Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Apprentice Wizard ("we," "us," "our," or "Company") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and otherwise handle your information when you visit our website and use our services.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide Directly

• Account Information: When you create an account, we collect your email address, authentication credentials, and profile information.
• Application Data: When you use our Application Tracker, we store information about opportunities you've saved, applications you've submitted, and related notes and deadlines.
• Feedback: When you submit testimonials or feedback, we collect the content, your user ID, and optional information like your role or company.
• Location Data: If you enable location-based features, we collect your location to show nearby opportunities.

2.2 Information Collected Automatically

• Log Data: IP address, browser type, pages visited, time and date stamps, and click-through data.
• Device Information: Device type, operating system, and unique device identifiers.
• Cookies & Tracking: We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to enhance your experience and analyze platform usage.

2.3 Third-Party Data

• We collect job listings from third-party sources including GOV.UK, Higherin (formerly RateMyApprenticeship), Not Going to Uni (NGTU), UCAS Career Finder, and curated GitHub job repositories published by SimplifyJobs, PrepAIJobs, SpeedyApply, and Vanshb03.
• This data is publicly available and does not include personal information about users.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• To provide, maintain, and improve our services
• To authenticate you and manage your account
• To suggest opportunities that fit what you've told us, and, if suggestions based on your activity are on, what you've saved, viewed and searched for (see section 19)
• To send transactional emails (account confirmations, password resets, etc.)
• To analyze platform usage and improve our features
• To detect and prevent fraud or security issues
• To comply with legal obligations
• To send news, tips and product updates, on the basis explained in section 18

4. Data Sharing and Disclosure

4.1 Public Information

If you choose to make your testimonial public, it will be visible to all users of the platform. We will display it anonymously (without your name) unless you specifically provide your name.

4.2 Service Providers

We share data with third-party service providers who assist us in operating our platform:

• Supabase: Cloud database, authentication, and storage of support messages
• Vercel: Frontend hosting provider
• Stripe, Inc.: Payment processing for Apprentice and Premium plan purchases
• OpenAI: For AI-powered features (with user consent), including classifying recruitment emails if you connect your inbox (see section 17)
• OpenAI (ChatGPT) and Anthropic (Claude): Only if you connect ApprenticeWizard to one of these assistants and ask it to use your account (see section 20)
• Google and Microsoft: If you connect a Gmail or Outlook inbox, we receive new-email notifications and read access from them (see section 17)
• Email delivery provider (SMTP): Sends transactional emails, including support reply notifications and service announcements
• Discord: Coaching sessions and direct messaging for Premium plan members (governed by Discord's own Privacy Policy)

These providers are contractually obligated to use your information only as necessary to provide services to us.

4.3 Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required by law or if we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to: comply with legal obligations, enforce our agreements, or protect the rights, privacy, safety, or property of Apprentice Wizard, our users, or the public.

4.4 Business Transfers

In the event of a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will provide notice before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

5. Data Security

We implement comprehensive technical, administrative, and physical security measures to protect your information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security.

• Data encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS)
• Row-Level Security policies on database tables
• Secure authentication with Supabase Auth
• Regular security monitoring and updates

6. Your Rights and Choices

6.1 Access and Portability

You have the right to access your personal information and receive a copy of it in a portable format. You can download your application tracker data at any time from your dashboard.

6.2 Correction and Deletion

You can update your account information at any time. You may request deletion of your account and associated personal data by contacting us at support@apprenticewizard.co.uk. We will comply within 30 days unless legally required to retain the data.

6.3 Cookie Preferences

You can control cookie settings through your browser. Blocking certain cookies may affect your ability to use all features of our platform.

6.4 Opt-Out

You can turn off specific reminders and alerts in Settings > Notifications. Some emails also include an unsubscribe link that works without signing in. Service emails cannot be turned off. See section 18, Emails We Send for the kinds of email and what we record.

7. Children's Privacy

Apprentice Wizard is aimed at students from Year 9 (about age 13) upward. We treat anyone under 18 with extra care. We send no news or tips to students in Years 9 to 11. We send news to students in Years 12 and 13 only if they say yes. We do not use personalised marketing for under 18s.

If you are under 18, or haven't told us your year group, we don't use what you save, view or search for to suggest roles unless you turn that on. We still suggest roles based on the answers you gave us in setup, such as the subjects and places you picked.

If you are a parent or guardian and have a question about your child's data, contact us at support@apprenticewizard.co.uk.

8. International Data Transfers

Your information may be transferred to, stored in, and processed in countries other than your country of residence. These countries may have data protection laws that differ from your home country. By using Apprentice Wizard, you consent to such transfers.

9. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide services. If you delete your account from Settings, deletion happens immediately: your account and the personal data listed below are removed straight away, except where we are required to retain it by law (e.g., for tax or compliance purposes).

• Account data: Retained while account is active, deleted immediately upon account deletion
• Application tracker entries: Retained while account is active, deleted immediately upon account deletion
• Public testimonials: May be retained indefinitely unless requested to be removed
• Support messages: Resolved support conversations are automatically deleted 18 months after resolution; all support messages are deleted when your account is deleted
• Contact us messages: Deleted when your account is deleted (see section 14.5)
• Email choices: Your email preferences and the record of each choice are deleted when your account is deleted. If you unsubscribe from News from ApprenticeWizard, we keep a one-way hash of your address so we do not send you news again, even if you delete your account and sign up again (see section 18).
• Search history and recently viewed roles: Kept for 90 days, then deleted automatically within a day. You can clear either at any time in Settings > Suggestions.
• Records of the suggestions we showed you: Kept for 90 days, then deleted. After that we keep only totals (for example, how many times a role was shown in a position) that can't identify you.
• Log data: Typically retained for 90 days
• Billing history: If you have ever had a paid subscription, a de-identified record of your subscription (plan, dates, and Stripe subscription reference — with no way to sign in, contact, or otherwise identify you) is kept separately for 7 years for UK financial/tax regulations, then automatically deleted. If you never had a paid subscription, no such record is created.

Your active subscription: If you have an active or past-due paid subscription when you delete your account, it is cancelled automatically as part of the deletion — you will not be charged again.

10. Third-Party Links

Our platform may contain links to third-party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these external sites. We encourage you to review their privacy policies before providing any information.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by updating the "Last updated" date and, in some cases, by sending you an email notification. Your continued use of the platform following such changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated Privacy Policy.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:

13. Additional Information for UK Users (GDPR/UK GDPR)

If you are located in the UK, you have additional rights under UK GDPR, including:

• The right to access your personal data
• The right to rectify inaccurate data
• The right to erasure ("right to be forgotten")
• The right to restrict processing
• The right to data portability
• The right to object to processing
• Rights related to automated decision-making

To exercise these rights, please contact us at support@apprenticewizard.co.uk. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

14. Feedback & Support Data

When you use the in-app feedback feature (accessible from your Dashboard or Settings), we collect and store the following personal data:

• Your account email address (used to identify your submission and allow us to respond).
• The category you select (Bug, Feature Request, or General Feedback).
• The subject and message body you write.
• Any replies posted by Apprentice Wizard staff.

Legal basis: Legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR), we use this data solely to improve our product and respond to your support queries. We do not use it for marketing or share it with third parties.

Retention: Feedback data is kept until you delete it yourself or until your account is deleted. There is no automatic expiry.

How to delete your feedback data:

1. Go to Settings in your Apprentice Wizard account.
2. Scroll to the Your feedback section.
3. Click the delete icon next to any submission you wish to remove.
4. Alternatively, deleting your account will permanently erase all feedback data.

To exercise any other data rights related to this data, contact us at support@apprenticewizard.co.uk.

14.1 First-Line Support Messages (paid plans)

Members on a paid plan can message our team directly from the in-app Support area. When you use it, we collect and store only what we need to help you:

• The message content you send and our replies.
• A reference to your account (so we can identify and respond to you).
• The time each message was sent and the status of the conversation (open, in progress, or resolved).

Please don't share sensitive personal information, such as health, financial details, or passwords, in support messages. We only need enough information to help with your question.

Legal basis: Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR) and our legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)) in providing support and improving our service. We use support messages only to respond to you and operate the service; we do not use them for marketing.

Who can see them: Access is restricted to authorised Apprentice Wizard staff, and staff access to support conversations is logged.

Retention: Once a support conversation is marked resolved, it is automatically deleted 18 months later. If you delete your account, all of your support messages are deleted at the same time.

Notifications: When our team replies, we notify you in the app and by email. These are transactional service messages, not marketing.

14.2 Service Announcement Emails

We may occasionally email paid-plan members with service announcements and product updates relevant to your plan, on the basis of our legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR). Every such email includes an unsubscribe link; once you unsubscribe, we record your choice and stop sending you these updates. You will still receive essential account and support messages.

