Privacy policy

In this Policy, "CollegeBinder" means the service described above. "We", "us" and "our" mean the operator of CollegeBinder, a sole proprietorship established in Maryland, USA. "You" and "your" mean the account holder, being the natural person in whose name an account is registered. "The Student" means the individual whose academic profile, school list, deadlines and financial aid information are recorded in an account, whether or not that individual is the account holder. "Basic" and "Pro" mean the two subscription tiers described in the section governing subscriptions.

CollegeBinder is intended for students applying to or enrolled in United States colleges and for the parents and guardians of such students. An account may be held by the Student or by a parent or guardian. Both arrangements are supported, and this Policy applies to each.

Support is provided by email at hello@collegebinder.com.

The following three disclosures are made at the outset. Each is set out in full in the sections that follow.

We do not sell personal information, share personal information for advertising purposes, or operate advertising tracking of any kind. We do not use ad networks, tracking pixels, third party analytics, or behavioral profiling.

When an award letter is uploaded, the entire document is transmitted to our artificial intelligence provider whole and unredacted, exactly as it was uploaded. The document is not redacted before transmission. Users are required to obscure Social Security numbers and financial account numbers before uploading. The section titled "Award Letter Uploads and Transmission to the Artificial Intelligence Provider" governs this process, and your attention is drawn particularly to it.

The minimum age for use of CollegeBinder is 13. Persons under 13 are not permitted to use CollegeBinder. A person aged 13 to 17 may use CollegeBinder only where a parent or guardian has reviewed and accepted the Terms of Service and this Policy on that person's behalf. Only a person aged 18 or over may purchase a Pro subscription.

Account information

Profile information, which supports the core features

Where the Student holds the account, this information describes the account holder. Where a parent or guardian holds the account, this information is what that person has entered concerning the Student.

Optional information, without which the service remains functional

Information generated through use of the service

Billing information

Billing information is collected only where a Pro subscription is purchased on an account. Payment is processed by Stripe. We do not receive or store card numbers. We retain the Stripe customer identifier, the Stripe subscription identifier, the plan, the subscription status, and the renewal date.

Technical information

Our hosting provider generates standard server logs, including IP address, browser user agent string, pages requested, timestamps, and error traces. These records are operational, are retained for a short period, and are not used to construct any profile of any user.

Information we do not request, and information we seek not to retain

We do not request Social Security numbers, the contents of tax returns, bank or loan account numbers, surnames, dates of birth, or home addresses. No field in the application collects any of these. Before the text extracted from an award letter is stored, a redaction process removes content matching the patterns of a Social Security number or a financial account number. That redaction applies to retained data and does not apply to data transmitted to the artificial intelligence provider.

One exception is stated expressly. Where the extraction of an award letter fails, the uploaded file remains in our storage, unredacted, until you delete it. We therefore cannot represent that we will never hold a Social Security number. We represent only that we do not request one, do not wish to hold one, and remove from retained data those that the redaction process is able to identify. The following section must be read carefully.

This feature involves the most sensitive document handled by CollegeBinder. The full sequence of processing is set out below without qualification.

You must obscure any Social Security number before uploading a document. This requirement is also stated on the upload screen. It is repeated here because of its importance.

Award letters frequently contain the financial details of a parent as well as those of the Student. Where a letter concerns a person other than the uploading user, that user must obscure those details and must be a person entitled to handle the document.

Anthropic processes the document for the purpose of returning a result to us. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, data submitted through its application programming interface is not used to train its models. Anthropic may retain the request for a limited period for operational and safety purposes. We do not control that retention period, which is the reason the requirements stated above are imposed.

The application of this Policy depends on who holds the account. The following provisions address each arrangement.

Where the Student holds the account. The information in the account describes the account holder, including grades, schools, deadlines, and financial aid. You may view all of it by signing in, you may amend your profile and your preferences in Settings, and you may delete the account and all information within it yourself, immediately, from Settings. No request to us and no approval from any other person is required. No other person may access the account unless that person has access to your email inbox.

Where a parent or guardian holds the account. You may operate the account, and the application functions identically. Information you enter concerning the Student is personal information about another natural person. It is visible to the account holder and to no other person, and must be treated accordingly. Where the Student is 18 or over and contacts us directly concerning information held about them, we will engage with the Student as set out below.

