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Privacy policy

GitHub

GitHub General Privacy Statement

C

Risk score

48of 100

In short

  • You are accepting that GitHub collects extensive personal data, including your code, location, and device details.
  • They share this information with affiliates like Microsoft, third-party partners for advertising, and other users.
  • You also agree to automated tracking technologies and inferences drawn from your activity.

What you accept

If you use this site

Everyday words for the material promises and rights you give up. Each line includes a quote from the document.

Fineprint cannot see whether you agreed. This page is posted on their site. Open the original if you need to know how they say it applies.

  1. 01

    You are agreeing to let GitHub process your personal data for business operations, safety, and product improvement using AI and machine learning.

    This product

    “This includes improving features, developing new offerings, enhancing safety and security capabilities, and training models.”
  2. 02

    You are agreeing that if you use an organization-provided account, your employer or school becomes the Data Controller for most of your data.

    This product

    “When a school or employer supplies your GitHub account, they assume the role of Data Controller for most Personal Data used in our Services.”
  3. 03

    You are agreeing to share your personal data with affiliates like Microsoft and third-party advertisers.

    Other products, stores, or brands

    “Personal Data may be shared with GitHub affiliates, including Microsoft... Partners and Resellers: We cooperate with third-parties that offer sales, consulting, support, and technical services...”

What it can cost you

Downsides we could quote

Quoted clauses that can affect your privacy, money, or right to go to court — including terms that follow you to other products.

Highest-cost clauses first

High cost

Tracking you across apps

You are agreeing to have your interactions tracked and your inferred characteristics shared with third parties for advertising.

“We and/or our partners also share the information we collect or infer with third parties for these purposes. ... track your interaction with the Services, develop inferences... across Services for various purposes, including targeted advertising.”

What that means: Your online activities are tracked and shared with advertisers who build profiles about you.

GitHub and its partners track user interactions across services and share inferred information with third parties for targeted advertising.

Medium cost

Data sold or shared with third parties

You are agreeing to share your data with advertising networks and analytics providers for marketing purposes.

“We 'shared' the following categories of personal information... We shared each category to or with advertising networks, data analytics providers, and social networks. ... The business or commercial purpose of sharing personal information is to assist us with marketing, advertising, and audience measurement.”

What that means: Your personal information is provided to ad tech companies for marketing and audience measurement.

Under California law definitions, GitHub explicitly states it 'shares' data with advertising networks and analytics providers for marketing purposes.

Medium cost

Indefinite retention

You are agreeing to allow them to keep your data for as long as they need to for legal or business reasons.

“We’ll retain your Personal Data as long as your account is active and as needed to fulfill contractual obligations, comply with legal requirements, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements.”

What that means: Your data remains on their servers for an indefinite amount of time, even after you stop using the service actively.

Data is kept indefinitely while the account is active and for vague periods to satisfy legal or dispute needs.

Medium cost

Broad license to user content

You are agreeing to let them use your content and data to train and improve their AI technologies.

“User Content and Files: When you use our Services, we collect Personal Data included as part of the information you provide such as code, inputs, AI outputs, text, documents, images, or feedback. ... This includes improving features, developing new offerings, enhancing safety and security capabilities, and training models.”

What that means: Your code and content are used to train their AI systems.

GitHub uses user content, including code and AI inputs, to train and improve their artificial intelligence models.

Lower cost

Location or sensitive-data over-collection

You are agreeing to let them collect your demographic details and regional location data.

“Geolocation Information: Depending on the Service's functionality, we collect regional geolocation data. ... Demographic information: In some cases, you provide us with ethnicity, gender, or similar demographic details.”

What that means: They collect sensitive personal attributes and your general location.

The document lists collection of geographic location and demographic details like gender and ethnicity.

Lower cost

Cookie consent that favors Accept

You are agreeing to accept non-essential tracking cookies by default unless you manually opt out.

“If you disable the non-essential cookies on the Enterprise Marketing Pages, the ads, content, and marketing you see may be less relevant. ... If you enable a browser extension designed to block tracking... non-essential cookies... may be disabled.”

What that means: You must actively change settings to stop all non-essential tracking and ads.

Users can opt-out via settings or extensions, but the default setting allows non-essential cookies for personalized ads unless changed.

Lower cost

Terms follow you to parks, stores, and other products

You are agreeing to send your browser information to third-party services when you use their buttons on GitHub.

“Our Services may contain links or buttons that lead to third-party services like Twitter or LinkedIn. Use of these features may result in data collection. Engaging with these buttons, tools, or content may automatically send certain browser information to these companies.”

What that means: Your data is sent to outside companies just by interacting with standard web buttons on GitHub.

Interacting with embedded third-party buttons (Twitter/LinkedIn) sends data directly to those external services.

Where this can follow you

Names that appear in this document for other apps, parks, stores, or brands. A click here can be used there.

  • Affiliates and sister brands

If these terms already apply to you

Keep this list. Fineprint cannot undo or cancel something you already agreed to at the company.

We cannot see Agree on their site. With Premium, tap “I accepted these terms” if you already agreed to what GitHub asks.