1. What we collect
- Account & role — name, email, password (hashed), and whether you're a mentee, mentor, or both.
- Profiles — a private mentee profile (school, stage, goals) or a public mentor profile (career, specialty, location, bio, optional photo).
- Verification info — mentors' LinkedIn URL and, for physicians, an NPI.
- Mentor conversations — conversation requests and the text messages you exchange with a mentor on Health Mentors; when each was sent; the conversation's status (pending, active, declined, expired or ended) and who ended it and why; the display names of both people at the time of the request; when each of you last opened the conversation (read markers); and when we last emailed each of you about it.
- Reports — if you report a conversation, the reason you choose, any details you add, and how staff resolved it.
- Staff access log — a record of each time an authorized staff member opens a reported conversation, closes a conversation, or resolves a report: who, when, and which conversation or report.
- Email introductions — the subject and message of a one-time email introduction, and delivery metadata.
- Email preference — whether you want an email when a new message is waiting in a conversation.
- Quiz & AI — your quiz answers/results if you're signed in, and the messages you send to the AI Mentor (formerly called the AI Career Guide; see §5).
- Workshop registrations — if you register for a workshop, the registration is linked to your account and records the name and email on that account, and a private link token that lets you into the session and lets you cancel your place. You need a Health Mentors account to register.
- Operational — referral attribution and security logs (e.g. IP for rate-limiting).
2. How we use it
We use this information to run the directory, verify eligibility and mentor identity, deliver introductions and conversation requests, host conversations and email you when a message is waiting, review reported conversations and enforce our Guidelines, register you for workshops and send you messages about a workshop you registered for, provide the optional quiz and AI tools, keep the Service secure, and comply with the law. We do not sell or share your personal information for advertising.
3. Age & birth date
This MVP is for U.S. adults 18 and older. When you create an account we process an exact birth date once only to compute eligibility, then retain only a verification timestamp and the age-gate version — the birth date itself is discarded.
Registering for a workshop requires a Health Mentors account, so it relies on the same adult verification as every other account. Workshops are designed for students exploring health careers, and a teacher, counsellor or parent is welcome to register and bring a group — the person who registers is the adult, and they are the only person whose details we hold.
4. Mentor conversations and email introductions
There are two ways to contact a mentor, and they handle your information differently.
Conversations on Health Mentors
When a mentee requests a conversation, the mentor sees the mentee's name and the short intro they wrote. If the mentor accepts, the two can exchange text messages on Health Mentors. Neither person's email address is shown to the other. Messages are text only — no photos, files, or attachments — and cannot be edited or deleted by either person.
Messages stay on Health Mentors and are visible only to the two participants. We do notmonitor conversations in real time. Authorized staff can read a conversation's messages only after one of its participants reports it, and every such access is recorded in a staff access log. Staff can see information about conversations that is not message text — who the participants are, when it started, and its status — to run the Service, and may close any conversation. Separately, the few people with direct administrator access to our database (the Service's technical operators) can technically access stored data, including messages; we limit that access to maintaining the Service, keeping it secure, and meeting legal requirements. Notification emails say that something is waiting and who it is from — they never include message text. You can turn off new-message emails in your profile.
Either person can end a conversation — or a request, including one that expired — at any time; that is final, and the other person cannot contact them there again. Either person can also report it, which ends it the same way and alerts our staff. The person a report is about is nottold that it was reported or by whom; they are told only that the conversation has ended. If an account is suspended or deleted, or a mentor is removed from the directory, that person's conversations end and the other person is told the conversation has ended, without a reason; a conversation that ended because of a suspension or a mentor leaving the directory may be requested again later. Do not share personal medical information in a conversation.
One-time email introductions
When a mentee sends an email introduction, the mentor receives the mentee's message, their verified email address, and a link to the mentee's private profile. The mentor's email is never disclosed to the mentee unless the mentor replies. Any reply and all further communication happen over regular email, outside Health Mentors. Health Mentors does not host or monitor what happens next.
5. Quiz & AI Mentor data
If you take the career quiz while signed in, your answers and generated results are saved to your account so you can return to them and so the AI Mentor can ground its responses on them. If you're not signed in, quiz results are not stored on our servers. Messages you send to the AI Career Guide are processed by a third-party AI provider to generate a response; do not enter sensitive personal, medical, or confidential information.
6. How long we keep it
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account & profiles | Until you delete your account (or we remove it). |
| Birth date | Discarded at registration; only a verification timestamp is kept. |
| Mentor conversations and their messages | Kept while the conversation is pending or active. Erased one year after it ends (ended, declined, or expired). A reported conversation is kept until one year after the report is resolved. |
| Conversations of a deleted account | Deleting your account ends your conversations. The other person keeps their copy, where you appear as “Former member” (the name from the time of the request stays stored with it), until it is erased on the one-year schedule above. |
| Reports | Two years after the report is resolved or dismissed. |
| Staff access log | Two years. |
| Email introduction subject and message | Available to authorized staff for 90 days, then auto-erased. |
| Delivery metadata | Retained for security, rate-limiting, and aggregate reporting. |
| Workshop registrations (name & email) | Deleted 90 days after the workshop ends, or as soon as you cancel your place. Deleting your account does not cancel a place you hold: cancel it first, or it is deleted on the same 90-day schedule. |
| Quiz results (signed-in) | Until you delete them or your account. |
| AI conversations | Kept in your account until you delete the conversation or account. |
| Security logs | Short-term, for abuse prevention. |
7. Service providers (sub-processors)
We rely on a small set of vendors that process data only as needed to operate the Service:
- Railway — application and database hosting (United States).
- PocketBase — the database/auth layer running on our hosting.
- Resend — transactional email (verification, email introductions, conversation request and new-message notifications — which never contain message text — and workshop confirmations, reminders, cancellations and change notices).
- Google (Gemini) / OpenAI — the AI model behind the AI Mentor, which processes the messages you send it.
8. Cookies & sessions
We use a first-party authentication token to keep you signed in. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
9. Verification
Approved mentor profiles undergo manual LinkedIn review and, where required, public NPI Registry review. This limited review confirms that submitted public information was reviewed — it is not a background check, endorsement, or guarantee.
10. Security
Passwords are hashed, a conversation's messages are readable through the Service only by its two participants (and by authorized staff after a report, with each access logged; see §4 for the limited technical access our operators have), and profile data is protected by per-record access rules (for example, a mentee's private profile is visible to a mentor only after that mentee sends them an email introduction). No system is perfectly secure, but we aim to collect little and protect what we hold.
11. Your rights
You can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, subject to legitimate security or legal retention needs. Depending on where you live (for example under the CCPA/CPRA), you may have additional rights; note that we do not sell or share your personal information. To make a request, use the contact page.
Deleting your account ends any conversations you are in. Because each conversation belongs to two people, the other participant keeps their copy of it until it is erased on the schedule in §6; there you appear as “Former member”, though the name you had at the time of the request is still stored with the conversation until it is erased.
If you registered for a workshop, you don't need to ask us: every email we send about it has a link that cancels your place and deletes your registration straight away, and you can do the same from the workshop schedule while signed in.
12. Children
The Service is for adults 18 and older, including workshop registration, which requires an account and its age verification. We do not knowingly collect personal information from minors; if we learn we have, we will delete it.
13. Changes
We may update this notice; we'll revise the “last updated” date and, for material changes, provide reasonable notice.
14. Contact
Privacy questions or requests? Reach us through the contact page.