Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

We collect information you provide directly, including:

• Account details — name, email address, and password.
• Profile information used for eligibility matching — such as academic standing, income bracket, location, and other criteria relevant to scholarship requirements.
• Your readiness checklist — which required documents you have marked as ready. BukasAral never asks you to upload the documents themselves.
• Messages you send to the BukasAI assistant, used to provide responses to your questions.

2. How We Use Your Information

Your information is used to:

• Match your profile against scholarship eligibility criteria.
• Generate your explainable eligibility results and readiness score.
• Give institution admins anonymous, aggregated statistics — such as match rates and eligibility gaps — for the scholarships they administer.
• Produce anonymous, platform-wide statistics used for scholarship planning, such as the Platform Usage and Demand Report.

3. Who Can See Your Information

Institution admins never see your individual profile or answers — only anonymous totals for their own scholarships. BukasAral does not send your information to scholarship providers: when you apply, you apply directly through the provider’s own process. We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

When you use the BukasAI assistant, your question, the eligibility-related parts of your profile (course, year level, GWA, household income, residency, and special circumstances), and your scholarship matches are sent to Google’s Gemini API so it can write an answer that fits your situation. Your name and email address are not sent.

4. Data Storage & Security

Your data is stored in the BukasAral system database with role-based access controls, so each account sees only what its role permits. As this is an academic capstone project, please share only the information the eligibility profile asks for.

5. Your Choices

You may update your profile information at any time through your account settings. If you would like your account and associated data removed, you may contact the BukasAral development team to request deletion.

6. Changes to This Policy

This policy may be updated as the project develops. Continued use of BukasAral after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

7. Contact

Questions about this policy or requests regarding your data can be directed to the BukasAral development team through the University of Cebu.