Terms of service

MAD HAT — TERMS OF SERVICE

Last updated: August 4, 2026

OVERVIEW

Welcome to Mad Hat. The terms "we", "us" and "our" refer to Mad Hat, which operates Mad Hat Labs.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") describe your rights and responsibilities when you use the Services. "Services" means all of the following, whether accessed on a paid or free basis:

  • the Mad Hat and Mad Hat Labs websites and online store;
  • the Mad Hat Labs training platform, including all courses, lessons, written materials, videos, and downloadable files;
  • the Mad Hat Labs hands-on lab environments, including any cloud tenant, subscription, portal, or account we provision for you (the "Lab Environments");
  • the Mad Hat Labs exam preparation tool and any other free tools or applications we make available;
  • the Mad Hat Stacker game and any leaderboards, rankings, XP, badges, or progression features;
  • the Mad Hat Discord server and any other community space we operate;
  • any Mad Hat mobile application; and
  • any physical products we sell.

These Terms include important information about your legal rights, including automatic renewal of subscriptions, refund limits, warranty disclaimers, limitations of liability, and a one-year deadline for bringing claims.

By accessing or using the Services, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.

SECTION 1 — ELIGIBILITY AND ACCOUNTS

1.1 Minimum age. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or purchase from us. If you are under 18, you may use the Services only with the consent of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to be bound by these Terms on your behalf.

1.2 Accurate information. You agree to provide accurate, current and complete information when you register or purchase, and to keep it updated — including your email address and payment details. If we cannot reach you or charge you, we cannot maintain your access.

1.3 One account per person. Accounts are personal to you. You may not create multiple accounts to obtain free-tier access repeatedly, to reset progress-gated content, or to circumvent any purchase, rate limit, or eligibility restriction.

1.4 No sharing, transfer or resale. You may not transfer, sell, assign, license, sublicense, or share your account or credentials with any other person, and you may not permit concurrent use of your account by anyone else. Course access, subscription access, and Lab Environment access are single-seat and non-transferable.

1.5 Your responsibility. You are solely responsible for maintaining the security of your credentials and for all activity under your account, including all activity in any Lab Environment provisioned to you. Notify us immediately at support@madhat.io if you suspect unauthorized use.

1.6 Team and organizational use. These Terms cover individual accounts only. If you want access for a team, multiple employees, or a classroom, contact us at support@madhat.io first. Buying individual seats and sharing them across a team is a breach of these Terms.

SECTION 2 — WHAT WE SELL

2.1 Digital training products. Mad Hat Labs sells access to online cybersecurity training, including written lessons, videos, interactive content, capture-the-flag style challenges, and hands-on Lab Environments. These are digital services and digital content, not physical goods. Access is licensed, not sold.

2.2 Purchase models. We currently offer:

  • Subscription access — recurring access to designated courses and labs for as long as your subscription remains active (Section 5);
  • One-time course purchases — access to a specific named course (Section 7);
  • Free tiers and free tools — certain lessons, chapters, and tools offered at no charge (Section 8); and
  • Physical products — a limited range of merchandise fulfilled by a third-party print-on-demand provider (Section 18).

Which content is included in which product is described on the applicable product or pricing page at the time of purchase. That description controls.

2.3 We can change the content. Courses, lessons, labs, flags, and features are updated, added, replaced, and retired over time. We may modify, restructure, or remove any content at any time, including content you have already purchased or completed, provided we do not materially reduce the core subject matter of a one-time-purchase course you have already paid for. Cloud platforms change constantly; content that reflects a vendor's current interface will not reflect it forever.

2.4 Accuracy of representation. We make every effort to describe our products accurately. We do not warrant that any product will meet your expectations, match your specific job role, or correspond to any particular certification exam blueprint version.

SECTION 3 — YOUR LICENSE TO OUR MATERIALS

3.1 License grant. Subject to these Terms and your payment of all applicable fees, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the course materials for your own individual learning and professional development, including applying the skills you learn in your own work.

3.2 What you may do. You may view, complete, and take notes on the materials. You may download any file we expressly provide for download — scripts, exports, worksheets, CSVs — and use it on your own systems for your own learning.

