Privacy Policy

The short version

• Your essay is processed to produce your review. It is not used to train models.
• Reviews created without an account are deleted after 30 days.
• You can delete any report from its page, which removes the essay text, scores and feedback.
• We use Stripe for payments. We never see or store your full card number.
• We do not sell personal information.

Who we are

Free College Essay Grader ("we", "us") operates freecollegeessaygrader.org. For privacy questions, contact hello@freecollegeessaygrader.org.

Information we collect

Essay content you submit. The essay text, the essay type, the prompt you select or paste, the target school if you provide one, and the word limit. This is necessary to produce the review.

Account information. If you create an account, we store your name, email address, and a hashed password (or the identifier returned by a social sign-in provider, if enabled). We do not store plaintext passwords.

Payment information. Checkout is handled by Stripe. We receive an order record, the amount, currency, status, and the email you used at checkout. We do not receive or store complete card numbers.

Technical and usage data. The pages you visit, the actions you take in the product, approximate device and browser information, and a one-way hash of your IP address used for rate limiting and abuse prevention. We do not keep the raw IP address in the review record.

Cookies. A session cookie when you sign in, a locale preference cookie, and first-touch attribution cookies for campaign parameters. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking pixels for behavioural advertising.

How we use your information

• To generate the review and display the report.
• To save reports to your account and let you compare drafts.
• To process payments and maintain your credit balance.
• To prevent abuse, rate-limit requests and secure the service.
• To respond to support requests.
• To understand aggregate product usage so we can improve the review.

We do not use your essay to train our models or any third-party model.

AI processing and third parties

To produce a review, the essay text, essay type, selected prompt, word limit and optional target school are sent to an AI model provider through an OpenAI-compatible API. The provider processes the text solely to return the structured review. We configure providers that do not train on API inputs, but their own retention and logging policies apply to the request. Do not include information in an essay that you would not want processed by a third-party AI provider.

We also use:

• Cloudflare for hosting, networking and the database.
• Stripe for payment processing.
• An email provider if transactional email is enabled.

We do not sell personal information. We share it only with these processors, when required by law, or to protect the service.

How long we keep it

| Data | Retention | | --- | --- | | Anonymous review (no account) | 30 days, then deleted | | Review saved to an account | Until you delete it, or up to 12 months after creation | | Account information | Until you delete your account | | Order and payment records | As required for accounting and tax, typically 7 years | | IP hash used for rate limiting | 30 days |

Deleting a report removes the essay text, the generated report and the scores from our production database. Backups may retain a copy for a short period before they rotate.

Your choices

You can delete any report from its page while the report is open. If you have an account, you can also request deletion of your account and associated reports by emailing hello@freecollegeessaygrader.org. We will respond within a reasonable period and may need to verify that you control the account.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete personal information, or to object to certain processing. Contact us to exercise them.

Students and minors

The service is intended for high school students applying to college. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are under 18, use the service with the knowledge and permission of a parent or guardian. A parent or guardian can contact us to request deletion of a student's report.

Security

We use HTTPS, hashed passwords, access controls and a managed database. No service can guarantee absolute security. If you believe your account or a report has been compromised, contact us immediately.

Changes

We may update this policy as the product changes. The "last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the current version. Material changes will be announced on the site or by email to account holders.

Contact

hello@freecollegeessaygrader.org