Privacy Policy

This policy explains how Digi Clovers LLC (“we”, “us”) handles your personal data when you use UDL — Ultimate Designers Lab: the website at udl.community and the UDL apps for iPhone and Android. It covers what we collect, why, where it is stored, who can see it, and what you can do about it.

We follow Egypt’s Personal Data Protection Law No. 151 of 2020 and its executive regulations. For any question or request about your data, email hello@udl.community.

Who is responsible for your data

Digi Clovers LLC runs UDL and decides how and why your personal data is used. That makes us the data controller. UDL was founded by Ahmed Qurany. Our contact details are at the end of this page.

What we collect

Your account. Your name, email address and password. We store the password only as a one-way hash, never the password itself. We also record whether you have confirmed your email address.

Your sign-up choices. When you create an account on your own, you confirm that you are 16 or older, or 13 to 15 with your parent’s or guardian’s permission, and we record when you confirmed it. We also record whether you ticked “Send me UDL news and design tips”, and when, and any later change you make in Settings.

Your profile, if you add to it. Username, profile photo, cover image, bio, design level, interests, and portfolio and social links. If you enter a phone number when we ask you to complete your profile, only our staff can see it, and we use it only to contact you about your account.

What you post and send. Posts, comments, images and files, voice notes and voice comments, chat messages (one to one and in groups) and their attachments, challenge submissions, curriculum contributions, reports you file, and feedback or bug reports, including any screenshot you attach.

Your activity. Your progress through the curriculum and courses, quiz results, XP, levels and badges, reactions, bookmarks, follows, mentions, and RSVPs to live sessions.

Your settings. Notification and email choices, the accounts you block, and your light or dark theme.

Membership. If you buy Pro on the website, Stripe collects your payment details. We keep your plan, its status and renewal or end date, and the Stripe customer and subscription identifiers. We never see or store your card number. If you pay by bank transfer instead, see “Paying by bank transfer” below.

Devices and notifications. If you allow notifications, we store a push token for your phone (with the platform and app version) or your browser’s push subscription. When you sign in, fail to sign in or sign out, on the website or in the app, we keep a log entry with the time, the device name, the app or browser version and a shortened IP address, but no email address or password. We keep this log for 180 days.

Security data. To stop abuse, such as repeated sign-in attempts, we count requests against a hashed (scrambled) form of your IP address for short periods. Our servers also keep technical logs, which can include IP addresses, to run and protect the service.

Emails we send you. Our news and marketing emails, which you get only if you opted in, contain links unique to you, so we can tell whether an email was opened and which link was clicked. For a click we record the time, your browser type and a hashed IP address.

Forms and invitations. If you fill in a form on our website, we store what you enter (for example name, email, phone and answers) and a hashed IP address. If someone invites you to UDL, we store your email address to send the invitation.

What we do not collect. Your location, your contacts, your browsing on other sites or apps, or advertising identifiers. The app asks for the camera or the microphone only when you choose to take a photo or record a voice note, and nothing records in the background.

Paying by bank transfer

In Egypt you can pay for Pro in Egyptian pounds by InstaPay or Vodafone Cash instead of a card. It is optional.

What you give us. The amount you transferred and the date, the name or the wallet number you transferred from (as you type it), and the receipt: a screenshot, photo or PDF of the transfer. You give us this so we can match your transfer to your account and switch your plan on, and so a person on our team can check it when the match is not automatic. We do not ask for your card or bank login.

What we read from the confirmation message. The bank and Vodafone send a text message to the UDL team’s phone when money arrives. A phone automation forwards that message to our server. We keep only the parts we need: the amount, the sender’s name or the last 4 digits of the sender’s wallet number, the transaction reference and the date. We never store the account balance, and we never keep a full phone or account number: numbers are cut to their last 4 digits. The text of the message itself is deleted 7 days after it is matched to a payment (7 days after it arrives if it never matches).