3.3 What you may not do. You may not:

  • (a) reproduce, republish, distribute, sell, rent, sublicense, or otherwise make the materials available to any other person;
  • (b) post lesson text, lab walkthroughs, videos, screenshots, or flag values publicly or in any private group, repository, or shared drive;
  • (c) create derivative training products from our materials;
  • (d) use the materials to train, fine-tune, or ground any machine learning model, or to build any competing training product or dataset;
  • (e) scrape, bulk-download, or systematically extract the materials by any means; or
  • (f) remove or obscure any proprietary notice.

3.4 Skills vs. materials. Nothing in this Section restricts your use of the knowledge and skills you acquire. You may use what you learn in your job, in client work, or in your own projects. The restriction applies to our content.

SECTION 4 — ORDERS AND BILLING

4.1 Orders. When you place an order you are making an offer to purchase. We may accept or decline any order at our discretion. Your order is accepted only when we confirm acceptance and your payment has been processed.

4.2 Prices. Prices, discounts, and promotions are subject to change. The price charged is the price displayed at the time your order is placed and confirmed, except for recurring subscription charges, which are governed by Sections 5 and 6. Posted prices exclude taxes unless stated otherwise.

4.3 Payment authorization. You represent that the payment information you provide is accurate, that you are authorized to use the payment method, and that you will pay all charges incurred at the posted prices plus applicable taxes.

4.4 Promotions. Promotional terms govern over these Terms where the two conflict, but only for the specific promotion.

SECTION 5 — SUBSCRIPTIONS AND AUTOMATIC RENEWAL

This section describes recurring charges. Read it.

5.1 Automatic renewal. Subscription plans renew automatically. By subscribing, you authorize us to charge your payment method the then-current subscription fee, plus applicable taxes, on a recurring monthly basis, until you cancel. Your subscription continues until cancelled by you or terminated by us.

5.2 Billing date. Your billing date is the date your initial subscription order is accepted. Each renewal charge is made on or around the same day of each subsequent month. Where a month has no corresponding day, the charge is made on the last day of that month.

5.3 What your subscription includes. An active subscription grants access to the courses, labs, and features designated as subscription-included at that time. Access is contingent on your subscription being active. It is not a purchase of the content and does not survive cancellation.

5.4 How to cancel. You may cancel at any time, and cancelling is at least as easy as signing up. You can cancel yourself from your account page using the subscription management link, which is also included in every order confirmation and renewal email. You may also cancel by emailing support@madhat.io from the address on your account; we will process email cancellations within two business days of receipt, effective as of the date you sent the request.

5.5 Effect of cancellation. Cancellation stops future renewals. Your access continues through the end of the billing period you have already paid for and ends at that time. We do not provide partial-period or prorated refunds on cancellation except as required by law.

5.6 Failed payments. If a renewal charge fails, we may suspend or remove your access to subscription content and Lab Environments without further notice, and may retry the charge. If payment is not resolved within 14 days, we may terminate the subscription. Your progress records — completed lessons, submitted flags, XP — are retained for 12 months after termination unless you ask us to delete them.

5.7 Price changes. We may change subscription pricing. Any change to the recurring price of an existing subscription takes effect only on a renewal date, and we will give you at least 30 days' advance notice by email before that renewal. If you do not want to pay the new price, cancel before that renewal date. Continuing your subscription after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the new price. This does not apply to locked rates covered by Section 6.

5.8 Renewal notices. Your order confirmation states your renewal terms, and every renewal charge generates a receipt sent to the email address on your account. We may also send advance renewal reminders but do not commit to doing so except where required by applicable law.

5.9 No stacking. You may hold only one active subscription per account. If a duplicate subscription is created, we will cancel the duplicate and refund it in full.

SECTION 6 — FOUNDING AND LEGACY RATES

6.1 Rate locks. From time to time we offer promotional, founding-member, or legacy subscription rates below our standard price. Where we have told you your rate is locked, that lock is subject to this Section.

6.2 The lock applies only while your subscription is continuously active. A locked rate survives ordinary renewals. It terminates permanently if:

  • (a) you cancel your subscription, for any reason, even briefly;
  • (b) your subscription lapses due to a failed payment not resolved within the period in Section 5.6; or
  • (c) we terminate your subscription for breach of these Terms.

