Privacy Policy
Version 2026-10-19
Who operates InTheKnow
InTheKnow is operated by In The Know LLC. Contact founders@intheknowconnect.com for privacy questions or requests. This policy covers the InTheKnow app, signup website and policy/support pages.
Information we handle
We handle your email, account identifiers and authentication information; profile details such as school, private graduation month and displayed graduation year, major, minor, certificates, interests, affiliations, hometown and work city; alumni work history and student internship companies, roles and dates; selected profile photos and student résumés; student-to-student and alumni messages, connections, shared alumni profiles, call scheduling and any phone number or meeting link you choose to include; private typed notes and uploaded PDF notes; credits, notification, optional email and graduation preferences, availability subscriptions and alerts; reports and support requests. We record the 18+ signup declaration and the policy versions acknowledged. Providers process technical data such as IP addresses, request times and error/delivery logs to operate and protect the service.
Optional affiliations and document contents
Some optional clubs and affiliations may reveal political opinions, religion or ethnic/cultural identity. You choose whether to include them and can remove them from your profile. Profile fields, résumés, notes and PDFs may contain information about you or other people. Include only information you have the right to provide, and avoid unnecessary sensitive information. Optional profile information may be visible to members who can view your profile.
How information is used
We use information to create and secure accounts, display and search student and alumni profiles, filter by education and internship or work experience, deliver messages, organize calls, manage credits, answer optional AI questions, send account and graduation emails, optional 10-message-count emails and opt-in news and promotional updates, deliver availability alerts, provide support and address abuse. We do not sell personal information or use it for advertising tracking. The current app has no advertisements or paid-credit checkout. We do not request your device location: city-search text goes to Apple’s search service to provide suggestions.
Signup bonuses, referrals and credit records
To determine eligibility for signup and referral bonuses, we record the account identifier, where signup occurred, the initial student or alumni role, signup and email-verification times, any referral code supplied at account creation, and whether an early-signup offer applies. We snapshot these details so later profile or account edits do not create another reward. Credit records include monthly and bonus balances, rewards, spending and their dates. Monthly credits are spent before bonus credits; bonus balances carry forward until used. We use these records to operate the offers, show balances, resolve support requests and prevent duplicate or abusive rewards. These features do not introduce paid checkout or a new external provider.
Sharing a referral
A referral link contains a code linked to the referring account. Anyone you share the link or code with can pass it on. A qualifying signup using that code may earn credits for the referring student after email verification. The referring student can see their successful referral count and resulting credits; the referral feature does not show them the new member’s email, name or profile. Ordinary profile discovery rules still apply once a profile is created. The app does not read your address book or send invitations automatically. You choose whether and where to share the link through your device’s sharing options.
Who can see your information
Creating or verifying an account on the signup website does not by itself create a searchable member profile. New profiles become discoverable after profile setup is completed. Confirmed, signed-in students can discover other student profiles and alumni profiles. Creating a student profile makes its directory fields, including any internships you add, searchable by other students; there is no separate peer-discovery opt-in or hide-profile setting in this version. Discovery is not restricted by a same-school access rule. Alumni can discover alumni and view student profiles where they have message history. Account, blocking and suspension restrictions apply, and administrator accounts are hidden from member discovery. Email addresses used for login are not included in the member directory. Student résumés are available to their owner and eligible alumni who can access the student’s profile; other students cannot open them. Alumni may share alumni profiles through the app; students cannot share profiles, and student profiles cannot be shared through that feature. Messages and call details, including any phone number or meeting link supplied, are available to their participants. Private notes and their PDFs are available only to their author through member-facing features, not to the person the notes describe. Reports and support requests are accessible to authorized administrators. These are access controls, not end-to-end encryption; the operator and providers may access data as needed to operate, secure and support the service. Authorized file access can produce short-lived links. Other members may retain screenshots, links or downloaded files; blocking or removal cannot recall copies already obtained.
Availability subscriptions
Alumni availability is visible on their profiles. A student can choose “Notify me when availability changes” on an alumni profile. We store the student/alumnus pair and subscription time, then create private in-app alerts containing the alumnus’s name, changed status, profile reference and read state. The subscription stays enabled until turned off or removed by an account change, blocking or deletion. Subscriptions are not shown to the alumnus or other members through the app. Alerts can describe changes to any availability status, including Busy this week or Not open to chat. Turning the toggle off stops future alerts. Setting Not open to chat limits new student-to-alumni conversations; existing message or call-invitation history allows that pair to continue. Availability is not a switch for hiding a profile or blocking an existing contact. Use Block to restrict a specific member.
Photos and PDF notes
The system photo picker gives the app the image you select; we do not request unrestricted access to your photo library. You can crop the image before saving your profile. Files access is limited to documents you select. PDF note text is extracted on the device, with on-device text recognition for scanned pages. When you save notes, the original PDF, its filename, extracted text and typed notes are stored in your private account data on Supabase. Importing a PDF alone does not send it to OpenAI. Review the extracted text before saving or asking AI questions; scans, handwriting and diagrams may be incomplete or misread. The current app does not record calls or request microphone, camera or address-book access.
