Privacy Policy
Effective Date: July 1, 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Ari collects, uses, stores, and shares information when you use our website, application, AI tools, planner features, recommendations, and related services.
1. Who We Are And Data Controller
This Privacy Policy is issued by Ari ("Ari", "we", "us", or "our"), the seller of the Ari service. Ari acts as the data controller for personal information collected through the Service, meaning we determine the purposes and means of processing that information. For payment transactions, Stripe processes billing data as a payment processor under its own privacy policy and terms.
2. Summary
Ari is an AI-powered educational planning tool. To provide the Service, we may collect information you provide, account information, planner inputs, saved activities, university preferences, AI conversations, and technical usage information. Your data may be stored and processed through third-party providers. We do not routinely access or manually review user planner data. We may access limited information only where reasonably necessary for support, debugging, security, legal compliance, service operation, or with your consent.
3. Legal Basis For Processing
Where applicable law (such as the UK/EU GDPR) requires a legal basis for processing, we rely on: (a) performance of a contract with you, to provide the Ari service and administer your account and subscription; (b) our legitimate interests, to secure, maintain, debug, and improve the Service, prevent abuse and fraud, and communicate service updates; (c) your consent, where required for optional processing such as certain analytics or marketing communications, which you may withdraw at any time; and (d) compliance with legal obligations, including tax, accounting, and responding to lawful requests from authorities.
2. Information We Collect
We may collect account information, including name, email address, login method, authentication identifiers, account settings, and subscription or billing status. We may collect student profile and planner information, including grade or school year, academic interests, intended major or career path, target universities, preferred countries, extracurricular activities, awards, courses, testing plans, essays, personal goals, application planning information, saved recommendations, and planner progress. We may collect AI inputs and outputs, including messages you send to Ari, planner answers, documents or text you upload or paste, and AI-generated responses, recommendations, evaluations, and next steps. We may collect technical and usage information, including device type, browser type, IP address, approximate location, pages used, time and date of access, error logs, performance logs, analytics events, cookies, or similar technologies.
3. How We Use Information
We use information to create and manage accounts, provide Ari's planner and AI features, save user progress, personalize recommendations, provide customer support, debug errors, improve the Service, protect against abuse or fraud, comply with legal obligations, and send service-related communications.
4. AI Processing Notice
Ari uses artificial intelligence to generate educational planning support. AI systems may process the information you submit in order to produce responses. AI-generated responses may be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or unsuitable. Users should independently verify AI outputs before relying on them. Users should avoid submitting unnecessary sensitive personal information into AI chat, planner fields, essays, or uploaded content.
5. Third-Party Service Providers
Ari uses third-party service providers to operate the Service. These may include AI model providers, analytics providers, email providers, payment processors, hosting providers, and error-monitoring tools used for application development, hosting, deployment, AI gateway, database, authentication, storage, backend services, and related infrastructure.
5a. Payment Processing
If you purchase an Ari Pro subscription or paid credits, your payment information is collected and processed by Stripe, our payment processor. Ari does not store full payment card numbers or complete payment credentials on its own servers. Payment is handled directly between you and Stripe under its secure systems.
5b. Billing Information Collected
The payment processor may collect information such as your name, email address, billing address, payment method details, transaction history, tax-related information, and subscription status. Ari may receive limited billing information back from the processor, such as a customer identifier, subscription status, plan type, renewal date, cancellation status, and payment event history. This information lets Ari enable the correct Pro features for your account.
5c. Use Of Billing And Subscription Data
Ari uses billing and subscription information to provide paid features, manage subscriptions, enforce free and paid usage limits, process refunds and cancellations, prevent fraud and abuse, and maintain required business, tax, and legal records.
5d. Feature Usage Tracking
To enforce free limits, Pro limits, credit balances, and monthly resets, Ari tracks feature usage at the account level. This may include counts of Application Planner evaluations, Essay Hub generations, and Ask Ari messages, along with timestamps used to reset monthly counters. This usage data is used to operate paid and free tiers fairly and to support your account.