If you resubscribe after any of the above, you pay the then-current standard rate.

6.3 What the lock covers. A locked rate applies to the subscription plan you purchased and to the content included in that plan as it exists and as we later change it under Section 2.3. It does not create any entitlement to:

  • new products, tiers, or plans we introduce later at separate pricing;
  • one-time course purchases;
  • any lab, module, or feature we designate at launch as an add-on or higher-tier offering; or
  • indefinite access to content whose delivery cost materially changes.

6.4 Cost-driven change. Some labs may require dedicated per-user cloud resources rather than shared, read-only ones. We reserve the right to offer such labs as a separate paid add-on or higher tier rather than including them in any legacy-rate plan.

6.5 Discontinuation. If we discontinue a legacy plan entirely, we will give you at least 60 days' notice by email and the option to move to a current plan at the then-current price.

SECTION 7 — ONE-TIME COURSE PURCHASES

7.1 What you get. A one-time course purchase grants you access to that named course for as long as we continue to offer it, subject to these Terms. This is commonly described as "lifetime access," which means the lifetime of the product, not your lifetime.

7.2 Discontinuation. If we permanently retire a course you purchased outright, we will give you at least 60 days' notice by email. If the retirement occurs within 12 months of your purchase, we will refund you in full. After 12 months, no refund is due.

7.3 Scope. A one-time purchase covers that course only. It does not include subscription-only labs, future courses, or community features unless expressly stated on the product page at the time of purchase.

7.4 Updates. Updates and corrections to a purchased course are included. Substantial new modules may, at our discretion, be offered as a separate product.

SECTION 8 — FREE TIERS AND FREE TOOLS

8.1 Free content. We offer certain lessons, chapters, and tools at no charge. Free access is provided as is and may be modified, limited, gated, or withdrawn at any time without notice.

8.2 Free tools. Free tools, including the exam preparation drills, are provided for study purposes only. They are not official exam content, are not endorsed by any certification body or cloud vendor, and are not a substitute for the vendor's own documentation. Exam objectives change; each tool displays the date its content was last aligned.

8.3 No account guarantee. Where a free tool works without an account or carries progress from your existing account, we do not guarantee that progress, scores, or history will be retained.

SECTION 9 — REFUNDS

This Section is our refund policy. It applies in full and supersedes any general refund language elsewhere on the site.

9.1 Subscriptions. Subscription fees, including renewal charges, are non-refundable. You may cancel at any time under Section 5.4 to stop future charges; cancelling does not refund charges already made. As a limited exception, if you are charged a renewal and contact us at support@madhat.io within 7 days of that charge and have not accessed subscription content or any Lab Environment during that billing period, we will refund that charge in full.

9.2 One-time course purchases. You may request a refund within 14 days of purchase, provided that at the time of your request you have completed no more than 20% of the course lessons and have submitted no more than 5 flags. Refund requests go to support@madhat.io. Because course access is granted immediately and materials are downloadable, refunds outside these limits are not available.

9.3 Duplicate and erroneous charges. Duplicate subscriptions, duplicate course purchases, and charges resulting from a pricing error on our side are refunded in full on request.

9.4 Physical products. Physical products are refunded or replaced only where the item arrives damaged, defective, or misprinted, or where the wrong item is sent. Contact us at support@madhat.io within 30 days of delivery with photographs. We do not accept returns for change of mind, and we do not accept returns of used items.

9.5 Consumers with statutory withdrawal rights. If you live in the EU, the UK, or another jurisdiction granting a statutory cooling-off period for digital content, that right applies to you. By purchasing and immediately accessing digital content, you request that we begin supplying it immediately and acknowledge that you lose your right of withdrawal once supply has begun. Where that acknowledgement is not validly obtained at checkout, your statutory right is unaffected by anything in this Section.

9.6 No refund on termination for breach. If we terminate your access under Section 24 for breach of these Terms, you forfeit any remaining paid period and are not entitled to a refund.

9.7 Chargebacks. Initiating a chargeback rather than contacting support may result in immediate and permanent termination of your account and access.

SECTION 10 — LAB ENVIRONMENTS AND RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

This is the section that separates authorized security training from unauthorized access. Read it before you touch a lab.

