SynchThis policy covers SynchAcademy — the Discord app and bot of the Synch Academy — and the Academy website at academy.synchsupport.org, including the Community Portal. It adds detail to our main Privacy Policy, which covers everything Synch runs and explains retention, your rights and how to contact us. Where the two overlap, they say the same thing; where this page is more specific, it applies to SynchAcademy.
SynchAcademy is part of Synch ("we", "us"), an unregistered, volunteer-run online community. Synch's volunteer leadership team decides how the data described here is used and is responsible for it.
The short version
- You sign in with Discord through the SynchAcademy app. We never see your password or email address.
- In partner communities' servers the bot only observes: the server's name, icon, member count and roles — it never moderates, posts in, or reads the messages of a server it's added to.
- It reads direct messages you send it, and only for the Academy's onboarding questions and replies to it.
/certshows the same details as a certificate's public verification page. It stores nothing about who looked a certificate up.- We don't sell data, show adverts or use it to train AI.
Signing in with SynchAcademy
When you sign in to the Academy, Discord shares with us your user ID, username, display name and avatar, and your roles in Synch's own servers (to decide what you can access). When you sign in to the Community Portal, Discord also shares the list of servers you're in and your permissions in each — we use it only to find the partner communities you run (Administrator or Manage Server), and we keep only those communities, not your full server list. We remember which community you last worked in, so the portal opens on it next time.
What the bot does in Synch's own servers
In Synch's servers the bot posts Academy updates (for example new enrolments, certificates and review queues) to staff and community channels, and runs staff-only commands such as /academy-whois, which shows a member's Academy role and team from their server roles. Posts about enrolments and certificates can include your Discord name.
What the bot does in a partner community's server
When a community adds SynchAcademy to its server, the bot records the server's ID, name, icon, owner's user ID and member count, and re-checks the member count regularly. That's how we decide whether a community can use Teams (20+ members) or become a Provider (50+ members).
While it's in a server, the bot may also:
- list the server's roles, so the community's Admins can pick one in the Community Portal (for example a role that qualifies members for faster Academy access);
- check whether a specific person is a member of the server, or holds a chosen role, when that person asks to join the community's Team or applies for Academy access through the community — and re-check it every 6 hours while they're on the Team;
- search the server's member list by name, only if the community's Admin uses the contact picker in the Community Portal and only where we have switched that feature on.
The bot does not read, store or moderate the messages in a partner server, and it has no moderation permissions there. Removing the bot from your server stops all of this at once; it also pauses the community's Academy access until it's added back.
Direct messages with the bot
The bot can send you direct messages about things that concern you: a decision on a course you submitted, a Team invite, a change to your community's status, or the Academy's staff onboarding steps.
If you're onboarding as a volunteer, the bot asks you questions by DM and keeps your answers (and any file you send in reply) as part of your staff onboarding record. Apart from onboarding, the bot doesn't keep the text of DMs you send it.
Certificate checks (/cert)
Anyone can run /cert with a certificate's code. The bot looks the code up and shows the certificate's title, holder's display name, type, issue date, score (where there is one) and whether it's valid or revoked — exactly what the certificate's public verification page shows. Certificates are public by design (see our Privacy Policy). We don't record who ran /cert or which codes were looked up.
Teams and Providers
What a community can see about its Team members, and the rules it must follow, are set out in our Terms & Conditions and the SynchAcademy Terms. In short: a community sees progress and certificates only for training it assigned, only for people who accepted, and more only if the member chooses to share it. Providers see aggregate statistics for their own courses — never who did what.
Who we share it with
- Discord Inc. — sign-in, and everything the bot does in Discord.
- Cloudflare, Inc. — delivers and protects the Academy website.
- Partner communities — only what's described above and what you choose to share.
- Anyone you give a certificate code or link to.
We don't sell personal data, and we don't use it to train AI models.
How long we keep it, and your rights
Retention periods and your rights (access, correction, deletion, objection, portability, and complaining to a data protection authority) are in our main Privacy Policy and GDPR Notice. In addition: a community's server details are kept while the bot is in its server and the community is registered with us, and for up to 12 months after it leaves, so we can handle appeals and past content.
Contact us
Synch · open a support ticket in our Discord server: discord.gg/NvbG77QZSP