Privacy policy

Who we are

Onward Scout (“we”, “us”) runs onwardscout.com and the Onward Scout app. We decide why and how the personal data described here is used, which makes us its controller under data protection law.

For anything in this policy, write to contact@onwardscout.com. We reply to every message within two business days.

What we collect, and why

Your account

Signing in needs one thing: your email address. Our sign-in provider, Clerk, sends a one-time code to it and keeps your session. We store your Clerk user id, your email, your language, when the account was created and when you were last active, and a random token for your personal reply drop-box address (see “Replies you forward” below).

Before you sign in

You can start without an account. Your browser then gets a random identifier in the os_anon cookie, and the files, links and draft profile you add are kept under it. When you sign in, the draft moves into your account. To prevent abuse, uploads and parsing before sign-in are limited per network address; we store only a keyed hash of that address (computed with a secret key, so it can’t be turned back into the address).

Your documents and links

The résumés, CVs, decks, business plans, portfolios, transcripts, certificates, licences, papers and other files you upload, and the links you paste. Files are kept in private storage (Cloudflare R2) and shown to you only through short-lived signed links. We extract their text to build your profile. For links, we fetch the public page (for GitHub and ORCID, their public records). We never log in anywhere as you, and we don’t read LinkedIn or Google Scholar pages.

Your profile, goals and matches

The profile we build from your documents: the identity details you provide (name, contact details, location, languages, links and, if you add them, work authorization and year of birth), roles, education, experience, projects, skills, achievements, publications and certifications. Each fact keeps a reference to the document and the words it came from, and whether you confirmed it. We also keep your goals, success definitions and milestones, the preferences you set (such as locations, remote work, budget or a salary floor), the opportunities matched to you with their scores, and the feedback you give.

Applications

For each application: the requirements we read, the answers and documents we prepared, the questions we asked you and your answers, a log of every step with timestamps, your confirmation (what you approved and when), and the proof of submission — a confirmation page, a reference number, a sent message, or a screenshot of each step when a browser fills in a form. These records show what was submitted in your name and on whose instruction.

Email you send through us

If you connect Gmail, Google gives us permission to send email from your account (the gmail.send scope) and tells us your Google email address. We store an encrypted refresh token and the emails we send for you: recipient, subject, text and Gmail’s message ids. We don’t request — and can’t use — access to read your inbox. You can disconnect at any time in the app or in your Google account.

People you contact

To send outreach for you, we keep details about the recipients — investors, recruiters, professors, editors, brands or clients: name, work email, organisation, role and the public page the details came from, plus when they were last contacted and whether they asked not to be contacted again. We only use professional contact details that are publicly listed or that you give us, and we honour every opt-out.

Replies you forward

Each account has a personal drop-box address of the form in+(your token)@onwardscout.com. Mail you forward there passes through Cloudflare Email Routing; we store its sender, subject and text, attach it to the right application and sort it (interested, meeting, needs information, rejected, automatic reply).

Payments

Payments are handled by Stripe on its own pages; we never see or store your card number. Stripe tells us what we need to deliver and support the purchase: the product, the amount, the email used at checkout, and Stripe’s customer, subscription, invoice and payment identifiers. We keep a ledger of your credits: granted, reserved, spent and returned.

Messages to us

When you use the contact form: your name (optional), email, topic, message and language, your browser’s user agent, a keyed hash of your network address, and your account id if you’re signed in. Email to our own addresses (contact@, support@, hello@) reaches us through Cloudflare Email Routing and arrives in our own Google (Gmail) mailbox; contact-form messages are also sent there as notifications.

Technical data

Error reports (the error, the page or route, the browser and a stack trace), rate-limit counters keyed by keyed hashes of network addresses, and the request logs our host keeps for a short time. For each AI processing call we log its purpose, size, cost and duration — not its content.

Practice applications

A practice application submits to our own test form. We store the fields it submits and the name, type and size of the attached file (not the file itself), with the user agent and a keyed hash of the network address of whatever sent it — for a submission Onward Scout makes for you, that is our server — to show you the result.

How we use it, and our legal bases

We use your data to provide the service you asked for: building your profile, finding and ranking opportunities, preparing, submitting and following up on the applications you approve, sending the emails you approve, showing your progress and notifying you. Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR, that is performance of our contract with you.

We rely on your consent for analytics where the law requires it, for connecting Gmail, and for any standing authorization you switch on. You can withdraw consent at any time; it doesn’t affect what was done before.

We rely on legitimate interests to keep the service secure and working (rate limits, abuse prevention, error monitoring, backups), to improve matching from the feedback you give, and to answer messages. For outreach, you decide who is contacted; we act on your instruction and keep the safeguards in our acceptable use policy.

We keep billing records because the law requires it (tax and accounting).

We don’t sell personal data, don’t share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and don’t show ads.

