Privacy Policy
What we collect, why, and the one thing we’ll never do
THE SHORT VERSION: We collect only what we need to match you to colleges. We don’t sell your data. Colleges don’t pay us for it. Your information is not the product — the honest college list is. Everything below is the detail behind those four sentences.
1. The promise that shapes everything
Most free college tools are free because a college or an advertiser is paying for access to you. ACG isn’t built that way. We don’t sell or rent your personal information, and we don’t take money from colleges to put them in front of you. That single choice drives every decision in this policy — when you see us collect less, share less, or keep less, this is why.
2. What we collect
What you tell us. Your college-search inputs: budget, GPA and test scores, intended major, and your location and campus preferences. If you create an account, your email and the lists you save. For the core product, that’s essentially it.
What we don’t ask for. We don’t need — and you shouldn’t send — your Social Security number, bank or card numbers, or sensitive ID documents.
What’s collected automatically. Basic device and usage data (pages viewed, approximate location from your IP address, anonymous analytics) to keep the site working and make it better, plus a small number of cookies (see §6).
Sensitive categories we avoid. We’re not built to collect biometric identifiers or government-ID data — categories the updated federal children’s-privacy rule now treats as personal information — and we don’t.
3. How we use what we collect
To compute your matches and show your list. To save your preferences if you have an account. To understand what’s working and fix what isn’t. To keep ACG secure and prevent abuse.
Two things we specifically don’t do: we don’t use your inputs to target advertising at you, and we don’t feed your personal information into third-party AI models for training.
4. What we never do with your data
The No-Sale Promise, In Full
We don’t sell it. We don’t rent it. We don’t hand it to colleges as a lead. We don’t use it for third-party targeted advertising. If any of that ever changed, we would ask you first, in plain language and up front — but that is not the plan, and it isn’t how ACG makes sense.
5. When we share — the short, honest list
- Service providers who run our infrastructure (hosting, analytics), under contracts that limit them to doing work for us.
- Legal reasons, if we’re genuinely required by law to respond.
- A future business transfer, if ACG is ever acquired — in which case we’d notify you first.
- Never advertisers, data brokers, or colleges as buyers of your information.
6. Cookies & analytics
We use a small number of cookies to keep the site working and to measure usage in aggregate. We don’t use them to build an advertising profile of you. You can control cookies in your browser; the essential ones simply keep core features running.
7. Children & students — we take this seriously
Under 13. ACG is not directed to children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their personal information (COPPA). If a parent or guardian believes an under-13 child gave us information, email us and we’ll delete it promptly.
Ages 13–17. We collect only the search inputs described above, and we encourage parental involvement. We honor state student-privacy and minor “eraser” rules — a minor can ask us to remove what they shared.
Why we’re already aligned with the strictest rules. The 2025 update to the federal children’s-privacy rule is largely about stopping companies from monetizing kids’ data. Because we don’t advertise to you or sell data at all, we meet that bar by design rather than by patch.
8. Your choices and your rights
You can see what you’ve entered, correct it, download it, or delete it — including your entire account.
State privacy laws. California’s CCPA/CPRA and the roughly twenty states with comprehensive privacy laws give residents rights to access, delete, correct, and opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information. Our answer on opting out is simple: there’s nothing to opt out of, because we don’t sell or share your data for advertising. Every other right, you can exercise fully.
How to use them. Email helloacg@purplelumen.com and we’ll take care of it. We won’t charge you, and we won’t treat you any differently for asking.
9. How long we keep your data
Only as long as it’s useful to you or needed for legitimate operations — then we delete it. If you delete your account, we remove your personal inputs (we may keep anonymous, aggregate statistics that can’t identify you). This mirrors the federal rule’s standard of not keeping personal data longer than necessary.
10. How we protect your data
We use encryption in transit, access limits, and sensible security practices. No system is perfectly secure — but the strongest protection is that we collect very little in the first place.
11. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top and flag anything meaningful. We won’t quietly start doing something this version says we won’t.
A note on this draft. This is a v1, plain-language version written to be read. It will be reviewed by counsel before ACG launches, and the finalized policy will control. Nothing here is legal advice.