Privacy Policy

This policy explains what TheStudySwap collects, why, and what other people can see. We keep it short on purpose. If you’re under 18, please read it with a parent or guardian.

What we collect

• Account details: your email address, a password (stored in a scrambled form, never as plain text), your display name, and your school.
• Profile: your display name and school are public once you save them. They appear on your listings, listing pages, and the preview shared when someone posts a listing link. You can change or clear them on your profile page at any time, and the change applies straight away. Clearing your school removes it from the site.
• Listings and content: titles, descriptions, prices, photos, PDFs, messages, ratings, reviews, reports, ideas, and votes you create.
• Purchases and downloads: which packs you bought or downloaded, and when. Every download creates a personal copy with a code, and that code is recorded against your account.
• Payments: card payments are handled by Stripe. We don’t store your card number. For sellers, Stripe holds bank and identity details, and we see only the status of the payout account and the amount paid out.
• Technical details: the information needed to keep you signed in, and basic logs that help us find and fix problems.

We don’t ask for your birthday, your phone number, or your home address.

What other people can see

• Everyone visiting the site can see listing titles, descriptions, prices, subjects, the seller’s display name and school, average ratings, the first page of each PDF (with a footer), the Ideas board with votes, and seller pages and the find-a-seller search (display name, school, number of listings, and average rating).
• Students who have bought or downloaded a pack can read the full study guide, and the reviews they leave appear with the student’s display name.
• Students you message can see your messages in that conversation.
• Nobody can see your email address, your purchase history, or who has bought or downloaded a pack, except the site team when investigating a report.

How we use it

• To run TheStudySwap: show listings, handle purchases and payouts, send messages, and keep your account secure.
• To protect students: block spam and bots, check uploaded PDFs for malware, enforce our limits, and act on reports.
• To deter piracy: every personal copy of a PDF has a footer naming the account it was given to and a unique code. The code is recorded with the download, so a leaked copy can be traced back to the account it came from.
• To tell you what’s happening: notices in your account about your listings, purchases, refunds, and reviews. Emails are sent for some account events, such as password resets.

Services we share data with

• Supabase stores the database and files.
• Stripe handles payments, subscriptions, and seller payouts.
• Cloudflare Turnstile runs the security check on sign-in and sign-up.
• VirusTotal checks a file’s fingerprint against a malware database. Only the fingerprint is sent, never the PDF itself.
• Vercel hosts the site.
• Email providers deliver the emails described above.

We don’t sell your information, and we don’t show ads.

Cookies and storage on your device

TheStudySwap stores what it needs to keep you signed in. It also remembers a few preferences on your device: whether you’ve turned on admin view, whether your Premium look should show straight away, and whether you’ve closed the add-to-home-screen banner. These settings stay on your device and aren’t shared.

How long we keep it

We keep your account and content while your account is active. Purchase and payout records are kept for as long as the law requires. If you want your account and content removed, contact us, and we’ll delete what we can, except records we must keep.

Your choices

• Change or clear your display name and school on your profile page.
• Delete your own listings and reviews.
• Cancel Premium at any time, from the Premium page.
• Ask us for a copy of your information, or ask us to delete it, by contacting us below.

Security

Data is protected with access rules that stop students from seeing each other’s private information, and PDFs are kept in private storage. No online service is perfectly secure, so please use a strong password and don’t reuse it elsewhere.

Changes and contact

We may update this policy. When we do, we’ll change the date at the top of this page. Questions or requests about your information? Contact saarth7412@gmail.com.