10.1 Scope of authorization. We grant you limited, revocable, read-only or otherwise restricted access to designated resources within lab tenants and environments we operate, solely to complete the assigned exercises. Your authorization extends only to the specific resources, subscriptions, directories, portals, and scopes assigned to your account for the lab you are performing. Nothing else is in scope.

10.2 Explicitly out of scope. You are not authorized to access, test, probe, scan, exploit, or attempt to circumvent controls on:

  • (a) the Mad Hat storefront, checkout, customer accounts, or any production website or application;
  • (b) any authentication, licensing, entitlement, anti-cheat, score-validation, or access-gating mechanism, including any API, worker, token, signature, or account metadata used to control access or validate submissions;
  • (c) any resource, subscription, tenant, directory object, workspace, or management scope outside the assignment for your current lab, including any attempt to escalate privileges, enumerate beyond your granted scope, assume another principal, or access another customer's data or resources;
  • (d) any third-party service we use to operate the Services;
  • (e) any other user's account, progress, credentials, or lab instance; or
  • (f) any target outside our infrastructure.

Attempting any of the above is not a lab exercise. It is unauthorized access, it terminates your account without refund, and depending on jurisdiction it may be a criminal offense.

10.3 Permitted activity. Within the scope defined in Section 10.1, you are expressly authorized to perform the security activities the lesson directs — enumeration, auditing, analysis, querying, exploitation of intentionally vulnerable applications we deploy for that purpose, and retrieval of flags — using the tools and techniques the course teaches. This authorization is granted by us as the operator of those environments and exists only inside that scope.

10.4 No expectation of persistence. Lab Environments are shared and ephemeral. We may reset, rebuild, reconfigure, or destroy lab resources at any time without notice. Do not store anything in a Lab Environment that you need.

10.5 No sensitive data. Do not upload, enter, or store personal data, client data, employer data, credentials, keys, or confidential information of any kind in a Lab Environment. Anything you place there may be visible to us and may be destroyed without notice.

10.6 No launching from our infrastructure. You may not use any Lab Environment, credential, or resource we provide as a source, relay, or staging point for any activity directed at any system outside that environment, including scanning, brute-forcing, phishing, cryptomining, hosting, or data exfiltration. This is grounds for immediate termination and, where warranted, reporting to the relevant cloud provider and to law enforcement.

10.7 Credentials. Lab credentials we issue are personal to you, must not be shared, and remain ours. We may rotate or revoke them at any time.

10.8 Availability. Lab Environments depend on third-party cloud platforms. We provide no uptime commitment, service level agreement, or guarantee of availability, and are not liable for downtime, provider outages, region failures, throttling, quota limits, or provider-side changes that break a lab exercise.

10.9 Reporting security issues in the Services. If you discover a security issue in the Services themselves — as opposed to an intentionally planted lab finding — report it to support@madhat.io promptly and privately. Do not exploit it further than necessary to confirm it exists, do not access, modify, or retain any data that is not yours, do not degrade the Services, and do not disclose it publicly until we have had a reasonable opportunity to fix it. If you follow those conditions in good faith, we will not pursue action against you under these Terms for the discovery itself, and we will treat your access as authorized for that limited purpose. This paragraph does not authorize testing of third-party services we use, and it does not apply to anything covered by Section 10.6.

SECTION 11 — FLAGS, PROGRESS, LEADERBOARDS AND INTEGRITY

11.1 Flags. Flag values are confidential course content. Sharing, publishing, selling, or requesting flag values is a breach of these Terms and grounds for immediate termination without refund.

11.2 No circumvention of progression. You may not bypass, forge, replay, or manipulate lesson gating, flag validation, progress tracking, XP, rank, clearance level, or completion records by any means, including manipulation of client-side state, direct API calls, or account metadata.

11.3 Leaderboards and games. Scores submitted to any leaderboard or game are validated server-side. Submitting fabricated, automated, replayed, or otherwise illegitimate scores will result in score removal and may result in account termination. We may remove, reset, or recalculate any leaderboard at any time.

11.4 Usernames. Public display names must not be obscene, harassing, impersonating, or infringing. We may change or remove any display name at our discretion.

11.5 Records. Progress records are a convenience feature. We do not guarantee their accuracy, permanence, or recoverability, and we may correct or reset them.

