StartHub Cookie Policy
Effective date: October 9, 2026
Last updated: October 9, 2026
This Cookie Policy explains how StartHub Academy Inc. ("StartHub," "we," "us," or "our") uses cookies and similar technologies when you visit or use starthub.academy, www.starthub.academy (opens in new tab), founders.starthub.academy, admin.starthub.academy, and partner.starthub.academy, and the services offered through them (together, the "Service").
This policy should be read together with our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle personal information more broadly.
1. What Are Cookies and Similar Technologies?
Cookies are small text files stored in your browser or on your device. They let a website recognize your browser, keep you securely signed in, remember your choices, measure how the site is used, and support marketing and advertising.
We also use similar technologies, including browser local storage, pixels, tags, scripts, tracked links, and server-to-server event sharing. In this policy, "cookies" includes these similar technologies where relevant.
- Session cookies expire when you close your browser. Persistent cookies remain until their expiration date or until you delete them.
- First-party cookies are set by StartHub. Third-party cookies are set by another company whose technology appears on or supports the Service.
2. How StartHub Uses Cookies
We group cookies into five categories. Only the first is required for the Service to work.
| Category | What it does | Can you turn it off? |
|---|---|---|
| Necessary and security | Keeps you signed in, refreshes sessions, recognizes devices for account security, prevents cross-site request forgery and fraud, supports sign-in with Google or LinkedIn, and processes payments. | No. The Service cannot work without these. You can block them in your browser, but sign-in, checkout, and other core features will break. |
| Preferences and functionality | Remembers settings and work in progress, such as your language, time zone, recent selections, and unfinished drafts. | No. These support features you use and are not used to track you. Clearing your browser's site data removes them. |
| Analytics | Measures how visitors use the Service so we can fix problems and improve it. We currently use Google Analytics, our own first-party visitor tracking, and Microsoft Clarity, which includes session replay on our public pages (Section 4). | Yes, through Cookie settings (Section 3). |
| Marketing and advertising | Measures our advertising, attributes signups and purchases to campaigns, builds advertising audiences, and helps us personalize our communications. We currently use the Meta Pixel and the Meta Conversions API, along with email tracking. | Yes, through Cookie settings (Section 3). Email tracking is controlled separately (Section 6). |
| External media | Loads content hosted by other companies, such as YouTube videos, maps, or newsletter embeds where we use them. Our own video player is not in this category (Section 7). Those providers may set their own cookies when the content loads (Section 7). | Yes, through Cookie settings (Section 3). If you turn it off, some embedded content may not display until you allow it. |
Some pages also load content or services from third parties, such as payment, sign-in, video, and scheduling providers. Those providers may set their own cookies (Section 7).
3. Your Choices
When the cookie banner appears, you can choose Accept all, Reject all, or Manage preferences. You can change your choices at any time by visiting the public StartHub website (opens in new tab) and selecting Cookie settings in its footer. Necessary cookies cannot be turned off there.
United States. Analytics, marketing, and external media technologies are on by default. You can turn off any of these categories at any time through Cookie settings.
Everywhere else, including the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Quebec. We ask for your consent before setting analytics, marketing, or external media cookies. They stay off unless you accept them, and you can withdraw consent at any time through Cookie settings.
How we determine your region. We use the approximate location of your internet connection, based on your IP address. We do not use your browser language, time zone, or profile details. If we cannot reliably determine your location, we treat you as being outside the United States and ask for consent first. A choice you have made in Cookie settings always overrides these defaults.
Global Privacy Control (GPC). If your browser sends a GPC signal, we treat it as a request to opt out of marketing and advertising technologies for that browser. We also treat it as a request to opt out of "sale" or "sharing" of your personal information and of targeted advertising, as those terms are used in U.S. state privacy laws. We honor the signal automatically, even if you select Accept all, without you needing to change Cookie settings. GPC does not turn off Analytics; you can turn that off separately in Cookie settings.
How long your choice lasts. We remember your choice for about six months, across all StartHub sites. It applies to the browser and device you made it on. If you use another browser or device, or clear your cookies, you will need to choose again.
What turning things off does. When you reject or withdraw a category, we stop collecting further data for it and remove our own related cookies and browser storage. This does not undo data already collected. We also cannot delete cookies that other companies set on their own websites; you can remove those through your browser settings.
Signing out is not the same as withdrawing consent. Signing out ends your session and disconnects our marketing tracking from your account. Tracking that you have allowed, or that is on by default in your region, may continue without being linked to your account. Some settings and drafts stored on your device may also remain (Section 8).
