Privacy Policy

What we collect

• Account details — name, sign-in email, password (stored only as a one-way hash), time zone, role, and your confirmation that you're 18+.
• Agreements — which version of these policies (and, for mentors, the Mentor Code of Conduct) you accepted, when, and from which network address and browser.
• Profile information you add — school, stage and interests; for mentors, training, bio, availability, capacity and meeting link.
• Mentorship content — requests, agreements, messages, meetings and meeting notes, notes, assignments and submissions, assessment answers, goals and your Dental Journey.
• Files you upload — resources, attachments, submissions, a profile photo and, for mentor applicants, optional verification documents.
• Support and feedback — messages you send through Help & Support and pilot feedback, with the page you sent it from.
• Usage and security data — which days you were active, your signed-in sessions (device type and approximate network), records of sensitive actions, and technical error reports.

How we use it

• To run BridgeDDS: matching, workspaces, scheduling, reminders, emails and notifications.
• To keep the community safe: reviewing mentor applications, verifying mentors, handling reports and support requests, and preventing abuse.
• To fix problems and improve the pilot, using error reports, your feedback and aggregate, de-identified metrics.

We don't sell personal information, and we don't use your mentorship content for advertising.

Who can see what

• Mentor profiles are visible in the directory once a mentor is listed; visitors see a limited version. Your sign-in email is never shown. You choose whether to share a separate contact email and with whom.
• Workspaces — chat, meetings, shared notes, resources, assignments and assessments — are visible only to the mentor and mentee in that mentorship. Meeting and session links are shown only to the people in the meeting or registered for the session.
• Private notes are visible only to the person who wrote them. Mentees never see a mentor's private notes.
• Your Dental Journey is shared with a mentor only if you allow it; you can change this per mentorship.
• Support requests are visible only to you and BridgeDDS Owners.
• BridgeDDS Owners (our administrators) can see account and mentorship metadata, verification evidence submitted with mentor applications, support requests and content that has been reported to them. They don't read private conversations or notes outside of a report.

Patient information

BridgeDDS is not designed to store protected health information, and our terms prohibit sharing it. If patient-identifying information is reported or found, we remove it.

Service providers

We use a small number of providers to run BridgeDDS: cloud hosting, a managed database, file storage, an email delivery service and, when enabled, an error-monitoring service that receives technical details of failures (never message content or passwords). They process data only on our instructions. We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the safety of our members.

Security

• Passwords are hashed with Argon2id; sessions use secure, HTTP-only cookies and can be signed out from Settings.
• Files are served only through an access-checked route — there are no public links to private uploads.
• Data is encrypted in transit. Sensitive actions — email changes, data downloads, account deletion and every administrative action — are recorded in an audit log.

No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting you, we'll tell you promptly.

Retention and deletion

We keep your information while your account is open. When a mentorship ends, its history stays available to both members as an archive.

You can delete your account yourself in Settings → Your data. It's deactivated immediately — you're signed out, removed from the directory, and your requests and mentorships end — and after 14 days your personal information is removed: your name, email, photo, profile, Dental Journey values, private notes, saved mentors, notifications and verification documents. Signing in during those 14 days restores your account.

Things you shared with another member — messages, shared notes, meeting notes and work you submitted to a mentor — stay in that member's history, shown as “Deleted member”. We keep records needed for safety and moderation, such as reports and the audit log.

Your choices and your data

• Edit your profile, privacy and email preferences in Settings, and change your sign-in email in Settings → Account.
• Download a copy of your data at any time from Settings → Your data.
• Turn Dental Journey sharing off for any mentorship, and revoke your private calendar link at any time.
• Block any member; report anything that concerns you.

Age

During the pilot, BridgeDDS is only for people 18 and older, and every member confirms their age when they sign up. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 18; if we learn an account belongs to someone younger, we'll close it.

Changes and contact

When this policy changes in a way that matters, we'll ask you to review it the next time you visit. Questions or requests about your data? Contact us through Help & Support.