SECTION 12 — COMMUNITY SPACES

12.1 Conduct. In our Discord server and any other community space, you agree not to harass, threaten, dox, impersonate, or discriminate against anyone; not to post flags, walkthroughs, pirated content, live malware samples, or illegally obtained data; not to solicit or advertise; and not to request or offer assistance with unauthorized access to systems you do not own or have written permission to test.

12.2 Third-party platform. Community spaces may be hosted by third parties under their own terms. Your use is also subject to those terms.

12.3 Moderation. We may remove content and remove or ban participants at our discretion, with or without notice. Removal from a community space does not entitle you to a refund and does not affect your course access unless we also terminate your account.

12.4 Not support. Community discussion is not a support channel. Guidance given there, by us or by other users, is informational only.

SECTION 13 — PROHIBITED USES

You may use the Services for lawful purposes only. Except as expressly authorized in Sections 10.3 and 10.9, within the scope defined in Section 10.1, you may not, directly or indirectly:

  • (a) use the Services for any unlawful, fraudulent, or malicious purpose;
  • (b) violate any applicable law or regulation;
  • (c) infringe our intellectual property rights or those of others;
  • (d) harass, abuse, threaten, defame, or harm any person, including our staff, contributors, and other users;
  • (e) transmit false or misleading information, or impersonate any person or entity;
  • (f) send spam, chain messages, or unsolicited advertising;
  • (g) upload or transmit malicious code to any part of the Services other than an intentionally vulnerable target we have deployed for that purpose within your assigned lab scope;
  • (h) reproduce, duplicate, copy, extract, sell, resell, or exploit any portion of the Services;
  • (i) collect or track the personal information of other users;
  • (j) use any robot, spider, scraper, headless browser, extraction tool, or automated process to access the Services, except as permitted under Section 22;
  • (k) interfere with, bypass, or circumvent any security, authentication, entitlement, rate-limiting, or anti-automation measure protecting the Services, other than as expressly directed by a lab exercise within your assigned scope; or
  • (l) engage in any conduct that restricts or inhibits another person's use of the Services or exposes us or our providers to liability.

We may suspend, disable, or terminate your account at any time, without notice, if we determine you have violated any part of these Terms.

SECTION 14 — NO GUARANTEE OF OUTCOMES

14.1 Educational content only. The Services provide educational content. We do not guarantee employment, interviews, promotions, salary outcomes, exam passage, or certification. Any statement about career outcomes in our marketing describes what the training is designed to help you work toward, not a promised result.

14.2 Completion certificates. Any certificate, badge, rank, or completion record we issue is a record of completing our course. It is not an industry certification, an accredited credential, or a professional license, and it is not issued or recognized by any certification body, university, or government authority.

14.3 Continuing education credits. Where we describe contact hours or continuing education value, acceptance is entirely at the discretion of the accrediting or certifying body you submit them to. We make no representation that any body will accept them.

14.4 Not professional advice. Nothing in the Services is legal, compliance, or professional security advice for your specific environment. You are responsible for how you apply anything you learn, and for obtaining authorization before performing any security testing on any system.

SECTION 15 — INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

15.1 Our materials. The Services, including all course content, lesson text, lab designs, flags, videos, graphics, diagrams, visualizations, software, and the selection and arrangement thereof, are owned by us or our licensors and protected by U.S. and foreign intellectual property laws. All rights not expressly granted in Section 3 are reserved.

15.2 Our marks. Mad Hat, Mad Hat Labs, our logos, the balaclava mark, our rank and clearance naming, and our slogans are our trademarks. You may not use them without our prior written permission.

15.3 Third-party marks and no affiliation. Microsoft, Azure, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender, and related names and logos are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other product and company names referenced in our content are trademarks of their respective owners, used for identification and educational purposes only.

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, authorized by, or certified by Microsoft Corporation or any other cloud provider, certification body, or vendor referenced in our content. Our exam preparation materials are independently written and are not official exam content.

15.4 Copyright complaints. If you believe content on the Services infringes your copyright, email support@madhat.io with: identification of the work, identification of the material you say infringes it and where it is located, your contact information, a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized, a statement under penalty of perjury that your notice is accurate and that you are authorized to act for the copyright owner, and your signature. We will investigate and remove infringing material where appropriate. We will also remove repeat infringers from the Services.