4. Cookies We Use
The tables below list the cookies we use today. Where a cookie name contains {app}, it is set separately for our web (student), admin, and partner applications, for example __Host-starthub_v2_web_access_token. The __Host- prefix is a browser security feature that limits a cookie to our exact site address and secure connections. Third-party names and durations are controlled by those providers and may change.
StartHub cookies
| Cookie | Category | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
__Host-starthub_v2_{app}_access_token | Necessary | Keeps you signed in to the relevant StartHub application. | About 15 minutes |
__Host-starthub_v2_{app}_refresh_token | Necessary | Renews your session so you don't have to sign in repeatedly. | About 7 days |
starthub_v2_{app}_logged_in | Necessary | Tells the application a session may exist. It does not contain your sign-in credentials. | About 7 days |
starthub_v2_{app}_device_token | Necessary / security | Recognizes your device for account security and suspicious-activity checks. Set when you first open the application, even before you sign in. | About 1 year |
__Host-starthub_v2_{app}_session_id | Necessary / security | Links your browser's requests to the correct server session. | About 24 hours |
__Host-starthub_v2_{app}_csrf_token | Necessary / security | Protects against cross-site request forgery. | About 1 hour |
__Host-starthub_v2_{app}_csrf_secret | Necessary / security | Works with the token above to protect against cross-site request forgery. | Ends when you close your browser |
starthub_cookie_consent | Necessary | Stores your Cookie settings choices, including a refusal, across StartHub sites. | About 6 months (182 days) |
starthub-signup-completed-production | Marketing and advertising | Records when a signup was completed so earlier campaign information is not reused for a later signup. Contains only a timestamp. Set only when campaign attribution was allowed, and removed if you withdraw marketing consent. | 182 days |
Analytics
| Cookie | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
_ga | Google Analytics | Distinguishes visitors and measures use of the Service. | Up to about 400 days |
_ga_C11B7Q9XQ2 | Google Analytics | Maintains session state for our Google Analytics property. | Up to about 400 days |
Google's cookie information: policies.google.com/technologies/cookies (opens in new tab)
Session replay (Microsoft Clarity)
On selected public pages, we use Microsoft Clarity's heatmaps and session replay to see how visitors use the site so we can find confusing layouts and broken features. Clarity can create a replay of your visit: a reconstruction of the pages you saw and how you moved through them.
- What it captures: pages viewed, clicks, taps, scrolling, mouse movement, and basic device and browser details.
- How we protect what's on screen: we mask page text and form fields before Clarity starts, which is designed to keep what you type and page content out of replays. No masking method is perfect, so avoid entering sensitive information you don't need to share.
- Where it does not run: sign-in, signup, checkout, and account pages; the StartHub learning platform after you sign in; and our admin and partner portals.
- Who processes it: Microsoft stores replays for a limited period under its own privacy statement (opens in new tab). We use them only to improve the Service.
- How to turn it off: session replay is part of Analytics. Turning off Analytics in Cookie settings stops Clarity. Outside the United States, and wherever we cannot determine your location, Clarity does not run unless you allow Analytics.
| Cookie | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
_clck | Microsoft Clarity | Recognizes a returning browser across visits. | About 1 year |
_clsk | Microsoft Clarity | Groups page views into a single recorded visit. | About 24 hours |
CLID | Microsoft | Identifies a browser across Clarity-enabled sites. | About 1 year |
MUID | Microsoft | Identifies a browser across Microsoft services. | About 390 days |
SRM_B | Microsoft | Microsoft browser identifier used with MUID. | About 390 days |
MR | Microsoft | Refreshes the MUID cookie. | About 7 days |
SM | Microsoft | Supports Clarity data collection for the current browser session. | Ends when you close your browser |
ANONCHK | Microsoft | Checks whether MUID is passed to Microsoft analytics. | About 10 minutes |
Microsoft Clarity's privacy information: clarity.microsoft.com/privacy (opens in new tab)
Marketing and advertising
| Cookie | Provider | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
_fbp | Meta | Identifies your browser so Meta can measure our ads and attribute visits, signups, and purchases to them. | About 90 days |
_fbc | Meta | Set when you arrive from a Meta ad. Records the ad click for measurement. | Set by Meta; varies |
Meta's cookie policy: facebook.com/privacy/policies/cookies (opens in new tab)
StartHub visitor tracking
These first-party cookies let us recognize a returning browser and group page views into visits. They are set only when analytics or marketing is permitted. Your activity is linked to your account and email for personalized outreach (Section 5) only when marketing is permitted. In the United States, marketing is on by default unless you turn it off or send a GPC signal; elsewhere it requires your consent. If you withdraw, we stop collecting and remove these cookies.
