Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Welcome to Collegemate, an online platform operated by Collegemate LLC ("Collegemate," "we," "our," or "us"). Our platform is designed to help incoming college students find roommates, make connections before arriving on campus, and access related services.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, store, and protect information that you provide to us or that we collect when you use our website, forms, social media pages, communications, and related services.

2. Consent

By using Collegemate, submitting information to us, purchasing our services, or otherwise interacting with our platform, you consent to the collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please do not use our services.

3. Information We Collect

We collect information to provide our services, improve the user experience, communicate with users, support roommate matching, process payments, measure performance, and operate our business.

The information we may collect includes:

• Personal Information: Full name, email address, phone number, Instagram username, and other identifiers you choose to provide.
• Profile Information: Photos, brief biography, graduation year, interests, preferences, and other content you choose to submit.
• Contact and Social Information: Additional social media handles, hometown, city, state, country, and other information you choose to share.
• Roommate Matching Information: Living habits, study preferences, lifestyle preferences, personality information, compatibility responses, and other roommate-related details you submit through our forms or platform.
• Payment Information: Payment and billing information processed by third-party payment providers such as Stripe and PayPal. We do not store full payment card details on our servers, but we may receive limited transaction information such as payment status, purchase type, amount, and date.
• Communications: Information you provide when you contact us by email, text message, social media, or other communication channels.
• Usage and Device Information: Information about how you interact with our platform, including page views, form submissions, clicks, referring URLs, browser type, device type, IP address, approximate location derived from IP address, operating system, and similar technical information.
• Cookies and Similar Technologies: We and our service providers may use cookies, pixels, tags, SDKs, and similar technologies to operate the platform, remember preferences, analyze traffic, measure campaigns, and support marketing and advertising activities, subject to applicable law.

4. How We Use Your Information

We may use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Platform Services: To operate Collegemate, process submissions, publish content you request us to post, facilitate introductions, and provide our services.
• Roommate Matching: To evaluate compatibility and connect users with potential roommate matches based on submitted information and preferences.
• Communications: To send confirmations, updates, support responses, service messages, match notifications, reminders, promotional emails, and other communications related to Collegemate.
• Payment Processing: To process purchases, verify transactions, prevent fraud, and maintain billing and financial records.
• Marketing and Promotion: To market Collegemate, promote our services, measure campaign effectiveness, build audiences, run email, SMS, and social campaigns, and communicate offers or opportunities that may be relevant to users.
• Advertising and Analytics: To understand usage trends, improve performance, personalize content, measure advertising effectiveness, and, where permitted by law, use information with advertising, analytics, and audience tools, including tools operated by third parties.
• Platform Improvement: To improve our products, forms, content, roommate matching systems, operations, and user experience.
• Safety, Security, and Fraud Prevention: To detect, prevent, investigate, and address fraud, abuse, spam, security incidents, harmful activity, or other violations.
• Legal and Business Operations: To comply with applicable law, enforce our terms, respond to legal requests, maintain records, complete audits, and support corporate transactions or financing activities.
• De-identified and Aggregated Uses: We may use, analyze, create, and disclose aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified information for analytics, research, product development, benchmarking, advertising measurement, business development, and other lawful purposes, provided that such information does not reasonably identify you.

5. Information Sharing and Disclosure

We may share your information in the following circumstances:

• Public Posting: If you submit content for public sharing, we may post your photos, bio, social handles, and other submitted profile details on our Instagram accounts, website, or other public-facing channels. Information posted publicly may be visible to the general public and may be copied, shared, or further used by others.
• Roommate Matching and User Connections: We may share your profile, compatibility information, and related submission details with potential roommate matches or other users as needed to provide our services.
• Service Providers and Vendors: We may share information with third-party vendors and service providers that help us operate our business and platform, including payment processors, hosting providers, cloud storage providers, analytics providers, email and messaging vendors, customer support tools, marketing tools, and similar vendors acting on our behalf.
• Advertising, Analytics, and Business Partners: Where permitted by applicable law, we may disclose certain information to advertising, analytics, social media, data, or business partners for purposes such as marketing, audience development, campaign measurement, traffic attribution, platform improvement, commercial insights, and related business purposes.
• Business Transfers: We may disclose information in connection with an actual or proposed merger, financing, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, sale of assets, or other corporate transaction.
• Legal Compliance and Protection: We may disclose information when we believe disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with applicable law, regulation, legal process, governmental request, court order, or to protect the rights, property, safety, or security of Collegemate, our users, or others.
• With Your Direction or Consent: We may share information when you request, direct, or otherwise consent to the sharing.
• De-identified or Aggregated Information: We may share aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified information that does not reasonably identify an individual for lawful business purposes, including analytics, research, advertising measurement, and commercial partnerships.

