Privacy, in plain English

What we collect

If you create an account: your email address, your first name, your shortlist, and your wizard answers (things like your ATAR and what you want to study). That's the whole list. No surname, no date of birth, no school, no phone number.

Without an account, everything stays in your own browser and never reaches our servers. The whole site works that way – an account only adds saving and syncing.

We also count page visits in aggregate (how many people looked at a page), using a cookieless counter that stores nothing on your device and never follows you to other sites. It cannot identify you and we couldn't connect it to an account if we wanted to.

We also keep a daily tally of how many people reach their matches, in which study area, and which of a few steps they took on the way (for example, whether they chose to answer more questions, or added a course to their shortlist), so we can tell whether the site is working. It is a count and nothing else: no name, no device, no IP address, nothing that could be traced back to you, and it is never linked to an account.

If you use a feedback prompt (“Was this page helpful?” or “Spotted a wrong figure?”), we keep your answer, anything you type, and which page it was on. Nothing that identifies you is kept with it, and it isn't linked to an account, so please don't type personal details. We store it for up to 12 months and send our team a summary of it by email each week.

What we never do

• We will never sell your data. Not to universities, not to advertisers, not to anyone, not ever.
• We never share your details with a university unless you explicitly tick a box asking us to, for one specific course. The box is always unticked, and leaving it unticked changes nothing.
• We never change your matches or comparisons based on who is signed in. Signed in or not, everyone sees the same scores, built the same way.
• We never store passwords, because we never ask for one.
• We never add tracking pixels to our emails, and we don't use third-party ad trackers on the site.

Emails

We only email you beyond sign-in links if you ticked the box asking us to – and then only at the moments that matter: results day, change-of-preference deadlines, your shortlist. Those dates are different in each state, so we time the emails from your answers and the courses on your shortlist. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe that works instantly. You can also switch emails off any time on your account page.

Deleting everything

Your account page has a "Delete my account and data" button. One click, one confirm, and your email, name, shortlist and answers are permanently deleted from our servers – not archived, not "deactivated", deleted. We send one final email to confirm it happened.

The bigger promise

My Shortlist exists to be the independent one. No university pays to change what you see, and your data is not the product. Read more about our independence and how the scores work.

Questions, and your rights

My Shortlist is run by My Shortlist Pty Ltd (ABN 56 702 451 830), and that company is responsible for the information described on this page.

To see what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or complain about how we have handled it, email privacy@myshortlist.au. That address goes to the founders, not a queue, and we will answer within 30 days.

For anything else, hello@myshortlist.au and a human will answer.

Found a security problem? Please tell us at security@myshortlist.au before telling anyone else, and we will not come after you for looking.