Privacy policy

Who we are

CourseBridge is operated by the CourseBridge team. We are an independent project and are not affiliated with ASSIST, the University of California, the California State University, or any community college.

You can reach us about anything in this policy at privacy@coursebridge.us.

What we collect

If you create an account, we store:

• Your email address and, if you signed up with a password, a hashed version of that password. We never store the password itself.
• Your name, and a profile photo if you upload one.
• Your Google account identifier, if you sign in with Google.
• Your community college, intended major, and the campuses you are targeting.
• Your language preference.

When you build a plan, we store the plan itself, along with the college, campus, major and the list of completed courses it was built from, so it is waiting for you next time.

If you send us feedback on a plan or a reply, we store that feedback and, if you are signed in, which account it came from.

We hold your IP address briefly in memory to enforce rate limits and prevent abuse. It is not written to our database.

What we do not collect

Some of this is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly.

• Transcripts you upload are read in memory to pull out your course codes, and then discarded. The file is never written to disk and never reaches our database.
• Conversations with the CourseBridge AI assistant are not saved. Each message is sent to our model provider to generate a reply and is not stored by us afterwards.
• We do not run analytics or advertising, and there are no tracking cookies on this site.
• We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising.

Cookies and browser storage

We use one cookie: a session token that keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary for the site to work, so we do not ask for cookie consent.

Your browser also stores your draft profile and language locally so the site works before you create an account. That data stays on your device and you can clear it at any time through your browser settings.

Who else sees your information

We use a small number of service providers, and only for the purposes listed:

• Groq, which runs the AI model. Your messages and your college, major, target campuses and completed courses are sent to Groq so it can answer usefully.
• Google, if you choose to sign in with Google.
• Resend, which sends password reset emails.
• Railway, which hosts the application and the database.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it. Beyond that, nobody else receives your data.

How long we keep it

Your account and saved plans stay until you ask us to delete them. Session tokens expire after 30 days, and password reset links expire shortly after they are issued.

We are a beta product and we would rather hold less than more. If your account has been unused for a long time, we may delete it and will try to email you first.

Your choices

You can see and change your name, college, target campus, photo and language at any time in Settings.

To get a copy of your data, correct it, or have it deleted, email privacy@coursebridge.us from the address on your account. We will action deletion requests within 30 days, and that removes your account, your saved plans and your feedback.

We do not currently have a self-serve delete button. Until we build one, email is the way, and we will honour it.

Security

Passwords are hashed, the site is served over HTTPS, session cookies are HTTP-only, and each account can only ever read its own plans.

No service can promise perfect security, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If we ever discover a breach affecting your information, we will tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Age

CourseBridge is for students aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has given us information, email privacy@coursebridge.us and we will delete it.

Some of our users are under 18. If you are, please talk to a parent, guardian or counsellor about your transfer plan as well as using this site.

Where we operate

CourseBridge is built for California community college students and is offered in the United States only. We do not target users in the European Union or the United Kingdom.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will tell account holders by email before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions, requests or complaints: privacy@coursebridge.us.