Privacy policy

Who we are

Path to Dentist (pathtodentist.com) is operated by xoCaliber Inc. For the purposes of the GDPR and comparable laws, xoCaliber Inc is the controller of the limited data described here. Contact: partner@xocaliber.io.

What stays on your device

Your salary, household details, loan balances, interest rates, employer status and every answer in the guide are stored in your browser's local storage, on your own computer. They are not transmitted to us, and we have no technical means to read them.

If you import your aid file from StudentAid.gov, that file is read and parsed by code running in your browser. It is never uploaded. These are the keys we write, which you can inspect in your browser's developer tools:

• `fafsa_user_v2` — the name and profile details you type
• `fafsa_loans_v2` — loans parsed from an imported file
• `fafsa_meta_v2` — when that file was generated
• `fafsa_dental_strategy_v1` — your answers in the guide
• `fafsa_calc_overrides_v1` — calculator adjustments
• `fafsa_theme_v1` — light or dark mode
• `fafsa_ai_settings_v1` — whether you switched on the optional AI explainer, and the API key you supplied, if you asked us to remember it

Clearing your browser's site data for pathtodentist.com deletes all of it immediately and permanently. The site also registers a service worker, which caches pages so the site loads offline; it stores no personal information.

What is collected when you visit

Four third parties are involved in serving the public pages of this site — and none at all on the pages that handle your loan file, which is covered in its own section below. None of them receives your loan, income or household figures, because those never leave your browser. Typefaces are served from our own origin, so no request for a font reveals your IP address to anyone else. A fifth party — an AI provider — is involved only if you switch on the optional AI explainer yourself, and that is described in its own section below.

We do not use advertising networks, retargeting pixels, session recording, heat maps or fingerprinting. We do not run A/B tests on you. We have not enabled Google Analytics advertising features, and we do not use analytics data to build profiles of individuals.

No third-party code on the pages that handle your loan file

The table above applies to the public pages — the front page, the guide, the blog and so on. It does not apply to the pages where your own aid file is uploaded, listed or worked on. Those are built without any third-party code at all.

• `/import` — where you upload the file from StudentAid.gov
• `/dashboard`, `/loans`, `/payments` — where the loans from that file are listed
• `/profile` — your own details
• `/calculator` — where figures derived from your loans are shown
• `/contact`
• `/writing-help` — where you may send a statement of purpose or recommendation request
• `/dentist-websites` — where a dental practice may ask us about a website

On those pages there is no Google Tag Manager, no Google Analytics, no measurement of any kind, and no request to any third party. The scripts are not merely switched off — they are not in the page, so there is nothing that could be re-enabled by mistake. Moving between one of these pages and the rest of the site loads a fresh page rather than switching in place, so a script loaded elsewhere cannot follow you into them.

The practical effect: we already could not see your figures, because they never leave your browser. Now no third party can see that you visited the page where you handed them over either.

How we use it

Analytics tells us which pages get used and which get abandoned, so we know what to improve. Server logs exist for security and debugging. Email you send us is used to answer you. That is the whole list. We have no other purpose, and we do not make automated decisions about you.

What we never do

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are used in US state privacy laws. We take no referral fees, commissions or advertising money from lenders, servicers or refinancing companies, and we never will while this tool recommends repayment strategies.

Forms you choose to send us

The pages at /writing-help and /dentist-websites are different from the loan tools, and we want to say so plainly. Each is a form you can choose to send us. What you write there, your name, your email and your answers about your application or your recommender, does leave your device when you press Send. It is received by our server and passed to an email delivery provider (Resend), which delivers it to our mailbox. We use it to reply to you and for nothing else.

Until you press Send, nothing is transmitted. We do not save a draft of the form in your browser or on our servers. There is no Google Tag Manager, no Google Analytics and no other third-party script on that page. Do not include other people's sensitive details, such as a recommender's home address, health information or government identifiers.

How long data is kept

Your choices and rights

Because the loan tools collect nothing that identifies you, there is usually nothing for us to look up, correct or delete on request. You can still exercise control directly:

• Block analytics with any tracker blocker, your browser's cookie controls, or Google's opt-out add-on. Everything on the site keeps working.
• We honor Global Privacy Control signals where your browser sends them.
• Clear local storage at any time from your browser settings to erase everything you have entered.
• Write to partner@xocaliber.io to ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or to have it deleted — including any email you have sent us.

If you are in California, you have rights under the CCPA as amended by the CPRA to know, delete, correct, and opt out of sale or sharing; we do not sell or share, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising any right. Residents of Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas and other states with comparable laws have equivalent rights, exercised the same way.

If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, our lawful basis is legitimate interest in understanding aggregate site usage and keeping the service secure. You may object to that processing, request access, correction, deletion or portability, and complain to your local supervisory authority. Data processed by Google and our hosting provider may be transferred to the United States under their standard contractual clauses.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS. Keeping your figures on your own device is itself the main safeguard: there is no central database of borrower information to breach, and no credentials to steal. Email we hold is protected by the ordinary security of our mail provider. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise.

Children

This tool is built for graduate and professional students and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children, and we would delete any that reached us.

The optional AI explainer

The calculator itself uses no AI. Every figure on this site is produced by a deterministic engine that runs in your browser, and it produces the same answer for the same inputs every time. You can use the whole site, indefinitely, without any AI being involved.

Separately, you may switch on an optional AI explainer that puts those results into plain English. It is off until you turn it on. While it is off, no request is made to any AI provider, and no code that would make one runs.

If you do turn it on, you supply your own API key from an AI provider you choose. Your browser then calls that provider directly. We are not in the path: we operate no server for this, we hold no API key, we see no question and no answer, and we keep no record that you asked anything. Your use of the model is governed by your agreement with that provider and billed to your account, not ours.

When you ask a question, your browser sends the provider only this:

• The loan balance, interest rate and private-loan balance the planner is using
• Your income assumptions: starting salary, raises, pre-tax contributions, filing status and number of dependents
• Your program cost assumptions, if the funding planner is switched on
• The payment, payoff, total cost, forgiveness and tax figures the page has already calculated
• The question you type

It never sends your name, your email address, your school, your servicer, your loan account numbers or anything parsed from an imported StudentAid.gov file. This is not a promise we have to police: the calculator holds no identifying fields to send, and the imported loan records are not part of what is assembled.

Your API key is held in this tab only, and disappears when you close it, unless you tick the box to remember it. If you do, it is written to your browser's local storage on your own device and is sent nowhere except to the provider it belongs to. Turning the explainer off erases the key and the setting from your browser.

The explainer is given the figures the engine calculated and instructed to explain them rather than compute anything. It cannot change your results. It can still be wrong about wording or emphasis, as any language model can, so treat it as a translation of the numbers and not as a source of them.

Institutional versions

Schools and programs that license a branded version get the same architecture: student figures stay in the student's browser, and the institution receives aggregate usage counts only, never individual student data. Any additional arrangement is set out in the written license agreement.

Changes

We will post any change on this page and update the date below. If a change materially reduces your privacy, we will say so prominently rather than quietly editing the text.