Privacy policy

Who we are

FDE Interview Prep, at fdeinterviewprep.com, is run by SourceStrongAI (“we”, “us”). We decide what data the site collects and what it is used for, so we are responsible for it. Where data protection law uses the term, we are the controller. Write to [email protected] with any question or request about your data.

What we collect, and why

Only what the site needs to work for you. Each item says why we hold it.

Your account

Your email address, and your name and profile picture if Google shares them or you add a name in Settings.

Why: to sign you in and to know the account is yours.

How you sign in

Which way you use: Google, or a link we email you. If you use Google (or GitHub, where we offer it), that service confirms who you are and shares your name, email address and profile picture. It also issues sign-in tokens, which we keep with your account and use for nothing else. We never see your Google password, mail, contacts or files. A sign-in link works for 15 minutes, and we store only a one-way hash of it.

Why: to let you in without a password.

Your sessions

For each time you sign in: when the session started and when it ends, and the IP address and browser it came from.

Why: to keep you signed in, and to spot a session that is not yours.

Your setup answers

Your interview date, the companies you are aiming for, your background and the kind of FDE role you want.

Why: to put what you practice first in the right order.

Your practice

Each case you run: the conversation with the AI customer, with the time on the clock for each message, the notes on your board, your score and its feedback, and which versions of the AI and its instructions ran it. We also note the lessons you have read.

Why: to show your work back to you, score it, and show your progress. The score is feedback for your practice. It is not shared with anyone, and nothing is decided about you with it.

Your AI usage

How many requests the AI customer and the scoring made for you each day, and how much text they read and wrote.

Why: to keep the daily limits and our costs in check.

Your listening

Where you stopped in each lesson’s audio. If you use your private podcast feed: a one-way hash of its secret address, never the address itself, and when your podcast app last fetched it.

Why: so a lesson picks up where you left it on any device, and your feed stays private.

Your email choices

Which optional emails you want from us.

Why: to send only those.

Your subscription and payments

Whether you pay monthly or yearly, the subscription’s status, its free trial and paid periods, and whether it is set to end. For each payment: the amount, the currency, the country the price was set for, the dates, Stripe’s reference numbers and links to Stripe’s receipts. Stripe holds your card details: we never see or store your card number.

Why: to give you Pro, bill you correctly, and keep the records the law asks of a business.

Product events

Records of steps you take, such as reading a lesson, starting and finishing a case, starting a checkout, or a payment that failed, with your account id and nothing else that names you. They stay in our own database, and no analytics company receives them.

Why: to see what works and fix what does not.

Abuse counters

Short-lived counts of requests per email address, stored as a keyed hash, and per network address, to limit sign-in links and AI requests.

Why: to stop the site being flooded or run up. They are deleted within about a day.

When you write to us

Your message and your email address.

Why: to answer you.

We do not sell your data or share it for advertising. We show no ads, our pages load no third-party tracking or analytics scripts, and our fonts are served from our own domain.

Our legal bases

Where the law asks us to name a reason for using your data, these are ours.

• To provide what you signed up for: your account, your practice and scores, audio and Pro. We need the data to do what you asked, under our agreement with you.
• To keep the site secure, working and improving: sessions, abuse counters and product events. This is our legitimate interest in running a safe service that works, and you can object to it (section 7).
• To keep payment records: because accounting and tax law requires it.
• Optional emails: your consent, which you can take back at any time in Settings, under Email.

Who processes it for us

These services handle data for us, only to do the job described, under their own terms and privacy policies.

OpenAI

Runs the AI customer and the scoring. When you practice, the case, your messages and your board go to OpenAI’s API, with a one-way code made from your account id so OpenAI can flag abuse without knowing who you are. Your name and email address are never sent. We send each request with OpenAI’s storage option turned off, so it keeps no copy for later retrieval. Under its API terms, OpenAI may hold request data for a limited time to monitor abuse, and does not use it to train its models by default.

Stripe

Takes payments for Pro and runs the subscription and its free trial. You enter your card on Stripe’s checkout page, and manage your subscription on Stripe’s billing page; both are on Stripe’s own site. Stripe holds your card details and your billing address, works out any tax, and keeps its own records under its own privacy policy.

