Privacy Policy

This policy explains what CarSchoolr collects when you use our website and app, why we collect it, who can see it, and what control you have over it. It applies to everything at carschoolr.org and to the emails we send you.

It does not cover what happens once you leave CarSchoolr. When you connect with another family and start emailing, texting, or driving together, that relationship is between you and them. Anything you choose to share directly with another family is outside our control and outside this policy.

CarSchoolr is built for parents and guardians. You must be 18 or older to create an account. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and we do not ask you to create accounts or profiles for your children.

Your profile describes a grade level, not a named student. If you believe a person under 18 has created an account, email us and we will remove it.

Everything in this list is information you type in or upload yourself.

• Account details. Your name, email address, and a password. If you sign in with Google instead, we receive your name, email address, and profile picture from Google rather than a password.
• Profile details. Grade level, school, a contact email for other families to reach you at, and an optional profile photo.
• Your weekly schedule. The start and end times you are available on each day of the week.
• A nearby landmark. A public place near you, such as a park, library, or intersection, that you choose from a search box. We store its name and coordinates and use them to estimate distance between families.
• Specific requirements. Free text you can add about things like allergies, booster seats, or only being able to drive mornings.
• School verification. If you choose to verify, your school email address and a six digit code. We store the code as a hash, not in readable form, and it expires.
• Connection and carpool activity. Who you sent requests to, who sent requests to you, whether each was accepted or declined, and the carpool groups and driving rotations you set up.
• Things you send us. Support emails, school requests, and testimonials you submit through the homepage form.

The absence of this data is a design decision, not an oversight. It is the main reason CarSchoolr can be careful with your privacy.

• Your home address. There is no field for it, and no column in our database that holds one. Matching uses the landmark you picked, so other families see an approximate area rather than where you live.
• Live or background location. We do not track your device, and we do not follow rides in progress.
• Payment information. CarSchoolr is free. There is no checkout, so there are no card numbers to store.
• Government identification or background check data. We do not run background checks and do not collect the documents one would require. Please read the safety section of our Terms for what that means for you.
• Your children's names or personal details. Nothing in the product asks for them.

When you use CarSchoolr, our hosting and database providers keep standard technical records, such as your IP address, browser type, and the pages you requested. These logs exist to keep the service running, spot abuse, and debug problems. They are kept for a limited period and are not used to build an advertising profile of you.

If you sign in by scanning a QR code, we create a short lived login session record that expires automatically.

• To score and rank potential carpool matches at your school by schedule, location, and grade level.
• To show your profile to other families at your school, subject to the visibility rules in section 7.
• To deliver connection requests, both in the app and by email, and to let the recipient accept or decline.
• To run carpool scheduling and send reminder emails before your turn to drive.
• To verify your school email and issue a verified badge if you want one.
• To answer support requests and respond to school requests you send us.
• To keep the service secure, investigate abuse, and enforce our Terms.

We do not use your information to serve you ads, and we do not sell or rent it. CarSchoolr is free and is not funded by advertising.

This is the part of the policy most worth reading closely, because it describes the privacy model the rest of the product is built around.

• Same school only. You are only ever shown to families who have selected the same school as you. Nobody outside your school can find you through CarSchoolr.
• Blurred by default. Before any connection exists, other families see the shape of your card but not its contents. Your name, photo, grade, school, location, schedule, and requirements are all visually obscured. Only the match percentage is readable.
• Revealed when someone asks to connect with you. If a family sends you a request, their details unblur for you so you can see who is asking before you decide. Yours stay blurred to them until you accept.
• Fully visible after both sides agree. Once you accept, both profiles unblur for each other, including the contact email, and an email button appears.
• Contact details are hidden, not just blurred. Your contact email is never sent to another family's browser until a connection is accepted.
• Map view shows areas, not addresses. Pins are placed at the landmark you chose.
• Profile photos. Photos you upload are stored with our file hosting provider at a long, randomly generated web address. That address is not published or listed anywhere, but it is not individually password protected, so treat an uploaded photo as something that could be viewed by anyone who obtains the link.
• You can switch yourself off. Turning off “open to carpooling” in your profile removes you from everyone else's matches.

We use cookies for one purpose: keeping you signed in. These are strictly necessary cookies set by our authentication provider, and the service cannot work without them.

We do not use advertising cookies, third party analytics, tracking pixels, or web beacons, and we do not let anyone else place trackers on CarSchoolr. There is no cross site profile of you to opt out of, because we never build one.

Running CarSchoolr means handing limited data to a small number of vendors. They may only process it to provide their service to us.

• Neon hosts our Postgres database and our authentication system, which is where your account and profile live.
• Vercel hosts the application and stores uploaded profile photos.
• Geoapify powers landmark search. Text you type into the landmark box is sent there to return suggestions.
• Mapbox renders the map view.
• Our email provider delivers verification codes, connection requests, and carpool reminders.
• Inception Labs powers the help assistant. What you type into the chat window is sent there to generate a reply. The assistant has no access to your account, matches, or connections, so please do not type personal details into it.
• Web3Forms receives testimonials submitted through the homepage form.
• Google receives an authentication request only if you choose to sign in with Google.

We share your information in only these situations:

• With other families at your school, according to the visibility rules in section 7.
• With the service providers in section 9, limited to what each one needs.
• When the law requires it, such as a valid legal request, or to investigate fraud or a threat to someone's safety.
• If CarSchoolr is ever transferred to another owner, in which case we will tell you before your information becomes subject to a different policy.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross context behavioral advertising, as those terms are used under state privacy laws.

We keep your information while your account is open. You can delete your account at any time from your profile settings, without emailing anyone to ask.

Deleting your account removes your profile, schedule, landmark, requirements, notifications, school verification records, saved login sessions, and your sign in credentials.

Two things can outlive your account. Records of connections and carpool groups you shared with other families may remain visible in their accounts, since those records belong to both sides. And emails we already delivered, such as a connection request someone received last month, are in that person's inbox and cannot be recalled. Backups and provider logs age out on their own schedule.

• Traffic between your device and CarSchoolr is encrypted with TLS.
• Data stored in our database is encrypted at rest.
• Passwords are stored as salted hashes, never in readable form, and neither are school verification codes.
• Accept and decline links in emails are cryptographically signed and expire after 30 days.
• Access to production data is limited to what is needed to operate the service.

No service can promise perfect security. Choose a strong, unique password, do not reuse it elsewhere, and tell us promptly if you think someone else has access to your account.

• See and correct your information. Everything on your profile can be viewed and edited from Edit Profile.
• Become invisible without leaving. Turn off “open to carpooling” to drop out of matching while keeping your account.
• Delete everything. Delete your account from your profile settings, as described in section 11.
• Control email. Unsubscribe links are in the emails we send. Messages needed to run your account, such as verification codes, are not marketing and will still be sent.
• Skip verification. Verifying your school email is optional. You can browse matches and connect without it.
• Ask us a question. Email support and we will answer.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights: to know what personal information we hold, to get a copy of it, to correct it, to delete it, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of them. CarSchoolr does not sell personal information or use it for targeted advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of on those fronts.

To exercise a right, email us from the address on your account. We will verify that the request is really coming from you before acting on it, and we will respond within the period the applicable law allows.

We will update this page when our practices change, and we will move the date at the top when we do. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect rather than relying on you to notice.

Questions, requests, or concerns about privacy go to support@carschoolr.org.