Privacy policy

We collect personal information in the following ways.

1.1 Information you provide

• Account information. Your mobile number or, if you sign in with Google, the identifier Google gives your Google account; your name and email address (taken from your Google account when you sign in with it, and yours to change); the picture you choose for your account from the set we offer; and the student ID we assign to you.
• Profile information. Where and what you want to study, your budget and whether you need a loan, your education history and test scores, the city and state you live in and, if you choose to add them to your profile, your date of birth and passport number.
• Shortlist and applications. The courses you save and the courses you apply to.
• Documents. The files you upload in support of an application, such as a passport, academic transcripts, English test reports, a CV or a statement of purpose.
• Communications. The messages you exchange with your counsellor and other members of our staff, and the photos and documents you send in them.

1.2 Information created when you use the Service

• Application records. The status of each application, its history and the notes your counsellor adds to it.
• Document check records. The details read from certain documents, any differences found, and every decision a counsellor takes on a document, with who took it and when (see section 4).
• Message records. When each message was sent and when it was read. The other person in a conversation can see when you have read what they sent, and, while you are writing to them, that you are typing: not what you write, which goes only when you send it. That you are typing is passed on and not kept.
• Payment records. If you pay for an application, Stripe takes the payment on its own page. We receive and keep the amount, the currency, the time, the course it was for and Stripe's reference for it. Your card details go to Stripe only and never reach us.
• Notifications. A record of each thing you are told has happened: for a student, a change to an application's status, a decision on a document or a payment; for staff, a document sent or an application made by a student they look after. It names who did it, when it was written and when you saw it.
• Notifications on your phone. If you turn them on, your browser gives us an address at its push service and two keys to encrypt notifications for it with. We keep them with the session you turned them on in. In a demo they go with you when you cross to its other side, and the phone is told what happens on both sides.
• Sign-in codes. A one-time code for each sign-in, which is valid for ten minutes. It is kept only as a keyed hash, never as the code itself.
• Session records. A record of each time you sign in, with when that session began and when it runs out, so that it can be ended before then.
• Technical logs. Our hosting provider records standard information about requests to the Service, which may include your device's IP address, the date and time, the page requested and the type of browser.
• Error reports. When something fails, on our server or in your browser, a report of the fault is sent to Sentry: what failed and where in our code, the address of the screen without anything typed into it, the time, and the name of your browser and operating system. A report may name the internal identifier of a record the fault concerns, such as a document. It never contains your name, email address, phone number or messages: an email address or phone number that appears in an error is blanked out before the report is sent, and Sentry is set not to store IP addresses.

1.3 Information stored on your device

The Service stores a small amount of information in your browser, which is described in section 9.

We do not collect your precise location, your contacts or payment card details, and the Service contains no advertising or analytics trackers.

We use personal information to:

• create and secure your account, and keep you signed in;
• show you the universities and courses that match your profile;
• assign you a counsellor and enable them to guide your applications;
• receive, check and review the documents you upload;
• deliver messages between you and our staff;
• tell you when something changes, in the Service and, if you turn them on, on your phone;
• keep a record of the decisions taken on your documents; and
• protect the Service against misuse, and find and fix faults.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Where the law that applies to you requires a legal basis for handling personal information, we rely on:

• Your consent, which you give when you create an account, provide optional details or upload a document. You can withdraw it at any time (see section 10).
• Our agreement with you, to provide the Service you have asked for.
• Our legitimate interests in keeping the Service secure, preventing misuse and resolving faults.
• Legal obligations, where we are required to keep or disclose information.

Passports, transcripts and English test reports that you upload are sent to Google's Gemini service, an artificial intelligence service, which reads the details printed on them: names, numbers, dates and scores. The upload screen tells you this before you upload. No other document is sent to it.

We store those details with the document and compare them with your profile and with the course you applied to, so that your counsellor can see at once when something does not match.

The service does not make decisions about you. A counsellor reviews every document and makes every decision, and each decision is recorded with who made it and when.

While your counsellor is away, your messages to them are answered by the Journey Sync assistant, an artificial intelligence that runs on Groq's service in the United States. To answer, it is sent the latest messages of that conversation (not the files in it), what your profile says about where and what you want to study, your budget, marks and scores, your applications and shortlist, and courses from our catalogue. Each of its replies is marked in the conversation as the assistant's, your counsellor can read it, and it decides nothing about you. Under Groq's terms, Groq does not keep what it is sent, except for up to 30 days when it looks into a fault or suspected misuse.

This demonstration uses the free tier of the Gemini service. Under Google's terms for that tier, Google may use the documents it is sent to improve its products, and human reviewers may read them. For that reason, upload only sample documents here. As this is a demonstration, keep personal details out of your messages too.

5.1 Within the Service

Your counsellor

Your name, picture and contact details, your study preferences, your applications, your documents and your messages with them, for as long as they are assigned to you.

A visa or funding specialist

Your name, your picture and the conversation you open with them.

Administrators

All accounts, applications, documents and conversations, in order to operate the Service.

Other students

None of your information.

5.2 Service providers

We use the following providers to operate the Service. They process personal information on our behalf, under their own security and privacy terms.

Supabase

Database, file storage and live messaging. Located in Mumbai, India.

Vercel

Hosting of the application and its server code. The server code runs in Mumbai, India; pages and files are delivered from its worldwide network.

Google (Gemini API)

Reading of the documents described in section 4.

Groq

The assistant's replies, described in section 4. Located in the United States.