14.3 Wizard AI Interaction and Feedback Signals

When you use Wizard AI chat, we collect limited interaction signals to improve answer quality and monitor reliability. These signals include chat opens, message send events, typing-state events, response-delivery events, and thumbs up/down ratings.

What we store: your account reference, an internal chat session ID, event type, event timestamp, optional short response excerpt (for rating context), and optional technical metadata needed for debugging and quality review.

What we do not store: raw keystroke-by-keystroke text streams. Typing events are stored as lightweight state transitions (for example "typing started" and "typing stopped"), not full key logs.

Legal basis: Legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR) to maintain service quality, investigate model failures, and improve Wizard AI output over time.

Retention: Wizard AI interaction and rating telemetry is retained for up to 24 months, then automatically deleted.

14.4 Founder Outreach Emails

We may occasionally reach out to registered users directly by email to ask for feedback on the product (for example, what has been useful and what has been missing), using your account email address and first name.

Legal basis: Legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR). We send these emails only where we have a recorded basis to do so under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR): you were offered an email choice when you signed up and did not opt out, or you said yes in the app. We only contact you about Apprentice Wizard itself, never for third-party marketing.

What these emails are not: automated marketing campaigns or newsletters. They are sent individually and read and replied to by a person.

Opt-out: You can opt out of these emails at any time by replying "unsubscribe", by contacting us at support@apprenticewizard.co.uk, or in any of the ways listed in section 18, and we will not contact you for this purpose again.

14.5 Contact us (paid plans)

Subscribers on any paid plan can message our team through Contact us, from Settings, the account menu or the Wizard AI panel. When you use it, we collect and store only what we need to have that conversation:

• The message content you send, the type you choose (question, problem, feedback or feature idea), and our replies.
• The page you sent it from (the path only, never search terms or other parts of the address), your plan and the app version, so we can understand and fix what you describe. The composer tells you this before you send.
• A reference to your account (so we can identify and respond to you).
• The time each message was sent and the status of the conversation (open or closed).

Please don't share sensitive personal information, such as health, financial details, or passwords, in these messages. We only need enough information to help with your question.

Legal basis: Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR) and our legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)) in providing this benefit to paid subscribers. We use these messages only to respond to you; we do not use them for marketing, and we do not pass them to our AI features. If you choose to send text that you first typed into the Wizard AI chat (the "Send this to the team" option), that text was already processed by the AI chat when you typed it there, under the AI terms in this policy; sending it to us does not process it again.

Who can see them: Access is restricted to the founder and ApprenticeWizard administrators.

Priority replies: Messages from active Top-tier subscribers are marked as priority so we see them first. This uses the plan we already hold for your account; no extra information is collected.

If you downgrade or cancel: your existing conversation history remains visible to you, but you can no longer send new messages unless you resubscribe to a paid plan.

Retention: Once a conversation is marked closed, it is automatically deleted 18 months later. If you delete your account, all of your Contact us messages are deleted at the same time.

15. Coaching Inquiry Data

When you submit a coaching inquiry via the /coaching page, we collect and store:

• Your full name and email address.
• Your current stage (e.g. Year 12, University Y2).
• The message you write describing your search and goals.
• The status of your inquiry (pending, reviewed, invited, or declined).

Legal basis: Legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR), we use this data solely to assess and respond to coaching inquiries. We do not use it for marketing or share it with third parties.

Discord: If you are accepted into the Premium coaching programme, your sessions and direct messages take place on Discord. Discord's own Privacy Policy governs data processed within their platform. We do not store Discord messages on Apprentice Wizard servers.

Retention: Inquiry data is retained for 24 months from the date of submission or until you request deletion, whichever comes first.

To request deletion of your inquiry data, contact us at support@apprenticewizard.co.uk.

16. Payment Data

Payments for the Application Season Passes (a single payment of £39.99, £24.99 or £49.99 depending on the purchase window) and the Entry, Mid and Top recurring plans (£1.99, £4.99 and £12.99 per month respectively) are processed by Stripe, Inc. Apprentice Wizard does not store your card number, CVV, sort code, or full payment details. We receive and retain:

• A Stripe payment intent ID and customer ID (for support and refund purposes).
• The plan purchased and the date of payment.
• Your email address as provided to Stripe at checkout.

Legal basis: Contract performance (Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR), we need this data to fulfil your purchase and provide paid features.

Stripe's privacy practices are governed by the Stripe Privacy Policy (stripe.com/gb/privacy). Payment records are retained for 7 years in accordance with UK financial and tax regulations.

