Who we are
Got a Seat? (“Got a Seat,” “we,” “us”) runs a service that helps students at the same school find carpools, school shuttles and shared trips home for breaks. Each school has its own instance of the service at its own address, such as yourschool.gotaseat.com. We operate every instance and are responsible for the information described here.
This policy covers gotaseat.com, every school instance, and the Got a Seat? apps for iPhone and Android.
What we collect
Information you give us
- Account details. Your school email address, which we use to sign you in and confirm you’re a student at your school, and your name, which other students see on your trips.
- Optional profile details. If you choose to add them, your gender (woman, man or nonbinary) and class year. Other students see them on your trips. You can leave them blank.
- Trips. Ride offers and requests you post: the general area you’re leaving from and heading to, travel hubs, the day and time window, seats, luggage room, any gas-and-toll share, whether you want to ride only with people of the same gender, and notes you add.
- Bookings and shuttle sign-ups. Which rides you join or confirm, and your shuttle reservations and waitlist spots.
- Messages. What you send other students through in-app messaging.
- Ratings, blocks and reports. Star ratings you give drivers, people you block, and safety reports you file, including what you write in them.
- Support requests. Anything you send us by email.
Information created as you use the service
- Activity counts and ratings. How many rides you’ve driven or taken, and the average of ratings riders give you as a driver.
- Account records. When you created your account and last signed in, your role (student or school staff), and whether your account is suspended.
- Technical data. Like nearly every website, our hosting provider processes your IP address, browser or device type and the pages requested, so it can deliver the service and protect it from abuse. We use this only for security and fixing problems.
Subscriptions
Drivers never pay. When riders subscribe, payment is handled by Apple (in the iPhone app), Google (in the Android app) or our web payment processor. We never see or store your full card number. We receive whether you’re subscribed, your plan, and its renewal and cancellation dates.
What we don’t collect
We don’t ask for your phone number, home address, date of birth, student ID or government ID. We don’t track your device’s location in the background. Our marketing site at gotaseat.com uses no analytics, advertising pixels or tracking cookies.
How we use it
- To run the service: sign you in, show rides, match riders with drivers, hold shuttle seats and deliver messages. If you or the other student asks for same-gender rides, we use the gender you each shared to decide whether you can be matched; we never guess it.
- To send you service email, such as sign-in links, match and booking notices, changes and cancellations. These aren’t marketing, so they can’t be turned off while you have an account, but you can choose which notices you get where the app offers that choice.
- To keep students safe: verify that everyone belongs to your school, enforce blocks, and let staff review reports and suspend accounts.
- To give school staff counts of demand by region and day so they can plan shuttles.
- To manage subscriptions and answer support requests.
- To secure the service, prevent abuse and fix problems.
- To meet legal obligations.
We don’t sell your information, share it for targeted advertising, or use it to build advertising profiles.
Who can see what
| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| Other students at your school | Your name, any gender and class year you’ve added, the general areas and times of trips you post, your ride counts and, if you drive, your average rating once you have at least 3. They see regions, not addresses. |
| The student you’re matched with | After you both confirm a booking, the pickup details and anything you share in messages. |
| Your school’s staff | Shuttle rosters, safety reports and the accounts involved in them, and demand totals by region and day. Staff use this to run shuttles and respond to reports. |
| Students at other schools | Nothing. Each school’s instance and data are kept separate. |
| Got a Seat? staff | Only what they need to operate the service, answer support requests and investigate safety or security issues. |
Students you block can’t see your trips or message you.
How long we keep it
- Rides, requests, bookings, shuttle reservations and the messages and ratings attached to them are deleted automatically a set number of days after each break ends (or after the ride, for trips outside a break). Your school sets that number; the default is 14 days. Your ride counts and average driver rating are kept as totals, without the trips behind them. A trip with an open safety report may be kept until staff close the report.
- Notifications are deleted about 30 days after that.
- Your account (email, name, role, and any gender and class year you’ve added) stays until you delete it or your school stops using Got a Seat?.
- Safety reports and blocks are kept longer, so your school can follow up on incidents and patterns, and are deleted when no longer needed for that purpose.
- Subscription and payment records are kept as long as tax and accounting law requires.
- Server logs kept by our hosting provider are short-lived.
Your school
Where we run Got a Seat? under an agreement with your school, we handle student information on the school’s behalf. That agreement limits how we may use the information, and where the U.S. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) applies, we act as a “school official” and use the information only for the purposes in the agreement. Your school may also have its own policies that apply to how its staff use the service.
We don’t connect to your school’s systems. The only school information we use is your school email address, to confirm you’re a student.
Your choices and rights
- See and change your trips and profile. You can view, edit and cancel trips you’ve posted, and change or clear your gender and class year, in the app at any time.
- Delete your account. Email us and we’ll delete it, or use the delete-account option in the app where it’s offered. This removes your account and the trips, bookings and messages tied to it. Safety reports involving you may be kept as described above.
- Get a copy. Email us to request a copy of the information we hold about you.
- Correct it. Tell us if something we hold is wrong.
- Subscriptions. Cancel any time in the App Store, Google Play or your account settings on the web, depending on where you subscribed.
Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act or other state privacy laws, including the right to know, correct and delete your personal information, and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. We don’t sell or “share” personal information as those laws define it. To use any right, contact us at the address below. We’ll verify the request comes from you, usually through your school email, and respond within the time the law requires.
Security
We encrypt connections to Got a Seat? with HTTPS, keep each school’s data separate, restrict staff access to what their role needs, and sign you in with one-time email links rather than passwords. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and will notify you and your school of a breach affecting your information as the law requires.
Age
Got a Seat? is for college and university students. It isn’t directed to children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has given us information, contact us and we’ll delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we’ll tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.
Contact us
Questions, requests or concerns about your privacy: email sasha@gotaseat.com. If your question is about how your school’s staff use Got a Seat?, you can also contact your school.