Last updated: August 2026

We collect your email, and — if you register work — your name, school, and grade. Nothing you submit is public yet, and when it is, your email, school, and grade never will be. Email us at hello@joinforest.studio and we'll delete everything we have on you.

Forest is an independent, student-founded platform for high school students to share their initiatives, research, and creative work. Forest is an independent project run by high school students, based in New York, United States.

This policy covers everyone who visits the site, joins the waitlist, creates an account, or registers work.

You can reach us any time at hello@joinforest.studio.

Forest is built for high school students, so nearly everyone using it is a minor. That shapes everything below.

We collect the least we can. We do not sell your information. We do not use it for targeted advertising. We do not use it to build a profile of you.

Forest is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has given us their information, email us and we will delete it.

Your age is self-reported — you check a box saying you're 13 or older. We don't ask for ID or verify your age.

A parent or guardian can contact us about their student's information at any time.

Joining the waitlist: your email address, plus the date you signed up.

Creating an account: your name and email address. If you sign in with Google, Google shares your name, email address, profile picture, and Google account ID with our sign-in provider. Forest never receives or stores your password.

Using our Google Forms: the "Join the team" and "Share feedback" links open forms hosted by Google. Whatever you enter there — which may include your name, email address, and school — is stored by Google Forms rather than in Forest's database. If you ask us to delete your information, we remove it from there too.

Registering work: your name, email address, school, and grade. Optionally your city/state and social handles. Plus the work itself — its title, description, category, and any links you add. Forest doesn't accept file or image uploads; everything you submit is text and links.

This happens for everyone who visits, including people who never fill in a form.

• Server logs. Netlify (our host) and Firebase (our database and sign-in provider) record your IP address, browser type and version, device and operating system, the page you came from, and timestamps.
• Approximate location. Your city or region can be estimated from your IP address by those providers. We don't collect precise location.
• Google reCAPTCHA. We use reCAPTCHA to tell real visitors from bots. It collects device and behavior signals — cookies, your IP address, and interaction data such as mouse movement — and sends them to Google. This is covered by Google's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
• Sign-in session. Firebase Authentication stores a token in your browser so you stay signed in.

No date of birth. No phone number. No home address. No payment information. No precise device location. No uploaded files.

• Your email — to contact you about your submission or account, to send you a verification link when you sign up, and to tell you when Forest launches.
• Your name, school, and grade — so we can review your submission and confirm it comes from a real high school student. Review is done by hand: someone on the Forest team reads what you submitted and decides whether to approve it. We don't contact your school.
• Your work — to display it on Forest once profiles go live.
• Server logs and reCAPTCHA — to keep the site running, and to stop bots and abuse.
• Legal obligations — if the law requires it.

We do not sell your information. We do not use it for targeted advertising. We do not share it with anyone for their own purposes. We do not use it to profile you. We do not use your work to train AI models.

If we ever want to feature your work outside Forest — in a post, a demo, or a presentation — we'll ask you first.

Right now, nothing. Forest is pre-launch. No submitted profile has been published, and nothing you've sent us is visible to anyone but the Forest team.

When profiles do go live, these will be publicly visible: your full name, your work's title, description, category, and any links you added. Social handles are only shown if you add them — adding one makes it public.

These will never be shown publicly: your email address, your school, your grade, and any contact details.

"Public" means visible to anyone on the internet. Search engines can index it. Other people can copy, screenshot, cache, or archive it. If that happens, Forest can't remove those copies.

If you're under 18, talk to a parent or guardian before publishing your work. A guardian can ask us to unpublish a profile at any time.

Firebase Authentication stores a sign-in token in your browser so you stay logged in. Google reCAPTCHA sets cookies to detect bots.

We don't use advertising cookies, and we don't use any third-party analytics tool.

We do count how many people reach each step of the registration form — how many opened it, how many chose a type of work, how many got to the last step. These are plain numbers that go up by one. Nothing is recorded about who you are, no cookies are involved, and the counts can't be traced back to you. We use them to find the parts of the form that confuse people.

We also count visits, and how many people are on the site at once. A visit is a number that goes up by one; the "on the site now" figure works by your browser writing a random, one-off id that deletes itself when you close the tab. Neither is linked to your account, your name, or your IP address, and neither survives your visit.

If we ever add tracking or analytics, we'll update this policy first.

Your information is stored using:

• Google Firebase — privacy policy — our database and sign-in.
• Netlify — privacy policy — our website host.
• Google reCAPTCHA — privacy policy — bot detection.
• Google Forms — privacy policy — hosts our "Join the team" and "Share feedback" forms.

Data is stored on servers in the United States.

These providers handle data on Forest's behalf and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes.

• The service providers listed above.
• Anyone we're legally required to disclose to — by law, legal process, or to protect someone's safety.
• If Forest is ever transferred to someone else, merged into another project, or shut down, we'll email you first and give you 30 days to delete your information before anything moves.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising.

• The site and everything sent to it is secured over HTTPS.
• Sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication. Forest never stores passwords.
• Firebase security rules control who can read and write records. Your email, school, and grade can only be read by the Forest team.

No system is completely secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

If your information is ever exposed, we'll email you — and your guardian, if we have their address — without undue delay, and explain what happened.

• Waitlist emails: until you ask us to delete them.
• Account and submission data: for as long as your account exists. Delete your account, or ask us to delete your information, and it's gone.
• We don't automatically delete inactive accounts. If you want yours removed, email us.
• Backups: we occasionally save a copy of the database. Information you've deleted may still exist in a backup copy until that copy is replaced or deleted.
• If Forest shuts down: everything is deleted within 30 days, and we'll email you beforehand.

