Privacy Policy

Account Information. When you register, we collect your name, email address, and a hashed password. If you sign in via OAuth (Google, LinkedIn), we receive the information your provider shares, such as your name and email address.

Profile Data. To generate tailored documents, you voluntarily provide professional information including work experience, education, skills, certifications, and projects. You may also upload an existing resume (PDF or text) to import into your profile, which we process to extract this information. This data is stored and used solely to create your application materials.

Job Postings and Generated Documents. We store the job posting text you submit, the AI-generated resume and cover letter content, and any edits you make. If you provide a link to a job posting, we fetch and store the posting details from that page. This enables you to revisit and download your documents at any time.

Job Discovery Data. If you use job discovery, we store the search criteria you save and the job listings we surface from public job boards on your behalf so you can review, import, or discard them.

Payment Information. When you start a membership or purchase a top-off, our payment processor (Stripe) collects and processes your payment details. We do not receive or store your full payment card number; we retain only limited records such as your subscription status and transaction identifiers.

Communications. If you contact support, submit feedback, or provide a testimonial, we retain the content of those communications along with the information needed to respond.

Referral Data. If you participate in our referral program, we record referral links, the accounts connected through them, and any rewards issued.

Usage Data. We automatically collect information about how you interact with the service, including pages visited, features used, timestamps, and general device information (browser type, operating system). We do not collect precise geolocation data.

Log Data. Our servers automatically record standard log data, such as your IP address, browser type, referring URLs, and error logs, for security and diagnostic purposes.

Advertising Measurement Data. If you consent to advertising cookies (see Cookies and Advertising below), measurement tags from our advertising partners collect information such as the pages you visit, whether you arrived from one of our ads, and limited device and browser information, so we can measure ad performance. If you decline, no advertising identifiers are stored on your device and at most aggregate, cookieless signals are sent.

We use the information we collect to:

• Create and manage your account
• Generate tailored resumes and cover letters using AI
• Provide related features you choose to use, such as importing an existing resume, interview preparation, profile suggestions, and job discovery
• Store and retrieve your documents and job applications
• Process payments and manage your membership, top-offs, and referral rewards
• Send transactional emails (password resets, account and billing notifications)
• Respond to support requests and inquiries
• Improve the quality and performance of our service
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and security incidents
• Comply with applicable legal obligations

We do not use your profile data or generated documents to train AI models, nor do we sell your data to third parties for advertising.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We may share data in the following limited circumstances:

AI Providers. To generate documents, we transmit relevant portions of your profile and the job posting to our AI provider. Data is transmitted over encrypted connections and is subject to each provider's privacy policy and data processing agreements. We do not send more data than necessary.

Cloud Storage. Generated PDFs and associated files may be stored on secure cloud storage. Files are accessible only to you and are protected by access controls.

Advertising Partners. With your consent, we share advertising measurement data with the advertising platforms we run campaigns on, to measure the effectiveness of those campaigns. This never includes your profile data, generated documents, or job postings — only site interaction data such as pages visited and conversion events. Under some privacy laws this kind of disclosure may be considered “sharing” for cross-context advertising; you can opt out at any time via Cookie Preferences (see Cookies and Advertising below).

Legal Requirements. We may disclose your information if required by law, court order, or governmental authority, or when we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of LightningApply, our users, or others.

Business Transfers. If LightningApply is acquired or merges with another company, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you before your data is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

LightningApply is operated from the United States, and our service providers (including AI providers, cloud storage, and payment processing) may process your data in the United States or other countries. These locations may have data protection laws that differ from those in your jurisdiction.

Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards — such as standard contractual clauses — to protect your information when it is transferred internationally. By using the Service, you understand that your data may be processed in these locations.

We retain your account and profile data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the service.

While you hold an active paid membership, your generated files are kept for as long as that membership lasts and are never removed for age. Outside of an active membership (during a free trial, or after a membership ends), generated files are retained for 6 months from their last update, after which they are automatically removed from our servers. Editing a file resets the retention window. We recommend downloading any documents you wish to keep promptly.

Some log and usage data may be retained for up to 90 days for security and operational purposes.

When you delete your account, your profile, job postings, generated documents, and saved searches are permanently removed. We keep a minimal record of the deletion — your email address, name, and the date — to prevent abuse of our free trial and for accounting purposes. Because of this, signing up again with the same email address will not start a new free trial. Records of AI usage costs are kept for accounting, with your account identifier removed.

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your data, including encryption in transit, secure credential storage, and access controls limiting data access to authorized systems.

No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your data, we cannot guarantee absolute security. If you suspect unauthorized access to your account, contact us immediately at support@lightningapply.com.

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the following rights with respect to your personal data:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correction: Update or correct inaccurate data in your profile settings
• Deletion: Permanently delete your account and personal data yourself from Account > Danger Zone, or by contacting us — subject to any records we must retain for legal, security, or accounting purposes (see Data Retention below)
• Portability: Request an export of your profile, job postings, and document data from Account > Your Data — we prepare a JSON file and email you a download link
• Objection: Object to certain uses of your data for legitimate interests
• Withdraw consent: Withdraw consent where our processing relies on it, without affecting processing already carried out
• Opt out of advertising cookies: Decline or withdraw consent for advertising cookies at any time via the Cookie Preferences link in the site footer — this is also how to exercise a “do not sell or share my personal information” request for advertising purposes. We also honor the Global Privacy Control browser signal as an opt-out automatically

To exercise any of these rights, email us at support@lightningapply.com. We will respond within 30 days, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

Essential cookies and storage. LightningApply uses browser storage and cookies to maintain your authenticated session, protect against cross-site request forgery, and remember preferences such as your theme and your cookie choice. These are required for the service to function and are not used for advertising.

Advertising cookies (optional, consent-based). We advertise LightningApply on third-party platforms and use those partners' measurement tags (including Google's) to measure whether our ads lead to sign-ups. These partners may set cookies and collect site interaction data for that purpose. Advertising cookies are set only if you accept them in our cookie banner. If you decline, or if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, no advertising cookies are set and no advertising identifiers are stored — at most, aggregate cookieless signals are sent for anonymous conversion modeling.

You can change your choice at any time:

• Open Cookie Preferences (also available in the site footer on every page)
• Adjust your Google ad personalization settings at adssettings.google.com
• Learn about and opt out of interest-based advertising at optout.aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.eu

For details on how Google uses data from sites that use its services, see policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

You can also clear browser storage and cookies through your browser settings at any time, which will sign you out of the service.

Our service integrates with the following third-party services, each governed by their own privacy policies:

• AI providers (used to generate your documents and power AI features)
• OAuth providers (Google, LinkedIn — used for social sign-in)
• Cloud storage (used to store your generated files)
• Payment processor (Stripe — used to handle membership and top-off payments)
• Advertising partners (used, with your consent, to measure our advertising campaigns)
• Public job boards (queried to surface listings when you use job discovery)

We encourage you to review the privacy policies of these services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties.

LightningApply is not directed to children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have inadvertently collected data from a child, please contact us immediately and we will promptly delete it.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you by email or by posting a prominent notice in the application, and we will update the effective date above.

Continued use of the service after changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy. If you disagree with the changes, please contact us at support@lightningapply.com.

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal data, please contact us: