Private beta · Effective September 21, 2026

Privacy Notice

ZotAdvisor is an independent course-planning tool. It is not operated, endorsed, or verified by the University of California, Irvine.

Information we collect

We collect your UCI email address without verifying ownership during registration, your password in hashed form, profile selections, completed and current courses, and conversations you choose to have with the advisor. Password confirmation is checked during registration and is not stored. If you import an unofficial transcript, we store only parsed academic fields such as course identifiers, grades, units, GPA, requirement status, and reliably mapped exam or transfer credit.

Local PDF processing

The transcript PDF is read in your browser. The original PDF, its file name, its full extracted text, your name, Student ID, and transcript footer URLs are not sent to or stored by ZotAdvisor's server. Only the structured academic fields described above are submitted after parsing.

How we use information

We use account and academic data to maintain your student profile, evaluate prerequisites, estimate degree progress, protect the service, and generate course-planning recommendations. Imported data is user-provided and is not an official UCI record or degree audit.

Service providers and international processing

The private beta may use cloud hosting, email-delivery services, and DeepSeek as an AI provider. ZotAdvisor sends DeepSeek a minimized transcript-derived context when needed for a recommendation: course identifiers, effective grades, units, and GPA. It does not send the transcript PDF, raw transcript text, name, email address, account ID, Student ID, transcript title abbreviations, or hidden requirement status. DeepSeek may process and store data in the People's Republic of China under its own terms and privacy policy.

Retention and deletion

Account data is retained while your account exists. You may delete your account from Student Profile. Primary application data is deleted immediately; encrypted backup copies expire within 30 days. Provider-side retention may follow the relevant provider's terms.

Sharing and selling

We do not sell personal information and do not use transcript data for advertising. We disclose data only to service providers needed to operate the functions described above, or when required by law.

Your choices

Transcript import is optional and completed courses can be entered manually. During the private beta, profile information can be viewed in the application and the full account can be deleted. A correction and dedicated privacy-request channel must be added before a public launch.

Contact

For the private beta, contact the project operator who invited you to participate. A dedicated privacy contact address and operator identity will be published before public launch.