BemaYour Data: Access, Export, Retention & Deletion
Last updated: 6 October 2026 · Version 2026-10-06
This page is the practical companion to the Privacy Policy. It tells you how to get your data, how long we keep it, and exactly what happens when you delete something.
Getting a copy of everything
Settings → Download your data gives you a machine-readable file, right now, containing your account (including the policy version you agreed to and when), profile, college list, checklist, tasks, deadlines, essays and their full text, comments and suggestions, activities and honors, your Common App workspace, scholarships, visits, decisions, FAFSA planner entries and your AI conversation history. Not included: your password hash, expired reset links, and the human check and AI-usage counters, which are operational rather than about you.
If you cannot use the button, email getbemaai@gmail.com from the address on
your account and we will send it within 30 days, usually much sooner. We
will not charge you for it.
Correcting something
Most of it you can edit yourself in the app. If you find something you cannot
correct — or something that looks wrong and you cannot see why — email
getbemaai@gmail.com and we will fix it.
Deleting things
One item
Deleting an essay, a college, a task or a scholarship in the app removes it and everything attached to it — comments and suggested edits on an essay go with the essay. This is immediate and cannot be undone.
When Bema removes something because you asked it to ("take Stanford off my list"), it asks you to confirm first, and keeps a copy for 30 days so you can put it back from Settings → Sign-in and security → Recently removed. After 30 days the copy is deleted.
Your account
Settings → delete account, or email getbemaai@gmail.com.
When you delete a student account we permanently remove your profile, essays, Common App workspace, college list, checklist, tasks, deadlines, activities, honors, scholarships, visits, decisions, notifications and AI conversations. Any connection to a parent is severed, and that parent immediately loses all access.
When you delete a parent account we remove your account and your connections to any student. Comments and suggestions you left on a student's essays are deleted along with your account — the student's own writing is untouched.
We complete deletion within 30 days.
What survives a deletion, and why
Two things, both narrow:
- Backups. Our backups roll off within 35 days. Deleted data can persist in an encrypted backup for that period. It is not restored into the live system and it is not accessible to us in the ordinary course.
- Anonymous aggregates. A scholarship award you logged contributes to a platform-wide total ("Bema students have won $X"). Once your account is gone that figure is a number with nothing linking it to you, and it stays in the total.
Nothing else survives.
How long we keep things while your account is open
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account and everything in it | Until you delete it |
| Server logs (IP address, timestamps) | 90 days |
| Backups | 35 days, rolling |
| Password reset tokens | 30 minutes, then unusable |
| Parent invitations that are never answered | 14 days, then they expire |
| AI conversation history | Until you clear it, or you delete your account |
| Copies of things Bema removed for you (for Undo) | 30 days |
| Security log (sign-ins, exports, deletions; no content) | 1 year |
| Unanswered "remove this?" requests from Bema | 1 day |
If an account is inactive for two years, we will email you, and if we hear nothing within 30 days we will delete it. Nobody should have their application data sitting on a server five years after they graduated.
Disconnecting a parent
A student can disconnect a parent at any time from Settings. The moment they do:
- that parent loses all access to the student's data, immediately
- the student's essays, checklist, profile and progress are no longer visible to them
- the other parents connected to that student are unaffected — each connection stands alone, which matters in separated households
- comments and suggestions that parent already left remain visible to the student, who can delete them
Disconnecting is not a punishment and does not need a reason.
Data portability, honestly
The export above is a complete copy of your data, but it is not something you can load into another product — no such standard exists for college application tools.
The practical answer is the one built into the app: every Common App section has a Copy button that produces clean text, and every essay can be copied as plain text. If you stop using Bema, take those before you delete your account.
Questions
getbemaai@gmail.com — a person will answer.