Who sees it. The receipt sits in private storage and only our administrators can open it, through a link that works for a few minutes. Other members never see it.

How long we keep it. Receipts are deleted 12 months after the payment is closed (confirmed, declined or expired). The record of the payment itself (plan, amount, dates) is kept as long as tax and accounting law requires. If you delete your account, your receipts and the name or number you typed are deleted at once.

A plan paid by transfer does not renew by itself. We remind you by email and notification 3 days before it ends and on the day it ends.

Why we use it

To create and run your account, sign you in and keep it secure.
To run the community: show your profile and posts, deliver chat, critique and replies.
To deliver the curriculum, courses, challenges and live sessions, and save your progress.
To send the emails the service needs (email confirmation, password reset, membership receipts and changes, invitations).
To send push notifications you allowed, in the categories you keep switched on.
To send news about UDL and design tips, such as new spaces, courses and sessions, but only if you opted in: the box at sign-up is unticked unless you tick it, and you can switch it on or off at any time in Settings. Every such email has an unsubscribe link.
To take payment for Pro memberships and manage renewals and cancellations.
To moderate content, handle reports and blocks, and protect members from abuse.
To fix problems and keep the service working.
To meet our legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for advertising.

Our legal basis

We process your personal data on one or more of these grounds:

Your consent. You give it when you create an account and accept this policy, when you tick the box to receive our news and design tips, when you allow notifications on your device, and when you choose to send us something. You can withdraw it at any time. Withdrawing does not affect processing that already happened, but some features may stop working.
Our agreement with you. We need the data to provide the service described in our Terms of Use.
The law. For example, keeping payment records, or answering a lawful request from a court or authority.
Protecting members and the service. Security, abuse prevention and moderation, where this does not override your rights and freedoms.

What other people can see

Other members who are signed in can see your name, username, profile photo, cover, bio, links, level, XP and badges, and your posts and comments wherever they are allowed to read them. Public posts are visible to all members, Pro-only posts to Pro members, and posts in a private space to that space’s members.
People who are not signed in cannot see posts or member profiles. Profile photos and cover images are stored as public files, though: anyone who has the exact link to one of those images can open it.
Chat messages are visible to the people in that conversation.
Our staff (administrators and moderators) can see content and the account details needed to run the service, including your email address and phone number. They do not browse private chats. When someone reports a chat message, they can read that message and up to 10 messages before and after it, to understand what happened.
Your email address and phone number are never shown to other members.
If you give us a testimonial and agree to it being published, it appears on our public website with the name and photo you agreed to.

Live sessions

Live sessions take place on an outside video-meeting service linked from the session page, and that service handles what you share there under its own policy.

Some sessions are recorded. We keep recordings for as long as UDL runs, and we share them with members. A recording can show and record what you say and, if your camera is on, how you look. If you do not want to appear, keep your camera and microphone off.

We may also publish a written transcript of a recorded session. A transcript can include what members said in the session. Transcripts are shown only to signed-in members: they are never public and search engines do not index them.

You can ask us to remove your part of a recording or a transcript. Email hello@udl.community or use the report option, and we remove it within 24 hours.

We may use clips of the host’s teaching to present UDL.

Ulti, the UDL assistant

Ulti is the AI assistant inside UDL. You can chat with it from the Chat inbox and from the Ulti button on every page. Ulti is an AI, not a person. This section explains what happens to your data when you use it.

What we process.

Your questions and messages to Ulti.
Images you upload to Ulti (up to 4 per question) and anything visible in them.
The conversation (the thread): Ulti’s answers, the sources it showed, and the labels on them.
Your learning profile, if it is switched on (see below).
Your ratings of Ulti’s answers (helpful or not, and the reason if you give one).
Your consent to Ulti, when you gave it, and your confirmation that you are 16 or older.
Technical records of each run: the time, the model used, its size in tokens, its cost and whether it succeeded. These records are not linked to the content of your questions.

