In short: we use your details to provide School Scoop, do not sell or rent personal information, do not ask for children's names, and only process school newsletters from public sources or material a user is authorised to share.

What we collect

• Your email address, manage/unsubscribe tokens, account status, subscription status, free preview count, gift/reward/promotion status, and email delivery history.
• Your chosen schools, year levels, language, keyword alerts, class or group terms, Smart Calendar categories, Tomorrow Reminder settings, and optional mobile number if you provide one.
• Newsletter links, school links, corrections, school requests, verification details, and support messages you send us.
• When you use newsletter forwarding, we collect the forwarding and sender details, the newsletter email and any supported attachments or links, information extracted to create your summary and dates, and processing and delivery records.
• Payment and subscription status from our payment provider, such as customer and subscription identifiers. We do not store your full card details.
• Referral, school-sharing, campaign, marketing preference, and product usage information, such as referral codes, direct school sign-up links, UTM parameters, page visits, button clicks, browser/device details, IP address, and cookies.
• If you choose Show schools near me, the location coordinates supplied by your browser. They are used to return nearby schools and may appear in ordinary server security logs; we do not request browser location until you use that feature or have already granted permission.
• Public school newsletter content and school website content that we process to create summaries, dates, and school-specific insights. Public newsletters may contain names or photos of staff, students, parents, or community members.

How we collect information

We collect information directly when you search, subscribe, choose preferences, submit a link or authorised newsletter, contact us, enter a promotion, or pay for Premium; when you send or automatically forward a newsletter through our email-routing and receiving providers; automatically when you use the website or receive an email; from payment, email and other service providers; and from publicly accessible school websites, newsletter platforms, documents and feeds.

What we do not want you to send

Please do not send us portal passwords, private student records, individual teacher or parent messages, private parent chats, medical information, student IDs, or anything you are not allowed to share. If your school newsletter is available only by email or behind a login, an authorised adult may forward the complete newsletter email or attach its PDF using the forwarding instructions we provide. If you accidentally send other sensitive information, contact us and we will remove it where we can.

We do not ask for or use school portal passwords and do not log in to private school portals. A parent-forwarded newsletter is processed only for the subscriber who sent it; it is not added to School Scoop's public newsletter archive, previews, school-wide calendar data or school page. Extracted dates may be retained privately for that subscriber's Tomorrow Reminders and tokenised Smart Calendar feed.

How newsletter forwarding is handled

A newsletter sent to the School Scoop forwarding address passes through third-party email-routing and receiving services. We retrieve the email body and supported attachment or public-link content when it is ready for processing. Relevant content may also be sent to an automated summarisation provider to create the private School Scoop.

Raw forwarded newsletters are not added to our public newsletter archive, public pages or school-wide data. We may temporarily retain content or a generated private summary while processing, delivery, quality checks or troubleshooting are incomplete. After successful delivery, we remove the temporary private summary and subject from the forwarding record. We retain only limited operational information where reasonably needed to prevent duplicates, apply included-edition limits, investigate problems, secure the service and maintain an audit trail.

Private extracted dates are stored for the associated subscriber and may appear in that subscriber's tokenised Smart Calendar feed or reminder emails. They are not copied into school-wide or public calendar data and are removed from active use when the subscriber unsubscribes. Our service providers may retain information under their own service and legal requirements.

How we use information

• To send your free and Premium digests, manage your account, personalise content by school/year/class, and support calendar and reminder features.
• To process public newsletters and newsletters you are authorised to forward, extract dates and action items, create summaries, privately deliver the result, prevent duplicates, apply security and quality checks, and improve accuracy. A forwarded newsletter and its summary are handled privately for the associated subscriber account.
• To handle Premium billing, free preview limits, launch partner access, verifier/founder rewards, manual gifts, referrals, plan changes, cancellations, refunds, and support requests.
• To send service emails, account notices, manage links, preview-ending notices, access-expiry notices, payment notices, security notices, and product or promotional messages where we have consent under applicable spam laws.
• To measure site activity, ad performance, funnel performance, product quality, abuse, security, errors, and deliverability.
• To comply with legal obligations, enforce our terms, protect users, and investigate misuse or incorrect school submissions.

Automated summarisation

School Scoop uses automated systems to extract and summarise public newsletter material and newsletters an authorised user forwards. Newsletter text, documents or images may be sent to a third-party automated processing provider. Automation may also help classify dates, year levels and action items. It does not decide whether a person may enrol at a school or determine any person's legal rights, eligibility or access to education.

