Terms of Use

Labsolutly Site Guidelines

These are the official posting guidelines ("Site Guidelines") for Labsolutly ("Site"). Labsolutly ("Labsolutly," "we") is a platform designed to help graduate students make better lab choices by providing student reviews and allowing professors to share information about the types of students they are looking for. Our mission is to provide a safe and trustworthy space for both students and professors to improve long-term matching in research labs.

The Site/App

The Labsolutly website (www.labsolutly.com) includes:

• Student reviews based on lab/PI experiences (e.g., advising style, average time to graduate, financial support, recommendation letter process).
• PI introductions, where professors can describe their preferred student qualities and lab environment.
• Survey-style information on lab practices, such as graduation requirements, financial support, travel support, and mentoring.

Lab reviews may only be posted by students who are currently or were previously part of the lab. Each student may only post one review per PI/lab.

Labsolutly is NOT the place to report dangerous or illegal behaviors. If you believe you or others are in danger, please report directly to your university authorities or local law enforcement.

How We Work

All reviews are monitored for compliance with these guidelines. Any review that violates the guidelines may be removed.

Student Guidelines:

• Users can click the "Report this review" button to flag inappropriate reviews, which will then be reviewed by the moderation team.
• Reviews will never be edited for compliance. They are either removed or restored.
• Reviews are not removed simply for being negative.

Student Guidelines

• Be honest and base reviews on your actual experience.
• Provide balanced feedback, including both pros and cons.
• Do not comment on a PI’s appearance, age, gender, race, or other personal attributes.
• Share only your own experiences; avoid hearsay.
• Do not directly reference or debate other reviews.
• Express dissatisfaction in a constructive way.
• Avoid anger-fueled or profane reviews.
• Only one review per PI/lab per student is allowed.
• Use discretion when reading reviews; online reviews should be one of many resources in decision-making.

Prohibited Content:

Reviews containing the following will be removed:

• Profanity, derogatory remarks, or vulgarity.
• Identifiable information about a professor or student (e.g., personal contact details).
• References to personal life, family, or sexual activity.
• Claims about employment status or illegal activity.
• Direct references to other reviews.
• Professors or students reviewing themselves or their own labs.
• Non-English content (support for more languages may be added later).
• Hyperlinks and URLs.

PI (Professor) Guidelines:

• Student reviews are anonymous; submitter details cannot be shared.
• Reviews will not be removed simply for being negative.
• Professors can create a profile and share information about their lab.
• Professors may not review their own labs.
• Encouraging students to share honest feedback is welcome.

Flagging a Review

If you see a review that violates these guidelines, click "Report this review." Our team will review the flagged content and decide whether to remove or restore it.

Legal Disclaimer

Labsolutly is not legally responsible for the content of user-submitted reviews. Like other online platforms, Labsolutly is protected under principles similar to the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. Sec. 230). Legal action against Labsolutly for user-generated reviews may result in penalties, including legal cost recovery.

Reservation of Rights

Labsolutly reserves the right to remove any review that is inappropriate, defamatory, harassing, discriminatory, offensive, threatening, obscene, or otherwise in violation of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Reviews that threaten violence or bodily harm may be reported to the appropriate authorities.

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes how Labsolutly ("Labsolutly", "we", "us", or "our") collects, uses, shares, and protects information you provide when you use the Labsolutly website (https://www.labsolutly.com) and related services (together, the "Site"). Labsolutly is currently an early-stage platform focused on helping graduate students and principal investigators (PIs) find better long-term lab matches through anonymous student reviews and PI profiles. This Policy explains the specific data practices for the Site, including our .edu verification and anonymous review model.

1. Scope and Applicability

This Privacy Policy applies to individuals who use the Site, including students who submit reviews and PIs who create profiles. By using the Site you consent to the data practices described in this Policy. If you do not agree with this Policy, do not register for or use the Site.

2. Summary

• Reviews displayed on the Site are shown anonymously (no public name or personal contact information is published alongside a review).
• You register with a personal email address (any email) but must verify a valid .edu email address during onboarding.
• We do not retain your raw .edu email address after verification — we convert it to a one-way hash and store only the hash for integrity and anti‑abuse checks.
• Each verified .edu email receives a single "ticket" usable to post one review; one ticket = one review.
• We do not require or collect a password; authentication and verification are handled by email links and verification codes.

