Privacy policy

Effective: 2026-04-26 · Last updated: 2026-04-26

Controller and contact

Certbond is operated by Lagerbolag 1, a Swedish corporation registered in Stockholm. We act as the data controller for the personal data described below. Data Protection Officer: [email protected]. General data-protection inquiries: [email protected]. The DPO function is currently held by the founder on an interim basis; an external, independent DPO is on roadmap.

What we collect and why

The data we process depends on whether you are a website visitor, a consultant member, or a partner-company contact.

Legal basis (GDPR Art. 6)

We rely on the following legal bases:

• Performance of contract — for account creation, profile management, credential verification, retainer administration, transactional email.
• Legal obligation — for KYB/KYC, sanctions screening, tax and bookkeeping records.
• Consent — for optional features: profile indexing in partner search, sharing your profile with partners, marketing email, optional LinkedIn periodic refetch.
• Legitimate interest — for security, abuse prevention, and the audit trail required to run a credentialled marketplace.

Consents you give us

Certbond keeps a tamper-evident record of consent. Each grant or withdrawal is recorded with the policy version and timestamp. You can review and change any optional consent at app.certbond.com/profile/privacy. Required consents (for transactional email when you have an active obligation, and for the audit log) are necessary to operate the service responsibly; they cannot be withdrawn separately from closing your account.

AI-generated content (EU AI Act)

Where you opt in, we use an AI provider to draft a professional bio from your own profile content. The output is shown to you before publication, and you can edit or discard it. The provider does not use your input or our output to train its models. Our match algorithm is decision-support — the partner decides, the consultant accepts. We do not make wholly automated decisions producing legal effects on data subjects within the meaning of GDPR Art. 22.

LinkedIn integration

Identity for consultants is anchored to LinkedIn. We use LinkedIn for two distinct purposes today, and have applied for a third planned use:

• LinkedIn OIDC sign-in — LinkedIn authenticates you and returns your member ID, name, country and (where you have shared it) email. This is the basis for your Certbond account.
• LinkedIn paste-text import — if you copy your profile text into our onboarding form, we parse it locally to populate your headline, bio and listed certifications. Stored on EU infrastructure.
• LinkedIn Marketing Developer Platform (DMP) API — planned periodic profile refresh, pending LinkedIn’s review. When granted, the integration will operate only with your explicit, separate, off-by-default consent. It will refresh only fields you have authorised — headline, current position, bio, listed certifications — and never connections, messages or contact information. Stored on EU infrastructure, never shared with third parties beyond Certbond’s storage sub-processor, and never used to train any machine-learning model. Withdrawal is honoured immediately and logged in your activity log. We comply specifically with the LinkedIn Marketing Developer Platform Agreement, the LinkedIn Member Data Restrictions, and the LinkedIn Platform Use Policy as published at developer.linkedin.com/legal.

Certification verification

Every certification you list is verified at the source before it is shown to partners. We use the verification mechanism the issuing vendor offers — public registry, badge directory or vendor API. We never trust self-reported credentials. If a credential later expires or is revoked, we detect it via the source signal where supported, mark your profile and notify the affected partner.

Identity and business checks

Before a partner can sign a retainer or a consultant can receive their first payout, we run identity and business-legitimacy checks via a regulated KYB/KYC provider in the EU. This satisfies AML directives. The provider stores the underlying identity documents under their own retention rules; Certbond stores only the result of the check (pass / fail / manual review) and a reference identifier.

Payments

Money flow runs through a regulated payment processor in the EU. Project-level hourly billing is negotiated and paid directly between partner and consultant after retainer activation; it does not flow through Certbond.

Email and messaging

We send transactional and (with opt-in) marketing email through an email provider with EU data residency. In-platform messages between partner and consultant are stored on our EU infrastructure, visible only to the conversation participants and Certbond support staff investigating abuse reports. We do not read messages for analytics or model training.