Google (Sign in with Google)

If you sign in with Google, Google confirms who you are and, with your permission, gives us your Google account's identifier, name and email address. Its sign-in button on the first screen is loaded from Google's servers, which receive your device's IP address and browser details.

Unsplash

Photographs of places are loaded from its servers, which receive your device's IP address and browser details, as any website you visit does.

Sentry

Error reports, described in section 1. Located in the United States.

Your browser's push service

If you turn on notifications on a phone: Google for Chrome, Microsoft for Edge, Mozilla for Firefox or Apple for Safari carries each one to your device. What it says is encrypted for your browser alone, so the push service cannot read it; it receives the address of your device at the service and when each notification is sent.

Stripe

Payments for applications beyond the free ones, taken on Stripe's own page, which receives what you enter there (your card details and email address) and the name of the course. In this demonstration Stripe runs in test mode and no money is taken. Located in the United States.

5.3 Legal requirements

We may disclose personal information where the law, a court order or a lawful request from a public authority requires it, or where it is necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of our users or of the Service.

Apart from the above, we do not share personal information with advertisers, data brokers or any other third party.

Your account, documents and messages are stored in India (Mumbai), and the Service's server code runs there.

Some of our providers process information in other countries: Google processes the documents described in section 4 and signs you in with Google on its own servers, Groq writes the assistant's replies in the United States, Sentry receives error reports in the United States, Stripe takes payments in the United States, and Vercel and Unsplash deliver pages and photographs from servers around the world. Where information leaves India, it is handled under those providers' terms and safeguards.

We keep personal information for as long as it is needed for the purposes set out in section 2.

Account, profile, applications, documents and messages

For as long as you have an account, or until you delete them.

Document check records

Deleted together with the document they relate to.

Notifications

For as long as you have an account. One about an application, document or payment is deleted with it.

Addresses for notifications on your phone

Deleted when you turn notifications off, when you log out of that session or of every device, when the session runs out and is cleared, or when the push service says your browser no longer takes them.

Sign-in codes

Ten minutes, after which they are removed.

Sign-in sessions

A record of each session is deleted when you log out of it or of every device. Otherwise it expires after seven days and is deleted at the next sign-in to the Service.

Links to your documents

One hour.

Technical logs

A short period set by our hosting provider.

Error reports

30 days, after which Sentry deletes them.

Payment records

For as long as you have an account. Stripe keeps its own record of a payment under its terms.

Backups

Copies of the database are made before maintenance. Information deleted from the Service can remain in such a copy until the copy is itself deleted.

When you ask us to delete your account, we delete the account and the information associated with it.

We protect personal information with technical measures that include:

• encryption of information in transit (HTTPS) and at rest;
• access checks on every request, so that a student can reach only their own records and a counsellor only those of the students assigned to them;
• private storage for documents and for the files sent in conversations, which open only through links that expire after one hour;
• a sign-in session held in a cookie that scripts on the page cannot read, which you can end on every device at once;
• single-use sign-in codes that expire after ten minutes and allow a limited number of attempts; and
• a record of document decisions that cannot be altered afterwards.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we become aware of a breach that affects your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authority as the law requires.

The Service uses one cookie of its own and your browser's local storage, both needed for it to work, and Google's sign-in button adds one cookie where it is shown. We use no advertising or analytics cookies and no third-party trackers.

Session cookie

Keeps you signed in. It lasts up to seven days, cannot be read by scripts on the page, is removed when you log out and stops working when its session is ended from another device.

Cached content

A copy of your profile, any set-up answers you have not finished and the courses you opened last, so that screens open quickly and you can find those courses again. Cleared when you log out.

Preferences

Display choices, such as a prompt you have closed or a control you have folded away, so that you are not shown them again, and whether you have opened the Service in this browser before, so that the offer to install it waits for a later visit.

Google's sign-in state

Where signing in with Google is offered, Google's sign-in button sets a cookie of its own on the first screen, which records the state of its sign-in prompt for Google.

Notification subscription

If you turn on notifications, your browser keeps its own subscription to its push service. Turning them off on your account screen removes it; you can also block notifications for the Service in your browser's settings.

Offline copy

The screen that says there is no connection is kept, with the files it is drawn with, so that it can be shown without one. It holds nothing about you.

You can remove all of these at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser's settings.

Depending on the law that applies to you, you may have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to receive a copy of it, to withdraw your consent, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to complain to a data protection authority.

You can exercise several of these rights in the Service itself:

• View and correct your details in Profile, using the edit button.
• Delete a document from Documents. The details read from it and the record of decisions on it are deleted with it.
• Delete a conversation from the menu of the conversation itself. The files sent in it are deleted with it.
• Turn notifications on your phone on or off on your account screen.
• End your sessions on every device where you are signed in, with “Log out of every device” on your account screen.

To delete your account, or to make any other request, contact us using the details in section 14. We may need to confirm your identity before we act on a request.

The Service is intended for people who are applying to study at a university. It is not directed at children. If you are under 18, use the Service only with the consent of a parent or guardian.

If you believe that a child has given us personal information without that consent, contact us and we will delete it.

The Service contains links to university websites and, where it is offered, to WhatsApp so that you can write to us, and lets you sign in with your Google account. These services are operated by others, and their own privacy policies apply to the information they collect.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the effective date at the top of this page, and we encourage you to review the policy periodically. Your continued use of the Service after a change means that the updated policy applies to you.

If you have a question about this policy, wish to exercise your rights or want to raise a concern about how your information is handled, you can reach us:

• through your counsellor, in Messages.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may have the right to complain to the data protection authority where you live.