3. Information We Collect

A. Account Email (Registration):

When you create an account on Labsolutly, you provide a personal email address (your account email). We use your account email to deliver account-related messages (verification, notifications, administrative communications). You may update or delete your account email via your account settings or by contacting us.

B. .edu Verification Email (Verification Process):

To ensure reviewer eligibility, we require verification of a valid .edu email address. During verification we send a one-time verification link or code to your .edu email. Once you complete verification, we do NOT keep the raw .edu address; instead we compute a cryptographic one-way hash of the .edu address and store only that hash. The raw .edu email is discarded from our systems after hashing and verification are complete.

C. Ticket Issuance and Review Metadata:

After successful .edu verification, the system issues one (1) unique ticket tied to that hashed .edu identifier. A ticket can be used to post exactly one review. We store ticket metadata such as ticket issue date, ticket status (used/unused), and the hashed .edu identifier associated with the ticket.

D. Review Content (User‑Submitted Content):

You may submit a review about a lab or PI. Reviews are displayed publicly on the Site but are shown anonymously — they will not contain your name, account email, or any personally identifying information. We retain the text and any non-personal metadata you include in the review (e.g., survey answers, rating values, timestamp).

E. Technical and Usage Data:

We automatically collect standard technical information when you visit or interact with the Site, including your IP address, browser type, device type, operating system, pages visited, and timestamps. We also use cookies and similar tracking technologies as described below. However, we do not save automatically collected information permanently to our database.

4. How We Use the Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Account administration: to deliver verification emails, notifications, and essential account messages to the account email you provide.
• Verification and anti‑abuse: to verify .edu status, issue and track single-use tickets, detect duplicate or abusive accounts (using hashed .edu identifiers and technical signals).
• Display of reviews and profiles: to make submitted reviews and PI profiles available on the Site (reviews are displayed anonymously).
• Site operations and improvement: to analyze usage, debug issues, and improve Site features and security.
• Legal compliance and enforcement: to comply with applicable laws and enforce our Terms of Use, including responding to legal requests, preventing fraud, and protecting rights and safety.

5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies to operate the Site, remember preferences, and for analytics. Cookies help us:

• Keep you signed in during an email-session-based login flow.
• Remember display preferences and site settings.
• Collect aggregated analytics about Site usage.

You can control cookies via your browser settings but disabling certain cookies may affect Site functionality. We may also use third‑party analytics services; their use of cookies is governed by their privacy policies.

6. How Reviews are Published and Anonymity

When you post a review using a ticket, the review text and non-personal metadata are stored and published on the Site. Publicly displayed reviews never include your account information, .edu email, or any direct identifier. We take steps to minimize re-identification risk in displayed content (see Section 9 Security & Data Retention).

7. Sharing and Disclosure of Information

We will not sell your personal information. We may share information in the following limited circumstances:

• Service providers: with vendors who perform services on our behalf (e.g., email delivery, hosting, analytics). Those vendors are contractually required to protect your information and use it only for the services they perform.
• Legal and safety reasons: to comply with laws, legal process, court orders or governmental requests, or to protect rights, safety, or property of Labsolutly, its users, or others.
• Business transfers: in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets (with notice to users where required).

8. Data Retention and Deletion

We retain account email addresses and review content for as long as needed to provide the services and for legitimate business purposes, or as required by law. The hashed .edu identifier and ticket metadata are retained to prevent duplicate/abusive accounts and to enforce the one-ticket-per-.edu policy. If you request deletion of your account, we will remove or de-identify your personal account email and, upon request, may remove your review content; however, we may retain anonymized or aggregated data for analytics. When you request deletion of a review posted with a ticket, the ticket remains marked as used to prevent reissuance to the same .edu.

9. Security Measures

We implement reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. Examples include encrypted storage for sensitive information, hashing of .edu emails, least‑privilege access controls, and secure transmission (HTTPS/TLS). While we work to protect your data, no system can be guaranteed 100% secure; if we learn of a data breach that affects your personal information, we will notify you and any regulators as required by law.

10. Age Policy

The Site is intended for university‑level users. We do not knowingly collect personal information from users under the age of 18. If we become aware that we inadvertently collected information from a user under 18, we will take steps to delete accounts and such information.

11. International Users and Transfers

Labsolutly is operated from the United States. If you are located outside the U.S., by using the Site you consent to transfer of your information to the U.S. and processing under U.S. law. We will take reasonable steps to provide protections consistent with this Policy when personal data is processed by third parties in other jurisdictions.

12. Your Rights and Choices

You may:

• Access or update certain account information by contacting us or using account settings (to the extent available);
• Request deletion of your account and/or review content (subject to the limitations noted in Section 8);
• Opt out of non-essential communications and marketing messages by following the unsubscribe instructions in those messages.

To make requests concerning your personal information, contact us at the address below. We will respond to requests in accordance with applicable law. Certain requests may be subject to verification.

13. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will post a prominent notice on the Site and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this Policy. Continued use of the Site after posting of changes constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.

14. Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at:

Labsolutly

Email: contact@labsolutly.com

We will aim to respond to privacy inquiries promptly.

Labsolutly Copyright Compliance Policy

1. Purpose

Labsolutly (“we,” “our,” “us”) respects the rights of both students and professors and is committed to preventing copyright infringement. This policy is part of the Labsolutly Terms of Use and is legally binding on all users.

2. How to Report Copyright Infringement

If you believe in good faith that content posted on our platform infringes your copyright, you, as the copyright owner or authorized agent, may submit a written Notice of Infringement to Labsolutly. Your notice must include the following information:

• A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or authorized agent.
• Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed.
• Identification of the infringing material and its location (e.g., URL).
• Contact information of the complaining party, including email address.
• A good faith statement that the use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, agent, or law.
• A statement that the information is accurate and made under penalty of perjury.

Upon receiving a valid notice, Labsolutly will promptly remove or disable access to the reported content.

3. Counter Notice (Request to Restore Content)

If you believe that your content was removed due to a mistake or misidentification, you may submit a written Counter Notice including the following:

• A physical or electronic signature of the user (you).
• Identification of the material removed and its prior location.
• A statement under penalty of perjury that the material was removed due to mistake or misidentification.
• Your name, address, and contact information, along with consent to the jurisdiction of a U.S. federal district court (or Labsolutly’s jurisdiction if outside the U.S.).

Labsolutly will forward the Counter Notice to the original copyright claimant and may restore the material if no legal action is initiated within 10 business days. Restoration is at Labsolutly’s sole discretion.

4. Repeat Infringer Policy

Labsolutly enforces a policy of terminating accounts of repeat infringers. Users with two or more valid infringement notices may have their accounts permanently terminated, and attempts to create new accounts will be prohibited.

5. Important Notice

Submitting false claims of infringement may subject you to civil penalties including damages, court costs, and attorney fees, as well as criminal prosecution for perjury.

Submitting a false Counter Notice carries the same risks and liabilities.

This document is the sole official Copyright Compliance Policy of Labsolutly. Any summaries or restatements are not legally valid.

1. Categories of Personal Information Collected

Labsolutly collects and stores only one category of personal information:

• Login Email Address (e.g., Gmail or other personal email)
  • Used for account access and ongoing login.

During the verification process, we require a .edu email to confirm academic affiliation. This email is:

• Used only for verification,
• Immediately hashed,
• Never stored in its original form.

We do not collect names, passwords, phone numbers, demographic data, or sensitive information.

2. Purpose of Collection

• To provide account login and maintain access.
• To verify academic affiliation (.edu, hashed and discarded).
• To ensure platform integrity (one review per verified account).

3. Sharing of Personal Information

We do not sell or share your personal information. Your login email is not shared with advertisers or third parties, except:

• As required by law, or
• With service providers strictly necessary to operate the platform.

4. Rights of California Residents

California residents have the right to:

• Know what personal information we collect (limited to your login email).
• Delete your login email/account information
• Correct your login email by deleting and re-registering.
• Non-Discrimination: You will not be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

5. Sensitive Personal Information

Labsolutly does not collect or process any “Sensitive Personal Information” (such as race, health, geolocation, biometrics, or union membership).

6. How to Exercise Your Rights

To make a request (know, delete, or correct), email us at contact@labsolutly.com with the subject line “Your California Privacy Rights.” We will verify your request using your registered login email.

7. Authorized Agents

You may appoint an authorized agent to act on your behalf, provided that written authorization is given and we can verify your identity via your login email.

8. “Do Not Sell or Share My Information”

Labsolutly does not sell or share personal information.