Privacy Policy

1. Our commitment to children

Because many of our members are minors, we follow these rules:

• No one under 12 can create an account.
• Students under 16 can only appear to others once a parent or guardian has approved their profile. Until then their profile is hidden from search and from other users — this is enforced by our database, not just by the website.
• No advertising is running currently. If introduced, ads must be tasteful, age-appropriate and relevant to students. We do not sell personal information or use children's information for behavioural advertising or marketing profiling. We will review applicable child-privacy requirements and update our disclosures and consent arrangements before introducing advertising.
• Parents' contact details are used only for approval and safety, and are never shown on a student's profile or included in their downloadable CV.
• We collect only what is needed to run a student profile network.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us:

• Account details: full name, email address, password (stored only in encrypted form) and date of birth.
• Profile details: grade or year, country, location, school, headline, bio, achievements, activities, volunteering, work experience, skills, photos, banner images, videos and any social media handles you choose to add.
• Parent or guardian details (students under 16): full name, email address and phone number.
• Connections: friend requests you send, accept or decline.
• Scholarship campaigns and pledges, including the name or "Anonymous" choice and message a supporter provides.
• Messages you send us, such as support requests or safety reports; contact and partnership forms (name, email, phone, message, and organisation and role where relevant); and career applications (name, email, phone, LinkedIn URL and CV). These submissions are stored privately for authorised team review, not published on student profiles.

Information collected automatically

When you use ScholarOut, our hosting providers record basic technical information such as your IP address, browser type, and the date and time of requests. This is used to keep the service secure, prevent abuse and fix problems. We do not use advertising trackers or third-party analytics that follow you across other websites.

3. How we use information

We use personal information only for these purposes:

• To create and run your account and profile.
• To verify age and obtain a parent or guardian's approval for students under 16.
• To show your public profile to people you choose to share it with, and to let signed-in members find and connect with you once your profile is visible.
• To run scholarship campaigns.
• To keep ScholarOut safe: investigating reports, preventing fraud and abuse, and enforcing our policies.
• To send essential service messages, such as approval emails and security notices.
• To review and respond to contact and partnership enquiries and career applications. CVs are stored privately; contact info@scholarout.com to request access or deletion of your submission.
• To comply with the law.

4. Consent

We rely on your consent to collect and use your information. For students under 16, we rely on the consent of a parent or guardian, given through the consent email sent only to them and recorded with the date, name and settings chosen. A parent or guardian may withdraw consent at any time from their private guardian link, which makes the profile private immediately, or by contacting us; some features will stop working without the information they need.

5. Who can see your information

• Who sees your profile depends on the setting you (or your parent) choose: only you, connections only, signed-in members, or a shareable link. Profiles of students under 18 start as connections only. For students under 16, anyone who isn't an accepted connection sees at most a portfolio — first name, last initial, grade, achievements, skills and photos — never school, location, videos or social handles. Adults who choose a shareable link show their full profile to anyone with it.
• Never public: your email address, date of birth, and your parent or guardian's name, email and phone number.
• ScholarOut administrators: a small number of authorised staff can see account details, including parent contact details, for safety, support and legal purposes only.

6. Sharing

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information. We share it only with:

• Service providers that host our website, database, file storage and email, under contracts requiring them to protect it and use it only to provide services to us.
• Payment processors (such as Stripe or PayPal), if and when payments are enabled, to process donations.
• A student's school, limited to what is needed to apply scholarship funds to their tuition, once payments are enabled.
• Police, child protection agencies or other authorities, when required by law or when we believe it is necessary to protect a child or anyone else from harm.
• A successor organisation if ScholarOut is merged or sold, which must continue to protect your information under this policy.

7. Where information is stored

Our service providers may store and process information outside your province or outside Canada, including in the United States. Information stored elsewhere is subject to the laws of that country and may be accessible to its courts and authorities. We take steps to make sure it receives a level of protection comparable to Canadian law.

8. How we protect it

Every database table is protected by access rules so each user can reach only what they are allowed to. Uploaded photos and videos are kept in private storage and shown only through short-lived secure links. Passwords are encrypted, and connections to ScholarOut are encrypted in transit. No system is perfectly secure, but we work hard to protect your information and will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada of any breach that creates a real risk of significant harm, as the law requires.

9. How long we keep it

We keep your information while your account is open. When you delete your account — or a parent, guardian or ScholarOut deletes it — your profile, entries, photos, videos, connections and campaigns are permanently erased. Limited records may remain in secure backups for a short period, or longer where the law requires us to keep them (for example, financial records once payments are enabled).

10. Your rights

Students and parents or guardians can:

• Access the personal information we hold about them or their child.
• Correct inaccurate information — most of it can be edited directly on the profile.
• Delete the account and all associated information, at any time.
• Withdraw consent.
• Ask how their information is used and who it has been shared with.
• Make a complaint to us, or to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca), or in Quebec to the Commission d'accès à l'information.

11. Members outside Canada

If you live in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom or elsewhere, you may have additional rights under local law, such as the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) or the GDPR. Contact us and we will honour those rights where they apply.

12. Privacy Officer

ScholarOut has designated Mark Mauleesan as its Privacy Officer. The Privacy Officer is responsible for our compliance with this policy. You can reach them by email at info@scholarout.com or through the Contact Us page with the subject line "Privacy".

13. Changes

We will post any changes to this policy here and update the date above. If changes significantly affect how we use children's information, we will notify members and parents before they take effect and ask for fresh consent where required.