Privacy Policy
Last updated October 2026
The short version
We collect what Hearth needs to work and nothing more. Your data is never sold, never used for advertising, and never shared with your university. Everything you post stays inside your verified campus, and you can delete your account, and everything in it, right from the app.
What you give us
When you sign up we ask for your university email address, a password, and a display name. Your password is stored only in protected, encrypted form. We never see it. Your handle starts out as the part of your email address before the @, it's visible to your campus, and you can change it to anything you like in Account. Everything else on your profile is optional and up to you: major, graduation year, bio, photo. We never ask for your phone number.
What you create
Your course list (entered by you, never pulled from your school), plus the channels and clubs you join, and the things you share: messages and direct messages, notes and files, events and RSVPs, polls and reactions. We store this so your classmates can see it. That's the product.
The things only you can see
Some of what you type is stored for you alone, and no classmate, no moderator and nobody at your university can read it. Your grade estimator is the main one: the categories, weights and marks you enter to work out where you stand. It's your own note to yourself, kept private by the database itself, and it is not a school record. Your blocked list, your saved messages and your flashcard review history work the same way. All of it is deleted with your account.
Safety and device data
If you report something or block someone, we keep a record so we can act on the report and keep the block working. A report is read by a moderator, who at most schools is a student at your own. They see the message or profile you reported and who wrote it, and nothing else about your account. Blocks are never shown to anyone but you. If you turn on notifications, we store a push token, the delivery address your device gives us, which you can switch off any time. We also keep routine technical records, like the timestamps behind our rate limits, to keep Hearth healthy.
What we never collect
We don't connect to your university's systems, so no official record of yours reaches us: not your transcript, not your real class roster, not your enrollment, not your student ID. Anything about your coursework on Hearth is there because you typed it. We don't track your location, we don't read your contacts, we don't ask for your phone number, and there are no advertising trackers or analytics SDKs anywhere in Hearth.
Who can see what
Course chats are visible only to classmates who added the same course. Campus channels are visible only to verified students at your school. Club spaces are for their members, and direct messages are for the people in that thread: just the two of you, or, in a named group, everyone in it (up to 16). Your profile is visible to your campus; turn Public profile off and classmates see only your handle and your photo. Nothing you write on Hearth is reachable from the wider internet. The one exception is your profile photo, which is served from a public link, so anyone who has that link can open it without signing in. Someone you block can't message you, and the things they write stay out of your view: messages, board posts, the line on their study session. They're never told, and nothing in Hearth will tell them.
How we use your data
To run Hearth: showing the right content to the right classmates, delivering your messages and notifications, and keeping the community safe by reviewing reports and enforcing blocks and rate limits. That's it: no ad targeting, no marketing profiles, no selling.
Where your data lives
Hearth's database and uploaded files are hosted with Supabase, our infrastructure provider, in a data center in Oregon in the United States. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and access rules are enforced at the database level, so a direct message, for example, can only ever be read by the people in that thread: the two of you in a one-to-one, or everyone in a group. If you're using Hearth from outside the United States, including from the UK or the EU, your data is transferred to and stored in the US, under the data processing terms we have in place with our host.
How long we keep things
Your account and what's in it stay for as long as your account does. Delete the account and it all goes at once. Messages you delete are gone from the app straight away, though a copy can sit in our host's routine backups for a short while before it is overwritten. Reports and the record of a block are kept while your account exists, because a block that forgets itself isn't a block, and a moderator needs to see whether a pattern is repeating. Routine technical records, like the timestamps behind our rate limits, are kept for 90 days.
When we share
We never sell your data, full stop. We share it only with the services that make Hearth run (Supabase for hosting, Expo for delivering push notifications, Resend for sending confirmation and password-reset emails, and Vercel for hosting the website) and only as needed for them to do that job. Beyond that, we would disclose data only if the law requires it or it's necessary to prevent serious harm to someone.
Deleting your data
You're in control: edit or clear your profile any time, drop courses, and leave channels whenever you like. Removing your profile photo deletes the file, not just the link to it. Deleting your account, from Settings, then Delete account, removes everything at once: profile, messages, files, courses, blocks, and push tokens, immediately and permanently. There's no recovery window and no archive. The one thing that outlives it is a message of yours a classmate forwarded somewhere else: that copy is their message now, and it keeps the text with your name taken off it. If you can't get into the app, email hello@uhearth.app from your university address and we'll delete the account for you within 30 days; the same steps are written out at uhearth.app/delete-account.
Your rights over your data
Wherever you live: you can see everything we hold about you (Settings, then Your data, gives you one file), correct it, or delete all of it from Settings without asking us first. If you'd rather we did any of it, email hello@uhearth.app and we'll answer within 30 days. We don't sell your data and we never have, we don't share it for advertising, and there's nothing to opt out of because none of it happens. If you're in the UK or the EU, our legal basis for handling your data is that we need it to provide the service you signed up for, and for safety features it's our legitimate interest in keeping the community safe. You can also object to how we use it, ask us to restrict it, and complain to your national data protection authority. If you're in California, the rights to know, delete, correct and not be discriminated against for asking are the same ones described here, and you can use them the same way.
Age
Hearth is for people 16 and older who are enrolled at or affiliated with a supported university. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 16, and if we learn that we have, we'll delete the account and everything in it. If you're a parent or guardian and think your child has an account, email hello@uhearth.app and we'll take care of it.
Cookies and local storage
The website uses only the cookies it needs to work: a session cookie while you confirm your email or reset your password, which expires on its own. The website and the app also keep a few preferences on your own device, like your colour scheme and text size, and never send them anywhere. There are no advertising, analytics, or tracking cookies, which is why there is no cookie banner: there is nothing to consent to.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top, and for anything significant we'll let you know in the app before it takes effect.
Talk to us
The controller of your data is Raghav Kedia, doing business as Hearth, 625 Cantrill Dr, Apt 146, Davis, CA 95618. Questions about your data, or a request we can help with? Email hello@uhearth.app. A human reads it.