Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 15, 2026. This policy explains what information Merge Campus collects, how we use it, and the choices you have.

1. Overview

Merge Campus ("Merge Campus," "we," "us," or "our") operates the Merge service, including our website and mobile application (together, the "Service"). We believe privacy should be the default. This policy describes how we handle information when you use the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the practices described here.

2. Information we collect

We aim to collect only what we need to make campus coordination work.

Information you provide

Account details such as your name, university email (used for passwordless, magic-link sign-in and to verify student status), bio, avatar, and role.
Activity and ride content such as the activities and rides you post or join — titles, descriptions, locations, dates, group sizes, routes, seats, and optional price.
Messages you send in activity group chats.
Social and trust signals such as connection and close-friend relationships, the ratings you give and receive, and reports you submit.
Communications you send us, such as support or safety requests.

Information collected automatically

Device and usage data such as app version, device type, and basic interaction logs that help us keep the Service reliable.
Approximate location only as needed to show relevant activities and rides, and only with your permission where required by your device.

3. How we use information

To operate the Service and let you discover, post, join, and coordinate activities and rides.
To verify university eligibility and maintain a trusted, student-only community.
To calculate and display trust scores and ratings, and to power features such as group chats and Trending.
To keep the community safe, including reviewing reports and preventing misuse.
To respond to your questions and provide support.
To improve the Service and develop new features.
To comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information.

We share information only in limited ways:

With other users, you share the profile, activity, and ride details needed to coordinate — subject to the audience you choose for each post (everyone, friends, or close friends). Group-chat messages are shared with the members of that activity.
With service providers who help us run the Service (for example, hosting and infrastructure), under obligations to protect your information.
For legal and safety reasons, when we believe disclosure is necessary to comply with law or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our users or the public.
In a business transfer, such as a merger or acquisition, subject to this policy.

5. Posts and the feed

Merge lets you share posts — a photo or caption, a place you want to recommend, a completed activity, or a brief "I'm here right now" — to a feed. This section describes who can see a post and what it contains.

Posts and who can see them

By default, a post is shared only with your friends. For each post you can instead choose a narrower audience (close friends, or specific friends you select), or — if you turn it on — "Anyone on Merge," which makes that post visible to every signed-in Merge member, including people you are not connected to, and may surface it in discovery areas within the app. You choose the audience on each post, and the audience is fixed once the post is made.

What a post contains

A post carries what you write and, for a place post, the name and public map location of the venue you're posting about (for example, a café's name and map pin). A post never includes your own device location. For a place you can act on from the post — save it, add it to your bucket list, or rate it — those actions are recorded to your own account as described above.

Sharing a public post with a link

When a post is set to "Anyone on Merge," you can share a link to it — for example, in a messaging app. Opening that link, or previewing it in a messaging or social app, shows a short preview to anyone who has the link, including people who do not use Merge: the author's first name, a snippet of the caption, and, for a place post, the name of the venue. The preview is deliberately minimal — it never includes your device location, your account identity, the audience the post was shared with, or who liked it — and the full post opens only inside the Merge app. Only "Anyone on Merge" posts can be shared this way; friends, close-friends, and live posts have no such link.

"I'm here right now" (live) posts

A live post shares the name of the place you indicate for a limited time (about six hours), after which it stops being shown. A live post is never shared with "Anyone on Merge" — it is limited to friends, close friends, or specific people you pick — and, like every post, it does not include your device location.

Comments

Comments on a post are shown with the name of the person who wrote them. If you comment on a post whose audience is "Anyone on Merge," your name and comment are visible to everyone who can see that post. You can delete your own comments, and the author of a post can remove comments on it. Comments may be reported by people who can see the post; reported comments may be hidden.

Likes

You can like a post. On friends-scoped posts, a like is associated with you. On "Anyone on Merge" posts, likes are shown only as an aggregate count and are not attributed to named individuals.

Changing or removing what you've shared

You can delete a post at any time. Posts shared with friends stop appearing to someone once you are no longer connected to them. Deleting a post or comment removes it from the feed; copies already seen or cached by others may persist outside our control, as with anything shared online.

Reporting and moderation

Posts and comments can be reported. Content that is reported by enough people, or that a moderator reviews, may be hidden pending review.

6. AI features (Merge Assistant)

Merge includes an optional AI assistant (the mascot) that can answer questions about your plans and shared expenses. When you use the assistant, some information is sent to our AI provider, Google (via Google Cloud Vertex AI, which runs Google's Gemini models), so it can generate a response:

Your plans and balances are sent in a de-identified form. We replace names and identifiers with temporary, meaningless labels and send only broad categories and coarse ranges — for example, an activity's type and rough timing, and whether you owe or are owed money within a broad band (such as "$50–100"). We do not send names, email addresses, exact dollar amounts, street addresses, or account identifiers as part of this structured information.
Any exact amounts you see in the assistant's answers are calculated on your device from your own data — they are not sent to, or returned by, the AI provider.
Anything you type to the assistant is sent as written. Your questions and follow-ups are sent to the AI provider as you wrote them, so please avoid typing sensitive personal information you don't want shared.
Your data is not used to train AI models. Under our agreement with Google, your prompts and the assistant's responses are not used to train or fine-tune any AI/ML models.
Limited abuse monitoring. Google may retain your prompts (and, for some models, the responses) for a short period to detect and prevent misuse, as described in Google Cloud's terms. Access is restricted, and this data is not used to train models.
Your chat history stays on your device. The assistant's conversation history is stored only on your device (for up to 14 days) and is not stored on Merge's servers.
It's optional. These AI features run only when you choose to use the assistant.

Chat suggestions from your group chats (off by default). Merge also offers an optional feature — “Let the mascot suggest things from your chats” — that, when you turn it on, lets the assistant read the recent messages in an activity's group chat and offer a helpful next step (for example, finding a place, starting a bring-list, or splitting a cost). Because a group chat contains everyone's messages, this feature works differently from the rest of the assistant, so we want to be specific about it:

It is off by default. It runs only if you turn it on — either from the prompt Merge shows when you tap the assistant's mascot, or in your settings — and you can turn it off again at any time in your settings.
It reads other members' messages, not just your own. To make a suggestion, it may send the recent messages in that activity's group chat — including messages written by other members of the activity, not only the ones you wrote — to our AI provider, Google (Google Cloud Vertex AI / Gemini).
Those messages are sent as written, not de-identified. Unlike the plans-and-balances data described above, this chat text is sent to the AI provider verbatim, so it may contain whatever members typed (including names or amounts). Only a small, most-recent window is sent (roughly the last 15 messages, and capped in length), and only when the assistant is unsure what the group is asking for, or when the group is working out who brings or packs what.
It is not stored on Merge's servers, and not used to train AI models. The messages sent for a suggestion are not saved on Merge's servers, and — under our agreement with Google — are not used to train or fine-tune any AI/ML models.

Processing location: requests may be processed by Google in any region where it operates ("global").

7. Your choices and rights

You can review and update much of your profile information within the Service.
You can control device-level permissions such as location at any time in your settings.
You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information by contacting us. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under applicable law.

To make a request, email privacy@mergecampus.com.

8. Data security and retention

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures designed to protect your information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. We retain information for as long as needed to provide the Service and for legitimate legal, safety, and business purposes, after which we delete or de-identify it.

9. Eligibility

The Service is intended for students and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, please contact us so we can take appropriate action.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, provide additional notice.

11. Contact us

If you have questions about this policy or our privacy practices, contact us at privacy@mergecampus.com or through our contact page.