Privacy Policy

ARC Collaboration LLC

Effective date: 1 September 2026 — Last updated: 1 September 2026

1. Introduction and scope

ARC Collaboration LLC (“ARC,” “we,” “us,” “our”) is a Wyoming limited liability company with its principal place of business at 30 N Gould St Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801. This Privacy Policy describes how ARC collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects personal information in connection with the ARC platform at arcollaboration.com (the “Platform”).

It applies to all users — public visitors, registered members, and verified independent researchers — and covers the website, the member portal, and associated services.

ARC seeks to comply with applicable US state privacy law and applies consistent privacy standards to all users regardless of state of residence. Wyoming has not enacted a comprehensive consumer privacy statute; ARC therefore extends the substantive rights described in §6 to all users, rather than only to residents of states whose law requires them.

This Policy does not apply to third-party services you reach from the Platform, or to the independent practices of our identity verification provider or payment processors, each of which operates under its own policy.

2. The short version

We collect the minimum needed to run a membership platform and issue a verification designation.
We do not receive or store your identity documents. Verification is performed by an independent provider; we receive only the outcome.
We do not receive or store full payment card details.
We do not sell personal information and do not share it for advertising.
We record which content you access, because engagement with ARC’s content pathways is one of the three components of the VIR designation.
ARC has no partners. We do not share member information with distributors, suppliers, or any commercial party, except the status confirmation you yourself initiate under §4.

3. Information we collect

3.1 Information you provide directly

Account registration. Name, email address, and a password (stored hashed).

Membership and payment. We receive confirmation of payment status and membership dates from our payment processor. We store membership status, subscription start and end dates, renewal status, and any promotional code used. We do not store full payment card details.

Account settings and preferences. Profile information, notification preferences, and any badge identifier display settings you choose.

Research Readiness Assessment responses. Your responses, score, pass or continue-learning status, attempt history, and the date of any status award. This is private to your account.

Research log and personal notes. Any content you enter into the private research log, saved content, or notes features within the member portal. This content is private to your account and is not visible to ARC staff except as needed for technical support you specifically request.

Communications. The content of any message you send us through the Platform’s feedback or support mechanism.

Consent and acknowledgment records. Where you affirmatively acknowledge something at a decision point — such as acknowledging that sitting the Research Readiness Assessment inside the refund window ends your refund eligibility, or initiating a verification check — ARC records that acknowledgment with a timestamp and the version of the text you were shown.

3.2 Information collected automatically

Content access and progress data. Which content pages you access, time spent, and progress through defined content pathways, to populate your progress dashboard and support the verification pathway. Not used for advertising and not sold.

Log data. IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URL, pages visited — for security, debugging, and aggregate analytics.

Cookies and similar technologies. For authentication, security, and basic functionality. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. See §7.

Device information. General device type and browser information, to ensure proper display.

3.3 What we do not collect

We do not ask for, and do not want:

health information, medical history, diagnoses, symptoms, or treatment information;
information about any compound you may acquire, possess, or work with;
government identity documents, images of them, selfies, facial scans, or other biometric identifiers.

Please do not enter health information or research subject information into any field on the Platform.

3.4 Third-party identity verification

When a member pursues VIR status, identity verification is conducted by a legally authorized, recognized, independent third-party identity verification provider — not by ARC.

The verification takes place entirely within the provider’s own environment, under the provider’s own security standards and privacy policy. You interact with the provider directly, and by proceeding you agree to that provider’s terms and privacy policy, presented to you at the time of verification. Your identity documents, images, and any biometric processing the provider performs are governed by the provider’s agreement with you, not by this Policy. The provider retains that information under its own retention schedule, independently of ARC.

ARC does not receive, collect, or store: government-issued identity documents or images of them; photographs, selfies, facial scans, facial geometry, or any other biometric identifier or biometric information; or identity attributes beyond what §3.1 describes.

ARC receives only: the verification outcome (confirmed or not confirmed); the timestamp of completion; and a reference identifier generated by the provider.

This separation is deliberate and structural: it allows identity to be independently confirmed without ARC holding sensitive identity data at all.

3.5 Children

The Platform is for adults aged eighteen and over. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under eighteen. If we learn we have, we will delete it. Contact info@arcollaboration.com.

4. How we use your information

Providing the Platform. Delivering content and functionality, maintaining your account, processing your membership and renewals, and improving the Platform.

Member portal functionality. Populating your progress dashboard, storing your research-log entries, and managing your verification status display, including your badge identifier and its active or inactive state.

Verification pathway. Tracking content-pathway completion and assessment performance to support your progression toward, and maintenance of, VIR status.

Billing communications. Receipts, renewal notices under the Terms of Use, and payment notifications.

Security and compliance. Protecting the Platform and its users, detecting and preventing fraud, credential sharing, and assessment misconduct, and complying with legal obligations.

Service communications. Account confirmations, significant platform updates, and compliance notifications. You cannot opt out of these while you hold an account.

Optional updates. Only with your explicit consent, and you may stop them at any time. We do not send marketing communications without your consent.

Aggregate analytics. Understanding Platform use in aggregate, anonymized terms.

Legal obligations. Retaining and disclosing information as required by applicable law and enforcing our Terms.

5. How we share your information

ARC does not sell personal information, does not share it for advertising, and has no partners, affiliates, resellers, or referral arrangements. We share personal information only as follows.

Service providers. Providers who help operate the Platform — payment processor, cloud hosting, email service, identity verification provider, analytics — each contractually required to use your information only to provide services to ARC and to maintain appropriate security.