5e. Payment Processor Privacy
Third-party payment processors handle billing data under their own privacy policies and terms. We recommend that you review the applicable payment processor's privacy policy before completing a purchase.
6. Where Data Is Stored
User data may be stored in systems provided by our service providers. Data may be processed or stored in countries different from where you live. By using Ari, you understand that your information may be transmitted to and processed by third-party infrastructure providers that help us deliver the Service.
7. Founder And Company Access To Data
We do not routinely access or manually review individual user planner data. However, we may access limited user information where reasonably necessary to provide customer support, respond to a user request, debug technical issues, investigate security incidents, detect abuse, maintain or improve the Service, comply with legal obligations, protect users or the company, or act with your consent.
8. How We Share Information
We may share information with service providers that help us operate Ari, payment processors if applicable, analytics or error-monitoring providers if used, legal authorities if required by law, or parties involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, restructuring, or sale of business assets. We do not sell user planner data. We do not share user planner data with third parties for their independent marketing purposes.
9. Cookies And Analytics
Ari may use cookies, local storage, analytics tools, or similar technologies to keep users logged in, remember preferences, improve performance, understand product usage, diagnose errors, and measure feature engagement. Users may manage cookies through browser settings, but some parts of the Service may not work properly if cookies or local storage are disabled.
10. Data Retention
We keep personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the Service, maintain user accounts, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, prevent abuse, and operate our business. Planner data and account data may remain stored until the user deletes it, requests deletion, deletes their account, or until we no longer need the information. Backup copies may persist for a limited period after deletion. Billing records, subscription status, transaction identifiers, and feature usage records may be retained as long as needed to provide service, resolve disputes, comply with legal and tax obligations, prevent fraud, and maintain accurate business records.
11. Data Security
We use reasonable technical, administrative, and organizational safeguards designed to protect user information. However, no online service, database, AI system, or infrastructure provider can guarantee absolute security. Unauthorized access, data loss, service interruption, or security incidents may still occur. Users are responsible for keeping account login credentials secure and promptly notifying us of suspected unauthorized account access.
12. User Choices And Privacy Rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access personal information we hold about you, correct inaccurate information, delete personal information, object to or restrict certain processing, request a copy of your data, withdraw consent where applicable, or opt out of marketing emails. To make a privacy request, contact Ari at support@ariai.xyz. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.
13. Students, Minors, Parents, And Guardians
Ari is designed for students planning for higher education. If you are under the age of majority in your country or state, you should use Ari only with permission from a parent or legal guardian. Ari is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without required consent. If we learn that we have collected information from a child under 13 without required consent, we may delete the information. Parents or guardians may contact us to request review or deletion of a minor's information.
14. Sensitive Information
Users should avoid submitting unnecessary sensitive information to Ari, including government identification numbers, financial account numbers, medical information, health records, immigration documents, passwords, highly sensitive family information, or other information not needed for educational planning. If sensitive information is submitted, it may be processed as part of providing the Service.
15. International Users
If you use Ari from outside the country where our company or service providers operate, your information may be transferred to, stored in, or processed in another country. Data protection laws in those countries may differ from the laws where you live.
16. Third-Party Links
Ari may provide links to external websites, universities, competitions, scholarships, courses, or programs. We do not control those third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy practices, content, deadlines, fees, eligibility rules, or security. Users should review the privacy policies and terms of third-party websites before submitting information to them.
17. Marketing Communications
If we send marketing emails, users may unsubscribe by following the instructions in the email. We may still send service-related messages, such as account notices, security alerts, billing notices, product updates, or legal notices.
18. Changes To This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If changes are material, we will take reasonable steps to notify users. Your continued use of Ari after a Privacy Policy update means you acknowledge the updated policy.
19. Contact
For questions, privacy requests, deletion requests, or concerns, contact Ari at support@ariai.xyz.