Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

Account information: When you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and profile picture. We use this to sign you in, to link your chat history to your account, and to show advisors at your college who they're helping. Some colleges restrict sign-in to their institutional email domain (e.g., a college-issued .edu address); if so, sign-in is limited to that domain.

Chat messages: Your conversations with Semestra are stored to provide chat history and improve your experience. Messages are associated with your account (or an anonymous session ID if not signed in).

Feedback: When you rate an answer, we save your rating and any comment you add. We also save that answer and the question you asked, so our team can see what went wrong. When you rate the site, we save your rating, your comment, and the page you were on.

Uploaded files: If you upload transcript images or PDFs, they are processed in memory to extract text for course recommendations. We do not permanently store uploaded files.

Usage data: We collect basic analytics (page views, feature usage) via Vercel Analytics to improve the Service. This does not include personal identifiers.

2. How We Use Your Information

• Provide and maintain the Service, including personalized course recommendations
• Store your chat history so you can revisit past conversations
• Authenticate your identity, and enforce a college's institutional email requirement where one applies
• Improve the Service based on aggregate usage patterns
• Review chats, including the answers students rate, so we can fix wrong answers. We may keep a rated question as a test for future versions of Semestra, with anything personal removed.
• Let advisors and counselors at your college see your name, email, profile, plan, and chats with that college, so they can help you. They can't see your chats with other colleges. They can also keep notes about helping you, which only staff can see.

3. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services:

• OpenAI: Chat messages are sent to OpenAI's API to generate responses. OpenAI's privacy policy applies to data processed by their models.
• Anthropic: At some colleges, chat messages and the courses on your profile are sent to Anthropic's API to answer and check your questions.
• Google OAuth: Used for sign-in. Google's privacy policy applies to the authentication process.
• Vercel: Hosts the application and collects anonymous analytics.
• Supabase: Cloud database provider that stores account, chat, and feedback data.

4. Data Retention

Chat messages are retained indefinitely unless you delete them. You can delete individual chats at any time from the sidebar. Account data is retained as long as your account exists. Feedback on an answer is deleted when you delete that chat or your account. Feedback on the site is deleted with your account. Anonymous session data may be periodically cleared.

5. Data Security

We use industry-standard security measures including HTTPS encryption, secure database connections, and OAuth 2.0 authentication. However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure.

6. Your Rights

You can:

• Delete your chat history at any time
• Sign out to stop data collection associated with your account
• Request deletion of your account data by contacting us

7. Children's Privacy

Semestra is intended for community college students (typically 18+). We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.

8. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy at any time. We will notify users of significant changes via the Service.

9. Contact

Questions about your privacy? Reach out at gordovsilva@gmail.com.