You can ask us to:

• Show you a copy of everything we hold about you.
• Fix anything that's wrong.
• Delete your information.
• Stop emailing you about the launch, without losing your account.

To ask, email hello@joinforest.studio from the address you signed up with. We'll respond within 30 days.

A parent or guardian can make any of these requests. Before we act on one, we'll confirm it with the student at their registered email address — this stops someone from deleting a student's work by claiming to be their parent.

If we say no to a request, we'll tell you why, and you can reply and tell us why you disagree.

Asking for any of this never costs you anything and won't affect your account.

One honest limit: deleting a published profile removes it from Forest, but it can't recall copies other people have already saved, cached, or screenshotted.

Residents of some US states have additional privacy rights under state law. We honor everything listed above for everyone, wherever you live.

Forest currently serves students in the United States.

Forest is early and still changing. If we update this policy, we'll change the date at the top.

For material changes — new information collected, new third parties, or changes to what's public — we'll email registered users at least 30 days before it takes effect.

Email hello@joinforest.studio with any question about this policy or your information. We'll respond within 30 days.

Parents, guardians, and school staff are welcome to reach out.

Last updated: August 2026

You keep ownership of everything you submit. You're giving us permission to show it on Forest once profiles go live — nothing is public yet. Submit only work that's actually yours. You can take it down whenever you want.

These terms apply to everyone who uses Forest — the website at joinforest.studio, the waitlist, accounts, and work you register.

Forest is an independent project run by high school students, based in New York, United States. You can reach us at hello@joinforest.studio.

By using Forest, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, don't use it.

Forest is pre-launch. Right now it collects waitlist signups and registrations. No profiles have been published, and nothing you submit is visible to anyone outside the Forest team yet.

That means things will change. Features will appear, move, or be removed. The site may be unavailable at times. We're describing what Forest is today, not promising what it will be.

You need to be 13 or older. Forest is built for high school students.

If you're under 18, you should have a parent or guardian's permission to use Forest and to publish your work.

You need to give us accurate information. Don't sign up as someone else, don't invent a school, and don't submit work claiming to be a student if you aren't one.

Forest is free. There's nothing to pay, now or as part of these terms.

Keep your password to yourself. You're responsible for what happens under your account.

If you sign in with Google, Google handles your password — we never see it.

Tell us at hello@joinforest.studio if you think someone else has access to your account.

You own your work. Submitting it to Forest doesn't change that. It's yours, it stays yours, and nothing here transfers ownership.

What you're giving us permission to do. By submitting work, you give Forest permission to:

• store it and show it to the Forest team for review, and
• display it publicly on Forest — but only once profiles go live, and only if we approve yours.

That's the whole permission. We won't license your work to anyone else, sell it, or use it to train AI models.

If we want to feature your work outside Forest — in a post, a demo, or a presentation — we'll ask you first.

It ends when you say so. This permission lasts as long as your work is on Forest. Email us to take it down and it ends. See "Taking your work down" below for the one honest limit on that.

What you're promising us. When you submit work, you're telling us that:

• you made it, or you have permission from whoever did,
• it doesn't break anyone else's copyright, trademark, or other rights,
• anything factual in it is true — real numbers, real impact, real people, and
• if it involves other people's work, you've credited them.

Don't use Forest to:

• submit work that isn't yours, or claim credit you didn't earn,
• lie about who you are, what school you go to, or what your work has done,
• post anything hateful, harassing, threatening, or sexual,
• post anyone's private information, including your own classmates',
• break the law, or encourage anyone else to,
• spam, scrape, or run bots against the site, or
• try to break, overload, or get around the site's security.

We review every submission by hand before it's approved. We may approve it, ask you questions, or reject it.

We can remove content or suspend an account if it breaks these terms, if we believe it's false, or if someone shows us it infringes their rights. We'll email you at the address on file to explain, and you can reply to contest it.

We may decline a submission without a detailed reason — Forest exists to keep the platform real, and that means saying no sometimes.

You can remove your work at any time by emailing hello@joinforest.studio from the address you signed up with.

One honest limit: taking work down removes it from Forest. It can't recall copies other people have already saved, screenshotted, cached, or that search engines have indexed. Once something is public on the internet, no one can fully undo that — which is worth thinking about before you publish.

If you believe something on Forest copies your work or infringes your rights, email hello@joinforest.studio with:

• what the content is and where to find it,
• what you own and why you believe it's being infringed, and
• how to contact you.

We'll look into it and respond. If it's infringing, we'll remove it.

If your work was removed and you think that was a mistake, reply and tell us why.

You can stop using Forest whenever you like. Email us to delete your account and we'll remove your information — see our Privacy Policy for exactly what that means and how long it takes.

We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. If we do, we'll email you.

Forest is provided as it is. We're a small, student-run project, not a company with a support team.

We don't promise the site will always be available, that it will be free of bugs, or that being on Forest will get you opportunities, an audience, or admission anywhere.

We don't check whether other students' submissions are accurate beyond our review. Don't treat anything on Forest as verified fact.

Links to other sites aren't endorsements, and we're not responsible for what's on them.

To the extent the law allows, Forest isn't liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from your use of the site. Nothing here limits liability that can't legally be limited.

We'll update these terms as Forest changes. The date at the top shows the current version.

For material changes, we'll email registered users at least 30 days before they take effect. If you keep using Forest after that, you're agreeing to the new terms.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, United States.

If part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.

Email hello@joinforest.studio with any question about these terms.

Parents, guardians, and school staff are welcome to reach out.