Privacy Policy

1. Scope

This policy covers:

• Our public website and related pages on careerbhavan.com.
• Counselling enquiries, lead capture, WhatsApp/email outreach you opt into, and related support.
• Our public MCP endpoint at https://mcp.careerbhavan.com/mcp and the Career Bhavan Colleges plugin that connects to it (no account sign-in required for public tools).

Separate admin/content-management MCP tools exist for authorised Career Bhavan staff only and are not part of the public plugin. This policy describes both where relevant.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Website and counselling

We collect information you voluntarily provide or that is generated when you use our website, including:

• Contact and identity data: name, email address, phone number, and other details submitted through lead or counselling forms.
• Academic and preference data: educational background, exam scores, course or college preferences, budget, location preference, and study mode when you share them for recommendations.
• Usage and device data: pages visited, approximate location derived from IP (city/region level where available), browser/device type, referral source, and similar analytics events.
• Communications: messages you send us by email, WhatsApp, or forms, and our replies.

2.2 Career Bhavan Colleges plugin and public MCP — tool inputs

The public plugin is read-only college and course discovery. It does not require you to create a Career Bhavan account. When you (or your AI assistant) call a tool, we receive only the parameters the host sends for that call. Current public tools and their inputs are:

• search_courses: course keyword or subject (query), optional level filter (e.g. UG/PG), and optional result limit.
• search_colleges: optional college keyword, course offered, city, institution type, optional fee budget in INR (min/max), and optional result limit.
• get_course_details: a course slug returned by search.
• get_college_details: a college/institute slug returned by search.
• get_college_course_details: a college slug and a course slug.
• compare_colleges: two to four college slugs, and optionally one course slug for course-specific fees/mode/duration.
• search_guides: a keyword for counsellor-written articles, and optional result limit.

We do not log or store MCP tool inputs, outputs, or chat content. Tool arguments are processed in memory only to look up public catalogue data and return a response for that request. We do not write search queries, slugs, or results to a database, analytics warehouse, or long-term log store. The MCP process may keep a short-lived in-memory rate-limit counter keyed by IP address (to prevent abuse); that counter is not a query log and is discarded when the process restarts or the entry ages out. Public tools do not request or accept passwords, API keys, payment card data, government IDs, health data, precise GPS coordinates, full chat transcripts, or your AI-host account credentials.

Search fields are for course, college, city, budget, and similar catalogue filters only. Avoid putting personal identifiers into free-text queries; if you do, those strings are still only used to answer that one request and are not retained by us.

2.3 Public MCP — tool outputs

Tool responses return curated public catalogue content from CareerBhavan (and optional Markdown / structured widgets for the host UI). Depending on the tool, outputs may include:

• Course cards: name, slug, level, duration, mode, fee summary/range, short summary, college count, and a link to careerbhavan.com.
• College cards: name, slug, location, type, rating, NAAC/NIRF where available, approvals, total fees, average package figures where published, logo URL, and a link to careerbhavan.com.
• Course details: eligibility, entrance exams, highlights, career outcomes and salary ranges where published, syllabus excerpts, specialisations, colleges offering the course with fees, FAQs, and page links.
• College details: profile summary, amenities/highlights, placement figures where published, courses with fees, anonymised review excerpts (reviewer names are not returned), FAQs, and page links.
• College–course combo details: fees and fee breakdown, admission notes, syllabus, FAQs, and page links.
• Side-by-side comparison rows for the fields above when using compare_colleges.
• Guide/article titles, excerpts, category, publish date, read time, cover image, and blog links.

Links may include campaign parameters (for example utm_source=mcp&utm_medium=ai_assistant&utm_campaign=public_mcp) so that clicks from AI assistants can be measured in our analytics. Outputs do not include internal database IDs, unpublished records, staff reviewer names, or admin credentials.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use information for the following purposes:

• To answer catalogue search and detail requests through the website and through public MCP / plugin tools.
• To provide personalised college and course recommendations and counselling when you ask us to via our website or forms.
• To help you shortlist colleges and courses and, with your consent, to support enquiries or applications with institutions you select.
• To send relevant updates about deadlines, exams, and counselling opportunities via email or WhatsApp when you have provided contact details and not opted out.
• To operate and rate-limit the public MCP endpoint in memory (abuse prevention), and to operate and improve our website.
• To measure website usage when someone visits careerbhavan.com — including optional analytics when a user clicks an MCP result link that carries UTM parameters. Clicking through is separate from the MCP call itself; MCP searches are not stored as analytics events on our side.
• To comply with legal obligations and protect against misuse of our services.