SECTION 16 — YOUR SUBMISSIONS

16.1 Feedback. If you send us ideas, suggestions, bug reports, reviews, or other informal feedback ("Feedback"), you grant us a perpetual, worldwide, sublicensable, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, and distribute that Feedback for any purpose, including commercially. We have no obligation to keep Feedback confidential, to compensate you for it, or to respond to it.

16.2 What Feedback is not. Section 16.1 does not apply to substantial creative or technical works submitted as a contribution — proposed lessons, labs, challenges, courses, or written modules. Those are governed by Section 17.

16.3 Your warranties. You represent that you own or have all rights to anything you submit, that it does not infringe any third party's rights, that it is not unlawful, defamatory, obscene, or malicious, and that you have disclosed any compensation or incentive you received in connection with it.

16.4 Moderation. We may, but are not obligated to, monitor, edit, or remove submissions at our discretion.

SECTION 17 — CONTRIBUTOR CONTENT

This Section is our contributor agreement. If you contribute content, these are the terms, unless we have signed something different with you.

17.1 Nothing is accepted until we say so in writing. We accept contributed lessons, labs, or challenges only after we confirm acceptance by email. Content you send before that confirmation is unsolicited, creates no obligation on us, and may be similar to work we already have underway. Do not send us confidential or proprietary material.

17.2 No payment unless agreed in advance and in writing. We owe you nothing for a contribution unless we agreed on a fee, rate, or revenue share by email before you began work. That email exchange, together with this Section, is the whole agreement between us on that contribution. Absent such an agreement, any contribution is submitted on a volunteer basis in exchange for credit only.

17.3 What you grant us. For any contribution we accept, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, publish, distribute, publicly display, and commercially exploit the contribution as part of the Services, including in modified form. You retain authorship credit where we agree to give it. You may not publish, resell, or license the same contribution to any other training provider.

17.4 Your warranties. You warrant that the contribution is your original work; that it is not derived from any employer's or client's confidential material; that it does not reproduce, paraphrase, or adapt another training provider's content, exam material, or exam dumps; that it does not infringe any third party's rights; and that you have the right to grant the license in Section 17.3. You will indemnify us for any breach of these warranties.

17.5 Our editorial control. We may edit, restructure, update, rename, retire, or remove any contribution at any time. We are not obligated to publish an accepted contribution, to maintain it, or to keep it available. Retiring a contribution does not entitle you to any payment beyond amounts already agreed and earned.

17.6 No employment relationship. Contributing does not make you an employee, partner, agent, or joint venturer. You are an independent contributor responsible for your own taxes.

SECTION 18 — PHYSICAL PRODUCTS AND SHIPPING

18.1 Scope. This Section applies only to physical merchandise. It does not apply to digital products, subscriptions, or Lab Environments.

18.2 Fulfillment. Physical products are produced and shipped by a third-party print-on-demand provider. Colors, print placement, and sizing may vary from the images shown.

18.3 Delivery. All delivery estimates are estimates only. We are not liable for delays caused by carriers, customs, or events outside our control. Title and risk of loss pass to you when we transfer products to the carrier.

18.4 Returns. Physical product returns are governed by Section 9.4.

SECTION 19 — INTERNATIONAL ACCESS, EXPORT CONTROL AND SANCTIONS

19.1 No representation of local compliance. We make no representation that the Services are appropriate or available in every jurisdiction. You access them on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with local law.

19.2 Sanctions. You represent that you are not located in, ordinarily resident in, or a national of any country or region subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions, and that you are not on any U.S. government restricted-party list. We may deny or revoke access, including Lab Environment provisioning, on this basis.

19.3 Local law on security tooling. Some jurisdictions restrict the possession or use of security testing tools and techniques. You are responsible for determining whether your use of the Services is lawful where you are.

SECTION 20 — PRIVACY AND DATA

20.1 Privacy Policy. Personal information we collect through the Services is handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

20.2 What we process and who processes it. To operate the Services we rely on third-party providers, including our e-commerce and hosting platform, our course delivery application, our subscription billing application, our payment processors, our community platform, our edge and security infrastructure provider, our email provider, our cloud platform for Lab Environments, and our print-on-demand fulfillment provider. Information you submit is transmitted to and processed by these providers, which may be located in countries other than your own.

