better understand how our Users use GitHub and to improve our Website and Service.
- We may use your User Personal Information if it is necessary for security purposes or to investigate possible fraud or attempts to harm GitHub or our Users.
- We may use your User Personal Information to comply with our legal obligations, protect our intellectual property, and enforce our Terms of Service.
- We limit our use of your User Personal Information to the purposes listed in this Privacy Statement. If we need to use your User Personal Information for other purposes, we will ask your permission first. You can always see what information we have, how we're using it, and what permissions you have given us in your user profile.
Our legal bases for processing information
To the extent that our processing of your User Personal Information is subject to certain international laws (including, but not limited to, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)), GitHub is required to notify you about the legal basis on which we process User Personal Information. GitHub processes User Personal Information on the following legal bases:
- Contract Performance:
- When you create a GitHub Account, you provide your Registration Information. We require this information for you to enter into the Terms of Service agreement with us, and we process that information on the basis of performing that contract. We also process your username and email address on other legal bases, as described below.
- If you have a paid Account with us, we collect and process additional Payment Information on the basis of performing that contract.
- When you buy or sell an application listed on our Marketplace or, when you send or receive funds through the GitHub Sponsors Program, we process Payment Information and additional elements in order to perform the contract that applies to those services.
- Consent:
- We rely on your consent to use your User Personal Information under the following circumstances: when you fill out the information in your user profile; when you decide to participate in a GitHub training, research project, beta program, or survey; and for marketing purposes, where applicable. All of this User Personal Information is entirely optional, and you have the ability to access, modify, and delete it at any time. While you are not able to delete your email address entirely, you can make it private. You may withdraw your consent at any time.
- Legitimate Interests:
- Generally, the remainder of the processing of User Personal Information we perform is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interest, for example, for legal compliance purposes, security purposes, or to maintain ongoing confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience of GitHub’s systems, Website, and Service.
- If you would like to request deletion of data we process on the basis of consent or if you object to our processing of personal information, please use our Privacy contact form.
How we share the information we collect
We may share your User Personal Information with third parties under one of the following circumstances:
With your consent
We share your User Personal Information, if you consent, after letting you know what information will be shared, with whom, and why. For example, if you purchase an application listed on our Marketplace, we share your username to allow the application Developer to provide you with services. Additionally, you may direct us through your actions on GitHub to share your User Personal Information. For example, if you join an Organization, you indicate your willingness to provide the owner of the Organization with the ability to view your activity in the Organization’s access log.
With service providers
We share User Personal Information with a limited number of service providers who process it on our behalf to provide or improve our Service, and who have agreed to privacy restrictions similar to the ones in our Privacy Statement by signing data protection agreements or making similar commitments. Our service providers perform payment processing, customer support ticketing, network data transmission, security, and other similar services. While GitHub processes all User Personal Information in the United States, our service providers may process data outside of the United States or the European Union. If you would like to know who our service providers are, please see our page on Subprocessors.
For security purposes
If you are a member of an Organization, GitHub may share your username, Usage Information, and Device Information associated with that Organization with an owner and/or administrator of the Organization, to the extent that such information is provided only to investigate or respond to a security incident that affects or compromises the security of that particular Organization.
For legal disclosure
GitHub strives for transparency in complying with legal process and legal obligations. Unless prevented from doing so by law or court order, or in rare, exigent circumstances, we make a reasonable effort to notify users of any legally compelled or required disclosure of their information. GitHub may disclose User Personal Information or other information we collect about you to law enforcement if required in response to a valid subpoena, court order, search warrant, a similar government order, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, to protect our property or rights, or those of third parties or the public at large.
For more information about our disclosure in response to legal requests, see our Guidelines for Legal Requests of User Data.
Change in control or sale
We may share User Personal Information if we are involved in a merger, sale, or acquisition of corporate entities or business units. If any such change of ownership happens, we will ensure that it is under terms that preserve the confidentiality of User Personal Information, and we will notify you on our Website or by email before any transfer of your User Personal Information. The organization receiving any User Personal Information will have to honor any promises we made in our Privacy Statement or Terms of Service.
Aggregate, non-personally identifying information
We share certain aggregated, non-personally identifying information with others about how our users, collectively, use GitHub, or how our users respond to our other offerings, such as our conferences or events.
We do not sell your User Personal Information for monetary or other consideration.
Please note: The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) requires businesses to state in their privacy policy whether or not they disclose personal information in exchange for monetary or other valuable consideration. While CCPA only covers California residents, we voluntarily extend its core rights for people to control their data to all of our users, not just those who live in California. You can learn more about the CCPA and how we comply with it here.
Repository contents
Access to private repositories
If your repository is private, you control the access to your Content. If you include User Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information, that information may only be accessible to GitHub in accordance with this Privacy Statement. GitHub personnel do not access private repository content except for
- security purposes
- to assist the repository owner with a support matter
- to maintain the integrity of the Service
- to comply with our legal obligations
- if we have reason to believe the contents are in violation of the law, or
- with your consent.
However, while we do not generally search for content in your repositories, we may scan our servers and content to detect certain tokens or security signatures, known active malw