Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 14, 2026
1. Introduction
fetchd (“fetchd,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) operates the fetchd lost-and-found platform at fetchd.it, including each school’s portal (together, the “Service”). This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect from students and staff who use the Service, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices available to you.
fetchd is based in Pennsylvania, and right now the Service is offered only to schools and users located in Pennsylvania. If that changes, we’ll update this policy to reflect any additional legal requirements that come with it.
2. A Note on School Data
fetchd is built for use inside a school, under a school’s direction. Because of that, some of the information we handle may be part of a student’s education record. Schools that use fetchd are responsible for their own compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and any applicable state student-privacy law, and we work with each school under a separate data-handling agreement in addition to this policy. If you are a parent or guardian with questions about how your school uses fetchd, please also reach out to your school directly.
3. Information We Collect
Account information. When you sign in, you use your school’s Google or Microsoft account. We receive your name, school email address, and a unique account identifier from that provider. We use your email only to confirm you belong to the school and to determine whether you’re signed in as a student or staff member — we never receive your password, and we can’t see anything else in your Google or Microsoft account.
Item reports. When you report an item you’ve found, we collect the item’s type, name, and description, the room where you found it, the date found, a photo of the item, and your name and account ID (attached automatically).
Claims. When you claim an item, we collect your name and account ID, and — once your claim is approved — the pickup location the finder sets for you.
Chatbot messages. If you use the search chatbot, we collect the text you type so we can find matching items and, where useful, ask a clarifying follow-up question.
Cookies and similar technology. We use a session cookie to keep you signed in (it expires after 14 days), and, where applicable, a cookie that remembers which school’s portal you last used so you land in the right place next time (it expires after 180 days). Both are sent only over HTTPS and can’t be read by JavaScript on the page. We also briefly note your IP address to enforce rate limits that stop abuse (like someone spamming uploads); we don’t store your IP address in our database.
We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or any analytics tool that builds a profile of you across other sites or services.
4. How We Use Your Information
- Verify you’re a member of your school and sign you in
- Let you report, search for, and claim items
- Show item photos to other verified users at your school
- Draft an item’s name, category, and description from its photo when you use the optional photo-scan feature
- Power search, including an AI-assisted chatbot that helps match your description to items already reported
- Connect a finder and claimer once a claim is approved, so the item can be picked up
- Prevent abuse of the upload and chat features
- Maintain the security and reliability of the Service
5. How We Share Your Information
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising or marketing purposes — not now, and we don’t plan to.
We do share information with the following service providers, only as needed to run the Service:
| Who | What they receive | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Name and school email (sign-in); item description text | Authenticates sign-in; item text is processed through Google’s embedding technology to power search matching | |
| Microsoft | Name and school email | Authenticates sign-in, for schools that use Microsoft/Office 365 accounts |
| Amazon Web Services (S3) | Photos you upload | Secure photo storage; photos are only ever shared back out through short-lived, expiring links |
| Groq | Text you send the chatbot; item photos you choose to scan with the photo-scan feature | Extracts search keywords and generates follow-up questions; drafts the item name, category, and description from a scanned photo |
| Render | All of the above, as stored data | Hosts our application and database |
Each provider is limited to using this information to provide their service to us — not for their own purposes.
We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect the rights and safety of our users, or if the school operating your fetchd portal requests records as part of its own recordkeeping obligations.
6. Data Retention
We keep item reports, photos, and claim records only as long as they’re useful:
- Claimed items — once a claimer confirms pickup, we delete the item record and its photo immediately.
- Denied reports — if school staff decline a report, we delete the report and its photo immediately.
- Everything else — for each school, we agree in advance on an annual purge date (typically around the end of the school year), and delete all remaining item and claim records tied to that school once it passes. This date is set individually per school by written agreement between us and the district, not chosen unilaterally by either side. You can confirm your school’s current purge date with your school administrator or by contacting us.
- Session cookie — expires automatically after 14 days.
- School-portal cookie — expires automatically after 180 days.
7. Your Choices and Rights
You can ask us to delete your account data — your item reports, claims, and any photos tied to your account — at any time by emailing fetchd.business@gmail.com from the email address associated with your account (or by asking your school to forward your request to us). We’ll confirm and complete deletion within 30 days, except for records we’re required to keep for a legitimate reason, such as records your school needs for its own compliance purposes.
Because fetchd is currently offered only in Pennsylvania, state privacy laws like the CCPA (California) don’t yet apply to your use of the Service. If we expand outside Pennsylvania, we’ll update this section with any additional rights that come with that.
8. Data Security
We use industry-standard safeguards, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), secure and HTTP-only cookies, cross-site request forgery protection, and file-upload checks that confirm photos are genuinely images before we store them. No system is 100% secure, but we work to protect your information at every layer of the Service.
9. Children’s Privacy
fetchd is intended for use by students at the secondary-school level under their school’s direction. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13 outside of a school’s supervised use of the Service. If fetchd is ever used at a school serving students under 13, that use is governed by our agreement with the school under COPPA’s school-consent provisions, and parents should direct questions to the school.
10. Changes to This Policy
We’ll update this page if how we handle your information changes, and update the “Last updated” date above. If a change is significant, we’ll make it easy to notice — for example, on the school portal home page.
11. Contact Us
Questions, concerns, or requests about this policy or your data:
Email:
fetchd.business@gmail.com