Who processes it. Anthropic, PBC (United States) provides the AI models that write Ulti’s answers. It acts as our service provider and receives your question, the recent turns of the thread, your uploaded images and the UDL content Ulti needs to answer. We do not send your name, your email address or your profile details. Under Anthropic’s commercial terms, it does not use our API data to train its models, and it deletes it automatically after a limited period (currently up to 30 days), except where content is flagged under its usage policy. Anthropic’s processing happens on servers outside Egypt. It is covered by the consent you give when you first use Ulti, in the same way as the transfers described in “Service providers and transfers outside Egypt”.

Who can use Ulti. Ulti is only for members who are 16 or older. The first time you use it you confirm that you are 16 or older, and we keep that confirmation with your consent. Members aged 13 to 15 cannot use Ulti, even with a parent’s permission.

A beta for Founding Members. Ulti is currently a beta, open to Founding Members only. We may open it to other members later. When we do, this section applies to them in the same way.

How long we keep your conversations. Threads are kept until you delete them. You can delete one thread or all of them at any time from Ulti. Images you uploaded are kept with the thread. When you delete your account, all your Ulti threads, images, ratings and your learning profile are erased with it. We do not delete threads automatically.

Your learning profile. After a thread has been quiet for a while, a smaller AI model (Claude Haiku) writes a short summary of it. We use these summaries to build your learning profile: the topics you ask about, the gaps that come back, your approximate level and the next topics or courses we suggest. You can open the profile at any time (“What Ulti understands about you”), turn it off, and clear it. When it is off, Ulti does not build it and does not use it. Turning it back on does not rebuild it from old threads unless you ask. We do not use the profile for marketing emails unless you have opted in to them.

Frequent questions, without your name. Even if your learning profile is off, we use your questions, without your name or any account identifier, to find questions that many members ask. These feed the “Frequently asked” page for Pro members. A frequent question is only published after Ahmed has approved it, and an answer is never shown with the name of the person who asked.

When Ulti asks Ahmed. If UDL content does not answer your question, Ulti tells you it will ask Ahmed and sends him a message. Ahmed then sees your question, the answer Ulti wrote and the two turns before them, not the whole thread. Because he replies to you, he can see who asked. If you turned on “UDL only”, Ulti sends the question without writing a general answer. Ahmed’s reply may be saved as an official UDL answer, edited by him, and reused for other members. When it is reused, you are never named.

When you report an answer. If you report an answer from Ulti, our moderators review it. The moderation screen shows them the reported answer and the question it answered, and nothing else from the thread. A report is the only way our moderators read your messages with Ulti, apart from the question Ulti sends to Ahmed. If you delete the conversation after reporting an answer, it disappears from your account but we keep the whole conversation, with its messages and images, until 12 months after the report is resolved (or 12 months after it was filed, if it was never resolved), and then we delete it. While it is kept, the moderation screen still shows only the reported answer and its question.

Improving Ulti. We use conversations, without names, to improve Ulti and to prepare future features such as a mock interview mode. This includes your ratings, Ulti’s findings on designs, and Ahmed’s answers and edits. We remove your name and account identifiers first. This use is on by default, and you can turn it off at any time: open Ulti, go to “What Ulti understands about you”, and switch off “Use my conversations (without my name) to improve Ulti”. When it is off, we do not use your conversations, your images or your ratings to improve Ulti, and we delete the improvement records already made from them. Your ratings stay visible to you on your own answers. The anonymous list of frequent questions is not affected by this switch: it holds no names and stays on. Turning it off does not change how Ulti answers you. Free text can still contain details that identify a person, so please follow the caution below.

What we do not do. We do not use Ulti conversations for marketing without your opt-in. We do not sell them. We do not use them to build advertising profiles.

Free and Pro members. Free members can ask Ulti about the platform only, up to 5 questions a day. Their messages are handled under this section too.

