Privacy Policy

Depending on which features you use, you may provide:

• Account: email address and a password (managed by Supabase Auth). We do not collect your date of birth.
• Profile & onboarding: your state, school type or name, grade/year, intended major, career interest, and transfer goals.
• Tool answers: things the tools need to personalize results — for example FAFSA/CADAA progress, whether you have an award letter, household income range (optional), living situation, interests and skills, and support needs you choose to share (such as food, housing, or emergency help). Sensitive options always include a way to skip or choose “prefer not to say.”
• Award-letter numbers: college names, costs, grant/loan/work-study amounts you enter to decode an offer.
• Help requests (“Get help”): your name, email, optional phone number, preferred contact method, student status, optional first-generation status, optional household income range, optional home language, colleges, and your question.
• Saved plans & trackers: resources, deadlines, scholarships, internship applications, and notes you save.
• Feedback: your message, the page it was sent from, and an optional email.

Some intake questions (for example identity-related chips in the Aid Action Center, like foster youth or DACA) are used only during your session to tailor recommendations and are not saved as identity labels; related practical needs (like “housing help”) may be saved to your profile so your plan remembers them.

• Authentication cookies & session data from Supabase Auth when you sign in (needed to keep you logged in).
• Browser storage (localStorage): your tool answers, saved plan, and progress are kept on your device so the site works without an account.
• Infrastructure logs: our hosting providers (Vercel and Supabase) automatically process IP addresses, device/browser information, and request logs to run and secure the service. We do not build marketing profiles from these.
• Error and security logs to keep the service reliable and detect abuse.

AidBridge does not use third-party analytics, advertising cookies, tracking pixels, session replay, or cross-site tracking, and does not train AI models on your information.

• Signed out: tool answers and saved plans stay in your browser's storage on your device. They are not sent to our servers — with one exception: forms you deliberately submit (help requests, feedback) always go to our database.
• Signed in: your profile, saved plans, internship profile/applications, and tool history sync to our database (Supabase, hosted in the United States) so they follow you across devices. A copy also stays on your device.
• Shared computers: if you use a school or library computer, log out and use the “Clear AidBridge data from this device” button below or in your account settings.

We use information to:

• personalize recommendations, deadlines, and matches;
• save your plans and let you continue where you left off;
• operate your account and respond to your help requests and feedback;
• secure the service, prevent abuse, and fix errors;
• understand, in aggregate, whether AidBridge is helping (never to profile individuals for marketing).

We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not send marketing email.

We share information only with the infrastructure providers that run AidBridge — Supabase (database & authentication) and Vercel (hosting) — which process it on our behalf under their terms.

AidBridge does not sell personal information, does not share it with advertisers or data brokers, and does not use behavioral advertising. If we are ever legally required to disclose information, or need to protect students' safety, we will disclose only what is required.

• Account data & saved plans: until you delete them or delete your account.
• Help requests (cases): reviewed by the team and retained while your case is open; our target is to delete or anonymize closed cases within 24 months.
• Feedback: our target retention is 24 months.
• Security & audit logs: our target retention is 12 months.
• Backups: our database provider keeps short-lived backups; deleted data may persist in backups for a limited period before it ages out.

These retention targets are operational goals we are building processes around; they may be refined as the project matures.

• Correct information: update your profile in onboarding or your dashboard at any time.
• Clear this device: use the “Clear AidBridge data from this device” button (above, and in account settings) to remove local answers, plans, and progress.
• Delete your account: signed-in users can permanently delete their account and synced data from the dashboard (Account → Delete account). Deletion is permanent and removes your profile, saved plans, tool history, internship data, cost summaries, help-request cases linked to your account, and your login.
• Request deletion by email: if you submitted a form without an account (or can't sign in), email AidBridge does not yet publish a monitored contact address. Please do not send sensitive information; signed-in users can delete their account from the account page. from the address you used and we will delete your submission.
• After deletion: data is removed from the live database immediately; residual copies may persist briefly in provider backups before aging out.

You must be 13 or older to create an AidBridge account. Younger students may use the public (signed-out) tools — ideally together with a parent, guardian, teacher, or counselor — and signed-out answers stay on the device rather than on our servers.

AidBridge does not knowingly allow children under 13 to create accounts or save information to our servers. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact AidBridge does not yet publish a monitored contact address. Please do not send sensitive information; signed-in users can delete their account from the account page. and we will delete it.

Data is protected with encryption in transit, row-level database security (each user can only access their own rows), and server-only admin credentials. No system is perfectly secure — please use a unique password, and never enter Social Security numbers, bank information, passwords for other services, or other highly sensitive documents anywhere in AidBridge.

• Third-party links: AidBridge links to official external sites (like studentaid.gov or college pages). Their privacy practices are their own — this policy stops at the link.
• Do Not Track: AidBridge has no third-party tracking, so there is nothing for a DNT signal to turn off; we do not respond to DNT signals in any special way.
• International use: AidBridge is built for students in the United States and hosted on U.S. infrastructure. If you use it from elsewhere, your information is processed in the U.S.
• Changes: when this policy materially changes, we will update the version and effective date at the top of this page.

Privacy questions or requests: AidBridge does not yet publish a monitored contact address. Please do not send sensitive information; signed-in users can delete their account from the account page.

See also: Terms of Service · Copyright & content concerns · Accessibility · Contact

This policy is a working operational document maintained by a student team and is pending review by a licensed attorney before a major public launch.