Privacy Policy
Effective September 20, 2026
PedsScout is an iPhone app and this website, operated by Kaushik Iska, a sole proprietor in Texas, USA. This policy says what PedsScout collects about you, why, who else touches it and what you can do about it. It is written to be read; if anything in it is unclear, write to privacy@pedsscout.com.
What we collect
- Your account. Sign-in is handled by Clerk. When you sign in, Clerk gives us a user id and, if you chose to share them, your email address and name. If you use Sign in with Apple and hide your email, we receive Apple's relay address instead, and that is fine with us.
- Watches you create. The campuses and places (a state, a city or a ZIP) on your watchlist, and whether each one should notify you.
- Push notifications. If you turn notifications on, the device token Apple issues for PedsScout on that device, whether it is a sandbox or production token, and the app version the device is running.
- Subscription status. If you subscribe to PedsScout Pro, Apple tells us which plan you bought, when the current period ends and whether it renews, and we keep that against your account. We never see your payment details; Apple handles the transaction.
- Email you send us. What you write to support@pedsscout.com or privacy@pedsscout.com, and the address you sent it from.
- Request logs. Like every web service, our hosting provider records the IP address, path and time of each request for a short time. We use those logs only to keep the service running and to investigate abuse.
What we do not collect
- Your location. The app asks for location permission only to sort campuses by distance and to answer "near me". Your coordinates are used on the phone and never sent to our servers. You can decline the prompt and the rest of the app works.
- No analytics or tracking SDKs, in the app or on this website. This website sets no cookies.
- No advertising, no advertising identifiers, and no tracking across other apps or sites.
- Nothing from your contacts, photos, calendar or health data.
How we use it
To run your account and keep your watchlist with it; to send the digest you asked for when a publication changes something you watch; to honour PedsScout Pro on every device you sign in on; to answer you when you write to us; and to keep the service secure. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.
Who we share it with
We share personal data only with the services that run PedsScout, each for the purpose named here and nothing more:
- Clerk for sign-in. Clerk holds your sign-in identity and issues the tokens the app uses.
- Apple for purchases, subscription notifications and push delivery. Apple's own privacy policy applies to your Apple Account.
- Vercel and Neon for hosting and the database, in the United States.
- Resend to deliver email from pedsscout.com.
The research service that checks hospital pages (Parallel) never receives anything about you. We would disclose data if the law required it, and we would tell you unless the law forbade that too.
How long we keep it
Account data — your user id, email, name, watches, devices and subscription record — is kept until you delete your account or ask us to remove it. Push tokens are removed when you turn notifications off in the app, or when Apple reports that a device is no longer registered. Email you send us is kept for as long as we need to resolve it. Request logs are kept for a short time by our hosting provider and then discarded.
If we close an account for abuse, we keep only its user id on a revocation list so that the same identity cannot sign in again; everything else goes.
Your choices
- Delete your account from Settings in the app, or by emailing privacy@pedsscout.com from the address on the account. Deletion removes your watches, your devices and our record of your subscription. It does not cancel an App Store subscription: cancel that with Apple first, or you will keep being charged.
- Turn notifications off in iOS Settings under Notifications, or per watch inside the app.
- Decline location when the app asks, or change it later in iOS Settings under Privacy & Security.
- See or correct what we hold. Email privacy@pedsscout.com and we will send you a copy of your data, or fix it, within 30 days.
Children
PedsScout is for the people who staff pediatric intensive care, and it is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will delete it.
Security
Everything between the app, this website and our servers travels over TLS. Our database is encrypted at rest by the hosting provider. Access to production data is limited to the operator, and the tokens the app uses to sign in are short-lived. No system is perfectly secure, and if a breach affected your data we would tell you.
Data sources
The directory itself is compiled from public hospital web pages and public job postings. It describes hospital campuses and their openings, not individuals, and we do not build profiles of people from it. A hospital that wants a listing corrected can write to privacy@pedsscout.com.
Changes
When this policy changes, the new version is posted here with a new effective date. If a change matters to what we collect or share, the app will say so the next time you open it.
Contact
PedsScout is operated by Kaushik Iska, a sole proprietor in Texas, USA. For anything about your data, email privacy@pedsscout.com. For help with the app, see Support.