Audit log and your activity

Every meaningful action on your account creates an audit-log entry. You can see your own complete log at app.certbond.com/profile/activity. Certbond administrators can view this log for fraud, abuse and security investigation, under the consent you grant when joining.

Cookies and local storage

We use a minimal set of strictly-necessary first-party cookies (authentication session, language preference, bot-management). We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party analytics that follow you across sites. None of these cookies require consent under ePrivacy because they are either strictly necessary or activated by your own setting choice.

Sub-processors

Certbond uses a small set of third-party processors to operate the service. Each is bound by a Data Processing Agreement (Art. 28 GDPR) and processes data only on documented instructions from us. Categories include: EU-resident hosting and database, authentication, transactional email, payment processing, KYB/KYC screening, credential verification, and an opt-in AI-text provider for bio generation.

The current named sub-processor list (with company name, jurisdiction, data location and transfer mechanism) is provided to authenticated members at app.certbond.com/profile/sub-processors, and to Controllers under our DPA on request. We notify members in advance of additions or replacements.

International transfers

Our primary infrastructure is in the EU. Where data is transferred outside the EU/EEA — for the LinkedIn integration, the opt-in AI-bio provider, or where applicable a payment processor — the transfer is covered by Standard Contractual Clauses (EU 2021/914) and, where the destination has an adequacy decision under GDPR Art. 45, that adequacy framework. We perform Transfer Impact Assessments before onboarding any non-EU sub-processor.

Retention

We retain personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, and as required by applicable law:

• Active member profile — while your account is open.
• Closed account — 30-day grace period (cancellable), then hard-deleted from the live system.
• Consent ledger — retained as required to demonstrate consent under GDPR Art. 7(1).
• Audit log — retained for security investigation purposes.
• Invoices, payouts and accounting records — retained as required by Swedish bookkeeping law (Bokföringslagen).
• KYB / KYC results — retained as required by AML directives.

Your rights (GDPR Art. 15–22)

You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, port, and object to processing of your personal data, and to withdraw consent at any time. Self-service for most rights:

• Access and portability — /profile/data exports a complete report.
• Rectification — /profile/edit.
• Erasure — /profile/delete, with 30-day grace period.
• Consent management — /profile/privacy.
• Restriction or objection — email [email protected].

We respond within 30 days, extendable to 60 days for complex requests with notification. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority (in Sweden: Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, imy.se).

Deletion and retention exceptions

When you request deletion: if you have an active obligation (live retainer, pending payout) it is rejected with an explanation; otherwise, the account is marked deletion-scheduled with a 30-day cancellable grace period, after which we hard-delete identity, profile and credentials, and anonymise references in shared records. Records retained by legal obligation (consent ledger, accounting records, KYB/KYC references) are minimised and contain no profile content.

Security and resilience

We apply industry-standard technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk. We notify the supervisory authority within 72 hours of becoming aware of a personal-data breach affecting you, and you within reasonable time as required by GDPR Art. 33–34.

Although Certbond is currently outside the formal scope of NIS2 (small entity), we operate to its baseline because our partner-company customers are in scope and require equivalent measures of their suppliers. Our security disclosure channel and high-level posture are at certbond.com/security.

Children

Certbond is not intended for individuals under 18. Identity for consultants is anchored to LinkedIn sign-in, and LinkedIn’s own Member Agreement requires users to be at least 16 (or 18 in jurisdictions where that is the age of digital consent), so the OIDC-anchoring acts as a de-facto age gate. We do not knowingly process data of minors.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when our practices change. The version and effective date at the top change with every material update. For substantive changes affecting consent, you will see a banner asking you to re-confirm under the new version.

Contact and supervisory authority

Privacy questions and requests: [email protected] (DPO: [email protected]). We respond within 30 days.

Supervisory authority: Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten (IMY), imy.se. You also have the right to complain to the supervisory authority in your country of residence.

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