Privacy Policy

This policy covers the Polaris iOS app and the polarisadmit.com website (together, the “Service”), operated by Polaris Admit, LLC. Earlier versions of this policy are archived; you can request any prior version by emailing team@polarisadmit.com.

The short version

• Your account is pseudonymous. Polaris generates a username for you, and we never ask for your real name.
• We use your email (or Sign in with Apple / Google) only to run your account and confirm you’re old enough to use Polaris.
• Your academic stats (GPA, test scores, and similar) are private by default. Nothing is shared unless you choose to attach it to a post.
• Messages you send to PolarisAI are processed by a third-party AI provider to generate a response. They are not used to train any model and are never sold.
• We do not sell or share personal information for advertising. No ads, no ad trackers, no location tracking, ever.
• You can delete your account and its data at any time, in-app, immediately. Content you posted is anonymized rather than left under your name.

Who we are

The Service is operated by Polaris Admit, LLC, 1388 Haight St #1264, San Francisco, CA 94117, United States. For any question about this policy or your data, including privacy requests, contact team@polarisadmit.com.

Information we collect

Account information

To create an account you sign in with Sign in with Apple, Google, or an email address and password. We receive an email address to identify your account. If you use Apple’s “Hide My Email” feature, we only ever see the private relay address Apple generates, never your real one. We never ask for and never store your real name.

At signup you attest that you are 13 years of age or older. We record that you made this attestation and when, but we do not collect or store your date of birth.

We generate a pseudonymous username for your account (for example, “NovaSailor4821”). You can change it in Settings; it never contains or reveals your real identity.

Content you create

Polaris stores the content you choose to create and share, including:

• Posts, comments, votes, and poll responses
• Direct messages you send to other users
• Photos you upload (for example, a profile avatar or photos attached to a post)
• Your profile bio, tags (for example “Junior”), graduation year, and college list
• Reports you file and blocks you create

Academic stats: private by default

You may optionally add academic stats to your profile: GPA, SAT/ACT scores, AP exams, activities, and awards. These are private to you by default. We never share your full profile stats with other users or third parties. Stats become visible to other people only when you explicitly attach a snapshot of them to a specific post (for example, a “Chance Me” post). In that case only the attached snapshot is shown, not your live profile.

AI features

PolarisAI (chat) and My Chances (admissions estimates) are processed by a third-party AI inference provider, Groq, Inc., acting as our service provider. When you send a message or request a chances estimate, the relevant text (your message, and relevant profile stats for My Chances) is sent to Groq so it can generate a response, which is returned to you in the app.

• Your conversations are not used to train any model.
• Your conversations are never sold or shared for advertising.
• Your PolarisAI chat history is saved to your account so you can revisit past conversations, and is visible only to you. You can delete individual conversations at any time.
• Before your first message, the app shows a one-time notice explaining this processing, which you must acknowledge to continue.

Device and technical data

• If you turn on push notifications, we store a device push token so Apple can deliver notifications to your device. You can revoke this anytime in iOS Settings.
• Our infrastructure providers keep standard, short-lived server logs (which include IP addresses) for security, debugging, and abuse prevention. We do not use IP addresses to determine or store your location, and we do not build profiles from logs.

Website and waitlist

If you join the waitlist on polarisadmit.com, we collect your email address, your place in line, and, if you used a referral link, which account referred you. We use this only to run the waitlist and to contact you about Polaris. The website uses no advertising or analytics trackers.

Support

If you email us, we keep the correspondence so we can respond and keep a record of the request.

What we do not collect

• Your real name
• Your date of birth
• Location data of any kind: no GPS and no IP-based location lookups
• Advertising identifiers or data from ad networks. Polaris has no ads.
• Data from third-party analytics or tracking SDKs. Polaris has none.
• Your contacts, and nothing from your camera roll unless you choose to upload a photo

How we use information

We use the information above only to operate the Service:

• Authenticate you and maintain your account
• Enforce our age floor and community rules
• Show your content to the people you direct it to
• Generate AI responses and admissions estimates you request
• Keep the community safe: automated filtering, report review, blocking, and moderation
• Deliver notifications you have turned on
• Respond when you contact support
• Comply with law, including mandatory child-safety reporting

Automated content moderation and safety scanning

To keep Polaris safe for a 13+ community, content on the Service is screened automatically. By using Polaris you consent to this scanning. Specifically:

• All user-generated text, including direct messages, passes through an automated filter before it is stored. The filter blocks personal contact information (phone numbers, emails, social handles, street addresses) and hate or harassment content.
• Every uploaded photo is screened before it becomes visible. Images are checked by an automated classifier (processed by OpenAI’s moderation service) for sexual or violent content, and borderline images are held for human review.
• Uploaded images are also matched against industry hash databases of known child sexual abuse material (using Microsoft PhotoDNA). Apparent child sexual abuse material is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and preserved as federal law requires (18 U.S.C. § 2258A). We have zero tolerance for this content.

Human moderators review reported content and content held by the automated systems. Moderators see the reported or held content itself; they do not browse private messages outside of reports and safety holds.