AI processing

Reading documents, matching, drafting, answering form questions, mapping form fields and sorting replies can run in two ways.

On our own servers. By default these tasks run on our own deterministic engine: rules and templates applied to your sourced facts. Nothing is sent to an AI provider, and drafts made this way are labelled “Drafted from your profile”.

With Anthropic. When AI processing is switched on, the documents involved (their text, or the file itself when it is a scan or a photo), the relevant profile facts, the opportunity’s requirements and, for replies, the reply text are sent to Anthropic’s API to perform that task, and drafts made this way are labelled “Written with AI”. Under Anthropic’s commercial terms, content sent through its API is not used to train its models. We haven’t opted into any program that would change that, and we never use your data to train models ourselves.

Every result goes through the same checks either way: facts must trace to your documents or your confirmations, and anything that doesn’t is flagged for you.

Service providers we use

These companies process personal data for us, only to provide their service, under their data processing terms:

Product emails (the weekly brief and “needs you” alerts) are sent only once our email provider is switched on; until then, notifications appear inside the app. Sign-in codes come from Clerk and receipts from Stripe.

Who else receives your data

The organisations you apply to receive the application you approved: the answers, documents and contact details in it. The people you email receive the message you approved, from your own address. What they do with it is governed by their own policies.

We may disclose data when the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety or our rights, or to a successor if Onward Scout is transferred — in which case this policy keeps applying to your data.

Nobody else. No data brokers, no advertisers.

Analytics: what FlowGlance records

We use one analytics tool, FlowGlance, to understand which pages help people and where they get stuck. It records page views, clicks, scrolling and navigation, device and browser type, and an approximate location derived from your network address.

Because we have switched on its detailed capture, it also records text you type into forms on our website and in the app (for example the contact form, or answers you edit) and images you upload through our pages. When you’re signed in, recordings are linked to your account id and email address, so a support question can be matched to what you saw. Keep this in mind before typing anything you wouldn’t want recorded; you can turn analytics off at any time. Sign-in, checkout and admin pages are never recorded.

How consent works: visitors in the EU and EEA, the UK and Switzerland — and anyone whose location we can’t determine — are asked first, and FlowGlance loads only if they accept. Everywhere else it loads by default, with a notice and a one-tap opt-out. Your choice is kept in the os_consent cookie for 180 days and can be changed at any time from “Cookie settings”; opting out takes effect at once (the page reloads without analytics).

The cookie policy lists every cookie we set.

International transfers

Our database is in the United States, and most of our providers process data in the United States or globally. If you are in the EU/EEA, the UK or Switzerland, these transfers rely on our providers’ Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, as each provider offers.

If you are in mainland China: your personal information is stored and processed outside China, mainly in the United States, by Onward Scout and the providers listed above, for the purposes in this policy. You can exercise your rights under the Personal Information Protection Law by writing to contact@onwardscout.com.

How long we keep it

How we protect it

• HTTPS everywhere, and encryption at rest by our database and storage providers.
• Files in a private bucket, reachable only through signed links that expire.
• Gmail tokens encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they are stored.
• Network addresses stored only as keyed hashes (computed with a secret key).
• Access to production data limited to the people who run the service, for support and operations.
• Every automated action logged, and every submission tied to your confirmation.

No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that affects you, we will tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Your rights and choices

Wherever you live, you can:

• Get a copy of your data: Settings → download your data.
• Delete your account and data: Settings → delete account.
• Correct your profile at any time in the app, or ask us to.
• Withdraw consent: disconnect Gmail, switch off standing authorizations, or change your analytics choice in “Cookie settings”.
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests, or ask us to restrict it.
• Ask us anything or complain at contact@onwardscout.com.

EU/EEA and UK (GDPR, UK GDPR): you also have the right to data portability and to complain to your local data protection authority (in the UK, the ICO).

California (CCPA/CPRA): you have the right to know, delete and correct personal information and to opt out of its sale or sharing. We don’t sell or share personal information as those laws define it, and we won’t treat you differently for using your rights. An authorised agent may make a request for you with your written permission.

Mainland China (PIPL): you have the rights to know, decide, access, copy, correct, supplement and delete your personal information, to withdraw consent, and to ask us to explain how we process it.

We answer requests within one month (45 days for California requests) and verify them through the email you sign in with.

Automated decisions

Matching and ranking are automated, but they only decide what we suggest to you. You decide what to apply for, and the organisations you apply to make their own decisions. We don’t make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on you by automated means.

Children and students under 18

Onward Scout is not for children under 13. High-school students under 18 can use it only with a parent or guardian: we ask for a guardian’s email on the profile before the first submission, and outreach email is switched off for them. If you believe a child has given us data without that, write to contact@onwardscout.com and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will tell you in the app or by email before it applies.

Contact

Write to contact@onwardscout.com with any question or request about your data. We reply to every message within two business days.