This Privacy Policy explains how Box Scholar collects, uses, stores, discloses, and protects your personal information when using www.box-scholar.org to provide personalized career and academic guidance for Grade 12 students.
Effective: August 21, 2025
We collect information to provide tailored academic and career guidance and to improve our Services, designed to assist Grade 12 students in discovering their dream careers through AI-powered assessments, personalized roadmaps, and expert university guidance. The types of information we collect include:
When you register, contact us, or use our Services (e.g., Explorer, Discoverer, or Achiever plans), we may collect your name, email address, age, school details, Grade 12 subject choices, and other details you provide to generate personalized career and academic recommendations.
This includes any academic data, career preferences, or documents (e.g., subject results, career interest forms, or application essays for Achiever plan users) you submit to receive guidance on courses, university applications, or career opportunities.
We collect information about how you interact with our Services, such as your IP address, browser type, device information, pages visited (e.g., career assessment pages or community forums), and timestamps. This data helps us enhance user experience, optimize platform performance, and ensure a seamless journey.
We use cookies and similar technologies (e.g., web beacons, local storage) to improve functionality, analyze usage, and ensure a secure experience. Cookies support features like saving assessment progress, personalizing career matches, and tracking community interactions. You can manage cookie preferences via our consent banner or browser settings, as detailed in our Cookie Policy (https://www.box-scholar.org/cookie-policy).
We use your information to provide, personalize, and improve our Services, ensuring Grade 12 students receive accurate and relevant career and academic guidance.
We generate personalized academic and career recommendations based on the data you provide. For example, we use your Grade 12 subject choices and assessment results to suggest suitable courses, institutions, or career paths.
We use aggregated and anonymized data to improve our platform, train our AI recommendation model, and enhance features like interactive assessments, achievement tracking, and university guidance to better serve Grade 12 learners.
We use your contact information to communicate with you, respond to inquiries, send service-related notifications (e.g., updates on your Discoverer or Achiever plan), and provide support, such as scheduling 1-on-1 counselor sessions for Discoverer or Achiever plan members.
We ensure compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and other applicable data protection laws by maintaining secure data practices, such as encryption and access controls, to protect your information.
We do not use your personal information for marketing, advertising, or promotional purposes. Our focus is on delivering tailored career and academic guidance, not commercial promotion.
Any decisions you make based on our recommendations, such as choosing a career path or university, are entirely your responsibility. While our AI strives to provide accurate career matching, we do not guarantee the accuracy or outcomes of our recommendations. We strongly advise verifying our suggestions and consulting trusted parties, such as parents, teachers, or career counselors.
We share your information only in specific circumstances, ensuring compliance with POPIA and prioritizing your privacy.
We facilitate sharing only with your explicit permission, such as when you authorize us to share your application details or assessment results with educational institutions or scholarship programs to support your university applications.
We use trusted third-party service providers (e.g., Stripe for payment processing, Google Analytics for usage insights) under strict confidentiality agreements and POPIA compliance to support our Services. These providers are contractually obligated to protect your data.
We may share your information to comply with South African laws, respond to legal requests (e.g., court orders), or protect the rights, safety, or property of our users, Box Scholar, or the public.
In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of Box Scholar assets, your information may be transferred to a successor entity, provided equivalent privacy protections are maintained.
We apply robust security measures to protect your data, including encryption, access controls, and POPIA-compliant practices. For example, we use HTTPS and TLS protocols to secure data transmission and limit access to authorized personnel only. However, no system is perfectly secure. We recommend using strong, unique passwords and exercising caution when sharing personal information. If you suspect a security issue, contact us immediately at info@box-scholar.org.
As a South African user, you have rights under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), including Access (request a copy of your data), Correction (correct inaccurate data), Deletion (request data removal), Objection (object to specific data processing), and Data Portability (request a transferable copy of your data). To exercise these rights, email info@box-scholar.org. We will respond within 30 days, as required by POPIA.
As Box Scholar is designed for Grade 12 students, some users may be under 18. We require parental or guardian consent for users under 18 to use our Services. We do not knowingly collect data from minors without such consent. Parents or guardians can contact info@box-scholar.org to review or delete a minor’s data.
We retain your data only as long as necessary to provide our Services (e.g., generating career recommendations, tracking progress) or comply with legal requirements. For example, assessment data for Discoverer or Achiever plan users may be retained to support ongoing counseling sessions. Once no longer needed, we delete or anonymize your data securely in accordance with POPIA.
Our website links to third-party sites, such as educational institutions or scholarship programs. We are not responsible for their privacy practices. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of these third-party sites before providing any personal information.
If you access our website from outside South Africa, your data may be transferred to our servers in South Africa or third-party servers (e.g., Google Analytics in the U.S.). We ensure these transfers comply with applicable data protection laws, such as GDPR’s standard contractual clauses for EEA users or POPIA for South African users.
We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices, technology, or legal requirements. Updates will be posted on this page with a revised 'Effective' date. For significant changes, we will notify you via a website notice or email (for subscribed users, e.g., Discoverer or Achiever plan members). Continued use of our Services after changes indicates your acceptance of the updated policy.
If you have questions, concerns, or requests under POPIA, please contact us at info@box-scholar.org or via www.box-scholar.org/contact. For more details on how we use cookies, see our Cookie Policy (https://www.box-scholar.org/cookie-policy).