Privacy Policy
Effective date: June 17, 2026 · Last updated: October 20, 2026
Smuker ("Smuker," "we," "us," or "our") is operated by Smuker LLC. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and what rights you have. By using www.smuker.com or any Smuker service, you agree to this policy.
1. Information We Collect
Account information
When you register, we collect your email address and any name you provide, and record how you sign in (email and password, Google, or LinkedIn). If you sign in with Google or LinkedIn, we receive your name, email address, and profile photo from that provider. During setup we also ask about your target role type, career stage, interview timeline, and biggest interview concern, and we store your answers to tailor the product. We use this information to authenticate you, personalise Smuker, and communicate with you about your account.
User content
Smuker's core function requires you to upload career documents. This includes your resume and any job descriptions you save. Resumes typically contain personal identifying information such as your full name, contact details, address, employment history, and education. You control what you upload. We also store everything Smuker generates from that content for you, such as gap analyses, ATS scores, tailored and AI-generated resumes, cover letters, company briefs, cheat sheets, and interview questions, along with your application tracker entries and saved practice questions. We store this content to provide the service and delete it when you delete your account or the relevant files.
Practice and coaching data
We store the answers you write during practice sessions, AI-generated model answers, STAR segment scores, your Story Bank entries, and the transcripts, scores, and debriefs from mock interviews. This data is used to provide coaching feedback and session history. If you answer by voice, your audio is sent to our transcription provider to produce a text transcript and delivery metrics (pace, filler words, pauses) — the audio itself is never stored and is discarded immediately after transcription. We retain the resulting transcript and scores, not the recording.
Sign-up source and approximate location
When you create an account, we record how you found Smuker (the referring website and any campaign or ad source in the link you followed) and your approximate location (city, region, and country), which is estimated from your IP address at sign-up by our hosting provider. We do not store your precise location or the IP address itself with your account. We use this to understand which channels bring people to Smuker and where our users are.
Support and feedback
If you contact support, we keep your support tickets, the messages exchanged with us, and any screenshots you attach to them. If you send feedback, rate Smuker, or answer a feedback email, we keep your response, including your rating and comments. We only publish feedback as a testimonial on our site if you have given us permission to do so.
Payment information
We use Stripe to process payments. We store only your Stripe customer ID and subscription status. We never see or store your card number, CVV, or full payment details — those are held exclusively by Stripe.
Usage data
We log feature usage, AI model calls, and associated token counts to monitor service health, manage costs, and enforce plan limits, and we record when you were last active. This data is tied to your user ID but is not sold or used for advertising.
Cookies and technical data
We use essential session cookies to keep you logged in, and a first-touch attribution cookie that records how you found Smuker (referral source and campaign, if any). We use PostHog, routed through our own domain, for product analytics — understanding feature usage, never for advertising. If you visit from the EU, EEA, UK or Switzerland, PostHog sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser unless you choose "Accept" in our cookie banner; until then, or if you decline, visits are counted without cookies. You can change your choice at any time with "Cookie settings" at the bottom of any page. Google reCAPTCHA runs on our contact and feedback forms to prevent spam. We use the Meta Pixel on our public pages to measure our own ads on Facebook and Instagram: it records page visits on smuker.com and, when they happen, that you signed up, started a trial or bought a plan (with the plan and price). It never receives your resume, practice answers, job descriptions or anything else you create in Smuker, and it is not loaded if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal. In the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland it loads only after you choose "Accept". We use the Google Ads tag in the same way, with the same limits, to measure our own ads on Google Search, and we keep the Google click ID from an ad link to record which ad brought you to Smuker. Standard server logs may capture your IP address, browser type, and pages visited for security and debugging purposes.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect to:
- Provide, operate, and improve the Smuker service
- Generate AI-powered analysis, coaching, and document outputs from your content
- Process payments and manage your subscription
- Send transactional emails (account confirmation, password reset, billing receipts)
- Enforce plan limits and detect abuse
- Respond to support requests you initiate
- Comply with legal obligations
We use limited website-visit and sign-up data to measure and improve our own ads on Meta and Google (see Cookies and technical data above). We never use your resume, answers or other content you create in Smuker for advertising, and we do not sell your personal information to any third party.
Smuker for Teams (organization seats)
If you accept a seat from an organization (for example a college, school, bootcamp or employer) through Smuker for Teams, that organization's admins can see your Smuker activity while you hold the seat: your name, email, when you joined and were last active, your practice sessions and mock interviews, your scores and answers, the jobs you saved and applied to, and your resumes. We tell you this before you accept. Admins cannot change your content or sign in as you. If your seat ends or is revoked, the organization stops seeing your activity and you keep your account and everything in it. The organization keeps only a summary of your activity during the time you held the seat — counts such as practice sessions, answers, average scores, mock interviews, applications and saved jobs — not your answers, resumes or job details, and nothing you do after the seat ends. If you delete your Smuker account, that summary stays with the organization without your name (shown as “Former member”). The organization pays for the seat; we do not charge you unless you choose a plan of your own. Organization admins' own names and emails are visible to Smuker for billing and support, and the organization's billing details are handled by Stripe.