Where an account is operated jointly. Joint operation is common and is permitted. There remains one account, one email inbox, and one set of information. Any person able to access that inbox may sign in, view all information, and delete all information. Families should determine who holds the account before information is entered.

Data minimization. We deliberately collect less information than the product could use. Account fields comprise a first name only and no surname, no date of birth, no home address, a grade point average band rather than an exact figure, and an income band rather than an exact figure. This reduces the harm arising from any compromise. This is not anonymization and is not described as such. A first name, a graduation year, a state, and a school list may identify a specific young person, particularly within a small community. We treat this information as personal information because that is what it is.

Where a parent or guardian holds the account and the Student is 18 or over. Many students reach the age of 18 during the application cycle. Upon reaching that age the Student is an adult with independent privacy interests, irrespective of who established the account. Where a Student aged 18 or over contacts us at hello@collegebinder.com concerning information held about them in a CollegeBinder account, we will engage with that Student directly, disclose what is held, and honor a reasonable request to correct or delete that information, after taking reasonable steps to verify the Student's identity and connection to the account. We will notify the account holder that such a request has been made.

FERPA. We are not an educational institution and do not receive education records from one. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act therefore does not apply to us directly. It is referenced because families reasonably expect a comparable standard of care in relation to a student's records. We seek to observe its principles: minimal collection, no onward disclosure, and no secondary use.

A person aged 13 to 17 may use CollegeBinder subject to the following provisions.

A parent or guardian must review and accept the Terms of Service and this Policy on the minor's behalf. In most United States jurisdictions a person under 18 cannot enter into a binding contract independently, and acceptance of the Terms of Service must therefore be given by an adult responsible for that person. By using CollegeBinder, the account holder confirms that such permission has been given. We cannot verify that confirmation and rely upon it. A person who has not obtained such permission must not proceed.

A minor retains full rights over their own information. Age does not diminish a Student's rights in respect of their own information. You may view all information held about you by signing in. You may correct that information in Settings. You may delete your account and all information within it yourself, immediately, without a request to us and without a waiting period. Exercise of these rights is not conditioned upon adult approval.

A person under 18 is not permitted to purchase a Pro subscription. Only a person aged 18 or over may purchase a subscription. Where the user is under 18, a parent or guardian must make the purchase. Access to the Service requires a subscription, except for accounts created while the Service was provided at no charge, which retain Basic permanently.

Minors and state privacy law. A number of United States jurisdictions confer additional protection upon the personal information of persons under 18 and restrict the processing of information belonging to a user known to be a minor. Rather than cite statutes selectively, we state the principles we apply. We do not sell or share personal information under any circumstances. We do not direct advertising at any user, because we do not operate advertising. We do not profile users, do not construct behavioral segments, and do not use personal information for any purpose other than the operation of the features requested. We collect the minimum information upon which the product can function. Where a state rule requires consent before a particular use of a minor's information, we do not undertake that use. Where a state confers a right to deletion of information provided by the user, that right is exercisable immediately in Settings.

Control of the email inbox. The email inbox associated with an account is the means of access to that account. Any person able to read that inbox may sign in and delete all information. Users who share a computer or a family email address should take this into account.

CollegeBinder is not intended for and must not be used by any person under 13. This restriction reflects the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and is enforced without exception.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from any person under 13. We do not market to persons under 13, and the service is not directed at children.

Where we determine that an account belongs to a person under 13, we will close and delete the account and its associated data promptly, and will not use that data for any purpose in the interim. A parent or guardian who believes that a child under 13 has created an account should contact hello@collegebinder.com. We will act upon the report and confirm when the deletion has been completed. No elaborate proof is required for such a report to be acted upon.

The following features are included in the Basic tier: deadlines, deadline reminders, the Sunday digest, scholarship matching, and school checklists. Basic is a paid tier and requires a current subscription, save upon an account created while the Service was provided at no charge, which retains Basic permanently. There is no trial of any tier. Reading, correcting, exporting and deleting your own data, and deleting your account, are never restricted by payment.

Pro is the paid subscription tier. Pro comprises award letter analysis, offer comparison, calendar subscription, and on demand refreshing of scholarship matches.

Only a person aged 18 or over may purchase a Pro subscription. Where the intended user is aged 13 to 17, a parent or guardian must make the purchase on that account using that adult's own payment method, and that adult is the party accepting the billing terms. A purchasing parent or guardian should note that where the account is held by the Student, the Student may cancel the subscription or delete the account and all information within it at any time, and that deletion is irreversible.

