Privacy policy

1. Information We Collect

Information you provide

Depending on how you use Afterglow, you may provide:

• Your name and email address (account registration and sign-in).
• Your resume or résumé text, extracted from an uploaded PDF or DOCX file or pasted as text.
• Employment history, job titles, responsibilities, education, certifications, skills, and professional accomplishments contained in that resume.
• General location or work-location preferences.
• LinkedIn, portfolio, GitHub, or other professional links if they appear in your resume.
• Job-search preferences such as desired direction, work mode (remote, hybrid, onsite), career level, company size, location, and related onboarding choices.
• Optional profile fields you choose to save (for example, recent title or organization during the Early Access beta).
• Feedback, role suggestions, support messages, ratings, and optional contact email if you ask us to follow up.
• Jobs, notes, analyses, and other information you choose to save in the product.
• Billing contact details and subscription status when you purchase Afterglow Pro (payment cards are handled by Stripe).

Please do not upload Social Security numbers, government identification numbers, financial account information, medical information, passwords, or other sensitive information that is not needed for career recommendations.

Information generated through the service

Afterglow may create or store outputs based on your inputs and Afterglow's curated research data, including:

• A career profile summary and career "sweet spot."
• Suggested roles, titles, companies, and search terms.
• Career insights drawn from Afterglow's researched role-family packs.
• Career insights+ hiring signals, skills trends, and role briefs (Pro).
• Guided search+ plans, company lists, outreach drafts, and progress logs (Pro).
• Job-fit assessments ("Worth it?") and related explanations.
• Saved strategy results, search priorities, and related product artifacts.

These outputs are informational recommendations. They are not official employment assessments, background checks, or hiring decisions.

Information collected automatically

When you use Afterglow, we and our infrastructure providers may collect limited technical information, including:

• IP address and network metadata as processed by hosting and database providers.
• Browser and device type, operating system, and similar technical details.
• Pages or features used, dates and times of access, and diagnostic or error logs.
• Authentication cookies and similar identifiers needed to keep you signed in (Supabase Auth).
• Application analytics events through Vercel Analytics (for example, page views used to understand whether the service is working).
• Limited product-event records in our database (for example, that a strategy was generated, time and scroll depth on the Strategy page, section expands, and search copies), which may be associated with your user ID.
• Browser local storage on your device that Afterglow uses to keep temporary session data such as resume text or strategy results while you work.

2. How We Use Information

We use your information to:

• Create and maintain your account and authenticate you.
• Parse resume files on our servers to extract text (PDF/DOCX parsing runs in Afterglow application code; the original binary file is not kept as object storage).
• Store resume text and preferences so we can generate and regenerate your strategy and Worth it? analyses.
• Match your background and preferences against Afterglow's curated role taxonomy, hiring-pattern research, and Career Insights packs.
• Save jobs, notes, analyses, and account settings you choose to keep.
• Respond to feedback and support requests when you contact us.
• Operate Founding Member / plan entitlements and beta access controls.
• Investigate errors, abuse, fraud, or security concerns.
• Improve reliability, accuracy of matching, and product usability.
• Communicate important service or policy updates.
• Comply with applicable legal obligations.

We do not use Afterglow to make hiring, firing, promotion, compensation, or other employment decisions about you on behalf of an employer.

3. How Automation and AI Are Used

My strategy, Career insights, and Worth it? do not send your resume or personal information to a generative AI provider to create those outputs. They are produced by matching your inputs to Afterglow's curated research and taxonomy data using Afterglow's own application logic.

Guided search+ (Pro) uses OpenAI for some steps, including search plans, company lists, and outreach drafts. See the AI Use & Transparency Policy for details.

Afterglow still uses automated processing (deterministic matching, heuristics, and structured research lookups) on personal information you provide, including resume text and preferences, to deliver the product. That processing happens on Afterglow's application servers and in our database.

If Afterglow later enables generative AI for additional features, we will update this Privacy Policy and the AI Use & Transparency Policy to name the feature, the provider, and what personal information is sent, before or as that change takes effect.