We do not use public MCP tool calls to build advertising profiles, sell personal data, or train third-party foundation models. We do not pull, reconstruct, log, or store your chat history from ChatGPT, Codex, or other hosts; we only process the tool arguments the host sends for each call, in memory, to return catalogue results.

4. Recipients and Sharing

We do not sell your personal data. We may share or disclose information in these categories of recipients:

• AI hosts and your devices: When you use Career Bhavan Colleges inside ChatGPT, Codex, Claude, Cursor, or another MCP-compatible client, that host sends tool inputs to our MCP server and receives tool outputs on your behalf. Those platforms process the conversation under their own privacy policies. We do not control how the host stores your chat.
• Infrastructure and service providers: hosting, CDN, DNS, email/WhatsApp delivery, CRM, and website analytics vendors that process data on our behalf under contractual obligations (for example cloud hosting for mcp.careerbhavan.com and careerbhavan.com). Our MCP application itself does not send tool queries to analytics providers; website analytics apply when you visit or click through to careerbhavan.com.
• Colleges you enquire about: When you ask us to facilitate an enquiry or application for a specific college or course, we may share relevant details with that institution — only for that purpose and with your consent.
• Legal and safety: We may disclose information when required by law, regulation, legal process, or to protect rights, safety, and integrity of our users and services.

5. Retention

• Public MCP tool calls: Not retained. Inputs and outputs are not logged or stored by the Career Bhavan Colleges / public MCP service. Handling is request-scoped in memory. An in-memory IP rate-limit counter may exist briefly for abuse prevention and is not a record of what you searched. Your AI host may retain the conversation under its own policy; that is outside our control.
• Website analytics: Retained according to our analytics provider settings and our Cookie Policy, generally in aggregated or pseudonymous form.
• Lead and counselling records: Kept for as long as needed to provide counselling, follow up on your enquiry, meet legal or dispute-resolution needs, and then deleted or anonymised — typically up to 36 months after last meaningful contact unless a longer period is required by law or an active matter.
• Published catalogue content: Course, college, and guide content is editorial content we publish; it is not your personal data unless you appear in a review or similar contribution you asked us to publish.

6. Your Controls and Rights

You can:

• Stop using the Career Bhavan Colleges plugin by uninstalling or disconnecting it in your AI host; public MCP calls only occur when the host invokes our tools.
• Choose what to ask: avoid including name, phone, email, or other personal identifiers in MCP queries.
• Opt out of marketing emails or WhatsApp by using unsubscribe links or replying STOP / requesting opt-out.
• Request access, correction, deletion, or restriction of personal data we hold about you (for example lead form submissions), subject to applicable law.
• Withdraw consent for counselling follow-up or optional processing where consent is the basis we rely on.
• Lodge a complaint with a data protection authority in your jurisdiction.

To exercise these rights, email [email protected]. We may need enough information to verify your request. For data held only by OpenAI or another AI host (for example your chat history), use that provider's privacy controls.

7. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures appropriate to the nature of the data, including HTTPS, separation of public read-only MCP tools from authenticated admin tools, path allowlisting on the public API client, and rate limiting. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. Children

Our services are intended for general audiences interested in higher education. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal data, contact us and we will take appropriate steps to delete it.

9. International Processing

We are based in India and may process data on servers or with providers in India or other countries. If you access our services from elsewhere, your information may be transferred across borders with appropriate safeguards where required.

10. Third-Party Links

Our website and MCP outputs may contain links to third-party websites, including college and university portals and AI host platforms. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those external sites. Review their policies before submitting personal information.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, including when plugin tools, inputs, or outputs change. Any changes will be posted on this page with a revised "Last Updated" date. Continued use of CareerBhavan or the Career Bhavan Colleges plugin after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy where permitted by law.

12. Contact Us

Privacy questions and requests: [email protected]. General support: [email protected] or our About page. Also see our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.