Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to gradshore.com and the GradShore services. GradShore is an independently operated academic-intelligence service and acts as the controller of the personal information described here. Questions and privacy requests may be sent to privacy@gradshore.com.

• Account information: email address, display name, authentication provider, internal user identifier, account status, and sign-in/session information.
• Saved activity: professors on your watchlist, application-target selections, advisor-search preferences, and notification history.
• Advisor inputs: messages, research interests, and any CV, research statement, or other text you choose to submit to Advisor Finder.
• Public shares: the title and structured search criteria of an advisor list you deliberately publish. GradShore does not store the underlying chat or uploaded document in a public share.
• Subscription information: plan, status, price, currency, trial dates, and Lemon Squeezy customer and subscription identifiers. GradShore does not receive or store your complete payment-card number.
• Professor verification information: ORCID iD and professor-submitted details such as recruiting status, degree preferences, rank, department, and contact preference.
• Usage and technical information: pages and features used, approximate referral and campaign data, browser/device information, IP-derived security signals, timestamps, and diagnostic logs.
• Public professional information: names, affiliations, publications, citations, grants, research topics, and collaboration relationships obtained from scholarly and government sources.

We receive information directly from you, from your authentication provider, from service providers, and from public or licensed sources including OpenAlex, ORCID, NSF, NIH, IPEDS, GSS, and HERD. Public-source records may be incomplete, delayed, or incorrectly matched.

• Provide search, recommendations, profiles, rankings, maps, watchlists, and sharing.
• Authenticate users and maintain account and subscription access.
• Process professor claims, corrections, and opt-out requests.
• Send requested service messages and, if enabled, watchlist digests.
• Measure feature performance, diagnose errors, prevent abuse, and secure the service.
• Comply with law, enforce our terms, and establish or defend legal claims.

Where applicable law requires a legal basis, we rely on performance of our contract, legitimate interests in operating and securing the service, consent where requested, and compliance with legal obligations.

Advisor Finder sends your messages and any document text you submit to Google's Gemini API to generate a response and to call GradShore's read-only research tools. GradShore does not intentionally persist chat messages or uploaded document text in its application database. The model provider may process and retain this data under its applicable terms, security, and abuse-monitoring practices.

Do not submit Social Security numbers, financial credentials, medical information, or other sensitive information that is not needed for an advisor search.

We disclose information only as needed to the following categories of recipients:

• Supabase for authentication and database hosting.
• Vercel and Railway for application hosting and delivery.
• Upstash for short-lived caching and service reliability.
• Google for Gemini processing and, if enabled, Firebase/Google Analytics.
• Amplitude for product analytics, if enabled.
• Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record and payment/subscription provider.
• ORCID for professor identity verification.
• SendGrid for service email, if enabled.
• Authorities, advisers, or counterparties when required by law or a transaction.

We do not sell personal information for money, and we do not use personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.

GradShore uses browser storage and similar technologies for authentication, session continuity, security, and navigation preferences. When analytics integrations are enabled, they may use device identifiers or browser storage to measure acquisition and product usage. You can limit these technologies through your browser settings, although blocking essential storage may prevent sign-in and saved features from working.

Advisor lists you choose to share are accessible to anyone with the link and may be indexed by search engines. Professor profile information is generally public professional data. Do not publish confidential, infringing, or personal information about another person in a shared-list title or query.

• Account and saved-feature records are retained while your account is active.
• An account deletion request deactivates the GradShore account immediately. Signing in during the next 30 days reactivates it; after that grace period, GradShore deletes the application account and associated watchlist, subscription, digest, and shared-list records through its scheduled cleanup process.
• Security logs, provider records, backups, and transaction records may remain for limited periods where reasonably necessary for security, dispute resolution, or legal compliance.
• Public academic records remain while GradShore provides the service, subject to correction, verified professor claims, and opt-out procedures.

Depending on your location, you may have rights to access, know, correct, delete, restrict, object to, or receive a portable copy of personal information, and to appeal or complain to a regulator. We will not discriminate against you for exercising a privacy right.

• Account holders can request deletion from Account Settings.
• Professors can verify a profile through ORCID to update it or request an opt-out.
• Other requests may be sent to privacy@gradshore.com. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

GradShore and its providers may process information in countries other than your own, including the United States. Where required, we use contractual or other legally recognized safeguards for international transfers.

We use technical and organizational safeguards designed to protect information, including encrypted transport, managed authentication, access controls, signed webhooks, and rate-limiting. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

GradShore is intended for graduate-school applicants, researchers, and other users aged 13 or older. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Contact us if you believe a child under 13 has provided information.

We may update this policy as the service or law changes. We will update the date above and, for material changes, provide additional notice where appropriate. Contact privacy@gradshore.com with questions or requests.