Important: SMS and Text Messaging Data: Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be sold, rented, or shared with third parties for their own marketing or promotional purposes. We may share your phone number, SMS opt-in status, and related messaging data only with service providers that help us deliver messaging services, such as platform providers, telecommunications providers, and vendors supporting SMS delivery and compliance.

6. Third-Party Platforms and Social Media

If your information appears on Instagram, Meta platforms, or other third-party platforms, your information and content may also be subject to those platforms' own privacy policies, terms, and moderation practices.

We do not control how third-party platforms collect, use, store, moderate, or disclose information once content is posted there, including comments, reposts, tags, messages, engagement metrics, or moderation decisions. We are not responsible for outages, policy changes, account restrictions, or moderation actions taken by those platforms.

7. Data Storage and Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect your information.

For example:

• Data may be stored using platforms such as Google Cloud Firestore and Google Cloud Storage
• Data transmitted through our platform is encrypted in transit using HTTPS
• Payment information is processed by third-party payment providers such as Stripe and PayPal
• Access to personal data is limited to authorized personnel and service providers with a legitimate business need

However, no method of transmission over the internet or method of storage is completely secure. As a result, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. Data Retention

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide our services, fulfill the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, and maintain business and financial records.

We may retain different categories of information for different periods of time depending on the nature of the data, the purpose for which it was collected, and our legal or operational needs. Publicly posted content may remain visible until removed by us or by the applicable third-party platform, and copies may persist elsewhere outside our control.

You may request deletion of your information by contacting us using the information below. We may retain certain information as permitted or required by law. You can reach us by emailing support@thecollegemate.com.

9. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on where you live and the nature of your relationship with us, you may have the following rights or choices regarding your information:

• Access: You may request access to the personal information we maintain about you.
• Correction: You may request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Deletion: You may request deletion of your personal information, subject to legal and operational exceptions.
• Data Portability: You may request a copy of certain information in a portable format, where applicable.
• Communications Preferences: You may opt out of promotional emails by using the unsubscribe link in those emails. You may opt out of SMS messages by replying STOP, where applicable.
• Public Content Removal Requests: You may request that we remove content that we control from our owned channels, subject to our records retention needs and third-party platform limitations.
• Advertising and Privacy Choices: Depending on applicable law, you may have the right to opt out of certain advertising-related processing, the sale or sharing of personal information, or similar disclosures. Where required by law, we will honor applicable opt-out requests and legally required privacy signals.
• Cookies and Similar Technologies: You may be able to manage certain cookies and similar technologies through your browser settings, device settings, or any cookie or privacy tools we make available.

To exercise any applicable privacy rights, please contact us using the contact information below.

10. International Users

Collegemate is based in the United States, and your information may be collected, processed, stored, and transferred in the United States or other jurisdictions where we or our service providers operate.

By using our services, you understand that your information may be transferred to and processed in countries that may have different data protection laws than those in your jurisdiction.

11. Children's Privacy

Collegemate is intended primarily for users who are preparing for college and related housing or social connection needs. Our services are not directed to children under 13.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without any consent required by applicable law. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 in a manner not permitted by law, we will take steps to delete that information.

If you are under 18, you represent that you have obtained any permission required from a parent or legal guardian to use the service and submit information to us, including information that may be publicly posted or shared through our platform.

If we know that a user is under 18, we may apply additional protections or limits to certain uses of that user's information. Without limiting the foregoing, we do not sell or share the personal information of users we know are under 18 to third parties for their own marketing, cross-context behavioral advertising, or similar advertising-related purposes.

If you believe we may have collected information from a child or minor in violation of applicable law, please contact us and we will review the request.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technologies, legal requirements, or business operations.

If we make changes, we will post the updated Privacy Policy on this page and revise the "Last updated" date above. Your continued use of our services after any update becomes effective constitutes your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.

13. Contact Information

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or would like to submit a privacy request, please contact us at:

Collegemate LLC

Email: support@thecollegemate.com

You may also contact us at support@thecollegemate.com or any other contact method we make available.

14. Your Consent

By using Collegemate, submitting information to us, or otherwise interacting with our services, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy and agree to our collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described here.