Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and scope

SciLink is a startup team based in Los Angeles, California, United States. We are developing tools that help students and researchers find professors, labs, papers, and research opportunities that match their interests.

Our website and services are intended only for people in the United States who are at least 16 years old. This policy applies to services that link to it; it does not govern third-party websites or services that have their own policies.

2. Information we collect

Depending on the features you use, we may collect:

• Contact and account information: your name, email address, account profile, login or authentication information, and communication preferences.
• Education and research information: your school or university, role, degree or program level, field of study, academic or research interests, skills, experience, goals, and other education-related profile details you choose to provide.
• Content and product activity: searches, prompts, saved professors, labs, papers, or opportunities, matching preferences, feedback, optional survey responses, and other content you submit to the service.
• Communications: messages, questions, support requests, and other information you send to us by email or through the service.
• Signup, consent, and referral information: when you joined, your waitlist or account status, the version of the signup notice shown to you, campaign source and name, and the signup location on our site when those values are available.
• Technical information: IP address, browser and device type, operating system, request time, pages or features used, referring page, error information, and similar server or usage data. Our waitlist application uses a salted, one-way IP fingerprint for rate limiting and does not write the raw IP address to the waitlist database. The fingerprint is kept in server memory for approximately one minute.
• Public research information: professional and academic information about researchers, faculty, publications, labs, and institutions from public university pages, scholarly publications, and public research databases. We may combine this information with your profile and interests to generate matches.

Please do not submit health, financial, government-identification, confidential research, or other sensitive personal information unless a feature specifically requests it and explains why it is needed.

3. How we use information

We use personal information to:

• operate the waitlist, create and manage accounts, and provide the service;
• match users with professors, labs, papers, and opportunities based on their education, research interests, preferences, and activity;
• personalize searches, recommendations, saved items, and AI-assisted tools;
• send invitations, early-access notices, and information about what is coming next;
• respond to questions, support requests, and privacy requests;
• measure demand, troubleshoot the service, and develop or improve features;
• protect users and the service, enforce usage limits, and prevent abuse; and
• comply with law, protect rights and safety, and enforce our terms.

4. AI-assisted matching and features

Our matching and AI-assisted features may analyze the education, research, preference, search, and prompt information you provide together with public research information. This processing is used to generate recommendations, summaries, rankings, or other requested results.

When an AI-powered feature is enabled, information needed for that request may be sent to an AI service provider acting for us. We will update this policy to identify material providers when they are selected. Do not submit confidential or sensitive information to an AI feature. AI outputs may be incomplete or inaccurate and should be independently reviewed. We do not use matching to make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about users.

5. How we disclose information

We may disclose information to:

• Service providers: Vercel for website hosting and server infrastructure, Supabase for database infrastructure and future account services, Google for email and communications, and other providers that help us secure, support, and operate the service. Future AI providers may process information only when needed to provide an AI-assisted feature.
• Professional advisers and authorities: when reasonably necessary to obtain advice, protect rights and safety, investigate misuse, comply with legal process, or enforce our terms.
• A successor organization: in connection with a merger, financing, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or sale of assets, subject to applicable law and appropriate confidentiality protections.
• Other parties at your direction: when you ask us to share information or otherwise provide consent.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising or use it for targeted advertising.

6. Cookies, analytics, and browser signals

We do not currently set advertising cookies or run a third-party analytics service. Vercel may process standard server logs as our hosting provider. The future product may use essential cookies or similar storage for login sessions, security, and saved preferences.

If we introduce optional analytics or other tracking technologies, we will update this policy and provide any notice or choices required by law before using them. We do not currently track users across unrelated websites for advertising, so browser Do Not Track signals do not change our practices. We honor Global Privacy Control signals where required by applicable law; because we do not sell or share personal information for targeted advertising, there is currently no sale or sharing to opt out of.

7. Retention

We retain waitlist, account, education and research profile, saved preference, survey, and product-activity records while your waitlist entry or account remains active and while the information supports the ongoing service. This period may be indefinite unless you request deletion, close your account, or we determine that the information is no longer needed.

After a deletion request or account closure, we delete or de-identify information unless limited retention is reasonably necessary for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, backup integrity, or dispute resolution. We periodically review whether retained information continues to serve a legitimate business need.

8. Security

We use reasonable administrative and technical safeguards designed to protect personal information. The waitlist browser does not receive direct database access, and public database roles cannot read waitlist records. Our service providers are expected to protect information they process for us. No online service can guarantee absolute security, so please use care when deciding what to submit.

9. United States service and processing

The service is operated from the United States and is currently intended only for people located in the United States. We and our service providers may process information in the United States and in other locations where those providers operate.

10. Your choices and privacy rights

You can unsubscribe from product emails using the link in an email or by contacting us. Depending on applicable state law, you may also have the right to request access to, correction of, deletion of, or a portable copy of your personal information, and to appeal a refusal of a request. We do not discriminate against users for exercising a privacy right.

Send requests to SciLink000@gmail.com. We may need to verify your identity and authority before completing a request. An authorized agent may submit a request where permitted by law, but we may require proof of authorization or direct confirmation from you.

11. Age requirement

The service is not intended for anyone under 16, and people under 16 may not join the waitlist or create an account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a person under 16 has provided information to us, contact us so we can review and delete it.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product, providers, and our practices change. We will post the revised version here and change the effective date. If a change materially affects how we use information already collected, we will provide additional notice when required by law.

13. Contact us

SciLink is a startup team based in Los Angeles, California, United States. Questions, requests, or concerns can be sent to SciLink000@gmail.com.