| Cookie | Category | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
_sh_vid | Analytics and marketing | A random visitor ID that recognizes a returning browser. It does not contain your name, email, or account details. | 182 days |
_sh_sid | Analytics and marketing | A random session ID that groups page views into a single visit. Renewed while you are active. | 30 minutes |
_sh_sts | Analytics and marketing | Records your last activity so a visit ends after 30 minutes without activity. | 30 minutes |
_sh_actor | Marketing and advertising | Links your visits to your signed-in StartHub account, using a scrambled (hashed) form of your account ID. Removed when you sign out or when marketing is turned off. | 182 days |
5. How We Use Information Collected Through These Technologies
Measuring and improving the Service. We use analytics data to understand which pages and features are used, find problems, and improve the Service. If you have allowed Analytics, we may send your StartHub account ID (not your name or email) to Google Analytics when you sign up, so we can measure activity consistently.
Connecting activity to your contact record. When you identify yourself, we may connect your activity on the Service with your contact record in our internal marketing and customer-management systems. You identify yourself by, for example, creating an account, submitting a form, booking a call, or making a purchase. The activity we connect includes pages and programs you viewed and actions such as signing up or starting checkout. This can include activity from before you identified yourself, collected from the same browser.
Personalized outreach. We use your contact record to personalize our emails, phone calls, text messages (SMS), and WhatsApp messages about StartHub programs and offers. This includes your activity on the Service and the information you gave us. For example, a message may mention a program you viewed. You can stop this outreach at any time:
- Email: use the unsubscribe link in any marketing email.
- Text messages: reply STOP.
- WhatsApp: reply STOP or block our business number.
- Phone calls: tell the caller you don't want further calls.
- Any channel: email support@starthub.academy.
Advertising with Meta. We send information to Meta (Facebook and Instagram) to measure our ads, attribute signups and purchases, and reach people who may be interested in StartHub. We do this in three ways:
- The Meta Pixel runs in your browser and reports events such as page views, signups, leads, checkout starts, and purchases.
- The Meta Conversions API sends similar events directly from our servers to Meta. These events may include your email address in hashed (scrambled) form, an event or payment identifier, the Meta browser identifiers described in Section 4, your IP address, browser details, and the page address with extra parameters removed. Hashing makes the data harder to read, but it is not anonymous. Meta uses them to match the event to a Meta account. Purchase events also include the amount and currency.
- Customer lists. We may upload hashed contact information to Meta to create Custom Audiences and lookalike audiences, to exclude existing customers from ads, and to measure results.
Meta handles this information under its own privacy policy. To opt out:
- Browser tracking: turn off marketing and advertising in Cookie settings, or use GPC. This stops the Meta Pixel and the server-side events tied to that browser.
- Customer-list uploads: email support@starthub.academy and we will exclude you from future uploads.
- Ads you see on Meta: use Meta's own ad preferences.
Sale and sharing. We do not sell personal information for money. Some of our advertising activity with Meta may count as "sharing" or "targeted advertising" under certain U.S. state privacy laws. You can opt out as described above.
Turning off optional cookies stops new activity from being collected from that browser. It does not delete information we already hold. To ask us to delete or access your information, see our Privacy Policy or email support@starthub.academy.
6. Email Tracking
Our marketing emails contain small tracking images (pixels) and tracked links. They tell us whether you opened an email, which links you clicked, and when. They may also reveal your device type and approximate location based on your IP address. We add this to your contact record and use it to measure our emails and personalize future outreach.
Cookie settings on our website do not control email tracking. To limit it:
- Turn off automatic image loading in your email app.
- Unsubscribe using the link in any marketing email.
7. Third-Party Services
Some features rely on other companies' services. When those services load or you use them, the provider may receive information such as your IP address, browser details, and the page you are on. The provider may also set its own cookies under its own policy. We do not control those cookies, and their names and durations may change. Our video player, provided by Vimeo, is a core part of the Service and loads without External media consent, on both our public pages and the learning platform. We load it with Vimeo's Do Not Track option turned on, which tells Vimeo not to track your viewing session. Other embedded content, such as YouTube videos, maps, or newsletter embeds, falls under the External media category in Cookie settings.
