Privacy policy.

• You can read everything on the public site without an account. It sets no advertising or analytics cookies. If a link or another website brought you here, your browser keeps a small note of how you arrived (see below).
• When you click Apply, you leave ASV for the platform, through a referral link where we have one. From there, the platform’s own privacy policy applies.
• If you join ASV’s talent pool, we keep your answers and your CV to match you to ASV’s projects and to contact you about them. Only ASV’s admins can see them, and you can edit or delete them at any time.
• We do not sell your personal information, we do not use it for advertising, and we will not share your profile with a client without asking you first.

ASV (African Silicon Valley) runs this site and its talent pool, and decides how the information described here is used. To reach ASV about your information, email support@asvalley.com.

The platform profiles, guides and blog are open to everyone. Reading them does not require an account, and we never ask for your name or email to do so.

Cookies. The public site sets no advertising or analytics cookies. The only cookies ASV uses are the ones that keep you signed in, if you sign in, and a light or dark display preference if you choose one at the foot of the page.

How you arrived. If you arrive through a link with campaign tags (such as utm_source) or a referral code, or from another website, your browser keeps a short note of it: those tags or that code, the address of the site that sent you (without anything you searched for), the page you arrived on, and when. A visit you start yourself, by typing the address or from a bookmark, leaves no note. The note stays in your browser’s local storage, not in a cookie, and nothing in it is sent to ASV unless you start a talent pool application. Clearing this site’s data in your browser removes it.

Notes the site keeps for itself. Your browser also keeps a few small notes in its local storage: that you have seen the cookie notice; how long you have spent on the job board during a visit, so that a suggestion to join the talent pool appears only after a minute there; and whether you closed that suggestion or have joined. Nothing in them is sent to ASV, and clearing this site’s data removes them.

As with any website, the servers that deliver ASV receive basic technical information, such as your IP address and browser type, in order to send you its pages, and may keep it for a limited time in their logs.

Apply buttons send you on through a short link on ASV: /go/ followed by the platform’s name, or, for a job opening, /go/jobs/ followed by the opening’s name. A platform’s button leads to the platform, through our referral link where we have one. An opening’s leads to the role itself where we have a referral link for that role or, on Mercor, a referral code we can add to the role’s listing. Failing that, where our referral link covers the whole platform, it goes through that link to the platform’s sign-up page; otherwise, it opens the public listing, which may sit on a hiring site the platform uses, such as Greenhouse or Lever. ASV never sees what you share after that: not your application, your assessment results, your identity documents or your payment details.

Once you arrive on a platform’s site, or on the hiring site that carries its listing, that site’s own privacy policy governs what it collects and how it uses it. Read it before you sign up.

Through its referral program, a platform may let ASV know that someone it referred has signed up, been accepted or completed work, so that it can pay a referral bonus. What it shares for that purpose is set by the platform’s own policies. How ASV makes money explains referrals in full.

Everything in this section applies only if you sign in to join ASV’s talent pool. The talent pool is for people 18 or older.

Signing in

You sign in with Google, which shares your email address, your name and a link to your Google profile picture with ASV’s sign-in service, which keeps them with your account. To keep accounts secure, the sign-in service also keeps a log of sign-ins, with your email address and the IP address each one came from, and remembers which browsers you are signed in on.

What the application asks for

• About you: your first and last name as they appear on your official ID, your email address, your date of birth, your sex as recorded on your legal documents, and, if you choose, a phone number and whether you use it on WhatsApp.
• Where you’re from: your country, region and city of residence, your time zone, your nationalities, your country and place of birth, the country where you spent most of your childhood, and, if you choose, your ethnic group.
• Languages: your first language, the other languages you speak and how well, your level of English, and any dialects you speak.
• Education and work: your highest qualification, with its year, subject and institution; what you are studying, if you are a student; and your employment status, years of experience, sector, role, employer and key skills.
• Expertise: your areas of expertise, the coding languages you use, your experience of AI training work, the platforms you have worked on and the kinds of task you have done.
• Availability and setup: the hours you could give and when, how soon you could start, the hourly rate you would like, your devices, microphone, webcam, internet connection and backup power, the ways you can receive payment (the methods, such as Payoneer or mobile money, never your account details), and whether you would do a video interview or verify your identity.
• Your CV and links: your CV, your LinkedIn, GitHub and portfolio links if you share them, anything else you choose to tell us, and how you heard about ASV.

ASV also records your progress through the application, when you started and when you joined the waitlist, and when you gave each consent.

While you fill in a step, your browser keeps what you have typed but not yet saved, in that tab only, so a reload or the Back button does not lose it. Nothing in it reaches ASV until you save the step. It is removed when you save, sign out or delete your application, and when you close the tab.

