Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what information SchoolScout LLC (“SchoolScout,” “we,” “us”) collects when you use schoolscout.college, and how we use it.

Your family is our only customer. We don’t sell or share a student’s profile, essays or college list, and no college, lender or recruiter pays us. There are no advertising trackers on signed-in pages.

1. What we store and why

• Your account: your name and email, a hashed password or your Google sign-in, and basic technical information, such as your IP address and browser, when you sign in, to keep your account secure.
• The student’s profile and plans: what you enter, the documents you upload, and your college plans and chats, including family chat, so SchoolScout can build and update your college plan.
• Usage and billing: which features you use and how much, so we can bill fairly. Card details go straight to Stripe; we never see them.

2. Who helps us run SchoolScout

• Hosting: Amazon Web Services stores our data. Privacy policy
• SchoolScout’s AI providers: Google (Gemini) and Anthropic (Claude) receive the profile, chats and documents needed to build your college plan. If Google is unavailable, we use OpenRouter as a backup, which sends them only to hosting companies that don’t store them. None of these companies use your data to train their models. Google · Anthropic · OpenRouter
• Payments: Stripe processes payments. Privacy policy
• Email: Resend delivers our emails, such as password resets, family chat notifications and deadline reminders. A reminder goes out one week before each confirmed deadline; you can turn reminders off on the Account page or with the link in each email. Privacy policy
• Sign-in: if you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email and profile picture, and use them only to run your account. Your picture is shown only to you and the family members on your account, beside your name in the menu, the family chat, comments and recent activity. Our server fetches it from Google and keeps a copy, and your browser loads it from us, so showing it sends Google nothing; the copy is deleted with your account. Privacy policy
• Analytics: we use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used. Privacy policy
• Maps and videos: maps come from OpenStreetMap, and college videos play in YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. OpenStreetMap · YouTube
• School logos: our own server fetches them, so no logo service sees who you are or which schools are on your list.

3. Your data, your choices

• You can see, edit and delete your profile and plans at any time in the app.
• You can delete your account at any time on the Account page.
• Email us for a copy of your data, to disconnect Google sign-in, or if you can’t delete your account yourself.
• We keep your data while your account is active and delete it when you ask us to, except records we have to keep, such as payments.

4. Children’s privacy

SchoolScout is for high school students, usually with a parent or guardian who reviews or pays for the account. SchoolScout is not meant for children under 13. For users we know to be under 18, we do not sell personal data or use it for targeted advertising. If we learn we’ve collected data from a child under 13, we’ll delete it. Parents can contact us to review or delete their child’s data.

5. Security

Passwords are hashed and never stored in plain text. We use industry-standard practices to protect data in transit and at rest, but no online service can guarantee absolute security.

6. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by an updated “Last updated” date on this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a data request? Reach us at contact@schoolscout.college.