Privacy notice
How Ascend handles your information. Last updated July 2026.
Who we are
Ascend (ascendcareer.ai) is an AI career-coaching service operated by NexaCore, a registered trade name of LinkRoute Logistics International B.V. (KVK 84263482), Rotterdam, the Netherlands, which is the data controller for your personal data. For privacy questions or requests, use Feedback and support in Settings (web and app); we answer there directly.
What we collect
- Account details: your name and email, and an encrypted password; or, if you sign in with Apple or LinkedIn, the identifier and name/email those services share with us.
- What you tell your coach: your messages, and a profile and a "client file" of durable facts your coach records to help you over time (career history, goals, strengths, preferences, context).
- Assessment answers and results (interests, strengths, values, confidence), if you choose to do them.
- Goals, action steps, progress ratings, and check-ins you create with your coach.
- Mood check-ins and topics you choose for your daily audio episode.
- CVs, job descriptions, and cover-letter drafts you bring into the Toolkit.
- Support tickets you send us, and our replies.
- Subscription status. Payments are processed by Stripe (web) or Apple (iOS app); we never see or store your card number.
How we use it
Solely to provide and improve your coaching: your coach reads your file and history to give you personalised, continuous guidance. We do not sell your data, do not use it for advertising, and do not use it to train AI models.
AI processing
Ascend is an AI, not a human. To coach you, your messages and the relevant parts of your profile are processed by these AI providers under agreements that do not permit them to train their models on your data:
- Anthropic (Claude) — coaching conversations, CV feedback, and episode scripts.
- OpenAI — live voice interview rehearsals.
- ElevenLabs — turning your daily episode and Ascend's replies into audio.
In the iOS app we ask for your explicit consent to this before coaching starts, and you can review or withdraw that consent at any time from Settings. Ascend is not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, legal, or financial advice.
Other service providers
Stripe (payments on the web), Apple (sign-in, and purchases made in the iOS app), LinkedIn (sign-in only), Resend (transactional email), and Render (hosting and managed database). These providers process data only as needed to run the service.
Legal bases (GDPR)
We process your data to perform our contract with you (providing the coaching you asked for), with your consent for AI processing where consent is required (you can withdraw it at any time), and on our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and preventing abuse.
International transfers
Some providers above process data in the United States. Where they do, transfers are safeguarded by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
Storage, security and retention
Your data is stored in a managed, access-restricted database. Passwords are hashed; sessions use signed cookies. We keep your data for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account, your data is removed from the live database immediately, and residual copies in encrypted database backups expire automatically within 30 days.
Your rights
You can export everything Ascend holds about you, and permanently delete your account and all associated data, at any time from Settings (on the web, the "Your file" tab); see how to delete your account or your data. Deletion is immediate and irreversible. You also have the rights of access, rectification, restriction, objection, and data portability, and the right to lodge a complaint with your data-protection authority (in the Netherlands: Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens).
Children
Ascend is a career tool for people aged 16 and over. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
Cookies
We use a single signed session cookie to keep you signed in. No advertising or tracking cookies, and no advertising or analytics scripts run on this site. If you reached us by clicking one of our ads, we store the click identifier the ad network put in the link, in a first-party cookie, for up to 90 days. If you then create an account we report back to that network that the click led to a signup. That tells them which of their own ads worked. It tells them nothing about you: no name, no email, no coaching content, and nothing you do inside Ascend. Visitors who did not arrive from an ad have no such cookie at all.
Crisis & safety
Ascend is not an emergency service. If you are in crisis or danger, contact your local emergency number or a crisis line (for example: 988 in the US, 113 or 0800-0113 in the Netherlands, 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or findahelpline.com elsewhere). Ascend may detect such messages and show you these resources.
Changes
We may update this notice; material changes will be reflected here with a new date.