Privacy Policy

Who We Are

Hoodie Academic Community is a teacher ratings, academic decision support, membership, and browser extension service operated by Advanced Additive Manufacturing Technology LTD. This policy explains how we handle information when you use the Hoodie website, account features, paid membership, review tools, AI-generated teacher profiles, and Chrome extension.

Information We Collect

• Account information: username, email address, password hash, login provider, Google account identifier, profile name, avatar URL, account status, verification status, school domain, school name, and related education certification metadata.
• Authentication and security data: session tokens, email verification codes, password reset codes, code expiry timestamps, and sign-in or account update timestamps.
• Teacher and review data: teacher names, schools, departments, titles, courses, research areas, ratings, written reviews, review assistant answers, moderation status, reviewer user ID, and whether the reviewer is school verified.
• Membership and billing data: membership plan, membership status, current period dates, cancellation status, Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, redemption codes, and reward claim timestamps for review submission or extension activation tasks.
• Site preferences and local data: selected language, dismissed prompts, teacher comparison selections, locally configured API or Stripe test overrides, and signed-in user/session data stored in browser local storage.
• Extension data: the Chrome extension stores your synced Hoodie token, user profile, membership status, locale, and last sync time in Chrome local storage. It scans page text locally to identify teacher-name candidates on supported academic, course, enrolment, LMS, student system, and university pages.
• Technical data: basic request data handled by our hosting and API providers, such as request headers, IP-derived region data, device/browser information, timestamps, and operational logs needed to keep the service secure and reliable.

How We Use Information

• To create and secure accounts, process sign-ins, send verification and password reset codes, and keep account sessions active.
• To detect education certification by matching email domains and Google hosted school domains against our school domain registry.
• To display teacher profiles, search and filter teachers, show reviews, enable teacher comparison, and support review submission from the website or extension.
• To provide Hooded Fellow membership features, including full reviews, teacher comparison, teacher profile details, extension quick lookup, subscription management, redemption codes, and free membership rewards.
• To generate and update AI-assisted teacher profile summaries, scores, tags, and evidence signals from submitted reviews and selected public academic search evidence.
• To localise the service, remember preferences, diagnose errors, prevent abuse, moderate content, enforce our terms, and protect the integrity of the academic community.

Reviews, Public Content, and AI Profiles

Reviews you submit may be shown to other users, used to update teacher statistics, and included in AI-assisted profile generation. We may process review text to extract signals such as teaching clarity, mentorship quality, grading friendliness, research support, working environment, academic integrity concerns, and profile tags. Please do not include private personal data, sensitive allegations without a factual basis, confidential school records, or information that can identify another student without consent.

Teacher profiles may combine community reviews with public academic information and AI analysis. AI outputs can be incomplete or inaccurate, so they should be treated as decision-support information rather than official school records, professional advice, or a final assessment of any individual.

Chrome Extension

The Hoodie Chrome extension runs on pages covered by its browser permissions so it can detect teacher names in academic systems, course pages, learning platforms, student portals, supervisor search pages, and public university pages. Page scanning happens in the browser. When the extension finds likely teacher candidates, it sends teacher-name search queries and, when available, your Hoodie authentication token to the Hoodie API so we can return matching teacher profiles and membership entitlements.

The extension can also sync your main-site sign-in state, check your membership status, submit a review you write in the extension bubble, and claim the extension activation membership reward. It does not intentionally upload the full page content or your school portal credentials to Hoodie.

Payments and Membership

Paid membership checkout, subscription renewal, cancellation, and billing portal access are handled by Stripe. We receive and store limited billing metadata from Stripe, such as customer ID, subscription ID, plan, status, period end, and cancellation flag. We do not store full card numbers or complete payment credentials on Hoodie servers.

Cookies, Local Storage, and Similar Technologies

Hoodie primarily uses browser local storage and Chrome extension storage to keep you signed in, remember language and comparison preferences, cache membership status, and support developer or local mock settings. Third-party services loaded by the site, such as Google Sign-In, Google Fonts, Chart.js CDN, and Stripe.js, may use their own cookies or similar technologies under their own policies.

Service Providers and Sharing

We do not sell personal information. We share information only as needed to operate Hoodie, comply with law, protect users, or complete actions you request. Service providers may include:

• AWS: hosting, APIs, Lambda functions, DynamoDB storage, and email delivery for some recipients.
• Tencent Cloud SES: verification and password reset email delivery for selected email domains.
• Google: Google Sign-In verification, Google Identity Services, Google Fonts, and AI/search services used for school metadata, teacher profile generation, embedding, or public academic evidence workflows.
• Stripe: checkout, subscription billing, customer portal, and webhook processing.
• CDN and browser platform providers: delivery of client-side libraries and operation of Chrome extension storage and permissions.

International Processing

Hoodie may process and store information in countries where we or our service providers operate, including the United States and other regions. Data protection laws may differ from those in your location, but we use reasonable safeguards appropriate to the service.

Retention

We keep account, membership, teacher, and review information for as long as needed to provide the service, maintain community history, comply with legal or accounting duties, resolve disputes, and prevent abuse. Verification and password reset codes are designed to expire after a short period. We may retain anonymised, aggregated, or de-identified information for analytics, service integrity, and teacher profile quality.

Your Choices and Rights

• You can sign out, clear browser local storage, or remove extension storage to delete locally stored session and preference data from your device.
• You can manage paid subscription cancellation and billing details through the Stripe customer portal when available in your account.
• You may contact us to request access, correction, deletion, or review of account information or user-submitted content, subject to identity verification, safety, legal, and community integrity limits.
• You may request deletion of reviews, ratings, teacher submissions, or other content that you submitted. Where deletion is legally required or reasonably available, we will remove it from public display or delete it from active systems. We may retain limited records where necessary for legal compliance, dispute handling, abuse prevention, security, accounting, backups, or anonymised/aggregated analytics.
• You can uninstall the Chrome extension at any time to stop extension page scanning and local extension storage.

Security

We use practical security measures such as hashed passwords, signed tokens, limited membership metadata, short-lived verification codes, provider-managed payment collection, and access controls. No online service is perfectly secure, so you should use a strong password, keep your email account secure, and avoid posting sensitive personal data in reviews.

Children and Students

Hoodie is intended for students and academic community users who can lawfully use online services in their location. If you are under the age required to consent to online services where you live, you should use Hoodie only with appropriate parent, guardian, or school permission.

Changes

We may update this policy as Hoodie evolves, including when we add new membership features, AI workflows, extension capabilities, or service providers. The updated version will be posted on this page with a revised date.

Contact

For privacy questions or requests, contact the Hoodie Academic Community team through the support channel provided on the main site or through Advanced Additive Manufacturing Technology LTD.