Privacy Policy

When you use The Career HUD, we collect the following information:

• Account information (name, email, country, age range, school)
• IP-based geolocation (used to pre-detect your country at registration via Vercel's edge network; the IP address itself is not stored)
• Assessment responses and response timing
• Derived psychological profiles and dimension scores
• Career match results and percentages
• Response validity and consistency flags
• Feedback you submit (career feedback, site feedback, dimension proposals)

We process your personal data under the following legal bases (GDPR Article 6):

• Consent — You provide explicit consent when you register and agree to our terms. You may withdraw consent at any time by deleting your account.
• Legitimate interest — We process data necessary to operate the service, maintain security, and prevent abuse (e.g., rate limiting, manipulation detection).

Your data is used to:

• Generate your career assessment report
• Calculate dimension scores and career matches
• Detect response inconsistencies for result quality
• Authenticate your account and protect your data
• Send transactional emails (password resets, assessment reminders)
• Comply with regional privacy laws (country and age range determine which regulations apply to your account)
• Display advertising — we may show ads to support the service. Your country and age range are used to ensure ads comply with applicable laws. Users aged 16–17 will only see contextual ads (based on page content, not personal data). We do not use your assessment results, dimension scores, or career matches for ad targeting.

Your personal data is never sold to third parties.

If you are in the EU/EEA, you have the following rights under GDPR:

• Right of access — You can view all your data in your profile and assessment results, or export it using the “Export My Data” button on your profile page.
• Right to portability — Export a machine-readable JSON file of all your data from your profile page.
• Right to erasure — Permanently delete your account and all associated data using the “Delete Account” button on your profile page.
• Right to rectification — Edit your personal information (name, country, age range, school) on your profile page at any time.
• Right to restriction & objection — Use the feedback form (select the “Privacy” category) to request restriction of processing or to object to specific processing activities.

You can exercise your data rights directly from your profile page:

• Export My Data — Downloads a complete JSON file containing your profile, all assessments, answers, results, career feedback, and dimension proposals.
• Delete Account — Permanently deletes all your data. Requires password confirmation. This action cannot be undone.

The Career HUD uses a single authentication session cookie (authjs.session-token) to keep you logged in. This cookie is strictly necessary for the service to function and does not require separate consent under GDPR.

We use Vercel Speed Insights to collect anonymized performance metrics (page load times, web vitals). No personally identifiable information is included.

If advertising is enabled in the future, ad providers may set their own cookies subject to their respective privacy policies. We will update this section and request consent where required before enabling any advertising cookies.

We use the following third-party services to operate The Career HUD. Each processes data only as necessary to provide their service:

• Vercel — Hosting, edge network, and speed insights (anonymized performance metrics)
• Turso — Cloud database storage (all user data)
• Resend — Transactional email delivery (password resets, assessment reminders)
• ntfy.sh — Admin-only push notifications (signup and assessment completion events; no user data is transmitted)

Your data is stored in a Turso cloud database. Passwords are hashed using bcrypt and are never stored in plain text. All connections are encrypted via HTTPS, served through Vercel's infrastructure. Rate limiting and manipulation detection protect against abuse.

The Career HUD is intended for users aged 16 and older. An age range selection is required at registration, and users who indicate they are under 16 are blocked from creating an account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16.

Users aged 16–17 are treated as minors for advertising purposes: they will only see contextual ads (based on page content), and their personal data will never be used for behavioral ad targeting.

If you believe someone under 16 has created an account, please contact us so we can remove their data.

Your data is retained for as long as your account is active. You may delete your account and all associated data at any time from your profile page. As this is a proof-of-concept application, data may also be deleted without notice during development or if the project is discontinued.

The Career HUD is an AI-generated prototype. Assessment results are not scientifically validated and should not be used as the basis for real career decisions. This tool is for educational and exploratory purposes only.

For data requests, questions, or to exercise your rights under GDPR, use the feedback button in the bottom-right corner of any page and select the “Privacy” category.