California Privacy Notice

1. CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

Under the CCPA, "personal information" means information that identifies, relates to, or could reasonably be linked to you or your household. In the preceding 12 months, we have collected the following categories:

Category	Examples	Collected?
A. Identifiers	Name, email, phone, IP address, username	Yes
B. Personal information (Cal. Civ. Code 1798.80(e))	Name, address, phone, education, employment history	Yes
C. Protected classifications	Age (eligibility only), veteran status (if voluntarily provided)	Limited
D. Commercial information	Subscription purchases, payment history	Yes
E. Internet or network activity	Browsing history on our site, feature usage, search queries	Yes
F. Geolocation data	Approximate location from IP address	Yes
G. Professional information	Job titles, employers, skills, certifications, education	Yes
H. Inferences	Job preferences, skill level, career interests	Yes
I. Biometric information	Fingerprints, face scans, voiceprints	No
J. Sensory data	Audio, video, electronic recordings	No
K. Sensitive personal information	SSN, financial accounts, precise geolocation, health data	No

2. SOURCES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

Directly from you: Account registration, resume creation, profile setup, application preparation, uploaded documents, communications with us.
Automatically: Cookies, web analytics, server logs, and similar technologies when you use our website.
Third parties: Public job board APIs (Greenhouse, Lever) for job listing data; analytics providers (Google Analytics); advertising partners (Google AdSense).

3. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We use the personal information we collect for the following business and commercial purposes:

Providing and improving our resume builder, job discovery, and application preparation services
Creating and managing your account
Processing payments and subscriptions
Matching you with relevant job opportunities
Sending service-related, promotional, and recruitment-partner communications (email and SMS)
Connecting opted-in candidates with recruiters
Analyzing usage to improve our platform
Detecting and preventing fraud and abuse
Complying with legal obligations

4. HOW WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of third parties for business purposes:

Service providers: Hosting, email delivery, SMS delivery, payment processing, analytics — bound by contractual obligations to protect your data.
Recruiters and employers: Only if you opt in to share your profile through our platform.
Advertising partners: Aggregated or de-identified data for ad targeting through Google AdSense. We do not share personally identifiable information for advertising.
Legal and regulatory: When required by law, subpoena, or government request.
Business transfers: In connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

5. DATA RETENTION

We retain each category of personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes described above:

Data Category	Retention Period
Account and profile data	Until account deletion or 24 months of inactivity
Resume and application data	Until you delete it or close your account
Payment and transaction data	7 years (tax and financial regulations)
Email/SMS opt-in records	Duration of consent + 3 years (CAN-SPAM and TCPA)
Usage and analytics data	26 months, then aggregated/anonymized
Server logs	90 days

6. YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

As a California resident, you have the following rights under the CCPA and CPRA:

Right to know: Request that we disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected, the sources, the purposes, and the third parties with whom we shared it.
Right to delete: Request that we delete personal information we collected from you, subject to legal exceptions.
Right to correct: Request that we correct inaccurate personal information we maintain about you.
Right to opt out of sale or sharing: We do not sell your personal information. If this changes, we will provide a prominent "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link.
Right to limit use of sensitive information: We do not collect sensitive personal information as defined by the CPRA.
Right to non-discrimination: We will not deny you services, charge you different prices, or provide a different quality of service because you exercised your privacy rights.

You may make up to two verifiable consumer requests per 12-month period. We will respond within 45 days. If we need more time (up to an additional 45 days), we will notify you in writing.

7. HOW WE VERIFY REQUESTS

To protect your privacy, we must verify your identity before fulfilling any request to access, delete, or correct your personal information:

Account holders: We will verify your identity by confirming your email address associated with your SmoothApply account. We may ask you to re-authenticate or confirm details only you would know.
Non-account holders: We will ask you to provide at least two pieces of identifying information that we can match against our records.
Authorized agents: If you use an authorized agent, we may require proof of written authorization and may still verify your identity directly.

We will not fulfill a request if we cannot verify your identity or authority. Information collected for verification purposes will only be used for that purpose.

8. WE DO NOT SELL YOUR INFORMATION

SmoothApply does not sell, and has not sold in the preceding 12 months, the personal information of California residents. We do not sell personal information of minors under 16 years of age.

We do share certain information with service providers for business purposes (as described above), but these disclosures are not considered "sales" under the CCPA because they are made pursuant to written contracts that restrict the use of the data.