Your rights. Under Egypt’s Personal Data Protection Law No. 151 of 2020, you can ask what we hold, get a copy, correct it, erase it, restrict it, object to it and withdraw your consent. For Ulti you can do most of this yourself: delete threads, view and clear the learning profile, switch the profile off, and delete your account. For anything else, write to hello@udl.community from your account email. You can withdraw your consent to Ulti at any time by deleting your threads and not using Ulti; the questions you have already sent cannot be taken back from the provider before its retention period ends.

Caution. Please do not put other people’s personal data, passwords or confidential client material in your questions or images.

Service providers and transfers outside Egypt

We use these companies to run UDL. They process personal data for us, only for the purposes in this policy.

Hetzner Online GmbH hosts our application server and main database: your account, profile, content, messages and activity.
Cloudflare, Inc. (R2 storage) stores uploaded files, such as images, covers, profile photos, voice notes, attachments and videos, and our encrypted backups.
Resend sends our emails. It receives your email address, your name and the content of the email.
Anthropic, PBC provides the AI models behind Ulti. It receives your questions to Ulti, uploaded images, the recent turns of the thread and the UDL content needed to answer, but not your name or email. See Ulti, the UDL assistant.
Stripe takes payment for Pro memberships on the website. Stripe also handles your payment details under its own privacy policy.
Expo (650 Industries, Inc.) relays the app’s push notifications to Apple Push Notification service or Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which deliver them to your phone. A notification can include a short preview, such as the sender’s name and the start of a message.
Your browser’s push service (for example from Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft) delivers website notifications, if you allow them in your browser.
Google and Apple, only if you choose to sign in with them. They tell us who you are; see Signing in with Google or Apple.
YouTube (Google) and Vimeo: some lessons and posts embed their video players. When a page with an embedded video loads, that provider can receive your IP address and device details under its own privacy policy. For YouTube we use its privacy-enhanced mode.

Artificial intelligence

Ulti, the UDL assistant, sends member content to an AI provider; see Ulti, the UDL assistant. If you connect an AI assistant to your own account yourself, that is your choice and it is covered in Apps you connect.

Transfers outside Egypt

These providers store and process data on servers outside Egypt, for example in the European Union and the United States. Using UDL therefore means your personal data is transferred to, and processed in, other countries.

Egypt’s Law No. 151 of 2020 restricts transfers of personal data abroad. We rely on your explicit consent to these transfers, which you give when you create your account and accept this policy. Sending your questions to Anthropic for Ulti rests on the separate consent Ulti asks for the first time you use it. The transfers are also needed to provide the service you asked for. If you do not agree, please do not create an account. You can withdraw your consent by deleting your account, which erases your personal data (see When you delete your account).

Other disclosures

We may disclose personal data when a law, a court or a competent authority requires it, or when it is needed to protect the safety of members or the rights of others. If UDL moves to another company, for example a new company that takes over the service, your data moves with it, this policy keeps applying, and we will tell you before it happens.

Apps you connect

UDL lets you authorise another app to connect to your account. We show you a consent screen first. Once you approve, that app can read and act on your account with your permissions, and it handles what it receives under its own policy. Only connect apps you trust. To disconnect one, email hello@udl.community and we will revoke its access.

Cookies and similar storage

Sign-in cookie. Keeps you signed in on the website, for up to 30 days or until you sign out. The sign-in system also sets short-lived security cookies, for example to protect forms and to return you to the page you were on.
Layout cookie. Remembers how you left the app’s side menu.
Browser storage. Remembers your theme, reading settings, panel layout, and whether you dismissed the install prompt. It stays on your device.
In the app, your sign-in tokens are kept in your phone’s secure storage.

We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, and there are no third-party analytics or advertising tools in the website or the apps. We do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites. Embedded video players are run by their providers, which may use their own storage.

