TC Academy Instructor Applicant Privacy Notice

Controller: Style Free LLC (合同会社スタイルフリー). TC Academy is a service operated by Style Free LLC. This notice applies to people who send the instructor pre-application inquiry form and to people who submit a formal instructor application in the TC Academy Portal.

Information collected

(1) Pre-application inquiry form (e-mail). Through the pre-application inquiry form we collect: full name; display or professional name (optional); email address; phone number; country or region of residence; languages you use; whether you can teach online; preferred course format; subjects and techniques you can teach; background and track record; teaching experience; available days and time slots; the course you would like to run with TC Academy; a self introduction; website or social URL (optional); other notes (optional); and your confirmations that you are at least 18 years old and that you have read this notice. Shopify may process technical information necessary to provide and secure the form and operate the store. The inquiry e-mail received by the operator may include a country code.

(2) Formal instructor application in the TC Academy Portal. After signing in with your Shopify account we collect: full name; contact; country or region; time zone; languages; what you want to teach; relevant experience, background and qualifications; who you can teach; what and how far you can teach; lesson format; and how you run a lesson (required); plus teaching style, applicant self-introduction, achievement URL and supplementary information (optional). We also record your Shopify customer identifier (customer ID and sign-in e-mail address) and the history and timestamps of draft saves, submission, review, follow-up questions, answers and related application handling. A draft is stored on our server as soon as you save it.

At the inquiry and application stages, do not provide identity documents, selfie-with-ID images, bank/payment-service information, My Number, passport number, detailed address, sensitive health information, passwords, or other information that is not required for the application. Identity verification, when required, has a separate notice and uses Stripe's official screen.

Purposes and legal-basis approach

We use information to receive and review instructor inquiries and applications, to contact applicants, to communicate about courses, agreements and related arrangements, to consider course content and delivery formats, to keep records of application handling, and for misuse prevention and security. For overseas applicants, we may rely on steps before entering into a contract requested by the applicant and legitimate interests in review, records and security. Reading or acknowledging this notice does not state that consent is the legal basis for all processing.

Services, retention, rights, and automation

Shopify provides the pre-application inquiry form and store, and Google/Gmail receives inquiry e-mail. For the formal Portal application, Shopify Customer Accounts handles sign-in and the TC Academy server on Render in Singapore stores the application. Authorized operations staff review only the information they need. We do not sell personal information or provide it to unrelated third parties except where required by law. Information from overseas applicants is handled in Japan and services may process it in multiple countries; safeguards required by applicable law are used without asserting unconfirmed processing locations or transfer mechanisms.

Not selected, withdrawal, closed contact, incomplete application, or no reply: delete within six months after last contact.
Selected applicants: move only agreement/tax/operations information to separate management and delete unnecessary application information within six months.
After deletion from active application records, limited copies may remain temporarily in security backups; such copies are isolated from ordinary business use and removed according to the applicable service's retention and deletion process.

Requests: TC Academy contact page; begin the message with “Privacy Request.” Rights may require identity verification and are not unconditional. Complaints may be made to Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission or, where applicable, a local supervisory authority. TC Academy does not determine the outcome of instructor applications solely through AI or other automated processing. An operations representative is involved in the final decision. We will update this notice if this practice changes.

Submitting a formal instructor application is not acceptance of the Instructor Terms and is not an electronic signature. Identity verification has a separate notice and uses Stripe's official screen.

Version: applicant-privacy-2026-09-19.1 (revised 2026-09-19)