Privacy

Effective October 22, 2026. What we collect, who sees it, and when we delete it.

The short version

• Your feature is posted publicly on Instagram.
• We never sell or share your information, including with sponsors.
• Your photos are deleted from our storage 14 days after your post goes up.
• You can ask us to take a post down or erase your details at any time, and we reply in 48 hours or less.

What we collect when you submit

• What you type into the form: your name, Instagram username, email, phone number, major and bio, plus anything optional you add (your hometown, a short cover line, a song, notes for our team).
• The photos you upload and the cover you design.
• Your answers to the optional boxes, each unticked until you tick it: whether you're 18 or older; whether College Connect may reuse your feature in its own marketing, which we only do for students who said they're 18 or older; and whether you want emails about College Connect deals.
• Where you came from, when the link says: for example a page's Instagram bio, a story, or a friend's share link.
• If you pay: the amount and Stripe's reference numbers for the payment. Stripe collects your card details itself. We never see your card number.

If you write to us through the For Brands form or the Remove a post form, we keep what you send so we can reply and keep a record of it. Across the site, Vercel Web Analytics counts page visits (the page, the site that sent you, your country and type of device) without cookies.

What's public

Your feature is posted publicly on the class page's Instagram feed and story: your photos, your cover (your name, plus whichever of your major, hometown, Instagram username or short line you chose to show), your bio, and your Instagram username, tagged. Anyone can see it, and pages in our network may share it with each other, for example as a collab post. Instagram is run by Meta, under Meta's own privacy policy.

What we use it for

Making and posting your feature, giving you your private edit link, reaching you if there's a problem with your post, handling payments and refunds, and counting how our pages are doing. If you ticked the promo box, we also send occasional emails about College Connect deals, each with an unsubscribe link. If you said you're 18 or older and ticked the marketing box, we may also use your first name, school, photo and quote on our website and in our own marketing.

Who on our team sees it

Each page is run by a page manager on our team. Your email and phone number are visible only to the managers of the page you submitted to and to the College Connect owner. Our team's alerts about a new post (phone notifications, email, and our team chat on Discord) carry your name, Instagram username and major, never your email or phone number. If you ask us to remove a post, your name and email are visible to the managers of the page you picked and to the College Connect owner, so one of us can reply.

Services that run the site for us

• Stripe processes payments.
• Vercel hosts the site, stores your photos (Vercel Blob) and counts page visits.
• Neon hosts our database.
• Resend sends our emails.
• Discord carries our team's alerts.
• Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla deliver our team's phone notifications. They're encrypted, so those companies can't read them.

These services handle your information only to run the site for us. We never sell or share your information, including with sponsors. Sponsors pay for posts on our pages and never get your details.

When we delete it

• Your photos are deleted from our storage 14 days after your post goes up. It can be sooner if our photo storage runs low.
• Page managers download your photos to post them, and our page-manager code requires them to delete their copies once your post is up.
• Photos for a post that's still waiting in line stay until it goes up or we decline it.
• Photos from a checkout you didn't finish: deleted after 7 days.
• Photos from a submission we decline: deleted when we decline it.
• Uploads that never became a post (say, the upload stopped partway): deleted after 7 days.
• The rest of your submission (your details and the order record) stays so we can handle refunds, pay our page managers and answer questions about your post. Ask, and we erase the details sent with your post (your name, Instagram username, email, phone number, major, bio, hometown, cover line, song, notes and answers to the optional boxes) and delete your photos and cover from our storage. We keep the payment record (the amount, the page, the order's status and dates, and Stripe's reference numbers) so our books and page managers' pay stay right. Alerts our team already got about your post, with your name, Instagram username and major, aren't erased.

Emails

• We don't email your edit link. It shows on the page you see right after you post, so save it there.
• If you start a post and don't finish checkout, we may send you one reminder. It has an unsubscribe link.
• Emails about College Connect deals, only if you tick that box on the form. It starts unticked, you never need it to get featured, and every one has an unsubscribe link.
• We don't send text messages.

Ages 13 and up

College Connect is for people 13 and older. If we learn we have information from someone under 13, we delete it and take their post down. If a student is under 18, their parent or guardian can ask us to take their post down.

Removing a post or deleting your details

Use our Remove a post form. Tell us which post, and say in the note if you'd also like your details erased (what that covers is under “When we delete it” above). We reply in 48 hours or less.

Changes

If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new effective date.