Shared-text content filtering
We automatically check shared profile text, messages and call details against language rules to help prevent abusive or inappropriate content. These checks run within our Supabase backend and do not send content to a new AI provider. Author-private notes, note PDFs, support requests and reports are excluded so you can preserve or report evidence. Profile photos and résumés do not require administrator approval and are not automatically scanned by this text filter. They are shared according to the normal profile and résumé access rules. Please use Report, Block or Help & Support for concerns. If an earlier version recorded an upload-review decision, that historical record may remain until account deletion but no longer controls file access. These checks cannot detect every harmful item.
Optional AI notes
Before the first AI request in a chat, the app asks permission to send your question, recent chat turns, eligible saved typed notes and extracted PDF text, plus associated profile names, company and work or internship history, through our backend to OpenAI. The context can include all eligible saved notes within the feature’s limits, not just the note matching your question. Original PDFs, profile images, résumés, inbox messages and calendars are not sent by this feature. Information you copy into notes or questions becomes part of that submitted text. Declining leaves note editing and storage available. Subsequent questions in that chat send updated context and recent turns again. Starting a new chat or closing it clears the local conversation and requires confirmation before another chat’s first request; our app database does not save AI chat questions or answers. The backend records daily per-account request counts for limits. Editing or deleting a note changes future requests but cannot recall data already processed. AI answers can be inaccurate and should be checked against your original notes.
Optional AI profile search
With your permission, we send your search question to OpenAI to translate it into profile filters. We do not send directory profiles, resumes, messages, calendars or notes for this feature. Our backend matches those filters against profiles you are allowed to discover. Suggested matches use shared profile fields inside our backend and are not a guarantee of suitability. Text you include in a question is sent to the AI provider, so avoid including confidential information. We store daily per-account usage counts; counts older than seven days are removed when the next AI search request is processed; we do not store search questions or results in our app database. Results and criteria stay in the current search screen. Regular search remains available without AI. Provider retention is described below.
AI provider retention
The app requests that OpenAI not store Responses API outputs as retrievable responses. This does not mean zero provider retention. OpenAI’s published API policy says API data is not used for model training by default unless the customer opts in; abuse-monitoring logs may contain prompts and responses and are normally retained for up to 30 days, with exceptions for legal or safety needs. Provider settings and policies govern this processing. Do not submit confidential information you are not authorized to share with an AI provider.
Optional message reminders and news emails
Message reminder and news email preferences are separate and start off until you choose to enable them. Message reminders combine counts of unread messages at least 24 hours old and conversations where the other person last wrote at least 48 hours ago, at most once per seven days. Counts can overlap and may change before an email arrives. We exclude blocked, suspended and incomplete profiles and do not include member names or message text in these reminders. News and updates are promotional emails about In The Know, including launch and new features, and go only to members who opt in. We use your email address, account ID, chosen preferences and delivery records to manage these communications; campaigns in this version do not target people using private messages, affiliations or profile details. Manage each category under Profile menu → Email preferences or Notifications → Preferences → Email preferences, or use the category-specific unsubscribe link. Turning off one optional category does not change another, and requested verification codes, password resets and essential security emails continue. Graduation uses its existing separate setting. We store preference-change times, random unsubscribe tokens and delivery jobs with the recipient, counts or campaign text and provider identifiers. The scheduled email worker removes optional-email job records older than 30 days and campaign content older than 90 days when it runs; if that worker is stopped, cleanup waits until it resumes. Provider delivery logs and backups follow their own retention schedules. No email opens or link clicks are intentionally tracked by this app; provider tracking settings must remain off.
Graduation reminders and account changes
We store your graduation month privately and show only your graduation year on your profile. Graduation reminders begin 30 days before the first day of your chosen graduation month, then on that date and every two weeks through week 10. At week 10 an unchanged student profile is hidden from member search. Monthly reminders continue while unresolved. Scheduled reminders use your device timezone, with New York as the fallback. Your account, existing conversations, calls and private notes remain available. Switching to Alumni makes your profile discoverable as alumni. If you are still studying and your plans changed, update your expected graduation date; choosing the same date does not restart the sequence. We store sequence state, delivery identifiers and an unsubscribe token to manage delivery and prevent duplicates. You can turn off graduation emails using an unsubscribe link or in-app settings; this does not stop in-app prompts, the search-visibility deadline, or essential authentication/security emails. A reminder or link never switches your role automatically. Confirming graduation keeps the same account and removes your student résumé from app sharing; previously downloaded copies cannot be recalled.