17. Inbox Auto-Tracking

You can choose to connect an Outlook or Gmail inbox so your application tracker updates itself when employers email you. This is off unless you connect an inbox, and you can disconnect at any time from Settings > Inbox.

17.1 What we access

• Read-only access to your inbox. We cannot send, delete, label or change any email.
• Only emails that arrive after you connect. We do not scan your existing inbox.
• Your inbox address and an account identifier, so we know which inbox is yours.

17.2 How emails are processed

1. When a new email arrives, we look at the sender, subject and preview to decide whether it is likely to be about a job or apprenticeship application. Emails that are not are ignored straight away.
2. For likely recruitment emails, we send the email text to OpenAI to identify what happened (for example an interview invite or a rejection), the employer, the role and any deadline.
3. If the result is clear enough, we update the matching application in your tracker, or add a new one. Every automatic change shows an Undo button and lets you rate whether it was right. Changes that look unusual, such as an application moving back a stage, are shown to you to confirm first. Emails we are unsure about are ignored.

17.3 What we store

• We do not store the content of your emails. We keep only what we extracted: the type of update, employer, role, deadline or interview date, and how confident we were.
• For emails we ignored, we keep only the email's technical ID for 30 days, so the same email is never processed twice.
• If you rate an update and tick "Share this email to help improve detection", we store the text of that one email with your rating, to improve accuracy. This is always optional and off by default.
• The access keys for your inbox are encrypted, and the encryption key is held separately from our database.

17.4 Employers we do not list yet

If an email is from an employer or for a role that Apprentice Wizard does not list, we record the employer and role name so our team can consider adding it. Our team only sees a count of how many students reported each employer, never who reported it.

17.5 Legal basis and your choices

Legal basis: Your consent (Article 6(1)(a) UK GDPR), given when you connect your inbox. You can withdraw consent at any time by disconnecting. Automatic tracker updates are a convenience feature with no legal or similarly significant effect on you, and you can undo any of them.

Disconnecting: Processing stops immediately and we revoke or discard our access. You can also choose to delete everything we extracted from your inbox. Your tracker entries stay, because they are yours. For Outlook, you can also remove our access from your Microsoft account settings; we link you there when you disconnect.

17.6 Retention

• Extracted details from recruitment emails: 12 months, then automatically deleted.
• Technical IDs of ignored emails: 30 days.
• Applications we found but could not add because of your plan's tracker limit: 60 days.
• Inbox access keys: deleted when you disconnect, or 30 days after a paid plan ends if you used Gmail and did not resubscribe.
• All inbox data is deleted when you delete your account, except two records that contain no email content: a security log of inbox events such as connecting, disconnecting, pausing, resuming and access being revoked, kept for 12 months, and, if you used Gmail, a one-way fingerprint of your Google account ID, kept so we stay within Google's limit on how many accounts can connect before verification.

17.7 Processors

Google (Gmail) and Microsoft (Outlook) provide the inbox access you grant. OpenAI processes the text of likely recruitment emails to classify them. OpenAI does not use API data to train its models.

17.8 Google user data

Apprentice Wizard's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use Gmail data only to update your application tracker. We do not use it for advertising, do not sell it, and do not use it to train AI models.

18. Emails We Send

We send a few kinds of email. You can turn off most of them. Service emails are the exception, because you need them to use your account.

18.1 The kinds of email

• Service emails: account and sign-in emails, payment emails and replies from our support team. We always send these.
• News from ApprenticeWizard: new features, guides and roles worth knowing about. At most twice a month.
• Tips and reminders: short nudges to help you get more out of your account.
• Deadline alerts: a heads-up about roles you saved.
• Programme alerts: emails about programmes you asked to hear about.
• Application update emails: only if you turn them on.
• Updates for paid members: news about your plan (see section 14.2).

We never put advertising for other companies in these emails.

18.2 Why we can send news and tips

Legal basis: for news and tips, we rely on the "soft opt-in" in Regulation 22 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) only where we offered you a way to opt out when we collected your address, you did not opt out, and the emails are about Apprentice Wizard itself. Our UK GDPR basis for this is legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)). Where the soft opt-in does not apply, we need your agreement before sending news or tips.

If you did not see that choice when you signed up (for example, you used Google One Tap, or your account is older), we only send you news and tips if you say yes in the app.

Every news or tips email has an unsubscribe link, and works with your mail app's own Unsubscribe button.

18.3 If you are under 18

Our rules for news and tips depend on your year group. Students in Years 9 to 11 must not get either. Students in Years 12 and 13 must say yes before getting news; tips can follow the choice made at sign-up unless you opt out.