20.3 Learning data. We store learning data against your customer record, including lesson completion, submitted flag identifiers, XP, rank, clearance level, game scores, display name, and any lab access identifiers issued to you. We use it to deliver and gate content, to operate leaderboards, and to improve our courses.

20.4 Your rights. You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data by emailing support@madhat.io. Deleting your data will end your access to purchased content, including one-time course purchases, and we cannot restore progress afterward. Where you have rights under the GDPR, UK GDPR, or a U.S. state privacy law, we will honor them within the timeframes those laws require.

SECTION 21 — THIRD-PARTY TOOLS, LINKS AND CONTENT

21.1 Third-party tools. Access to third-party tools through the Services is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranty or endorsement. Your use is at your own risk and subject to the third party's terms.

21.2 Links and references. Our content links to and references third-party documentation, portals, repositories, and tools. We do not control and are not responsible for third-party content, availability, accuracy, or practices. Third-party software referenced or used in labs is subject to its own license.

21.3 New features. New features and tools we release become part of the Services and are subject to these Terms.

SECTION 22 — AUTOMATED ACCESS AND AGENTS

22.1 Scope. This Section governs automated access to the Services. "Agent" means any software or service that takes autonomous or semi-autonomous action on behalf of, or at the instruction of, a person or entity, without direct supervision.

22.2 General prohibition. Automated access is prohibited except as permitted in this Section. This includes bots, scrapers, crawlers, headless browsers, and agentic AI tools.

22.3 Conditional permission. An Agent may access the Services only if it, at all times:

  • (a) identifies itself in every HTTP/HTTPS request by including Agent/[agent name] in the user agent string;
  • (b) does not conceal or obfuscate that access is automated, including by mimicking human interaction patterns or by solving or circumventing CAPTCHAs or other human-verification measures;
  • (c) responds truthfully to any prompt seeking to determine whether interactions originate from a human;
  • (d) respects robots.txt and any other measure we use to control automated access; and
  • (e) does not access paid, gated, or authenticated content, and does not act on a customer account.

22.4 Never permitted. No Agent may be used to complete lessons, submit flags, generate progress or XP, submit game scores, extract course content, or interact with any Lab Environment.

22.5 Our discretion. We may block, rate-limit, or otherwise restrict any Agent at any time, and may direct any Agent to cease accessing the Services.

SECTION 23 — ERRORS AND OMISSIONS

The Services may contain typographical errors, inaccuracies, or omissions relating to product descriptions, pricing, promotions, availability, or technical content. We may correct any such error and may change, update, or cancel orders where information was inaccurate, including after an order is submitted. Where we cancel an order because of a pricing error, we will refund you in full.

SECTION 24 — SUSPENSION AND TERMINATION

24.1 By you. You may stop using the Services at any time and cancel any subscription under Section 5.4.

24.2 By us. We may suspend or terminate your access to all or part of the Services, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms, if your payment fails, if your conduct creates risk or legal exposure for us or other users, or if we discontinue the Services.

24.3 Immediate termination. Breaches of Section 1.4 (sharing), Section 10 (lab scope), Section 11.1 (flag sharing), or Sections 11.2–11.3 (circumvention and cheating) may result in immediate termination without notice.

24.4 Effect. On termination, your license under Section 3 ends immediately and access to all paid and free content, Lab Environments, and community spaces may be revoked. If we terminate for breach, you forfeit any remaining prepaid period and are not entitled to any refund. You remain liable for all amounts due up to termination.

24.5 If we shut down. If we discontinue the Services entirely, we will give at least 60 days' notice by email and stop all recurring billing.

24.6 Survival. The following survive termination: Sections 3.3, 9, 10.6, 11.1, 15, 16, 17, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, and any provision that by its nature should survive.

SECTION 25 — DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

Information presented through the Services is provided for general educational purposes. We do not warrant its accuracy, completeness, currency, or usefulness. Cloud platforms, interfaces, and vendor exam objectives change frequently and content may not reflect current vendor behavior. Any reliance you place on the content is at your own risk.

EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY STATED BY US, THE SERVICES AND ALL PRODUCTS OFFERED THROUGH THE SERVICES, INCLUDING ALL COURSES, LABS, LAB ENVIRONMENTS, FREE TOOLS, AND COMMUNITY SPACES, ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, WARRANTY, OR CONDITION OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, MERCHANTABLE QUALITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, DURABILITY, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, THAT ANY LAB ENVIRONMENT WILL BE AVAILABLE OR FUNCTION AS DESCRIBED, OR THAT ANY DEFECT WILL BE CORRECTED. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THESE DISCLAIMERS, SO THEY MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

SECTION 26 — LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL WE, OUR OWNERS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, CONTRIBUTORS, AFFILIATES, SERVICE PROVIDERS, OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOST PROFITS, LOST REVENUE, LOST DATA, LOST OPPORTUNITY, LOSS OF EMPLOYMENT OR ADVANCEMENT, OR REPLACEMENT COSTS, ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES, WHETHER BASED IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICES SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNTS YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so some of the above may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or under any non-waivable consumer protection law.

SECTION 27 — INDEMNIFICATION

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Mad Hat and our affiliates, officers, employees, contractors, contributors, licensors, and service providers from any losses, damages, liabilities, or claims, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of:

  • (a) your breach of these Terms;
  • (b) your violation of any law or the rights of a third party;
  • (c) your access to and use of the Services; and
  • (d) any activity you conduct in, from, or using any Lab Environment, credential, or resource we provide, including any action directed at any system outside the scope authorized in Section 10.1.

We will notify you of any indemnifiable claim; a failure to notify promptly does not relieve you of your obligations unless you are materially prejudiced. We may control the defense and settlement at your expense, including choice of counsel, but will not settle a claim imposing non-monetary obligations on you without your consent, not to be unreasonably withheld. You will cooperate in the defense.

SECTION 28 — RESOLVING DISPUTES

28.1 Talk to us first. Before starting any formal proceeding, you agree to email support@madhat.io describing the dispute and what you want, and to allow us 30 days to resolve it informally. Most disputes about billing, access, or refunds are resolved this way in a day. We agree to do the same before bringing any claim against you.

28.2 Small claims. Either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court instead, if it qualifies.

28.3 Individual claims only. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you and we each agree to bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. If this paragraph is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, it remains in force for all other claims, and that particular claim proceeds in court.

28.4 One-year limit. To the fullest extent permitted by law, any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Services must be brought within one (1) year after the claim arises, or it is permanently barred. This does not apply where a longer period is required by non-waivable law.

SECTION 29 — GOVERNING LAW AND VENUE

These Terms and any dispute arising out of them or out of the Services are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, together with applicable United States federal law.

Subject to Section 28, you and we consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts located in the State of Washington, and waive any objection to those courts on grounds of inconvenient forum.

Nothing in this Section deprives a consumer of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of their country or state of residence where those provisions apply.

SECTION 30 — GENERAL

30.1 Severability. If any provision is held unlawful, void, or unenforceable, it will be enforced to the fullest extent permitted and severed to the extent it is not, without affecting the remaining provisions.

30.2 Waiver. Our failure to enforce any right or provision is not a waiver of it.

30.3 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any policies posted on the Services, constitute the entire agreement between you and us and supersede all prior agreements and communications, including prior versions of these Terms. Ambiguities will not be construed against the drafting party.

30.4 Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms or any rights under them without our prior written consent; any attempt is void. We may assign or transfer these Terms without notice.

30.5 Force majeure. We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including cloud provider outages, platform failures, network disruption, and acts of government.

30.6 Headings. Headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation.

30.7 Notices. We may send notices to the email address on your account. Keeping it current is your responsibility.

SECTION 31 — CHANGES TO THESE TERMS

You can review the current version of these Terms at any time on this page.

We may update these Terms by posting a revised version. We will notify you by email of material changes at least 30 days before they take effect, including any change affecting subscription pricing, renewal, cancellation, refunds, or dispute resolution. Your continued use of the Services after the effective date constitutes acceptance. If you do not accept a change, cancel your subscription before it takes effect.

SECTION 32 — CONTACT

All questions, requests, cancellations, refund requests, security reports, and copyright notices: support@madhat.io