Beacon Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 8, 2026 · Last updated: October 29, 2026

Beacon is made by Rachel Gubin Affiliate Consulting, Inc., doing business as Beacon Helps ("Beacon," "we"). This page says what information Beacon collects, what it does with it, who else sees it, and how to get rid of it. We wrote it to be read, not skimmed. If anything here is unclear, email hello@beaconhelps.com and a person will answer.

The short version

• Beacon reads your Canvas so you don't have to type in your assignments. It never writes anything to Canvas.
• Your course data, syllabi and Tutor conversations are stored to build your plan. They are not sold, not used for advertising, and not shared except with the services that run Beacon, listed below.
• You can disconnect Canvas, turn off email forwarding, or delete your account from the More tab at any time.

What we collect

Account. Your email address, and your first name, school, time zone and phone number if you give them. If you use a password, Beacon stores only a one-way scrambled form of it (a hash), never the password itself. If you turn on Face ID sign-in, your phone keeps a sign-in key and Beacon's server keeps only a hash of it; Face ID itself stays on your phone. Your settings, such as your support level and Tutor style, are stored too.

Canvas. A Canvas access token or calendar-feed link that you give Beacon, stored encrypted. With a token, Beacon reads your Canvas profile, courses, sections, assignments and due dates, your submissions and scores, discussion topics, announcements, the names and roles of your teachers and TAs, course files (to find your syllabus), and when your token expires. A calendar-feed link gives Beacon only what is on your Canvas calendar, such as due dates. Beacon only reads; it never submits, posts, or changes anything in Canvas.

Syllabi. Syllabus files you upload (PDF, Word or text), or that Beacon reads from Canvas or from a forwarded email. The text is stored encrypted, along with the rules, deadlines and summaries Beacon finds in it. The file itself is not kept.

Photos. If you photograph your class schedule, or a Canvas screen to read your token or calendar link, the photo is read once and is not kept. Beacon saves only the classes you confirm, or the token or link.

Class schedule. Your class names, days, times and places, from a photo, from Canvas, or typed in.

Your work. What you mark done, submitted or skipped, and the steps and "before you can start" checks Beacon suggests for an assignment.

Beacon Tutor. Your messages to the Tutor and its replies, including any email drafts it writes, stored encrypted so you can pick up where you left off.

Accommodations. If you describe your accommodations so Beacon can include them in emails to your professors, that text is stored encrypted. A testing-center contact you add is stored too. Emails to professors open in your phone's mail app for you to send; Beacon never sends them.

Forwarded email. If you set up email forwarding, the meetings, notices and due-date heads-ups Beacon finds, and the sender and subject of each forwarded message. See Forwarded email below.

Your phone's calendar. If you turn on 'Show my phone calendar', Beacon reads the events on your phone so it can show them next to your deadlines. They are read on your phone only and are never sent to Beacon's servers or anyone else. If you tap 'Add to my calendar', Beacon adds that deadline or meeting to your phone's calendar, and only ever changes or removes events it added.

Notifications. Your phone's push-notification token, your phone number if you turn on text reminders, and a record of the reminders Beacon has sent you.

Purchases. Whether you have a subscription, which plan, its price and when it renews, and the purchase records Apple and RevenueCat send Beacon. Apple handles the payment; Beacon never sees your card.

Beta feedback. While Beacon is in beta, it may ask you short questions about how it is going. If you answer, your answer is stored encrypted and read by the Beacon team. While these questions are turned on, Beacon also keeps a short log of what you do in the app, such as which assignments you open and which reminders you tap, and deletes it after 30 days.

Technical. Your IP address is used in memory to limit abuse. It is stored in three places: with each sign-in link or password-reset code you request; with your text-message consent if you turn on text reminders, because U.S. messaging rules require a consent record; and as a one-way hash if you join the website waitlist. Beacon collects no device location, does not read your phone's contacts, collects no advertising identifier, and does not track you across other apps or websites.

