NELO
Back to Sign Up
Privacy & Data Protection

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026 · Effective immediately

Our privacy promise:

NELO collects only the information needed to match and apply you to courses: your account details and the documents you choose to upload. Documents are encrypted at rest, never sold, and only shared with a university when you submit an application to it. You can request deletion of your account and documents at any time.

1. Information We Collect

To provide tailored higher education matching and direct university application submission, we collect:

  • Account Credentials: Name, email address, password hash, and account role.
  • Social Sign-In: If you sign in with Google, Facebook or LinkedIn, we receive your name and email address from them. We use this to create and manage your account.
  • Academic Profile: Prior degrees, grade point averages, target field of study, and destination preferences.
  • Application Documents: Transcripts, standardized test scores (e.g. IELTS/TOEFL/GRE), letters of recommendation, and personal statements that you explicitly choose to upload.
  • Usage & Device Metrics: Browser type, search queries, IP address, and anonymized platform interaction metrics.
  • Voice Input (optional): If you use a microphone — in a search field or in the assistant — your speech is streamed to our speech-to-text provider and converted into text as you speak. The transcript appears in the box so you can read and correct it, NELO does not store the audio, and the microphone is only active while you are dictating. Every field that accepts dictation can be typed into instead.
  • Assistant Conversations (optional): What you type or dictate to Ask NELO, and the answers it gives. These are sent to a third-party language model to be answered (see section 4). NELO does not store them on its servers: the conversation is kept only in your browser tab and is discarded when you close it. Clearing it sooner is one press of “New conversation” in the assistant.

2. How We Use Your Data

Your personal data is used solely to:

  • Calculate AI match scores against published university admission criteria.
  • Transmit verified applications directly to institutions you explicitly authorize.
  • Send important deadline reminders, scholarship notifications, and visa updates.
  • Prevent abuse, protect platform security, and ensure document authenticity.

3. Encryption & Storage

All student records and uploaded academic documents are encrypted in transit using TLS 1.3 and at rest using AES-256 encryption. Access to document storage is restricted to authenticated services and audited under ISO/IEC 27001 security standards.

4. Data Sharing & Third Parties

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data with third-party advertisers. Your information is shared only with:

  • Admissions Offices: The specific universities or colleges to which you choose to apply.
  • Authorized Partners: If you register under an authorized recruitment partner, your assigned counselor can view your application progress.
  • Infrastructure Providers: Secure cloud infrastructure providers operating under strict data processing agreements compliant with GDPR and UK GDPR.
  • AI Service Providers — transcription: When you dictate anywhere on the site, your speech is streamed through Vercel AI Gateway to a third-party transcription model — currently operated by Google in the United States — solely to convert it into text as you speak. The provider does not use it to train its models, but unlike the other providers above it may retain it briefly for abuse monitoring. NELO does not record or store the audio. Dictation is optional everywhere it appears.
  • AI Service Providers — the assistant: Your questions, the answers, and the course and institution records used to answer them are sent through Vercel AI Gateway to a third-party language model — currently operated by Anthropic in the United States — which is contracted to retain none of it and to train on none of it. If you have answers read aloud, the text of the answer goes to a speech provider under the same terms. Dictation is the exception: see the note on transcription above, which applies to the assistant as it does to search.

5. Your Rights & Account Deletion

Under global privacy standards including GDPR and UK GDPR, you have the right to access, rectify, export, or permanently delete your personal information. You can request deletion of your account and all associated documents directly through your account dashboard or by emailing our Data Protection Officer at privacy@nelo.education. Step-by-step instructions, including how to remove NELO from a Facebook, Google or LinkedIn account, are on How to delete your data.

6. Contact Our Privacy Team

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how your documents are managed, please reach out to:

NELO Privacy & Data Governance Team
Email: privacy@nelo.education