Privacy Policy | Rate Your Advisor

Overview

Rate Your Advisor ("we," "the platform") is a tool for anonymous, verified reviews of academic advisors at US universities. We are committed to protecting the privacy of reviewers. This policy explains what data we collect, why we collect it, and how it is stored.

What we collect

Institutional email address — collected solely to verify that a reviewer has a genuine affiliation with a US institution. Your email is never displayed publicly and is never linked to your review content in any database record.
Review ratings and optional written text — stored without any link to your email address. There is no foreign key or join between the reviews table and the tokens table, so no individual review can be attributed to a specific email.
Advisor information — name, institution, department, and field submitted by users when adding a new advisor to the platform.

What we do not collect

No names, usernames, or profile information
No IP addresses linked to reviews
No cookies beyond what Next.js requires for basic site function
No third-party tracking or advertising scripts

How your email is used

Your email address is used only to send a one-time verification link. Once verified, the email is stored in a separate tokens table with no foreign key or link to your review record. An administrator can see which emails have verified for which advisor, but cannot determine which specific ratings or written text came from which email.

Privacy thresholds

To further protect reviewer anonymity, ratings are only displayed publicly once an advisor has at least 5 verified reviews. Detailed category breakdowns require 10 or more reviews. Exact review counts are never shown.

Data storage

Data is stored in a hosted PostgreSQL database (Supabase). We do not sell, share, or transfer your data to third parties. Email addresses are retained to prevent duplicate reviews; they are not used for marketing or shared with any advisor or institution.

Data deletion

You may request deletion of your email and associated verification record at any time by contacting us at contact@rate-your-advisor.com. Because reviews are stored without a link to your email, the review itself cannot be identified or deleted without your specific review details.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the platform evolves. Continued use of the site after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy: contact@rate-your-advisor.com