Payment is processed on a page hosted by Stripe. We do not receive card numbers. Charges are final and refunds are not given, with two exceptions set out in the Terms of Service. One of them applies here: where a purchase has been made by a person under 18 without the permission of a parent or guardian, contact hello@collegebinder.com and we will cancel the subscription and refund all amounts paid upon it.

Where a Pro subscription lapses or is cancelled, the account, its data, its deadlines, its reminders, its school checklists, and its scholarship matches are retained. Only the Pro features cease to be available.

Supabase, Resend, Anthropic and Railway act as our service providers, under contract, and upon our instructions. Stripe occupies a different position. For the purposes of payment processing, fraud prevention, and financial compliance, Stripe acts as an independent controller of payment data under its own privacy policy and not solely as our processor. Stripe's own policy governs its handling of payment data.

We do not transmit personal information to any other recipient. Where a sub-processor is added or changed, this list will be updated. Where such a change alters how personal information is handled, and in particular where a new recipient will receive uploaded documents, we will notify you by email at least 30 days before the change takes effect, so that you may delete your account beforehand.

We do not store passwords. Authentication is performed by emailing a single use sign in link that remains valid for approximately one hour.

This method has an important consequence. Any person able to read your email may access your CollegeBinder account. That access includes permanent deletion of the account, which cannot be reversed. Users who share an email inbox, or who believe that another person has access to it, must secure that inbox first.

Reminders and the Sunday digest may be disabled at any time in Settings. Account email cannot be disabled while an account remains open, because it is the means by which material changes and billing matters are communicated.

Reminders and the Sunday digest are not conditional upon payment. They continue for as long as the account exists and the setting remains enabled. Users should nonetheless record material dates in their own calendars, because email delivery can fail and a missed deadline cannot be reopened.

We do not send marketing email and do not sell or disclose email addresses to any person who does.

We use one category of cookie, being the session cookie that maintains an authenticated session following use of a sign in link. Without it an authenticated session cannot be maintained.

We operate no advertising cookies, no tracking pixels, no third party analytics, no session recording, no device fingerprinting, and no cross site tracking.

One point requires precision. When a user proceeds to Stripe in order to pay or to manage billing, that user is on a page hosted by Stripe, and Stripe sets its own cookies on that page for fraud prevention and to enable checkout. That page is governed by Stripe's policy. We do not control it and do not receive tracking data from it.

A single flag is written to browser session storage where the application is opened from a home screen icon, so that the installation timestamp described above is not sent more than once in a visit. It is cleared when the browser tab closes and contains no identifier.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share personal information for cross context behavioral advertising. We have not done either in the preceding twelve months. This applies to a Student's information whether or not the Student holds the account.

California law defines the terms "sell" and "share" broadly enough to encompass certain ordinary analytics and advertising arrangements. We state without qualification that we maintain no such arrangements. No personal information is transferred to any person for advertising, audience construction, or resale, whether for monetary or other consideration. This applies irrespective of the age of the user and applies to every minor who uses CollegeBinder.

We honor browser level opt out signals, including Global Privacy Control. Such signals have no effect to give, because we do not sell or share personal information, but they are respected regardless.

We do not carry out automated decision making producing legal or similarly significant effects. Scholarship matching filters and ranks a list. It does not determine, award, or deny anything.

Where a Pro subscription lapses, no other change occurs and the account is not deleted. Applications extend over multiple years, and users frequently return after an interval. Information is retained until deleted by you or until the account is closed under the Terms of Service. Should we determine to purge long dormant accounts, we will notify affected users by email in advance and afford a genuine opportunity to retain the account.

You may delete your account and all of its data yourself, immediately, from Settings. No request to us, no waiting period, no retention offer, and no permission from any other person is required.

Billing is cancelled first. Upon deletion, any active Stripe subscription is cancelled before any data is removed. Where that cancellation fails, the deletion is aborted and no data is removed, so that an account cannot be deleted while a charge remains active.

Deletion removes the account, the profile, the schools added, deadline statuses, checklist statuses, scholarship matches, award letter records and breakdowns, any uploaded file remaining in storage, the email log, and the sign in identity.

Deletion does not reach encrypted backups until they rotate out, Stripe billing and tax records that law requires be retained, and any data already retained by a processor under its own policy, such as delivery logs held by Resend or operational records held by Anthropic.