Forwarded email

You can give Beacon a private forwarding address and forward email from your school account to it. Each student gets their own address, made of random characters, that works only for their account. Beacon reads each forwarded message once, keeps what it needs from it, and then deletes the message itself. The text of your messages is never written to Beacon's server logs.

What Beacon keeps:

• From a calendar invitation, the meeting details only: the title, time, place, and the organizer's email domain (for example, school.edu). Not the organizer's full address, the guest list, or the invitation's text. Calendar invitations are read without AI.
• From other messages, any meeting, change to an assignment's due date, announcement or reminder Beacon finds.
• For every forwarded message, the sender's address, the subject line, and what kind of message it was.
• Your school email address, taken from the first forwarded message, to confirm the mail comes from your school.

There are two exceptions to deleting the message right away. A forwarded syllabus is kept encrypted while it is processed and deleted within 78 hours; what Beacon finds in it is kept like a syllabus you upload. A message that arrives before your forwarding address is verified is held encrypted and unread so it isn't lost, then read once the address verifies, or deleted within 30 hours.

Beacon also uses our AI provider to read the subject and the first part of forwarded messages that are not calendar invitations or bulk mail, to find meetings and changes to due dates. See Artificial intelligence below.

Email date heads-ups. If a forwarded email gives a different due date than Canvas, Beacon shows it as a heads-up on that assignment. An email date never replaces the Canvas date: Canvas stays the source of truth, and Beacon never asks you to confirm a change. If the email's date is later than Canvas's, Beacon waits until that later date before telling you an assignment is overdue.

Beacon never sends email from your address, never replies, and never forwards your mail anywhere. You can turn forwarding off at any time in More → Forward school email. This deletes your forwarding address, the sender and subject records, and every meeting, notice and heads-up Beacon found. Mail sent to the old address after that is ignored.

How we use it

To build your plan: show what is due, find the rules in your syllabi that cost points, suggest what to work on next, remind you, and answer your questions in the Tutor. To sign you in, and to send you sign-in links, verification and password-reset codes, reminders you have turned on, and notices about your account or subscription. To fix problems when something breaks. While Beacon is in beta, to learn from feedback you choose to give. That is the whole list.

Artificial intelligence

Several Beacon features use Anthropic's Claude models. The information each feature needs is sent to Anthropic to produce a result. Some of this happens in the background, for example when Beacon syncs your assignments, not only when you open a feature.

• Beacon Tutor sends your message and the earlier messages in that conversation; your first name, school, Tutor style and support level; and a summary of your courses: course and instructor names, instructor email addresses from your syllabus, your assignments and their descriptions, your scores and current course score from Canvas, syllabus rules and grade weights, your class schedule, and recent announcements.
• Syllabus analysis sends the syllabus text.
• Recommendations send your upcoming assignments (course, title, due date and points), today's classes, syllabus rules, and your course grade when Canvas provides it.
• Step-by-step plans and "before you can start" checks send the assignment's title, course and description.
• Photo reading sends the photo of your schedule or Canvas screen.
• If you set up email forwarding, the subject line and the first part of forwarded messages that are not calendar invitations or bulk mail, with the sender's email domain but not their address, to find meetings, due-date changes, announcements and reminders.
• While beta feedback questions are turned on, Beacon may send the titles and dates of your recent activity in the app to write a question for you.

Anthropic processes this data to produce the result and does not use it to train its models. See Anthropic's commercial terms at anthropic.com. Beacon does not use any other AI provider.