Sensitive information

Your ethnic group is sensitive information, and it is optional. ASV keeps it only with your explicit consent, which the application asks for right under the question, and uses it only to match you to projects. To withdraw your consent, remove the answer from your profile: the answer and the consent go together.

ASV also asks for your date of birth, sex, nationality and place of birth, because projects often need contributors of particular ages, backgrounds or places, and confirm who you are before work starts. For your sex, you can answer “Prefer not to say.” Your CV may hold personal details of its own, so include only what you are happy for ASV to read.

Where you signed up from

When you save the first step of your application, ASV records, once, where you came from and roughly where you were: the note your browser kept, if it kept one (see browsing the public site; with no note, ASV records the visit as direct), whether you were on a phone, a tablet or a computer, and the approximate location of your connection (country, region and city) as our hosting provider works it out from your IP address. The IP address itself is not saved with your application. This tells ASV which channels reach which people, and it is never shown outside ASV.

What ASV uses it for

To match you to ASV’s projects: when ASV takes on a project, its admins search the pool on these answers and read the profiles that fit. And to contact you about projects, by email, or on WhatsApp if you gave a number you use there. If you start an application and stop part-way, ASV may send you one email to remind you, and no more. Your page on ASV also lists openings on ASV’s job board that fit your answers: the matching happens on ASV’s site as the page opens, and nothing about you is sent to the platforms. ASV also looks at totals across the pool, such as how many people joined from each country or heard about ASV from each source, to understand who it reaches. Your profile is used for nothing else, and never for advertising.

Your page also has an invite link with a code of your own. When someone joins through it, the code is recorded with their application, so ASV’s admins can see who invited whom. The people you invite cannot see your profile, and you cannot see theirs.

Why ASV may use it

• Your application: your answers, your CV and your contact details are used to consider you for projects and to contact you about them, which is what you ask ASV to do when you join, before any project agreement exists.
• Your ethnic group: only with your explicit consent.
• Everything else: ASV’s legitimate interests in keeping accounts secure (the sign-in log), in knowing which channels reach people (where you signed up from, and who invited whom), in showing you openings that fit your answers, in reminding you once about an application you started, and in the totals it looks at across the pool. You can object to these uses (see your rights).

Who can see it

You and ASV’s admins, the people at ASV who run the pool. Other applicants cannot see your profile, and nothing in the pool is published. ASV will not share your profile, your CV or your contact details with a client without asking you first. ASV’s service providers hold it for ASV.

ASV’s admins keep their own working notes on the pool, such as a status, tags and notes on a profile, a record of changes to it, and a note of each email ASV sent you about your application and whether it went out. They are for ASV’s use and are not shown in your account.

Your CV

Your CV is stored privately, in storage that only your own account and ASV’s admins can read, and never at a public address. Admins open it through links that expire after a minute. When you replace it, the old file is deleted.

How long ASV keeps it

Your application stays until you delete it. That includes an application you start and do not finish: what you saved stays until you delete it. ASV may also remove a profile that breaks the terms, such as a fake one.

Entries in the sign-in log are deleted after 90 days.

Your controls

Sign in and open your application to see your answers, edit any of them, replace your CV or delete your application. Deleting it removes your answers, your CV, your account, your entries in the sign-in log and ASV’s notes about you, all at once, and it cannot be undone. Copies in our database provider’s routine backups, where it keeps them, expire on its own schedule.

ASV relies on a small number of service providers to host the site and its email, store its data and files (CVs included) and handle sign-in. They process personal information only on our behalf, and only to run ASV. Some of them store or process it outside the country you live in, where data protection law may differ from yours. When you sign in with Google, Google confirms who you are under its own privacy policy. We do not sell personal information to anyone, or share it with advertisers.

You can ask ASV for a copy of the information it holds about you, including in a form you can take elsewhere; to correct it; to delete it; to stop using it for a purpose you object to; and to withdraw any consent you gave. You can do much of this yourself: sign in to see, edit or delete your application, and remove your ethnic group to withdraw that consent. For anything else, email support@asvalley.com from the address you joined with.

If you are not happy with ASV’s answer, you can complain to the data protection regulator where you live:

• in Nigeria, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission;
• in Kenya, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner;
• in South Africa, the Information Regulator;
• in Ghana, the Data Protection Commission;
• in the European Union or the UK, your local supervisory authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office).

When this policy changes, the date at the top of the page changes with it. If a change affects how we handle information you have already given us, we will tell members of the talent pool by email before it takes effect.

To ask about this policy, or about information ASV holds about you, email support@asvalley.com. If you email us, your address and your message are kept in ASV’s inbox so we can reply.