Export. A copy of the information held about you is available for download from Settings, at any time and on every tier, in a structured, machine readable format. The export comprises account information, the Student's profile, the school list, deadline records, essays, recommendation records, award letter figures, scholarship matches, and a log of email sent to you. Authentication tokens for the calendar feed and the share link are excluded, being credentials rather than information about you; each may be regenerated in Settings. Deletion is immediate and irreversible, and an export should accordingly be obtained before deletion rather than after it.

Depending upon your place of residence, you may hold rights to know what information is held, to obtain a copy of it, to correct it, to delete it, or to object to certain processing. United States state privacy laws, including those of California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Minnesota and Maryland, among others, confer versions of these rights. Several confer additional protections upon persons under 18.

We extend all of these rights to every user, irrespective of residence and irrespective of age. The right to obtain a copy of your information, and to receive it in a structured, commonly used and machine readable form, is satisfied by the download available in Settings, which is offered on every tier and is not conditioned upon payment. Where a user additionally requests in writing a statement of the information held about them, we will provide that statement in writing.

Most of these rights are exercisable directly and immediately, without any request to us. A user may sign in to view all information held, amend the profile and preferences in Settings, download a copy of all information held from Settings, and delete all information from Settings. These functions operate identically for every user regardless of age.

For any other request, contact hello@collegebinder.com. We will respond within 45 days. No charge is imposed, and no user will suffer any reduction in service or change in price as a consequence of exercising a right.

Verification. Requests are ordinarily verified by reference to the email address on the account, that address also being the means of authentication. Where a request is unusual, or where fulfilling it would disclose information to a person who may not be the account holder, we may require further verification before acting. Where identity cannot be verified safely, we will state the reason rather than allow the request to lapse without response.

Appeals. Where we decline a request and the applicable state law confers a right of appeal, you may appeal by replying to our decision and stating that you are appealing. The request will be reconsidered by a person and a written response will be provided.

Authorized agents. A request may be submitted on your behalf by another person holding written authorization capable of verification. A parent or guardian submitting a request in respect of a minor on the account constitutes such an agent. For the avoidance of doubt, a user aged 13 to 17 does not require an agent or an adult in order to exercise their own rights in respect of their own account, and may exercise those rights directly in Settings.

Personal information is encrypted in transit and at rest by our infrastructure providers. Award letter files are stored in a private bucket that is never publicly readable and is retrievable only by means of short lived signed links. Access to production systems is restricted and protected by multi factor authentication. We hold the minimum sensitive information upon which the product can function, which is the most effective security measure available to us.

No representation is made beyond the foregoing. We do not hold a formal security certification. A user for whom these measures are insufficient should not upload any document the loss or disclosure of which would cause that user serious harm.

Where personal information is exposed, we will investigate the incident, take steps to contain it, and notify affected users promptly and without undue delay, by email to the address on the account, once the nature of the incident has been established. That notification will describe the information involved, what is known of the cause, the steps taken in response, and the steps recommended to the affected user.

We will comply with the notification deadlines applicable to us by law, including those imposed by state breach notification statutes. Notification will not be delayed in order to improve the completeness or presentation of the message.

Where CollegeBinder is sold or merged, personal information may transfer to the acquirer as part of that transaction. We will notify you by email at least 30 days before such a transfer takes effect, and you may delete your account beforehand. Any acquirer is bound by this Policy until such time as you accept a different policy.

Where the service is discontinued deliberately, we will notify you by email at least 60 days beforehand, will maintain the service throughout the notice period so that you may copy out what you require, and will publish a final date for deletion of data. We have designated a trusted contact who is able to initiate that shutdown and deletion in the event that we become unable to do so.

CollegeBinder concerns United States college admissions and financial aid. All information is stored and processed in the United States. The service is not directed at persons outside the United States and is not offered there. A user accessing the service from outside the United States acknowledges that their information will be processed in the United States under United States law.

This Policy is governed by the laws of the State of Maryland, USA, without regard to its conflict of laws provisions.

Where this Policy is changed in a manner that materially affects you, we will notify you by email at least 30 days before the change takes effect, being the same period of notice provided under the Terms of Service. Minor corrections are reflected by a revised date at the head of this document. We will not broaden the uses made of personal information without the notice described in this section.

Enquiries concerning this Policy, and requests for a statement of the information held about you, should be directed to hello@collegebinder.com.

CollegeBinder is operated as a sole proprietorship established in Maryland, USA.