Privacy Policy

SmarterApply is operated by an independent sole proprietor trading as SmarterApply (“SmarterApply”, “we”, “us”), who is the controller of the personal data described here. SmarterApply provides a service that helps job seekers assess how well their profile matches a job opportunity.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we process, why we process it, and your rights.

Information we process

When you use SmarterApply, we may process:

• your email address and basic account information;
• information contained in your CV or professional profile, such as your experience, education, skills and qualifications;
• job descriptions and other information you submit for analysis;
• results and history of analyses performed through your account;
• subscription and account status information; and
• limited technical and usage information necessary to operate, secure and improve the service.

We do not sell your personal data.

How we use your information

We process your information to:

• create and manage your account;
• provide job-match analyses and recommendations;
• maintain your analysis history and preferences;
• provide customer support;
• manage subscriptions and access to the service;
• maintain the security and reliability of SmarterApply; and
• understand and improve how the service performs.

Where applicable, we process personal data to perform our contract with you, based on our legitimate interests in operating and improving the service, or with your consent where required.

CVs and AI processing

SmarterApply uses artificial intelligence services to process information you submit, including CV content and job descriptions, for the purpose of producing your analysis.

We use third-party AI service providers acting as service providers/processors to SmarterApply. We do not sell your CV, share it with employers or recruiters, or use it for advertising.

Your CV is not stored as a saved CV unless you choose to save it to your account.

Retention by our AI provider

Your CV and the job description are sent to our AI provider to produce the analysis. Under our agreement with them:

• They do not use it to train their models. This is a contractual term, not a setting.
• They do not retain it in the ordinary course. Prompts and responses are not kept after the response is returned.
• One exception, which we would rather state than have you discover. If their automated safety systems flag a request, they may retain that request and its response for up to two years so it can be reviewed for abuse. This applies to essentially every major AI provider and is not something we can switch off. It is the reason this section does not simply say nothing is kept.

Service providers

We use trusted third-party service providers to operate SmarterApply, including providers for:

• hosting and infrastructure;
• authentication and database services;
• artificial intelligence processing;
• payments and subscription management; and
• website analytics.

Payments are processed by Polar, which acts as Merchant of Record and processes payment information in accordance with its own privacy terms. The provider is identified at checkout and on your receipt.

We count visits to our public pages and articles using Vercel Web Analytics, provided by our hosting provider. It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device, does not identify you or follow you across other websites, and reports visits only in aggregate. The short-lived identifier it derives from each request is discarded after 24 hours. Pages you use while signed in are not measured, and before a visit is recorded we remove everything from the page’s address except the page itself and any campaign tag.

These providers may process personal data only as necessary to provide their respective services.

Cookies and browser storage

We use a small number of cookies and one item of browser storage. Each exists to run the service you are using. We do not use advertising cookies, and none of them follows you across other websites.

• Sign-in cookies, set by our authentication provider, keep you signed in — including a temporary one used while you sign in with Google or LinkedIn. They can last up to 400 days, and signing out removes them.
• sa-active holds the date you were last active, so we record your activity at most once a day instead of on every page you open. It lasts 2 days.
• sa_preview is set only if you use the free preview without an account. It holds a date and nothing else, and expires at midnight UTC.
• Session storage holds a job posting and CV you have pasted while you sign in, so you do not have to paste them again. It stays in that browser tab, is removed as soon as it is used, and is cleared when you close the tab.

When you sign in with email or use the free preview, the page also runs a security check from Cloudflare Turnstile to tell people apart from automated abuse. Cloudflare describes the signals it collects as strictly necessary for that purpose and handles them under its own privacy terms.

Vercel Web Analytics, described above, sets none of these and stores nothing on your device.

Data retention

Specific periods, rather than a general assurance:

• Analyses — your analysis history is kept on a rolling 24 months. Cancelling a paid plan does not delete it: you move to the free plan and keep your history.
• A saved CV — only if you choose to save one. It is deleted 12 months after your most recent analysis, not after your last sign-in: the saved CV exists to make repeat analyses faster, so with no analyses it has no purpose, and it is the most sensitive information we hold.
• Your account — if you do not sign in for 24 months, the account and its data are deleted. We email you before that happens.
• Usage and technical records — kept for up to 12 months, then reduced to aggregate figures that identify no one.
• Requirements extracted from job postings — kept indefinitely, so that a posting many people analyse is only sent to an AI provider once. These records contain no CV, no account and nothing identifying any person.

Deleting your account deletes your data immediately. Not scheduled for deletion, not hidden from view — your profile, your analyses and any saved CV are removed at the point you ask, other than anything we are required by law to keep.

International processing

Some of our service providers may process information in countries other than your own. Where required by applicable data protection law, appropriate safeguards are used for international transfers of personal data.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete your personal data, withdraw consent where processing is based on consent, or object to certain processing.

You may exercise these rights by contacting us at privacy@smarterapply.com.

You may also have the right to complain to the data protection authority applicable to you.

Children

SmarterApply is not intended for anyone under 18, or under the age of majority in their jurisdiction where that is greater.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The current version will always be available on this page, with the date of the latest update shown above.

Contact

For privacy-related questions or requests: privacy@smarterapply.com.