Privacy Policy

Account Information. When you register, we collect your name, email address, and a hashed password. If you sign in using one of the third-party sign-in options we offer, we receive the information that provider shares with us, such as your name, email address, and profile picture.

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, Word document, or plain text) — or a photo or scan of a paper resume (JPG or PNG) — to import into your profile, which we process to extract this information. The uploaded file itself is kept only while the import is being processed and is deleted once it finishes; the extracted information is kept so you can review and apply it. 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 (including standalone resumes not tied to a particular posting), 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.

Interview and Negotiation Inputs. If you use the interview preparation or offer negotiation assistants, we store what you enter to use them — including practice answers you submit for coaching and the offer details you provide for negotiation guidance, which may include compensation figures such as salary, bonus, and equity. This information is stored alongside the job it belongs to and is removed when you delete that job or your account.

Documents You Email. You can email a copy of a generated document from the file page, either to yourself or to a recipient you name. When you send it to someone else, we process the recipient's email address in order to deliver that one message with the document attached, and we record that the document was emailed. We do not use recipient addresses for any other purpose and do not add them to any mailing list.

Payment Information. When you start a membership or purchase a top-off, our third-party payment processor 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.

Testimonials. If you submit a testimonial and consent to its publication, we may — after review — display your rating, your comments, your first name, and your profile picture publicly on our website. Testimonials submitted without that consent are used internally only. You can ask us to remove a published testimonial at any time by emailing us, and deleting your account removes it as well.

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.

Error and Performance Monitoring. We use a third-party monitoring service to capture errors, crashes, and performance traces so we can find and fix problems. These reports include technical details such as the page you were on, the action that failed, your browser and device type, your IP address, and your account identifier. A small sample of browsing sessions — and sessions in which an error occurs — is also recorded as a session replay: a reconstruction of how the page behaved and what you clicked. Replays are captured with all text masked and all images and media blocked, so the contents of your profile, job postings, and generated documents are not recorded in them.

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 and answer coaching, offer negotiation guidance, profile and resume suggestions, and job discovery
• Store and retrieve your documents and job applications
• Email a copy of a document to you, or to a recipient you specifically ask us to send it to
• Process payments and manage your membership, top-offs, and referral rewards
• Send account and service emails — verification and password resets, billing and membership notices, alerts when a document or export is ready, job discovery results, and occasional onboarding, activity, and product messages about your account
• Respond to support requests and inquiries, and troubleshoot problems you report
• Monitor errors and performance, and improve the quality and reliability of our service
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and security incidents, including enforcing our one-free-trial-per-person policy
• Comply with applicable legal obligations

We do not send third-party marketing email. If you would like us to stop sending non-essential messages, email us at support@lightningapply.com; emails that are essential to your account, such as security and billing notices, will continue for as long as you have an account.

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.

AI-generated documents and guidance may contain errors or details that are not accurate for you. Reviewing and verifying them before you rely on them or send them to an employer is your responsibility — see our Terms of Service.

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. When you import a resume, the text of the file you upload — or, for scans and photos, the file itself — is transmitted to the AI provider to extract your information. 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 and Hosting. Generated PDFs and associated files may be stored on secure cloud storage, and our application and databases run on third-party hosting infrastructure. Stored files are namespaced to your account, are accessible only to you through the application, and are protected by access controls.

Email Delivery. We use a third-party email delivery provider to send the messages described above. When you email a document to someone, that provider transmits the message and the attached PDF to the address you entered.

Recipients You Choose. If you email a generated document to another person, the document is delivered to the address you enter. Please check the address before sending — we cannot recall a message once it has been sent.

Job Posting Retrieval. When you add a job by link and the site blocks direct access, we may pass that job posting URL to a third-party data retrieval provider that fetches the page on our behalf. Only the URL is sent — never your profile, documents, or account details.

Error Monitoring. The diagnostic reports and masked session replays described above are processed by our monitoring provider solely to help us detect and fix problems.

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.

Uploaded resume files are deleted as soon as the import finishes, and the records of those import attempts are removed after about 90 days. Data exports you request expire and are deleted a short time after we email you the download link.

Other operational records are kept on their own schedules, which we may adjust as our needs change: activity and audit records (such as sign-ins, page views, and account security actions) for about 180 days; payment-processor event records for about 90 days; job discovery run history for about 30 days; and AI usage and cost records for up to 24 months. Job listings surfaced by job discovery stay with your account until you delete them or delete your account, because they are how we remember which listings you have already been shown. Diagnostic and session-replay data held by our error-monitoring provider is retained for a limited period set by that provider, generally no more than 90 days.

When you delete your account, your profile, job postings, generated documents, saved searches, discovered job listings, feedback, testimonials, and activity records 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.

A small number of authorized administrators can view a user's profile, job postings, and generated documents through read-only support tooling, so that problems you report can be diagnosed. That tooling cannot alter your content, and these views are logged.

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 platforms' measurement tags 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 the ad personalization settings offered by the advertising platforms whose accounts you hold
• Learn about and opt out of interest-based advertising at optout.aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.eu

If you would like to know which advertising partners we currently work with, or how a particular partner uses data from sites that use its services, email us at support@lightningapply.com and we will tell you.

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)
• Sign-in providers (used for the social sign-in options we offer)
• Cloud storage and hosting providers (used to run the application and store your generated files)
• Payment processor (used to handle membership and top-off payments)
• Email delivery provider (used to send account emails and any document you choose to email)
• Error and performance monitoring provider (used to capture errors and masked session replays)
• Job posting data retrieval provider (used to fetch a job posting from a link when the site blocks direct access)
• Advertising partners (used, with your consent, to measure our advertising campaigns)
• Public job boards (queried to surface listings when you use job discovery)

Each of these providers is bound by its own privacy policy, and we are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties. We choose providers on the basis of their security and data protection practices, and we may change providers as our needs change. If you would like to know which providers we currently use for any of the purposes above, email us at support@lightningapply.com and we will tell you.

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: