Privacy Policy

1. About The Career Advisors

The Career Advisors is an educational consultancy providing counselling and assistance relating to educational opportunities, courses, universities, countries, medical admissions (including MBBS abroad) and related services.

Founded: 2016 by Waqar Abdullah

Head Office: 2nd Floor, Baghat Chowk, Al Harim Complex, Near Old Cottage Inn, Baghat, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir – 190005, India

Additional Offices: Chandigarh, Dhaka (Bangladesh), Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Cairo (Egypt)

Phone: +91 60051 52350

Email: info@thecareeradvisors.in

Website: thecareeradvisors.in

The above contact details may be used for privacy-related enquiries, requests, complaints, correction requests, consent withdrawal and deletion requests.

2. Personal Data We Collect

Depending on how you interact with The Career Advisors, we may collect the following information.

Information Submitted Through Website Enquiry Forms

Our enquiry forms (inline homepage form, popup enquiry modal, scholarship form) may collect:

• Full name
• Phone number
• Email address
• NEET score or NEET score range (where requested)
• Preferred country or countries
• Message or enquiry details
• Whether the applicant is under 18
• Parent/guardian name and phone number (where the applicant is a minor)
• Marketing consent preference (optional and separate)
• Traffic source and form location (for internal enquiry management)
• Date and time of submission

You should provide information that is accurate and relevant to your enquiry.

Information Provided During Later Counselling or Admission Assistance

If you subsequently choose to use our counselling or admission assistance services, you may voluntarily provide additional information necessary for those services, such as academic information, passport details, or application-related information. Such information is not collected through the initial website enquiry form.

Documents

The website enquiry forms do not require or provide a document-upload facility. If documents are later provided directly to The Career Advisors through another communication channel (email, WhatsApp, in-person visit) for counselling or admission assistance, those documents may contain personal information and will be handled for the relevant consultancy or application purpose.

AI Academic Counsellor Conversations

Our website provides an AI Academic Counsellor powered by Google Gemini. Messages you send to the AI Counsellor, and any images you attach, may be processed to generate a response. Users are strongly advised not to share sensitive personal information through the AI Counsellor. See Section 18 for full details.

3. Information Collected Automatically

When you visit our website, certain technical information may be processed for website operation, security, performance and administration.

Depending on the website's technical configuration, this may include:

• IP address (processed for abuse prevention and security; stored in our server-side rate-limiting system for approximately 1 hour, with periodic cleanup running every 6 hours — resulting in a maximum retention of approximately 7 hours)
• Browser type and version
• Device information and operating system
• Pages visited, referring page or traffic source
• Visit count and session information
• Date and time of access
• Technical and security logs

Such information is processed to operate, secure, troubleshoot and improve the website. Aggregate visitor statistics may be retained for analytics purposes (see Section 9).

4. How We Use Personal Data

The Career Advisors may use personal data for the following purposes:

• Responding to enquiries
• Providing educational and career counselling
• Understanding your preferred course, country or educational destination
• Providing information requested by you
• Following up regarding your enquiry
• Providing admission-related guidance where requested
• Communicating regarding counselling or services
• Managing and maintaining enquiry records
• Improving website functionality and user experience
• Maintaining website security and preventing misuse
• Complying with applicable legal obligations
• Sending promotional or educational communications where applicable consent or another lawful basis permits such communication

We will use personal data only for purposes relevant to the services and interactions described in this Privacy Policy and the applicable notice provided when information is collected.

5. Consent

Where processing is based on consent, The Career Advisors will seek consent through an appropriate notice or consent mechanism.

Our website enquiry forms require users to provide consent to the processing necessary to receive and respond to their enquiry. This consent is captured through a checkbox on the form.

The notice associated with the form identifies the categories of personal data being collected and the purposes for which they are processed.

Consent for necessary enquiry processing is separate from consent to receive promotional communications. Both are captured through separate checkboxes and either can be given or withheld independently.

6. Promotional and Marketing Communications

The Career Advisors may wish to communicate with users regarding:

• Educational opportunities
• Admission updates
• Scholarships
• Courses and universities
• Counselling services
• Other promotional or educational information

Where required, promotional communications will be subject to the appropriate consent or other applicable legal requirements.

Where promotional consent is requested, it is separate from the consent necessary to submit and respond to an enquiry. Users can submit an enquiry without granting marketing consent.

Users may request that promotional communications be stopped by contacting The Career Advisors using the contact details provided in this Privacy Policy.

7. Children and Students Under 18

Our services may be used by students who are under 18 years of age.

A minor may submit an educational enquiry through the website. Where the user is a minor, our enquiry forms require the parent or legal guardian's name and contact information before the enquiry can be submitted.

The Career Advisors will take appropriate steps required under applicable data-protection law when processing personal data relating to children, including requirements relating to parental or guardian consent where applicable.

Parents or legal guardians may contact The Career Advisors using the contact details in this Privacy Policy regarding the processing of a child's personal data.

We do not intentionally require children to provide personal information that is unnecessary for the relevant educational enquiry.

8. Sharing of Personal Data

The Career Advisors does not sell personal data.

Personal data may be shared where reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including with:

• The Career Advisors personnel handling enquiries and counselling
• Universities or educational institutions, where necessary for services requested by the student
• Admission or educational partners, where applicable
• Embassies, visa authorities and government departments, where required for admission or visa processing
• Technology and service providers used to operate the website or manage enquiries (see Section 9)
• Legal, regulatory or governmental authorities where required by applicable law

Information will not be shared with a university or admission partner merely because a user submitted a general website enquiry, unless such sharing is necessary and appropriate for the relevant service or has otherwise been authorised.

9. Website Data Storage

The website uses Google Firebase services for certain website functionality and enquiry management.

The website's Firebase services include:

• Cloud Firestore (Asia South 1 / asia-south1) — for enquiry records, university data, and website content
• Firebase Realtime Database (US Central / us-central) — for aggregate traffic analytics, administrator session state, and abuse-prevention rate-limit records (which may be keyed to IP addresses or to email addresses submitted through the site)
• Firebase Authentication — for administrative login only (not for public users)

The website also uses:

• Cloudinary — for storage and delivery of website images
• Google Gemini API — for the AI Academic Counsellor (see Section 18)
• Google reCAPTCHA v3 — for bot prevention on enquiry forms (administered via Firebase App Check; enabled when enforcement is active)

The website is hosted on Vercel Inc. ("Vercel"), which processes all inbound traffic as our hosting provider and receives network-level information including IP addresses as part of serving the website.

The website loads some images from third-party content delivery networks, including i.pravatar.cc (homepage testimonial avatars). When these images are loaded, the CDN operators' servers receive users' IP addresses as part of standard HTTP delivery.

The website loads webfonts from third-party font hosting services (Fontshare and Google Fonts). When these fonts are loaded, the font providers' servers receive visitors' IP addresses and browser information as part of standard web-font delivery, in the same manner as any other CDN-hosted asset.

Personal information submitted through the website may therefore be processed and stored using these services as part of the website's technical operation. We may also maintain records of enquiries through our own business systems and communication channels.

10. International Processing

Some technology or service providers used by the website may process or store information in locations outside India.

The Firebase Realtime Database used by the website is located in the US Central region. Some third-party services (such as Cloudinary, Google reCAPTCHA and Google Gemini) may also process data outside India.

Where personal data is processed outside India, we will handle such processing subject to applicable Indian law and any applicable restrictions or requirements concerning transfer or processing outside India.

11. Data Retention

The Career Advisors does not represent that all enquiry information will be automatically deleted after a fixed number of days or months.

Personal data may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, including:

• Responding to and following up on enquiries
• Providing ongoing counselling or admission assistance
• Maintaining necessary business records
• Complying with legal or regulatory obligations
• Establishing, exercising or defending legal claims
• Addressing disputes or security issues

When personal data is no longer required for the relevant purpose and there is no legal or other applicable reason to retain it, we will take appropriate steps to delete or otherwise dispose of the information.

12. Your Rights

Subject to applicable law and any applicable conditions or limitations, you may contact The Career Advisors to request:

• Access to information concerning your personal data
• Correction or updating of inaccurate personal data
• Deletion or erasure of personal data
• Withdrawal of consent where processing is based on consent
• Cessation of promotional communications
• Assistance regarding a privacy-related complaint or grievance

To make a request, contact The Career Advisors using the contact information provided below.

We may need to verify the identity or authority of the person making a request before taking action, particularly where the request concerns personal data.

13. Requesting Deletion of Personal Data

You may request deletion of your personal data by directly contacting The Career Advisors using the contact details below.

Email: info@thecareeradvisors.in

Phone: +91 60051 52350

When making a deletion request, please provide sufficient information for us to identify the relevant enquiry or records.

We will consider and process deletion requests in accordance with applicable law. Personal data may be retained where continued retention is necessary for a specified purpose, required by applicable law, or otherwise permitted under applicable law.

14. Withdrawal of Consent

Where we process personal data on the basis of consent, you may contact us to withdraw that consent.

Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before the withdrawal.

After withdrawal, we may stop the relevant processing unless continued processing is permitted or required under applicable law.

15. Data Security

The Career Advisors takes reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against unauthorised access, misuse, alteration, disclosure, loss or destruction.

The website uses appropriate security controls for its technical environment, including encrypted communication (HTTPS/TLS), access controls, security rules at the database layer, rate limiting, bot prevention (reCAPTCHA v3), and administrative session management.

However, no website, online system, database, internet transmission, or electronic storage method can be guaranteed to be completely secure. While we make reasonable efforts to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security of information transmitted to or stored through online systems.

Users should avoid submitting unnecessary sensitive information through public or unsecured communication channels. By using our website and submitting information electronically, you acknowledge this inherent risk.

16. Personal Data Breaches

The Career Advisors will take appropriate steps to identify, investigate, contain and address personal-data security incidents.

Where applicable under law, we will provide required notifications to affected individuals and/or relevant authorities within the applicable timeframes.

17. Cookies and Similar Technologies

The website uses cookies, browser local storage, and similar technologies that are strictly necessary for website functionality, security, performance, and spam prevention.

Specifically, we use local storage and cookies to:

• Enforce rate limits on our enquiry forms via a server-side abuse-protection system (browser cookies are not used to enforce enquiry limits)
• Assign an anonymous browser identifier (cookie name: tca_browser_id, lifetime: 90 days) used solely to enforce anti-abuse rate limits on the AI Academic Counsellor
• Track anonymous page-view counts and traffic sources (no personal identifiers)
• Remember locally which announcements you have already seen
• Cache public educational directory content (university listings) to improve page-load speed
• Remember that you have seen our AI Counsellor privacy notice so we don't repeat it
• Store a one-time visitor flag and traffic-source label (localStorage keys: tca_device_tracked, tca_user_source) used to avoid duplicate page-view counts
• Track an administrative session identifier for admin panel concurrency detection (admin users only)

Because these are essential security and functionality features, they cannot be disabled or rejected.

Our enquiry forms additionally use anti-spam techniques (a hidden honeypot field and submission-time analysis) to detect and silently reject automated bot submissions. These techniques do not collect personal information and are stripped from the request before any data is stored.

Our administrative login system stores authentication failure records keyed to email addresses for abuse prevention. These records persist until a successful login clears them, and are not currently removed on an automatic timer.

We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party analytics services that identify you personally.

Where non-essential tracking or advertising technologies are implemented in the future, they will be handled in accordance with applicable requirements.

18. AI Academic Counsellor

Our website offers an AI Academic Counsellor to provide instant information about our services, countries, universities and admission guidance. This feature is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute admission advice, legal advice, or a guarantee of any kind.

When you use the AI Academic Counsellor:

• Your messages and any attached images are transmitted to Google's Gemini AI service to generate a response
• We strongly advise you NOT to share sensitive personal information through the AI Counsellor (including phone numbers, addresses, Aadhaar, passport details, or financial information)
• The AI Counsellor is subject to Google's Gemini API terms and privacy practices
• We do not use AI Counsellor conversations to make automated decisions about you
• For personalised advice, please use our enquiry form or book a free counselling session instead

AI-generated responses may be inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated. Always verify important information with a human counsellor before acting on it.

19. Third-Party Websites and Services

Our website may contain links or integrations leading to third-party websites or services, including university websites, social media platforms, WhatsApp, and technology service providers.

If you choose to communicate with us through a third-party communication platform such as WhatsApp, information exchanged through that platform may also be processed by the platform according to its own terms and privacy practices.

Third-party websites and services operate under their own terms and privacy practices. The Career Advisors is not responsible for the privacy practices, security or content of third-party websites that it does not control.

Users should review the privacy policies of third-party services before submitting personal information to them.

20. Accuracy of Information

Users are responsible for providing accurate and up-to-date information, and for submitting genuine, un-forged documents when required.

If you discover that information provided to The Career Advisors is inaccurate or incomplete, you may contact us and request correction or updating of the information.

21. Changes to This Privacy Policy

The Career Advisors may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in services, website functionality, data-processing practices, applicable laws or regulations, or security practices.

The updated version will be published on this page. Users are encouraged to review this Privacy Policy periodically. Continued use of the website following such changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

23. Acceptance

By submitting information through The Career Advisors website, users acknowledge that they have been provided with the applicable privacy notice and that their personal data may be processed for the purposes described in that notice and this Privacy Policy, subject to applicable law.

Where separate consent is required, The Career Advisors will obtain consent through the applicable consent mechanism.