How long we keep data

While your account is open, we keep your data so the service works. You can edit or remove much of it yourself:

A post you delete is hidden from everyone at once. Its record stays in our database until we erase it.
A comment you delete is removed.
Unsending a chat message removes its text and attachments. The other person sees that a message was unsent.
A push token is removed when you sign out, switch notifications off in your phone’s settings, or when the app is no longer on the device.

When you delete your account

You can delete your account in the app (Profile, then Settings, then Delete account) or on the website (your profile’s Settings tab, then Account). You confirm it with your password. If you cannot sign in, use our account deletion page: enter your email address and we send you a link that works once, for one hour. Opening it and confirming deletes the account. Administrator accounts cannot use that page. The steps are on our Support page. This is what happens:

If you have a Pro membership that renews, we cancel it first so you are not charged again. If the cancellation fails, nothing is deleted and you see an error.
Your personal data is erased at once, and this cannot be undone. That means your name, username, email address, password, profile photo, cover, bio, links and every other profile detail; your chat messages and their attachments, and your place in every conversation; your voice notes and voice comments; your progress, quiz and assessment results, XP and badges; your follows, blocks, reactions, bookmarks, RSVPs and notifications; your curriculum contributions and bug reports; your sign-ins on every device, app and connected app, your sign-in log and your push tokens; and our email records about you (your contact record, form answers and the history of the emails we sent you). The files behind your photo, cover, voice notes, attachments and contributions are deleted from storage.
What stays: the posts and comments you shared (their text and images) and your challenge submissions stay where you posted them, shown as “Deleted member”, with no photo, no name and no link to a profile. If you want some of them gone too, delete them before you delete your account, or email hello@udl.community and tell us which. Reports you filed stay as moderation records, without your name.
Kept because the law requires it: Stripe keeps its own records of your payments. We keep only the identifiers and the status of your membership that link those records to our books, for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
Kept so we never email you again: your email address goes on our do-not-email list. It is used only to make sure no news email reaches you.
Kept because someone reported it: content another member reported (a chat message, a voice comment, or your profile) is not erased. Moderators keep it to handle the report and any complaint or legal claim that follows. A reported message is hidden from everyone else and only moderators can read it. If you were reported as a member, a copy of your profile as it was (name, username, bio, photo and cover) is kept for the same reason. If the report is still open, your sign-in log is kept too, until its 180 days are up.
Records of Ulti runs stay without any link to you (no name, no account identifier), for cost and safety statistics.
A testimonial you agreed to publish stays on the website, without any link to an account, unless you ask us to remove it.

Cannot sign in any more? Use the account deletion page, or email hello@udl.community from the address on your account and we will delete it for you.