How we share information

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. We have not done either in the preceding 12 months, and that includes the personal information of users under 16. We share data only in these limited ways:

• Service providers that process data on our behalf under contract: Supabase (database, authentication, and file hosting, in the United States), Vercel (website hosting), Apple (sign-in and push notifications), Google (sign-in), Groq (AI inference), OpenAI (automated image screening), Microsoft (PhotoDNA child-safety hash matching), and Resend (transactional email such as verification codes). Each receives only what it needs to perform its function and may not use your data for its own purposes.
• Other users: only the content you direct to them, such as your posts, comments, DMs to a recipient, and stat snapshots you attach to a post.
• Safety and legal compliance: reports of apparent child sexual abuse material to NCMEC as required by federal law; responses to valid legal process such as subpoenas or court orders; and disclosures necessary to prevent imminent harm to a person. Where we are legally permitted and it is safe to do so, we will tell you before disclosing your data in response to legal process.
• Business transfers: if Polaris is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may transfer with the Service. This policy would continue to apply, and we would notify you of any change in ownership or in how your personal information is handled.

How long we keep it

• Account data (email, profile, stats, chat history): kept while your account is active; deleted when you delete your account.
• Content you post: remains part of the community discussion until you delete it or your account. When you delete your account, your posts, comments, and DMs are anonymized (see below).
• Moderation records: reports and moderation actions are retained after content removal for safety, audit, and legal-compliance purposes.
• Child-safety reports: material reported to NCMEC is preserved for the period federal law requires, then deleted.
• Server logs: retained briefly by our infrastructure providers, then deleted on a rolling basis.

Deleting your account and your content

You can delete individual posts, comments, and PolarisAI conversations at any time in the app. You can permanently delete your whole account under Settings → Delete Account. Deletion is immediate and removes your authentication credentials, email, profile, academic stats, saved colleges, push tokens, and AI chat history.

Posts, comments, and DMs you sent are anonymized rather than deleted outright: your username is replaced with “[deleted]” so conversations other people were part of stay coherent, and nothing ties the content back to you. Photos tied to your account are removed as part of deletion. If you want anonymized content removed as well, email team@polarisadmit.com and we will handle it.

Your rights and choices

Regardless of where you live, we extend these rights to every Polaris user:

• Know and access: request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, including the categories we collect and the purposes described in this policy.
• Delete: delete your account and data in-app, or ask us to delete specific data by email.
• Correct: fix inaccurate information, in-app (profile and stats are directly editable) or by email.
• Portability: receive a copy of your data in a portable format.
• Opt out of sale or sharing: we do not sell or share personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of. If that ever changed, we would provide a clear opt-out first and obtain opt-in consent from users under 16.
• No discrimination: exercising any of these rights never affects your access to Polaris.

To exercise any right, use the in-app tools or email team@polarisadmit.com from the address on your account (that is how we verify it’s you; we may ask a follow-up question if needed). An authorized agent may submit a request on your behalf with proof of authorization. We respond within 45 days. If we decline a request, we will explain why, and you can appeal by replying to our response.

California disclosures

In the terms used by California law: we collect identifiers (email, username, push token), user content (posts, comments, messages, photos, stats you provide), education information you volunteer (academic stats), and internet activity limited to server logs. We disclose them only to the service providers listed above for the business purposes described. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in the CCPA, and we do not use or disclose sensitive personal information beyond what is necessary to provide the Service. We provide the rights above to all users as a matter of policy, and to California residents to the extent required by law.

Content removal for minors (California Eraser law): if you are a California resident under 18 and a registered user, you have the right to remove, or to request and obtain removal of, content you posted to Polaris. You can delete any of your posts or comments directly in the app, or email team@polarisadmit.com with your username and a description of the content and we will remove it. Removal takes the content out of public view, but does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal: copies or reposts made by other users may persist, and we may retain data as permitted by law.

Shine the Light: we do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct-marketing purposes. Do Not Track: because we do not track users across sites or over time, the Service does not respond to Do Not Track browser signals; there is nothing for them to turn off.

Children’s and teens’ privacy

Polaris is intended for users age 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and accounts for anyone under 13 are not permitted. If we gain actual knowledge that a user is under 13, we will suspend the account and promptly delete the personal information associated with it. Because Polaris does not collect real names, dates of birth, or location, the data footprint of any account is intentionally minimal.

For teen users, the protective defaults in this policy are not optional features. They apply to everyone: stats private by default, no ads, no tracking, no data sales, and automated screening of all content. Parents or guardians with questions, or who believe their child under 13 has created an account, can contact team@polarisadmit.com and we will resolve it promptly.

Security

We protect your data with industry-standard safeguards: encryption in transit (TLS), row-level access controls that limit every database query to the requesting user’s own authority, server-side enforcement of permissions, and secrets kept out of the app entirely. No service can promise absolute security, but Polaris is designed so that even in a worst case the database holds very little identity to expose. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you as applicable law requires.

International users

The Service is operated from the United States and directed to users in the United States. Your information is processed and stored in the United States. If you use Polaris from elsewhere, you understand that your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, where privacy laws may differ from those in your country.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you in-app (or by email for waitlist members) before they take effect, and we will update the date at the top of this page. Continuing to use Polaris after changes take effect means you accept the updated policy. Prior versions are available on request.

Contact us

Polaris Admit, LLC, 1388 Haight St #1264, San Francisco, CA 94117. Email team@polarisadmit.com for anything in this policy, including privacy requests and parental inquiries. See also our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.