When we disclose information

We disclose information only as reasonably needed to operate School Scoop: to hosting and database providers; automated summarisation and analytics providers; email-routing, receiving and delivery providers; payment and subscription providers; advertising measurement providers; calendar and feed infrastructure; professional advisers; and authorities or other parties where required or authorised by law, or reasonably necessary to protect users, the public, or School Scoop.

For advertising measurement, we may send a one-way hashed version of an email address together with IP address, browser details, campaign information and a signup or purchase event. The advertising provider may use this information under its own terms and privacy policy.

We do not sell or rent personal information. If School Scoop is reorganised, sold or transferred, relevant records may transfer with the service subject to applicable law and this policy.

Overseas processing

Some providers process or store information outside Australia. Likely locations include the United States and countries in the European Union or other regions where the providers and their subprocessors operate. Provider infrastructure can change, so contact us if you need the current information available to us about a particular provider or location.

Analytics, ads & cookies

We use cookies, analytics and advertising tools, server-side conversion events and similar services to understand how people find and use School Scoop, measure advertising, avoid duplicate reporting, improve signup and protect the service. These tools may collect browser, device, page visit, event, IP address, cookie, referral and purchase/subscription event information.

You can restrict cookies through your browser and use browser or device privacy controls. Blocking analytics or advertising tools should not prevent you from searching for a school or managing an existing subscription, although some site measurements may be unavailable.

Emails & unsubscribe

School digest emails, manage links, preview/final-preview notices, trial or gift expiry notices, reminder emails, calendar setup emails, and account notices are part of the service you requested. Promotional or product-update emails include an unsubscribe or manage link where required. You can stop marketing without stopping service emails available under your current access, or unsubscribe from School Scoop entirely. We action electronic marketing unsubscribe requests as soon as reasonably practicable and within the period required by law.

Children's privacy

School Scoop accounts are intended for parents, carers and other adults, not children. If you are under 18, do not subscribe or send us personal information; ask a parent or carer to use the service. We ask for year levels and optional class/group terms so we can filter newsletter content, but we do not ask for a child's name. Please avoid entering children's names or sensitive information into keyword, class/group, or support fields. Public or properly forwarded school newsletters may nevertheless contain information about children that the school included in the newsletter.

Storage, security & retention

We use access controls, tokenised manage links and operational safeguards intended to protect subscriber data. No online service can guarantee perfect security, so keep manage and calendar links private and tell us promptly if you think a link or account has been compromised. If a data breach occurs, we will assess and notify affected people and regulators where applicable law requires.

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably needed for the purposes described above, including service delivery, support, payment, consent and unsubscribe records, fraud prevention, security, legal compliance, dispute resolution and backups. Different records have different retention periods.

Unsubscribing deactivates delivery, removes active school subscriptions, removes active private forwarded-calendar events and turns off marketing; it is not automatically the same as deleting every historical record. Limited account, email delivery, billing, consent, unsubscribe, forwarding, security and audit records may be retained where reasonably needed. Public school newsletter archives, school-level summaries, extracted dates, source checks and scanner evidence may also remain because they are product records about public material. Parent-forwarded newsletters and their summaries are not made public; the raw received email may remain temporarily with the providers needed to route, receive, process and deliver the service. When personal information is no longer reasonably needed, we delete or de-identify it where practicable and subject to provider, legal and backup requirements.

Access, correction & deletion

You can update your schools, year levels, reminder settings, calendar categories, keywords, language, mobile number, marketing preference and subscription status from your manage page. You may also ask us for access to, or correction of, personal information we hold about you.

For an access, correction or deletion request, including a concern about personal information in a forwarded newsletter, email hello@schoolscoop.com.au. Identify the relevant account, school and newsletter where practical, but do not resend sensitive material unnecessarily. We may need to verify that you control the relevant email address or have authority to make the request. We will respond within a reasonable period and explain if we cannot provide access or delete a record. We do not charge for making a request. Deletion is subject to records we must or reasonably need to retain for payment, security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, backups, dispute handling or audit.

Complaints & contact

Send questions, privacy requests or a written complaint to the Privacy Contact at hello@schoolscoop.com.au. Please describe the issue and include the email address linked to your subscription where relevant. We aim to acknowledge and respond to privacy complaints within 30 calendar days.

If you are not satisfied with our response and the Privacy Act applies, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. Other consumer or legal complaint rights may also apply.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when our practices, providers or legal obligations change. We will publish the updated version here and update the date below. If a change materially affects how we use existing account information, we will take reasonable steps to notify affected users where required.