Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information Advisely collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. We wrote it in plain English because you deserve to actually understand it.

What we collect

• Account info: your name, email, and password (stored as a bcrypt hash — we never see your actual password).
• Conversations:messages you send to Advisely and the AI's responses.
• Documents you upload: transcripts, course wishlists, teacher notes. We extract the text from PDFs and images and store that text.
• Memory: facts Advisely learns about you from conversations (grade level, interests, completed courses).
• Feedback: survey responses you choose to submit.

What we don't collect

• We don't use cookies for advertising or tracking.
• We don't collect your location.
• We don't track your behavior across other websites.
• We don't have social login (no Google/Apple pulling your photo or contacts).

How we use it

• To answer your questions — your message, relevant curriculum chunks, and your documents are sent to OpenAI to generate a response.
• To personalize advice — memory and documents let Advisely give you answers specific to your situation instead of generic ones.
• To send you transactional emails — password resets only. No marketing.

Who we share it with

We only share data with third-party services that directly power Advisely:

• OpenAI— we send your messages and relevant context to OpenAI's API to generate answers. OpenAI's API data policy says they don't use API data to train their models.
• Resend — delivers password reset emails.
• Our hosting providers (Railway for the backend, Vercel for the frontend) — they store and serve the app.

We never sell your data. We never share it with advertisers. We never give it to other students.

Your data, your choices

• View what we remember: the Memory page shows every fact Advisely has stored about you.
• Delete individual memories or clear everything with one click.
• Delete conversations individually or all at once from the sidebar.
• Delete uploaded documents from the Documents page.
• Delete your entire account:contact us and we'll wipe everything tied to your email.

Security

• Passwords are hashed with bcrypt (cost 12).
• All traffic is over HTTPS in production.
• Your account data is isolated — another student can't see your conversations, documents, or memory.
• We use rate limiting to prevent abuse of login and API endpoints.

No system is 100% secure. If you think your account has been compromised, reset your password immediately.

Students under 18

If you're under 18, your parent or guardian should be aware that you're using Advisely. We don't intentionally collect information from children under 13. If we learn we have, we'll delete it.

Data retention

We keep your data as long as your account is active. When you delete something (memory, conversation, document), it's removed from our live database. Backups may retain it for up to 30 days before being purged.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in ways that affect your rights, we'll notify you in the app or via email before the changes take effect.

Contact

Questions, concerns, or requests about your data? Reach out to the Machine Intelligence Club at The Village School.