Who else receives your data

Beacon runs on services that each receive the minimum needed for their job:

• Railway — all stored data (sensitive fields encrypted) and server logs — hosts Beacon's server and database.
• Anthropic — see the AI section above — powers the Tutor and analysis features.
• Resend — your email address and the content of each email Beacon sends you: sign-in links, verification and password-reset codes, deadline warnings, and account and subscription notices — sends email.
• Apple and Expo push services — your push token and the text of each notification — deliver notifications.
• Twilio — your phone number and the text of each message: deadline reminders if you turn on texts, and password-reset codes if you ask for one by text — sends text messages.
• RevenueCat and Apple — your Beacon user ID and purchase events — run subscriptions.
• Canvas (your school) — your token or calendar link, with read-only requests — reads your coursework.
• Sentry — error reports from the server, with names, email addresses, phone numbers, tokens, links and message text removed; your Beacon user ID is kept — finds bugs.
• Cloudflare — emails you forward to your Beacon address pass through it on the way to Beacon's server; it also serves this website — routes forwarded email.

We do not sell your data and do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

Your choices

Disconnect Canvas. More → Canvas Connection → Disconnect Canvas. Beacon deletes your token or calendar link and every course, assignment, score, announcement, syllabus and rule that came from Canvas. Courses you added by hand, a class schedule from a photo, your Tutor history, forwarded-email items, past semester summaries and your account stay.

Email forwarding. Turn it off in More → Forward school email. See Forwarded email above for what that deletes.

Your phone's calendar. Tap 'Hide my phone calendar' on the Calendar tab, or turn off Beacon's calendar access in your iPhone's Settings.

Notifications. Turn push, text or email reminders on or off in More → Notifications. Account notices (sign-in links, codes, subscription changes) are sent regardless.

Delete your account. More → Account → Delete account. Your account is scheduled for deletion in 30 days, reminders stop right away, and you get an email confirming it. During those 30 days you can change your mind by signing in and tapping Keep my account. What is deleted, and what is not, is under How long we keep your data. Deleting your account does not cancel an App Store subscription; cancel it in your iPhone's Settings → your name → Subscriptions.

How long we keep your data

While you have an account. Beacon keeps your data until you delete it, disconnect the service it came from, or delete your account. The exceptions:

• Forwarded email: the message itself is deleted as soon as it is processed. A forwarded syllabus is deleted within 78 hours, and a message held before your address is verified within 30 hours. The sender, subject and what Beacon found are kept until you turn forwarding off or delete your account.
• Photos are not kept.
• The beta activity log is deleted after 30 days.

Records of the sign-in links and password-reset codes you request, with the IP address each request came from, are kept until you delete your account.

Beacon does not delete inactive accounts. Your account and data stay until you delete them, however long you go without opening the app.

When you delete your account. Deletion happens 30 days after you ask. Until then your data is kept so you can change your mind. After the 30 days, a cleanup that runs once a day permanently deletes your account and everything linked to it: your profile, Canvas token or link, courses, assignments, syllabi, schedules, Tutor conversations, notifications and push tokens, forwarded-email records, feedback, and subscription records.

What is kept after your account is deleted.

• If you turned on text reminders, the record that you consented: the consent wording and the dates you agreed and opted out. Your phone number, IP address and device details are removed from it. It has no set end date, because U.S. messaging rules require proof of consent.
• Apple and RevenueCat keep their own records of your purchases under their own terms. Deleting your Beacon account does not delete them.
• If you joined the website waitlist, that email address is separate from your account; email us to be removed.
• Server logs, error reports and database backups may still hold some of your data for a limited time. They are kept by Railway and Sentry and expire on those services' schedules; Beacon does not remove them one account at a time.

Security

Canvas tokens, calendar links, syllabus text, Tutor conversations and email drafts, accommodations, feedback answers and forwarded email messages are encrypted in the database. Other data, such as your email address, phone number, assignments and the sender and subject of forwarded emails, is stored without that extra encryption. Connections to Beacon use HTTPS. No system is perfect; if we learn of a breach affecting you, we will tell you.

Children

Beacon is for college students who are 18 or older. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. Beacon does not ask your age.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Contact

hello@beaconhelps.com
Rachel Gubin Affiliate Consulting, Inc. d/b/a Beacon Helps