Resend

Delivers our emails: sign-in links, the welcome email, notices about your trial, receipts, and notices about your account. It receives your email address and the message.

Our hosting and database providers

Store the data above and serve the site. Lesson audio is served from our own storage, so playing a lesson sends nothing to anyone else.

Cookies and browser storage

We set only the cookies the site needs to work. None is for advertising or for tracking you across sites.

better-auth.session_tokenUp to a month after your last visit

Keeps you signed in. Over a secure connection its name starts with __Secure-. Signing out removes it.

better-auth.stateA few minutes

Protects a Google sign-in from being forged while you are on Google’s page.

fde_signed_in30 days

Tells a page to show your account button instead of Get started. It holds no identity.

checkout_intentAn hour

Holds the plan you chose, and the price you were shown, while you sign in to buy it.

Stripe’s cookiesStripe’s policy

Stripe sets its own on its checkout and billing pages, which are on its site, not ours.

Some choices stay in your browser’s storage and are never sent to us: your theme (theme), your recent searches (fde:search:recent), a draft you type in a question’s practice box (fde:answer: and the question), the audio player’s speed and your place in each lesson (fdeip.audio.), and the kind of role you picked on the curriculum page (fde-curriculum-lean). Signed in, your place in a lesson’s audio is also saved to your account, as above. Your browser’s settings for this site clear them all.

How long we keep it

• Your account and everything in it (setup answers, practice, listening, email choices, events and AI usage): until you delete your account. Then it is deleted at once, in one step.
• Sessions: a session ends when you sign out, or after a month without use. Its record goes with your account.
• Sign-in links: each one stops working after 15 minutes, or once it is used.
• Abuse counters: deleted within about a day.
• Payment records: kept after you delete your account, for as long as accounting and tax law requires, with your account id, your country and the receipt links removed. What stays is Stripe’s reference numbers, the amounts, the currency, the price tier and the dates. Stripe keeps its own records under its own policy.
• Emails you send us: as long as we need them to help you. Ask and we delete them, unless the law requires us to keep them.
• Backups: deleted data can stay in our database provider’s backups until those backups expire.

Your choices and rights

Most of this you can do yourself, straight away, in Settings:

• Download your data: Settings, under Your data, gives you one file with everything we hold about you, in a format other services can read.
• Delete your account: Settings, under Your data. It deletes your account and everything in it at once, and cancels a running subscription straight away. It cannot be undone.
• Correct your details: Settings, under Profile, for your name, your onsite date, the kind of role, your background and your target companies. To change your email address, write to us.
• Choose your emails: Settings, under Email. Sign-in links, receipts and notices about your account and trial always come, because the service needs them.

You also have the right to ask what we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to how we use it or ask us to limit it, to take it elsewhere, and to take back a consent you gave. We give these rights to everyone, wherever you live. Write to [email protected] from the address on your account, so we know the request is yours. We answer within 30 days, and it costs nothing. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Children

FDE Interview Prep is for adults preparing for work. It is not for anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has an account, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.

Data sent abroad

We and the services above may store and process your data in the United States and in other countries whose data protection laws differ from yours. Where the law requires safeguards for this, we rely on the ones those services offer in their data processing terms, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

How we protect it

• The site is served only over encrypted connections.
• There are no passwords to steal: sign-in links, and your podcast feed’s address, are stored only as one-way hashes.
• Our cookies are sent only to this site, and the session cookie cannot be read by the page’s scripts.
• Your card details go to Stripe and never reach our servers.
• Requests are rate-limited, and only the people who run the site can reach its data.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you, and the authorities, as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change matters to you, such as new data collected, a new service that processes it or a new use for it, we email account holders at least 30 days before it applies.

Contact

SourceStrongAI runs FDE Interview Prep. Write to [email protected] about your data or this policy. The rules for using the site are in the terms of use, canceling and refunds are in cancellation and refunds, every way to reach us is on Contact, and About says who we are.