Other retention

Backups. We back up the database and uploaded files every day. Backups are encrypted and kept for about five weeks (7 daily and 4 weekly database copies, and 28 days of files), then deleted automatically. Data erased from the service can remain in a backup until it expires.
Unsubscribing. If you unsubscribe from our emails, switch them off in Settings or delete your account, we keep your email address on a do-not-email list so we do not write to you again. If you later opt in again, you come off the list.
Abuse-prevention counters expire within an hour.
Sign-in logs. Every sign-in, failed sign-in and sign-out, on the website or in the app, is logged with the time, the device or browser name and a shortened IP address, with no email address. We keep these logs for 180 days, then delete them. They are deleted when you delete your account, unless an open report about you or your content still needs them; then they stay until their 180 days are up. A failed sign-in is not tied to an account, so it stays until its 180 days are up.
Clips viewing history. To order the Clips you see, we record which clips you watch and for how long, how you moved through them (for example skipping, rewinding or sharing), and which of your taps and gestures you used, together with the device type and connection speed. This is kept separately from your XP and saved items. You can turn it off at any time in Settings (“Keep Clips personal to me”), and clear it with “Reset my suggestions”. When it is off, nothing is recorded and Clips are shown newest first. We keep this history for 180 days, then delete it, and it is deleted when you delete your account. Speed and loading measurements are kept for three months without your name or account.
Recordings and transcripts of live sessions are kept for as long as UDL runs. Your part is removed when you ask (see Live sessions).
Account-deletion link requests (the address you typed and a one-time code) are deleted after 7 days, or at once when the account is deleted.
Reports and moderation decisions are kept as long as they are needed to keep members safe and enforce our Terms.
Copyright notices and counter-notices (the sender’s name, contact details and signature, the notice text and our decision) are kept for 3 years after the case closes, then deleted. If you are a member and sent a counter-notice, your details in it are erased when you delete your account, unless the complainant’s time to start a court action is still running.
Removal requests for private intimate images (the sender’s name, email, signature and the links) are kept for 12 months after they are closed, then deleted, together with any files we removed for a valid request. A short log line of what was removed, with no names or links, is kept for 3 years. To stop a removed image being uploaded again we also keep its fingerprint (a one-way code, not the image) on a block list until our staff lift the block.
Ulti conversations are kept until you delete them or delete your account. Learning-profile summaries are deleted with the thread they came from. Frequent-question groups and improvement data hold no names and may stay after you leave. Anthropic deletes the data it receives for Ulti automatically after a limited period (currently up to 30 days). A conversation with a reported answer is kept for 12 months after the report is resolved, then deleted, even if you delete the conversation earlier.
Payment and tax records are kept as long as the law requires.
Transfer receipts and the text of transfer confirmation messages (see “Paying by bank transfer”): receipts 12 months after the payment closes; the message text 7 days after it is matched.

Your rights

Under Egypt’s Law No. 151 of 2020 you have the right to:

know what personal data we hold about you, and access it;
obtain a copy of it;
have it corrected, completed or updated;
have it erased, or its processing restricted to a specific scope;
object to its processing, or to the results of processing, where they conflict with your fundamental rights and freedoms;
withdraw your consent at any time;
be told of any breach of your personal data.

How to use them

You can do a lot yourself: edit your profile, change notification and email settings, unsubscribe from emails, block members, and delete your account, which erases your personal data. For anything else, email hello@udl.community from the address on your account and tell us what you want. We may ask you to confirm it is you before we act. We reply within the time the law sets.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to Egypt’s Personal Data Protection Center.

Members outside Egypt

If the law where you live gives you further rights, for example the EU or UK GDPR, we honour requests under that law too. Send them to the same address.

Security

Passwords are stored only as one-way hashes.
Connections to the website and the apps are encrypted (HTTPS).
Post images, chat files, voice notes and videos are kept in private storage, and we check that you are allowed to see a file before we serve it.
Backups are encrypted before they leave our server.
IP addresses used for abuse prevention and forms are stored hashed.
Changing or resetting your password signs out every existing session.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will tell you and the Personal Data Protection Center as the law requires.

Children

You must be 16 or older to use UDL. If you are 13, 14 or 15, you may use UDL only with your parent’s or guardian’s permission. UDL is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. When you create an account you confirm that one of these applies to you, and we record when you confirmed it. If the law of your country sets a higher age, that age applies. Ulti, the UDL assistant, is stricter: it is only for members who are 16 or older, and members aged 13 to 15 cannot use it even with permission (see Ulti, the UDL assistant).

Parents and guardians. If your child uses UDL without your permission, or you believe a child under 13 has signed up, email hello@udl.community with the account’s email address or username. We may ask you to confirm that you are the parent or guardian, and we will then delete the account, which erases its personal data as described in When you delete your account.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when the service or the law changes. We will change the date at the top, and for a significant change we will tell members by email or in the service before it takes effect. If a change needs your consent, we will ask for it.

Contact

For privacy questions and requests, and to reach us for any other reason:

Operator and data controller: Digi Clovers LLC
Service: UDL — Ultimate Designers Lab (udl.community)
Founder: Ahmed Qurany
Postal address: 447 Broadway, 2nd Floor, #1578, New York, NY 10013, United States
Email: hello@udl.community