4. How We Share Information

We share information with service providers that help us operate Afterglow. Current infrastructure includes:

• Vercel: website hosting, deployment, and Vercel Analytics.
• Supabase: authentication, PostgreSQL database storage for accounts, resume text, strategies, saved jobs, analyses, feedback, and related product data.
• Stripe: payment processing and subscription billing when you purchase Afterglow Pro. Stripe receives billing contact details, payment method information, and transaction metadata. Afterglow does not store full payment card numbers on our servers.
• Resend: transactional email (account notices, contact form delivery, internal alerts). If you have not opted out, we may also send occasional product updates and emails about Afterglow Pro through the same email service. You can change these preferences in Account & settings or use the unsubscribe link in those emails.
• OpenAI (Guided search+ only): when you use Guided search+ as a Pro subscriber, resume excerpts, preferences, company names, and job-search context may be sent to OpenAI to generate search plans, outreach drafts, and related outputs. My strategy, Career insights, and Worth it? do not use OpenAI in the default production path.

These providers process information as needed to provide their services to Afterglow, subject to their contractual terms and privacy obligations. See the AI Use & Transparency Policy for details on which features use generative AI.

We may also disclose information:

• When required by law, legal process, or a valid governmental request.
• To protect the rights, safety, property, or security of Afterglow, our users, or others.
• To investigate fraud, misuse, security threats, or violations of our policies.
• In connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, sale of assets, or transfer of the service, subject to appropriate confidentiality protections.
• With your direction or consent.

5. We Do Not Sell Personal Information

Afterglow does not sell your resume or personal information. Afterglow does not share your resume with employers, recruiters, or hiring platforms as part of the service. Afterglow does not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising and does not use resume information to serve targeted advertisements.

If these practices change, we will update this Privacy Policy and provide any notice or choices required by law before beginning the new practice.

6. Data Retention

We retain personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the features you use, maintain your saved results, respond to support requests, protect the service, and meet legal or security obligations.

You may delete your account and associated Afterglow database records from Account & settings. Account deletion removes your authentication account and cascaded application data such as profile, stored resume text, strategies, saved jobs, analyses, notes, feedback tied to your user ID, and related product events, subject to temporary backups or logs held by infrastructure providers.

Data stored only in your browser (local storage) may remain until you clear it in the browser or use in-product reset options. Waitlist entries, if any were collected under a separate email address without an account link, may need a separate deletion request.

7. Your Choices and Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to:

• Access personal information we maintain about you.
• Correct inaccurate information.
• Delete your personal information (including via Account & settings).
• Receive a portable copy of information you submitted, where applicable.
• Object to or restrict certain processing, where applicable.
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
• Turn off product updates and marketing emails in Account & settings. Account and billing email stays on.
• Lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (for example, under GDPR).

Privacy rights vary by location (including GDPR in the EEA/UK and U.S. state privacy laws). We will honor requests as required by applicable law and may need to verify your identity. We will not discriminate against you for exercising an applicable privacy right.

To submit a privacy request, use the Feedback form and start your message with "Privacy Request." Include the email address on your Afterglow account so we can verify the request. You may also delete your account directly from Account & settings.

8. Legal Bases (GDPR / UK GDPR)

If you are in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom, we process personal data under one or more of these bases, depending on the activity:

• Contract / steps prior to contract: to provide the Afterglow service you request (account, strategy, saved work).
• Legitimate interests: to secure the service, prevent abuse, debug errors, and improve matching quality in ways that do not override your rights.
• Consent: where we ask for it (for example, optional contact follow-up on feedback).
• Legal obligation: when we must retain or disclose information to comply with law.

9. Data Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect personal information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), authentication and access controls via Supabase, row-level security policies on user tables, restricted administrative access, and provider security protections from Vercel and Supabase.

No online service can guarantee absolute security. Remove unnecessary sensitive information from your resume before uploading it and share only professional information relevant to your career search.

10. International Processing

Afterglow is operated from the United States. Vercel and Supabase may process information in the United States and other countries where they operate. Privacy laws in those locations may differ from the laws where you live. Where legally required, we rely on appropriate transfer mechanisms offered by our providers (such as Standard Contractual Clauses) for international transfers.

11. Children's Privacy

Afterglow is designed for adult job seekers and is not intended for children under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected such information, we will take reasonable steps to delete it.

12. Third-Party Websites and Job Listings

Afterglow may link to job boards, employers, LinkedIn, company career pages, Google search, or other third-party services. Afterglow does not control those services or their privacy practices. Information you provide directly to a third party is governed by that third party's policies.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as Afterglow changes. The effective date at the top shows when it was last revised. If a change materially affects how previously collected personal information is used, we will provide additional notice or obtain consent when legally required.

14. Contact Us

Afterglow
Website: this Afterglow site
Privacy / data requests: Feedback form (message starting with "Privacy Request")

This policy is provided for transparency. It is not legal advice. If you need jurisdiction-specific counsel, consult a qualified attorney.