Privacy Policy

01. Information We Collect

We collect information to provide, improve, and personalize the ScholAfrik experience.

1.1 Personal Information

When you create an account or use our services, we may collect:

• Full name
• Email address
• Password
• Profile picture
• Field of study
• Level of study
• University or institution of study
• Location

This information helps us personalize your experience and connect you with relevant people, schools, programs, opportunities, places, and educational resources.

1.2 User Content and Activity

When using ScholAfrik, you may:

• Create and publish posts
• Like, comment on, and share content
• Send and receive peer-to-peer messages
• Search for people, schools, programs, places, and educational resources
• Interact with other users and communities on the platform

We may collect and store information related to your activity and interactions on the platform to improve user experience, communication features, platform functionality, content discovery, and safety.

1.3 Automatically Collected Information

When you use ScholAfrik, we may automatically collect:

• IP address
• Device type
• Browser type
• Usage data
• Pages visited
• Login activity
• General interaction data

This information helps us improve platform performance, maintain security, and enhance user experience.

1.4 Your Profile and Who Can See It

ScholAfrik is a public network. Unless you choose otherwise, your profile can be seen by anyone — including people who do not have a ScholAfrik account — and may appear on public pages such as our home page, where it can be found by search engines.

The parts of your profile that may be shown publicly are:

• Your name and username
• Your profile picture
• Your university, programme and year of study
• Your country
• Anything you write in your bio
• Posts you publish publicly

Your email address, phone number and date of birth are never shown publicly. Your phone number is only visible if you turn it on yourself.

You decide this. In Settings → Privacy, “Profile visibility” has three options: Everyone, Connections only, and Only me. Choosing Connections only or Only me removes your profile from public pages and from search results on this site, and anyone opening your profile link without permission is told the page does not exist.

When you open someone else’s profile, we tell them — “your name viewed your profile”, with a link back to you, and at most once a day however often you visit. You can stop this: Settings → Privacy, “Let people see when I view their profile”. Turn it off and your visits are not recorded and you are never named. People you have blocked, or who have blocked you, are never told either way.

02. How We Use Your Information

We use the collected information to:

• Create and manage user accounts
• Personalize your experience on the platform
• Help users discover relevant people, schools, programs, places, and educational resources
• Enable social interactions such as posting, commenting, liking, and sharing
• Facilitate peer-to-peer messaging and communication between users
• Improve our platform, features, and services
• Respond to support requests and user inquiries
• Monitor usage trends and improve platform performance
• Maintain platform safety, moderation, and security
• Prevent fraud, abuse, unauthorized access, or misuse of the platform

We do not sell your personal data.

03. Data Sharing

We do not sell or rent your personal information to third parties.

We may share limited information with trusted service providers that help us operate and maintain the platform, including:

• Cloud hosting providers
• Google Analytics, which measures how the site is used — only if you choose "Accept all" in the cookie banner
• Authentication and security providers
• Communication and infrastructure service providers

These partners are required to protect your information and use it only for authorized purposes.

04. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your data, including:

• Secure cloud infrastructure
• Encrypted connections (HTTPS)
• Access controls and account protection measures
• Monitoring systems for suspicious activity

However, no method of electronic storage or internet transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

05. Your Rights

Depending on your location and applicable laws, you may have the right to:

• Access your personal data
• Request correction of inaccurate information
• Request deletion of your account or personal data
• Withdraw consent for certain processing activities
• Request information about how your data is used

You may contact us to exercise these rights.

06. Data Retention

We retain your information only for as long as necessary to:

• Provide and maintain our services
• Improve platform functionality
• Comply with legal obligations
• Resolve disputes and enforce policies

Some information has a fixed lifetime. We delete it automatically once that period has passed, whether or not you ask us to:

• Password reset and email verification links — 7 days after the link expires
• Devices we recognise you by — 6 months after a device was last used to sign in
• Push notification registrations — 6 months after they were last used
• Your recent searches — 90 days
• The record we keep when an administrator removes an account, so the decision can be explained or reversed — 90 days
• The record we keep when a page, partner organisation or listing is removed — 12 months
• Administrator activity logs, which we keep so that actions taken on the platform can be accounted for — 2 years

Stories are deleted 24 hours after you post them, together with the record of who viewed them.

You may request deletion of your account at any time, and you may ask us for a copy of your data from your privacy settings.

When you ask us to delete your account we deactivate it immediately — it stops being visible or reachable on ScholAfrik — and erase it 30 days later. The delay exists so that a request made by mistake can be taken back: sign in during those 30 days and the account is restored. After that the deletion is permanent.

07. Third-Party Services

ScholAfrik may contain links to third-party websites or services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices, policies, or content of external platforms.

08. Children’s Privacy

ScholAfrik is intended for users who are at least 16 years old. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16.

09. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When changes are made, we will update the “Last Updated” date on this page.

Your continued use of the platform after updates are posted indicates acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.

10. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how your information is handled, please contact us through the official ScholAfrik communication channels.

Website: https://scholafrik.com