Privacy Policy
Last updated: 09/14/2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Find Your Co-author ("Find Your Co-author," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, stores, and shares information when you use the Find Your Co-author website, applications, and related services (collectively, the "Service").
We aim to collect the minimum information reasonably necessary to operate the Service, use it only for the purposes described below, and delete or de-identify it when it is no longer reasonably needed. We do not sell personal information or use personal information for advertising.
1. Information we collect
Depending on how you use the Service, we may collect the following categories of information:
- Account information: name, email address, institution, and academic stage.
- Profile information: information you choose to provide, such as a profile photo, headline, bio, what you are looking for, education, work experience, research areas, skills, and links to ORCID, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, or similar profiles. These fields are optional unless otherwise indicated.
- User content: project or collaboration listings, applications, messages, connection requests, reviews or feedback, and other content you voluntarily submit.
- Verification information: information necessary to confirm that you have access to an institution email address, including the relevant institution email domain and verification status.
- Reports and safety information: reports you submit and reports or complaints submitted about your account or content, together with information reasonably necessary to investigate those reports.
- Usage and technical information: information reasonably necessary to operate, maintain, and secure the Service, such as authentication information, session information, logs, device or browser information, IP address, searches, pages viewed, and interactions with the Service.
We do not intentionally request or store government identification numbers, payment or financial account numbers, or health information as part of ordinary profile creation or collaboration activities. Please do not include this type of information in your profile, listings, messages, or other content. See our Community Guidelines for additional information about content that should not be submitted.
2. What "verified" means
Our current verification process is limited. A verified badge means only that we have confirmed that you have access to the institution email address associated with the verified domain.
We do not currently verify the accuracy, identity, employment, academic position, research claims, or qualifications represented by links to ORCID, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, or similar profiles. We also do not treat claims such as "PI," "faculty," "professor," project owner, or institutional approval as independently verified unless the Service expressly states otherwise.
Information that you provide about your academic background, research, position, project ownership, institutional approval, or other qualifications is generally self-reported. A verification badge is not an endorsement, certification, employment confirmation, academic endorsement, guarantee of identity, or guarantee that a user's claims, work, project, or suitability as a collaborator are accurate.
3. How we use information
We may use information we collect to:
- Provide, maintain, operate, and improve the Service.
- Create profiles, project listings, search results, and suggested collaborator or matching features.
- Display your profile and other information to other members in accordance with your search-visibility and profile settings.
- Facilitate communication, connection requests, applications, and collaboration between users.
- Send opportunity digests, deadline reminders, transactional messages, and other communications you request or that are reasonably necessary to operate the Service.
- Confirm institution email access and display applicable verification indicators.
- Review reports, investigate suspected abuse, fraud, unauthorized access, or violations of our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.
- Protect the security, integrity, and reliability of the Service and its users.
- Comply with applicable law, legal process, or lawful governmental requests.
4. Public and private information
Some information you provide is intended to be visible to other members or the public, depending on the relevant Service feature and your settings. This may include information contained in your profile, project listings, or other content that you choose to publish.
You are responsible for reviewing information before publishing it and for deciding whether you have permission to share it.
Private messages and other information designated as private are not intentionally displayed publicly. We may access or process private information when reasonably necessary to provide the Service, investigate abuse or security incidents, enforce our agreements, comply with legal obligations, or protect users and the Service.
5. Research, confidential, and proprietary information
Find Your Co-author is designed to help users discover potential collaborators. It is not designed to function as a secure repository for confidential research materials, trade secrets, unpublished datasets, or other highly sensitive information.
Do not submit confidential, unpublished, proprietary, patient, human-subject, trade-secret, export-controlled, institution-restricted, or otherwise sensitive research information unless you are authorized to disclose that information through the Service.
You are responsible for determining whether information can appropriately be shared and for obtaining any required institutional, supervisory, contractual, ethical, or other approvals before posting it.
6. Artificial intelligence and automated processing
We may use third-party artificial intelligence services to support certain features of the Service, such as opportunity summarization, classification, recommendations, matching, moderation, fraud prevention, or other automated processing.
For example, we may use the Anthropic API to help summarize opportunity listings obtained from public sources. Depending on the feature, text submitted to the Service may also be processed by a third-party AI service.
We seek to configure third-party AI services in a manner appropriate for the Service. However, third-party processing is subject to the applicable provider's terms and privacy practices.
AI-generated matches, summaries, classifications, recommendations, or other automated outputs may be incomplete or inaccurate. Users should independently evaluate information before relying on it.
7. Third-party service providers
We rely on third-party service providers to operate parts of the Service, including:
- Supabase — authentication, database services, file storage, and related infrastructure.
- Anthropic — certain artificial intelligence processing, currently including opportunity summarization and potentially other automated Service features.
- [EMAIL PROVIDER] — transactional, digest, and reminder email delivery.
We may add, remove, or replace service providers as the Service develops. We generally provide these providers only with information reasonably necessary for them to perform services on our behalf.
8. Data sharing
We may share information with the service providers described above when necessary to operate the Service.
We may also disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with applicable law or legal process, protect the rights or safety of users or the Service, investigate fraud or abuse, or enforce our agreements.
If Find Your Co-author is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, bankruptcy, or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to applicable law.
We do not sell personal information and do not use personal information for targeted advertising.
9. Data retention and deletion
We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the Service, maintain security, prevent and investigate abuse, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and comply with legal obligations.
You may request deletion of your account by emailing contact@findyourcoauthor.com. We will take reasonable steps to delete or de-identify personal information associated with your account within 30 days, subject to information that we are required or permitted to retain for legal, security, fraud-prevention, dispute-resolution, or other legitimate purposes.
Information associated with an open abuse, security, fraud, or legal matter may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary to investigate or resolve that matter.
Profile fields you never provide are not collected. Where the Service provides editing controls, you may also remove or update individual profile fields or disconnect optional third-party profile links.
10. Security
We implement reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.
However, no method of transmission, storage, or electronic communication is completely secure. We therefore cannot guarantee absolute security.
11. Cookies and similar technologies
We use cookies and similar technologies that are reasonably necessary to operate the Service, including authentication and session management.
We do not currently use advertising cookies or tracking technologies for targeted advertising. If this changes, we will update this Privacy Policy and provide any notices or choices required by applicable law.
12. Your choices
Depending on the features available in your account, you may be able to update profile information, remove profile fields, delete content, disconnect optional third-party profile links, adjust email preferences, change profile visibility settings, or request account deletion.
You may also contact us at contact@findyourcoauthor.com with privacy questions or requests.
13. International users
The Service may be operated from the United States and may be used by individuals located in other countries. Information may therefore be processed or stored in countries other than the country where you live.
If additional privacy rights apply to you under applicable law, we will handle applicable requests as required by that law.
14. Age requirement
The Service is intended for individuals who are at least 18 years old. If you are under 18, please do not use the Service or provide personal information through it.
If we learn that we have collected personal information from an individual under 18 in circumstances where collection is not permitted, we will take reasonable steps to delete that information.
15. Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy as the Service develops or as our privacy practices change. We will post the updated version on this page and update the "Last updated" date.
Where appropriate, we may provide additional notice, including email notification, for material changes.
16. Contact
Questions or privacy requests can be sent to: