Privacy Policy
Last updated: March 27, 2026
Palo Alto Digital Platform LLC ("we", "us", "our") operates EmbeddedInterviewLab. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your personal information.
1. Information We Collect
Account Information
When you create an account, we collect:
- Email address — provided directly or via Google OAuth
- Name — from your Google profile (if using Google sign-in)
- Profile picture URL — from your Google profile (if using Google sign-in)
Usage Data
When you use the Service, we collect:
- Code submissions — code you submit for AI evaluation, along with the language, scores, and feedback received
- Study progress — which pages you mark as "studied"
- Bookmarks — which pages you bookmark for later
- Page feedback — your thumbs up/down votes on content pages
- Forum content — posts, comments, and votes you create in the community forum
- Forum reports — reports you submit about content that violates community guidelines
- Problem submissions — coding problems you submit for review and potential inclusion on the platform
- Achievement badges — badges earned and their unlock dates based on your study activity
- Activity data — daily activity counts derived from your usage for the activity heatmap display
Automatically Collected Information
- IP address — used for rate limiting the AI evaluation API
- Analytics data — page views and performance metrics collected by our hosting provider
2. How We Use Your Information
- Provide the Service — authenticate you, save your progress, display your dashboard
- AI code evaluation — your code submissions are sent to third-party AI providers for evaluation (see Section 3)
- Community features — display your forum posts, comments, and votes to other users
- Moderation — review reported content and enforce community guidelines
- Improve content — aggregate feedback data helps us identify which pages need improvement
- Prevent abuse — IP-based rate limiting protects the AI evaluation system
Anonymous Posting
When you post anonymously on the forum, your name and profile picture are hidden from other users. However, your user ID is still stored in our database and linked to the post for the following purposes:
- Allowing you to edit or delete your own anonymous posts
- Enabling moderation in case of policy violations
- Preventing abuse (e.g., identifying users who repeatedly post harmful content)
Your identity on anonymous posts is never disclosed to other users or the public. Only platform administrators can access this information for moderation purposes.
3. Third-Party Services
We use the following categories of third-party services that may process your data:
| Category | Purpose | Data Shared |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication & database provider | User authentication and data storage | Account info, usage data |
| Cloud hosting provider | Application hosting and analytics | Page views, performance data |
| AI service providers | Automated code evaluation | Code submissions (for evaluation only) |
Code submitted for evaluation is sent to third-party AI service providers for processing. These providers have their own privacy policies governing how they handle data. We do not send your personal information (name, email) to AI providers — only the code you submit, the problem description, and evaluation criteria.
4. Cookies
We use the following cookies:
- Authentication cookies — session cookies to keep you logged in
- Analytics cookies — page view and performance tracking by our hosting provider
We do not use advertising cookies or sell data to third parties.
5. Data Retention
- Account data — retained until you delete your account
- Code submissions — retained as part of your submission history until you delete your account
- Progress, bookmarks, feedback — retained until you delete your account
- Forum posts and comments — retained until you delete them or your account. Soft-deleted content is hidden from public view but retained for moderation purposes for up to 90 days
- Problem submissions — retained until you delete your account. Approved problems that have been published to the platform remain even after account deletion
- Server logs — automatically deleted after 30 days
6. Your Rights (California Residents — CCPA)
If you are a California resident, you have the right to:
- Know — request what personal information we have collected about you
- Delete — request deletion of your personal information
- Opt-out — we do not sell your personal information to third parties
- Non-discrimination — we will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights
To exercise these rights, contact us at admin@embeddedinterviewlab.com. We will respond within 45 days.
7. Account Deletion
You may request deletion of your account and all associated data by contacting us at admin@embeddedinterviewlab.com. Upon deletion, all your submissions, progress, bookmarks, feedback, forum posts, comments, votes, reports, problem submissions, and badges will be permanently removed.
8. Data Security
We implement reasonable security measures to protect your data, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), secure authentication, and server-side API validation. However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure.
9. Children's Privacy
The Service is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected data from a child under 13, we will delete it promptly.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify users by updating the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.
11. Contact
For questions about this Privacy Policy, contact us at admin@embeddedinterviewlab.com.
Palo Alto Digital Platform LLC
Palo Alto, California