Providers and website
Supabase supplies authentication, database, file storage and backend functions. Resend delivers authentication, graduation, optional message reminder and opt-in promotional emails and processes recipient addresses, email contents and delivery events. OpenAI processes optional AI notes requests as described above. Apple provides city search, selected-file/photo access and on-device PDF text recognition. Cloudflare hosts the policy, support and graduation pages and can process website request data, such as IP addresses, for delivery and security. Email unsubscribe links contain a random category-specific token. Opening a link displays a confirmation; confirming it or using an email provider’s one-click unsubscribe turns off only that category. Providers may log requests containing these tokens. The graduation page reads a personal unsubscribe token when present and submits it to our backend only when you choose to unsubscribe. Providers may process data outside your country. We may disclose information when required by law or reasonably needed to respond to abuse, protect safety or enforce our terms.
Device storage and notifications
Stars, recently opened member profiles, the selected school, selected Student/Alumni search and inbox tabs, and other interface preferences are stored on your device. Session information keeps you signed in. Local delivery identifiers help retry sends without creating duplicates. Account notification preferences, unread state, call events, availability subscriptions and alerts are stored on the backend. Saved tabs survive closing the app; signing out does not necessarily erase account-specific interface preferences. Successful account deletion removes the app’s saved search history, stars, tab choices and privacy-notice dismissal for that account on the device performing deletion. AI queries leave the device only when you send them after confirming AI processing. This version supports in-app notifications, graduation emails and optional message reminder and promotional emails once delivery is activated. Phone push alerts and email call reminders are not active. Removing a conversation from the inbox saves a backend cutoff so old messages in that conversation do not trigger optional message emails. New messages can become eligible again.
Inactive profiles
We privately record when you use ITK while signed in and the app is in the foreground. Email opens, background notifications and automatic session refreshes do not reset this activity timer. We use it to send inactivity reminder emails after 60 and 75 days, if enabled, and hide your profile from searches and recommendations after 90 days. Your account, existing conversations, private notes and scheduled calls are retained. Returning restores discovery visibility if your profile is complete and other requirements, including graduation status, are satisfied. Your last-active timestamp is not displayed to other members. Inactivity emails have their own preference and unsubscribe link; turning them off does not stop the visibility rule. Private activity and delivery records are removed with account deletion, subject to the backup and provider-retention limits below.
Retention and deletion
We retain account data while needed to provide and protect the service. You can edit optional profile fields, remove a résumé or photo, remove a PDF from its notes document and save, delete the whole notes document, or delete your account from the profile menu. Account deletion removes app uploads and account-linked records, including conversations and calls for both participants, private notes/PDFs, availability subscriptions and alerts, graduation state, email preferences, reminder cutoffs, queued optional emails and support requests. Signup-source records, personal referral codes, wallet balances and the account’s ordinary credit ledger are also removed. The limited reward-prevention records described below are an exception. Deletion must finish successfully; an interrupted request may need retrying. Turning off an availability subscription stops future alerts but does not erase alerts already delivered. Administrator support replies can remain in another member’s support request without the deleted account reference. Provider backups, security logs and email-delivery records may persist under provider retention schedules or legal obligations. Deletion cannot recall content already processed by providers, copies saved by recipients, or device backups. Do not rely on blocking, signing out or deleting the app as account deletion.
Reward records after account deletion
To prevent the same email from repeatedly earning a signup or referral reward after an account is deleted and recreated, we retain a limited reward record containing a hash derived from the normalized signup email, the reward type, amount and award time. These records do not contain the plaintext email. The recipient account reference is cleared when that recipient account is deleted, but the hash and award details remain. A hash can still be compared with a known email and should not be treated as anonymous. The current reward system has no automatic expiry for these records. They are restricted to backend reward processing and authorized operational access and are not exposed in member search or referral details. Contact us about access, correction or deletion requests; we will review any continued need to retain a record for duplicate-reward prevention.
Your choices and requests
You can edit your profile, remove optional affiliations, internships and files, decline AI processing, manage in-app notifications, turn availability alerts on or off, manage separate message reminder, graduation, inactivity and news email preferences, block/report members and delete your account. This version does not offer an independent switch to hide a student profile from peer search. For access, correction, deletion, a copy of your information or questions about other rights available under applicable law, email founders@intheknowconnect.com. We may verify account ownership before acting. Do not send passwords, API keys or verification codes. Necessary operational processing may continue while you use the account.
Adults only
InTheKnow is for people aged 18 or older. Signup uses a self-declaration, not independent age verification. Contact us if you believe an under-18 account is using the service so we can investigate.
Updates
This version is dated October 19, 2026. It describes private graduation dates and foreground activity, reminder emails, and temporary discovery hiding. The privacy reminder appears on the first profile visit after account creation, rather than every visit. The current policy remains available in About & Privacy. Dismissing the reminder does not opt you into marketing or authorize AI processing; those choices remain separate. Contact founders@intheknowconnect.com with questions.