| Service | When it may set cookies | Provider policy |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe (payments) | During checkout and in the billing portal, on Stripe's hosted pages, including fraud-prevention cookies. | stripe.com/legal/cookies-policy (opens in new tab) |
| Google sign-in | When you choose to sign in with Google, on Google's domains. | policies.google.com/privacy (opens in new tab) |
| LinkedIn sign-in | When you choose to sign in with LinkedIn, on LinkedIn's domains. | linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy (opens in new tab) |
| Vimeo (video) | On pages that include Vimeo video, which may happen before you press play. We load Vimeo's player with its Do Not Track option turned on. Vimeo may still set cookies such as a visitor identifier (vuid, about 400 days) and a security cookie (__cf_bm, about 30 minutes). | vimeo.com/cookie_policy (opens in new tab) |
| YouTube (video) | On pages with embedded YouTube video, or when you play it. | policies.google.com/privacy (opens in new tab) |
| Calendly (scheduling) | When you follow a link to book a call, on Calendly's own website. | calendly.com/privacy (opens in new tab) |
| Google Maps and Substack | Where map or publication content is embedded. | policies.google.com/privacy (opens in new tab); substack.com/privacy (opens in new tab) |
Partner deals and discounts. Some links in our Deals & Discounts section go through affiliate networks such as PartnerStack, CJ, or Impact, or directly to the partner company. When you click one, the network or partner may set cookies on its own domains to record that you came from StartHub. StartHub does not set affiliate-tracking cookies. The network's or partner's own privacy policy applies to that tracking.
8. Browser Storage
We also store small amounts of information in your browser's local storage and session storage.
| Key | Type | Category | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
starthub-first-touch | Local storage | Marketing and advertising | Records how you first arrived (source, landing page, referring site, and campaign details) so we can attribute your signup. Not collected if you send a GPC signal. | 30 days, or until you complete signup or marketing is turned off |
meta-purchase:{payment ID} | Local storage | Marketing | Notes that a purchase was reported to Meta so it is not reported twice. | 30 days, or until marketing is turned off |
lastExternalReferrer and lastExternalReferrerTime | Local storage | Marketing and advertising | Used by Meta's tools to record the external site that sent you to StartHub, and when, for ad attribution. | 90 days, or until marketing is turned off |
starthub:freemium-prompts:v1:{account ID} | Local storage | Marketing and advertising | Remembers your recent activity in free content and which upgrade prompts you dismissed, so prompts appear at sensible times. Only saved when marketing is permitted. May remain after you sign out. | Until you clear your browser storage |
preferredLocale | Local storage | Preferences and functionality | Your chosen language. | Until you clear your browser storage |
preferredTimezone and preferredTimeFormat | Local storage | Preferences and functionality | Your time zone and 12- or 24-hour display choice. | Until you clear your browser storage |
recent-country-filter-codes | Local storage | Preferences and functionality | Up to three countries you recently selected in country filters. | Until you clear your browser storage |
community-add-post-draft:account:{account ID}:channel:{channel ID} | Local storage | Preferences and functionality | Saves your unfinished community post for that channel so you don't lose it. | Until you post or discard the draft, or clear your browser storage |
starthub.mfaLoginChallenge and other starthub.mfa.* keys | Session storage | Necessary | Lets you finish a two-factor sign-in or a security-settings change if the page reloads. | Ends when you finish the step or close the tab |
_cltk | Session storage | Analytics | Used by Microsoft Clarity to support session replay during your visit. Removed if you turn off Analytics. | Ends when you close the tab |
We may also pass campaign information between our sites in a temporary link parameter (signup_touch). It is removed from the address bar as soon as it is read.
Keys in the Analytics and Marketing categories follow your Cookie settings. Necessary and Preferences keys support features you use and are not affected by Cookie settings. Signing out does not remove local storage; clearing your browser's site data does.
9. Other Ways to Manage Cookies
Browser controls. Most browsers let you view, block, and delete cookies. Blocking necessary cookies will stop sign-in, checkout, and other core features from working.
Provider controls. Some providers offer their own opt-outs:
- Google Analytics: the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on (opens in new tab).
- Meta: ad preferences in your Facebook or Instagram settings.
Do Not Track. There is no common industry standard for browser Do Not Track signals. Our own first-party visitor tracking (Section 4) and our server-side Meta events (Section 5) treat a Do Not Track signal as a refusal. Other technologies on the Service may not respond to Do Not Track, so use Cookie settings to turn them off. We also honor Global Privacy Control as described in Section 3.
10. Changes to This Policy
We will update this policy when our technologies, providers, or legal obligations change. We will post the updated version here and change the "Last updated" date. If a change is material, we may also notify you through the Service or by email.
11. Contact Us
Questions about this Cookie Policy can be sent to:
StartHub Academy Inc.
Email: support@starthub.academy