18.4 How to stop

• Use the unsubscribe link in the email. Every news or tips email has one; other emails may not.
• Use the unsubscribe button in your mail app.
• In Settings > Notifications, turn off specific reminders and alerts.

You do not need to sign in. We act on your choice straight away.

18.5 What we record

For a choice made at sign-up, we record whether you opted out, when and where you chose, and the version of the notice you saw. Changes to supported account email preferences are also recorded. This helps us show that we respected those choices.

18.6 After you unsubscribe

If you unsubscribe from News from ApprenticeWizard, we keep a one-way hash of your address so we do not send you news again, even if you delete your account and sign up again. We keep this hash for our legitimate interests and to meet our duty under PECR.

18.7 Signing up for the newsletter without an account

If you sign up from the blog without an account, we send one confirmation email. We will not send the newsletter or other marketing emails unless you confirm. We delete unconfirmed sign-ups after 14 days. Every newsletter includes an unsubscribe link.

19. Suggested roles

19.1 What we use

On Discover we may show a "For you" row of live roles. We pick them using:

• the answers you gave us in setup: subjects or sectors, the type and level of role, where you'd like to work, and any grades you added;
• if suggestions based on your activity are on: roles you've saved to your tracker, roles you've opened, and your searches on ApprenticeWizard;
• closing dates, and how often other students have saved or applied to a role (counted together, never shown per person).

Each suggestion says why it's there, for example "Like the Barclays role you saved". Tap "Why these?" to see what we used for you.

19.2 What we never use

Your CV, messages to us, anything you write in our AI tools, your email inbox, or anything about who you are, such as health, ethnicity, religion or family background. We don't guess things about you and we don't build a stored profile of your interests. Suggestions are worked out when you open Discover and then thrown away.

19.3 Your choice

If your year group is "Graduate / Already working" or "Degree Apprentice", suggestions based on your activity are on until you turn them off. If you're under 18 or haven't told us your year group, they're off until you turn them on. Change this any time in Settings > Suggestions or from "Why these?". Turning them off also stops us storing new searches and recently viewed roles. When your year group moves up on 1 September, we'll tell you if this changes your setting.

19.4 Measuring whether suggestions help

We record which suggestions we showed you, where, and whether you opened, saved or applied to them, so we can check suggestions are useful and compare them with Discover without them. These records are kept for 90 days (section 9). We may later use these records, only from students whose activity-based suggestions were on, to improve how suggestions are ordered. We'll update this policy before we do.

19.5 Legal basis

We suggest roles from your setup answers because it's part of the service you asked for (contract). We use your activity only when that setting is on, on the basis of our legitimate interest in helping you find relevant roles, which you can switch off at any time. Suggestions never decide anything about you: you see the same roles in Discover whether or not they're suggested.

20. Using ApprenticeWizard in ChatGPT or Claude

20.1 Connecting

You can add ApprenticeWizard to ChatGPT (made by OpenAI) or Claude (made by Anthropic). To connect, you sign in to ApprenticeWizard and approve access. After that, the assistant can use ApprenticeWizard for you when you ask it to. You can remove the connection in the assistant's settings at any time, which stops any further access.

20.2 What the assistant can see and do

When you ask, the assistant can:

• read your profile: your setup answers and preferences, the roles in your tracker, your saved CV, your readiness scores, your saved STAR answers and what you've asked the application chat to remember;
• search live roles and employer information, and check whether you meet a role's entry requirements;
• save a role to your tracker, change its stage, and set a deadline reminder;
• save a STAR answer, or add something to your application chat memory, once you've agreed;
• check your saved CV, or a CV you paste into the conversation, against a role.

What ApprenticeWizard sends back is shown to the assistant, so OpenAI or Anthropic then holds it under its own privacy policy. You choose to share it by connecting and asking. A CV check sends your CV text to OpenAI to score it, as for the CV check on our website (section 4).

20.3 What we record

Each time the assistant uses ApprenticeWizard, we record which tool it used, which assistant it was, whether it worked, how long it took and any AI credits it used. We use this to run the service, charge credits and keep it secure. We don't receive or store your conversation with the assistant, only the request it makes to us, such as a search or a tracker change.

20.4 How long we keep it

These records are kept while your account is open and deleted when you delete your account. Anything the assistant changes, such as a tracker entry, is the same data you see in your account and is kept as described in section 9.

20.5 Legal basis

We provide the connection because you asked for it (contract). We keep the usage records for our legitimate interest in running, billing and securing the service.