Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 2026

Beacon (“the app,” “we,” “us”) is a tool that helps students draft and send research-outreach emails to professors from their own Gmail account. This page explains what data we collect, why, and how it's used.

What we collect

Your Google profile — name, email address, and profile picture, when you sign in with Google.
OAuth tokens— used to send email on your behalf. We never see or store your Google password; sign-in happens entirely through Google's own sign-in page.
Profile details you provide — school, grade level or year, area of study, and a short bio, used to personalize your outreach drafts.
Professors you add — name, email, school, department, research area, and any notes or drafts you write or generate for them.
Saved prompts (templates) — the outreach templates you create and edit.
Send status — whether and when an email was sent.

How your Gmail access is used

Beacon requests one Gmail permission — the ability to send email— used only when you click “Send” on a specific, individually-reviewed draft. Beacon never sends email automatically or in bulk without your explicit action on that email, and it never requests read access to your inbox.

AI features and third-party services

When you use AI-assisted drafting or Discover's researcher database, limited context (such as a professor's name, school, and research area, or your outreach template) is sent to:

NVIDIA's NIM API, to generate draft text or extract researcher information from public web sources.
Exa, a web search API, to find publicly available information about a professor's research.

We never send your Gmail contents, your password, or other users' data to these services. Discover's researcher database is built from public web sources and is not guaranteed to be accurate — the app always asks you to verify a professor's identity and email before contacting them.

What we don't do

We don't sell or rent your data to anyone.
We don't show ads or use your data for advertising.
We don't send email on your behalf without you personally reviewing and approving that specific email first.
We don't request or have access to read your inbox at all — only permission to send email on your behalf.

Data storage and retention

Your data is stored in a hosted database used only by this app. It's retained for as long as your account exists, or until you delete individual professors or templates yourself within the app. To request full deletion of your account and all associated data, contact us at the email below.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Email angad18.bhatia@gmail.com.