3. AI Processing and Sub-processors
Smuker sends portions of your content — including resume text and job description text — to third-party services to generate analysis and coaching. We are committed to transparency about who receives your data.
| Service | Purpose | Data shared |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | AI analysis, coaching, and content generation | Resume text, job description text, practice answers |
| OpenAI | The AI interviewer voice (text-to-speech) in mock interviews and voice practice | The text of the lines the interviewer speaks: questions, follow-ups, spoken debriefs, and your first name in greetings. Your recordings are not sent to OpenAI |
| Supabase | Database, authentication, and file storage | All account and user content data |
| Stripe | Payment processing and subscription management | Email address, billing details |
| Resend | Transactional email delivery | Email address, email content |
| Vercel | Application hosting and delivery | All web traffic passing through the application |
| Groq | Voice transcription for delivery analysis | Audio of your spoken practice answers, transcribed text |
| PostHog | Product analytics | Feature usage events, pages visited — never used for advertising |
| Meta (Meta Pixel) | Measuring our ads on Facebook and Instagram | Public pages visited, sign-up, trial and purchase events (plan and price), browser and device signals, Meta cookies |
| Google (Google Ads tag) | Measuring our ads on Google Search | Public pages visited, sign-up, trial and purchase events (plan and price), Google click ID, browser and device signals, Google cookies |
| Sentry | Error monitoring | Technical error logs, which may include your user ID |
| Google (reCAPTCHA) | Spam and bot protection on contact and feedback forms | Device and browser signals, per Google's reCAPTCHA privacy policy |
Important note on AI training: Smuker uses Anthropic’s API to power its AI features and OpenAI’s API for the interviewer voice. Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI uses data submitted through its API to train its public AI models. Your resume and career content is not used to train any AI system.
4. Data Retention
We retain your data for as long as your account is active. Specifically:
- Practice session history — stored indefinitely across all plans, so nothing is lost if you change plans. On the Free plan, you can view practice sessions from the last 7 days; upgrading to Pro or Premium restores visibility into your full history.
- Resumes, stories, and job descriptions — retained until you delete them or close your account.
- Support tickets and feedback — retained while your account is active so we can follow up on your requests, and deleted when you close your account. Any feedback published as a testimonial is removed at the same time.
- Billing records — retained as required by applicable law (typically 7 years for financial records).
- Account closure — when you delete your account, we delete your personal data and user content within 30 days, except where retention is required by law. We keep a minimal deletion record (your name, email address, plan, the dates you signed up and closed your account, the reason you gave for leaving, if any, and whether you had used a free trial) for security and fraud prevention. This record contains no resumes, practice data, or other content, and is accessible only to our administrators. We may also keep a de-identified summary of the account (for example, plan, sign-up answers, sign-up source, and how many resumes or practice sessions it had) to understand why people leave. This summary does not include your name or email address.
5. Your Rights
You have the right to:
- Access — get a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- Correction — ask us to correct inaccurate data
- Deletion — delete your account and all associated data from your account settings at any time
- Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format you can take to another service
- Objection — object to processing based on our legitimate interests, including analytics
- Restriction — ask us to limit how we use your data while a concern is resolved
- Withdraw consent — where we rely on your consent (for example, publishing your feedback as a testimonial), withdraw it at any time
Export your data yourself: signed-in users on any plan can download everything we store about them from Account settings → Your data. The download includes a readable PDF summary, a complete copy of your data in JSON format, and your original resume files. This covers both your right of access and your right to data portability.
For anything the export doesn’t cover, or to exercise any other right, email us at support@smuker.com. We will respond within 30 days.
6. Users in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom
If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the UK GDPR applies to our use of your personal data. Smuker LLC is the controller of your personal data.
Legal bases for processing
| What we do | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Creating and running your account; storing your resumes, job descriptions, practice sessions, and stories; generating AI analysis and coaching; voice transcription | Performance of our contract with you (our Terms of Service) |
| Processing payments and managing your subscription | Performance of our contract with you |
| Account, security, and billing emails | Performance of our contract with you |
| Optional product emails (tracker digest, weekly review, reminders), which you can turn off in account settings | Our legitimate interest in helping you get value from Smuker |
| Product analytics, sign-up source, and approximate sign-up location | Our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the product and how people find it |
| Measuring our ads on Meta and Google (Meta Pixel, Google Ads tag) | Your consent, given in our cookie banner |
| Usage and cost logging, plan limits, spam protection, abuse prevention, and the minimal record kept after account deletion | Our legitimate interest in keeping Smuker secure, reliable, and fair to use |
| Answering support requests and feedback | Performance of our contract with you, and our legitimate interest in improving Smuker |
| Publishing your feedback as a testimonial | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Keeping billing and tax records | Compliance with our legal obligations |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed those interests against your rights, and you can object at any time by contacting us.
International data transfers
Smuker is operated from the United States, and our service providers listed in Section 3 process data mainly in the United States. When your personal data is transferred outside the EEA or the UK, we rely on appropriate safeguards: the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK Addendum, for UK data) included in our providers’ data processing terms, or the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension where a provider is certified under it. You can ask us for more information about these safeguards.
AI scoring and automated decisions
Smuker uses AI to score and give feedback on your practice answers, resumes, and interviews. These scores are coaching guidance for you only. They are not shared with employers and are not used to make any decision that has legal or similarly significant effects on you.
Your right to complain
If you are unhappy with how we handle your personal data, please contact us first at support@smuker.com and we will try to resolve it. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection authority in the EEA country where you live or work, or, in the UK, with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk).
7. California Residents (CCPA)
If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including the right to know what personal information we collect and share, the right to delete your personal information, and the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. We do not sell personal information. Our use of the Meta Pixel and Google Ads tag to measure ads may count as "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising under California law; to opt out, turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser (we then load neither) or email us. You can download the personal information we hold about you from Account settings → Your data. To exercise your other CCPA rights, contact us at support@smuker.com.
8. Children's Privacy
Smuker is intended for users who are 18 years of age or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us at support@smuker.com and we will delete it promptly.
9. Security
We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your data, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), row-level security on our database, and access controls that limit who can view user data. No method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the effective date at the top of this page. For material changes, we will notify you by email or by a prominent notice on the site. Continued use of Smuker after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
11. Contact
Questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy? Contact us at: