This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information when you use our Service. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy. We use your Personal Information for providing and improving the Service. The controller of that information is Esslo LLC. In this policy, "the EU" means the European Union, the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland. Your use of the Service is also governed by our Terms of Service.

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the date at the top of the policy.

AI and Your Data

Esslo does not use your essays to train its feedback models. Esslo may use aggregate, de-identified scoring data to provide statistical benchmarks, such as percentile comparisons across essay scores. This data cannot be used to identify individual users or reconstruct essay content.

Information Collection and Use

While using our Service, you may provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to, your email address, name ("Personal Information"), and personal content (essays). Additionally, we collect information about your interactions with our website, like the features you use and the time spent interacting.

We collect this information for the purpose of providing the Service, identifying and communicating with you, servicing your orders, and improving our services.

Information Sharing

We do not sell or share your personal information with third parties for their marketing purposes. Your essays are never sold, never used for advertising, and never shared. To generate your feedback, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google process your essays on our behalf through their paid APIs, and only for that purpose. As of 2026, these providers do not use data submitted through their paid APIs to train their models, per their respective terms of service. These providers' policies are subject to change, and Esslo does not control their data practices. We encourage you to review their privacy policies directly: Anthropic Privacy Policy, OpenAI Privacy Policy, and Google Gemini Privacy Policy.

We may also employ service providers to facilitate our service. These service providers may access your data over the course of executing specific directions.

College essays often describe health, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or similar personal subjects. In the EU this is special category data, so we ask for your explicit consent to process it when you set up your account, or the next time you use the Service if your account predates this policy. You can withdraw that consent at any time by asking us to delete your account.

Outside the EU, new accounts are added to our mailing list, and every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link. In the EU, we send marketing email only if you opted in, and you can withdraw that consent at any time through the unsubscribe link or by emailing hello@esslo.org.

We will disclose your Personal Information where required to do so by law or subpoena or if we believe that such action is necessary to comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement or to protect the security or integrity of our Service.

Security

We take the security of your personal information seriously and are committed to using reasonable and commercially viable security measures that are suitable for the type of information we handle. Our goal is to protect your information from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure.

Cookies

We use essential cookies for authentication and session management. These are required for the Service to function and cannot be disabled. We also set one cookie that records whether you appear to be in the EU and, in the EU, one that records your analytics choice. When analytics run, Google Analytics sets its own cookies and PostHog uses your browser's local storage. We do not use cookies for advertising or cross-site tracking.

Analytics

We may use third party services such as Google Analytics and PostHog that collect, monitor and analyze information in order to increase our Service's functionality. These third party service providers have their own privacy policies addressing how they use such information.

Outside the EU, Google Analytics and PostHog load by default. In the EU, they load only after you accept the analytics banner, and you can change your choice at any time with the "Cookie preferences" link in the footer. If you decline, we still collect anonymised usage statistics: PostHog runs in cookieless mode, which stores nothing on your device and identifies a session only by a short-lived hash computed on PostHog's servers, and our own servers record events under a rotating anonymous ID with your name, email, and account ID removed. Payment events reported to us by Stripe are recorded to run the Service and do not depend on this choice.

Purchase

When you purchase a package, we process your payments through Stripe, a third-party payment processor. We do not store or have access to your payment information. Stripe's use of your personal information is outlined by their Privacy Policy.

Children's Privacy

Outside the EU, our Service is not directed to children under the age of 13. In the EU, users under 16 may use Esslo only with the consent of a parent or guardian. If we become aware that we hold the data of a child without the required consent, we will delete it promptly.

Rights

You have the right to access, update, or delete your personal information at any time by contacting us at hello@esslo.org. We will answer within one month. If you are in the EU, you also have the right to restrict or object to how we use your data, to receive a portable copy, to withdraw any consent you have given, and to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority. For access and portability we email you an export of your data. Deleting your account removes your essays, feedback, comments, activity lists, applications, and chat transcripts, and removes you from our email and analytics providers. We keep one record of the deletion itself, consisting of an internal user ID, the administrator who ran it, and the time, with no personal details. If you are a California resident, you may have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including the right to know what personal information we collect, the right to request deletion, and the right to opt out of the sale of personal information. We do not sell personal information.

Data Retention and Transfers

We keep your account data until you delete your account or ask us to delete it. Essays you delete in the app can be restored until your account is deleted. Payment records are kept as long as the law requires. Your data is stored and processed in the United States. For EU data we rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, and on Standard Contractual Clauses otherwise.

Legal Bases (EU)

Where EU data protection law applies, we rely on the following legal bases.

Contract. Running the Service, sending transactional email, and processing payments.

Consent. Marketing email, analytics cookies, and the special category data in your essays.

Legitimate interests. Security, fraud and abuse prevention, and anonymised usage statistics.

Legal obligation. Tax and accounting records.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at hello@esslo.org.