Verification checks you initiate. If you choose to present or enter your ARC badge identifier with a third party and initiate a verification check, that party may query ARC to confirm your status. In response, ARC discloses only whether your status is active or inactive and, if active, your membership end date. ARC discloses no other personal information through this check.

This disclosure occurs only as a result of your own action in presenting your badge identifier and initiating the check. A third party that queries ARC is not a partner, agent, or affiliate of ARC, and ARC makes no representation to any such party.

ARC records your consent at the point you initiate a check, capturing the date and time, the version of the consent text shown to you, and the party to whom confirmation was given. You can review this record in your member portal.

Professional advisers. Legal, accounting, and audit, as needed.

Legal requirements. Where required by law, subpoena, court order, or other legal process, or where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect safety, or investigate fraud.

Business transfers. If ARC is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, with notice to you before it becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

6. Your privacy rights

Subject to applicable law, and extended by ARC to all users regardless of location, you may:

know and access — the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected, the sources, purposes, and categories of third parties with whom we share;
correct inaccurate personal information;
delete personal information, subject to §8 and legal retention obligations;
obtain a portable copy of your information;
opt out of optional communications at any time; and
close your account at any time.

We do not sell personal information, do not share it for targeted advertising, and do not engage in profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

To exercise any of these rights, contact info@arcollaboration.com. We verify your identity through your account before acting, and respond within the period applicable law requires, or within forty-five (45) days where none is specified.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights. Your membership, access, and designation are unaffected, except as described in §8.

Appeals. If we refuse a request, you may appeal by writing to info@arcollaboration.com with “Privacy Appeal” in the subject line. If your appeal is denied, you may contact your state attorney general.

7. Cookies and similar technologies

We use strictly necessary cookies (authentication, session, security — these cannot be disabled without breaking the Platform), preference cookies, and analytics cookies. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

You can control cookies through your browser; blocking strictly necessary cookies will prevent you from signing in. Where required, we present a consent mechanism before setting non-essential cookies, and we honor Global Privacy Control signals where required by law.

8. How long we keep it

Data	Retention
Account and profile — no VIR designation issued	While your account is open; deleted or de-identified twelve (12) months after closure
Account and profile — VIR designation issued	Retained for the reactivation period under the Terms of Use, being five (5) years from your Assessment passing date or your last active date, whichever is later; deleted or de-identified after that period unless you have reactivated
Billing records	As required by tax and accounting law, generally seven (7) years
Research log and personal notes	While your account is open; deleted on account closure
Content access and progress	While your account is open. Where a VIR designation has been issued, retained for the same five (5) year reactivation period, so that your progress is restored if you reactivate; otherwise deleted or de-identified twelve (12) months after closure
Assessment records	Five (5) years, for designation integrity
Verification record	Retained as an immutable, timestamped record — see below
Log data	Twelve (12) months
Support correspondence	Three (3) years
Verification-check consent records	Three (3) years from the date of each check
Refund-waiver acknowledgments	Seven (7) years, alongside billing records

On the reactivation period. If you hold a VIR designation, the Terms of Use allow you to reactivate inactive status for five years from your passing date or last active date, whichever is later. Your account and progress record are retained for that period so that reactivation restores what you had, rather than leaving you with a designation attached to an empty account. If you do not reactivate within that period, the account and progress record are deleted or de-identified; the verification record itself is retained as described below.

On the verification record. A VIR designation attests that a specific verification occurred on a specific date. Its value depends on the record being contemporaneous and incapable of being reconstructed or backdated. ARC therefore retains the verification record — badge identifier, issue date, verification status and timestamp, provider reference, and the name under which it was issued — after your membership lapses, so that your status can be reactivated under the Terms of Use and so the attestation remains verifiable.

ARC’s record is held independently of the identity verification provider. The provider retains its own verification history for a limited period under its own policy, after which it cannot corroborate the record. ARC’s attestation does not depend on the provider’s continued retention.

If you ask us to delete your personal information and you hold a VIR designation, we will explain the consequence before acting: deletion of the verification record permanently and irreversibly voids the designation and cannot be undone. You may choose that. We will not retain the record against your wishes where you have a right to deletion, but we cannot restore the designation afterward.

9. Security

We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of what we hold, including encryption in transit, hashed passwords, access controls on a need-to-know basis, and vendor diligence. Deliberately holding no identity documents and no full card data is itself a security measure.

No system is perfectly secure and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

If a breach affecting your personal information occurs, ARC will investigate promptly, take reasonable steps to contain and remediate it, and notify affected members and any regulator as required by applicable law, within the timeframes that law requires. Where the law sets no timeframe, ARC will notify affected members without unreasonable delay after confirming the breach and its scope. The notice will describe what happened, the categories of information involved, what ARC has done, and what you can do.

10. Third-party links

ARC documentation cites published scientific literature and links to third-party sources, including journals, databases, and repositories. Those sites are not ours and are governed by their own policies. A citation is not an endorsement.

10A. Accessibility

ARC is committed to making the Platform accessible, including the mechanisms for exercising the rights in §6. If you have difficulty accessing this Policy or exercising any right described in it, contact info@arcollaboration.com and ARC will provide the information and assistance in an accessible format. See the ARC Accessibility Statement.

11. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy. Material changes take effect thirty (30) days after we post the revised Policy and notify registered members by email. The “last updated” date always reflects the current version. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance.

12. Contact

ARC Collaboration LLC 30 N Gould St Suite R Sheridan, WY 82801

info@arcollaboration.com