Terms of Service
1. Who we are and these terms
USAnaru™ (usanaru.com, including its API and MCP service) is operated by an individual (sole proprietor) in the United States under the brand USAnaru™ (“we”, “us”). These terms are an agreement between you and us. By using the site or creating an account you accept them; if you do not accept them, please do not use USAnaru™. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data. Privacy Policy
2. What USAnaru™ does — and does not do
USAnaru™ is an information and introduction service. We publish information about U.S. schools, starting with boarding schools, explain visas, admissions and costs, and help students and families connect with schools and with verified helpers such as study-abroad agents, guardian services and J-1 exchange sponsors.
We are not a government agency, a school or an admissions office, a study-abroad agent, a J-1 sponsor, a host-family organization, or a legal, immigration or financial adviser. We do not apply to schools for you, issue or obtain visas, Forms I-20 or DS-2019, place students or run exchange programs, and we do not guarantee admission, a visa, a placement or any other outcome. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security (including SEVP and ICE), NCES or any school shown on the site.
When we introduce you to an organization, any agreement you make (for example with an agent, a sponsor or a school) is between you and that organization. We are not a party to it and are not responsible for its services, fees or conduct, but you can report problems to us. Partners who pay us are labeled as such, and payments never change school facts or how schools are ranked.
3. Information only
School information comes from public sources — mainly the NCES Private School Universe Survey, the SEVP certified-school list and schools’ own websites — or from the schools themselves, and each fact shows its source and the date it was last checked. Public data can be out of date, incomplete or wrong, and schools change their programs, prices and policies. Always confirm admissions, tuition, deadlines and visa or immigration requirements with the school and with official U.S. government sources. Nothing on the site is legal, immigration, financial or other professional advice.
4. Accounts
- You must be at least 13 years old to create an account, and at least 14 if you sign up from Korea or China and 16 if you sign up from Vietnam. If you are under 18, you may use USAnaru™ only with the knowledge of a parent or guardian, who is responsible for your use.
- Give accurate information and keep it up to date. One account is for one person; do not share it or create accounts for others without their permission.
- Keep your email account and any password secure — sign-in links are sent to your email. Tell us at once if you think someone else has used your account.
- You can delete your account at any time in your profile.
5. Roles, links and verification
You can add roles to your account (student, parent or guardian, school staff, agent or guardian service, J-1 sponsor). We may verify a role — for example by your work-email domain, business details or the U.S. Department of State’s public sponsor list — and we may refuse, pause or remove a role if it cannot be verified or is misused. Verification shows only that the checks described on the site were passed; it is not an endorsement or a guarantee of an organization’s services.
A link between a student and a parent, agent or guardian service starts only when the invited person accepts. A student under 18 needs a linked parent’s agreement before linking with a helper. Either side can end a link at any time.
6. Additional terms for schools, agents, guardian services and sponsors
If you use USAnaru™ for an organization, you confirm that you are authorized to act for it, and these terms bind the organization as well as you. You agree to:
- give true information about your organization, your qualifications, your fees and any commissions or payments you receive from schools, and never claim that USAnaru™, a school or a government agency endorses you;
- use personal data you receive through USAnaru™ (for example from a linked student or parent) only to help that person with what they asked for; keep it confidential and secure; not copy it into other systems for unrelated purposes, sell it or use it for marketing without their consent; and delete it when the link ends unless the law requires you to keep it;
- comply with the laws that apply to you, including privacy laws (such as GDPR, Korea’s PIPA and U.S. laws), consumer-protection and advertising rules, any licensing or registration your country requires for study-abroad agencies, and, for J-1 sponsors, the U.S. Department of State Exchange Visitor Program rules (22 CFR Part 62). You remain responsible for your own legal duties, such as screening host families or issuing program documents; USAnaru™ does not perform them for you;
- handle each family fairly and in their interest, and respond to complaints we pass on to you.
You are an independent controller of the personal data you collect or use for your own services. We may suspend organizations that break these rules and may tell affected users when necessary to protect them.
7. Acceptable use
Do not break the law, harass anyone, pretend to be someone else, post false or misleading information, upload malware, try to get into accounts or systems that are not yours, overload the site, or scrape or copy it in bulk except through our API under its terms. Do not use USAnaru™ to contact families for marketing they did not ask for.
8. Your content
You keep ownership of what you submit (messages, profile details, information about your school or organization). You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, display and process it as needed to run and improve the service. Information that a school or organization submits about itself (for example tuition, deadlines, programs or an organization profile it chooses to publish) may be published on the site and through our API and MCP service, labeled with its source. We may use operational data from organizations in aggregated and anonymized form to improve the service and publish statistics; this never includes personal data that identifies a student or family. If you send us suggestions, we may use them without obligation to you.
9. Using our content and data
You may quote and share our pages for personal, research, educational, news and other non-commercial purposes, as long as you name “USAnaru™” and link to the page you used. Copying the site or its compiled data in bulk, or using it in a commercial product or service, requires our written permission or our API terms. API terms
Public source data stays free from its original publishers under their own terms — for example, NCES survey files are in the public domain. These terms cover our compilation, writing and service, not the underlying public records. School names and trademarks belong to their owners and are used only to identify schools.
10. Fees
USAnaru™ is currently free for students and families. If we introduce paid features, for example tools for organizations, we will show the price and terms before you pay, and nothing will be charged without your agreement.
11. Other websites and services
Links to schools and other sites, and services such as Google Sign-In and YouTube, are run by others under their own terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for their content or practices.
12. Disclaimer of warranties
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, availability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
13. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for losses arising from school choices, admission or visa decisions, the acts of schools, agents, sponsors or other organizations, or inaccurate third-party data. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim and US $100. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, for intentional misconduct or gross negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited by law.
14. Indemnity
If you use USAnaru™ for an organization or a business, you agree to compensate us for reasonable losses and costs, including legal fees, arising from your breach of these terms or of the law. For consumers, this applies only to the extent the law where you live allows.
15. Suspension and termination
We may suspend or close accounts or roles that break these terms or put other users at risk, normally after telling you why, unless the law or safety requires otherwise. You can stop using USAnaru™ and delete your account at any time. Sections that by their nature should continue (for example 8, 9, 12–16) survive termination.
16. Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and disputes will be heard in the state or federal courts located in Texas. If you are a consumer living in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Korea or another country whose law gives you rights that cannot be waived by contract — such as the protection of your local consumer law or the right to bring proceedings in your local courts — nothing in these terms takes those rights away. Please contact us first; most problems can be solved quickly.
17. Changes to the service and these terms
We may change the service or these terms. We will post the new version here with a new date. If a change is material, we will email account holders before it takes effect and ask them to agree again the next time they use their account; if you do not agree, you can delete your account. Changes do not apply to disputes that arose before them.
18. General
These terms, the Privacy Policy and any terms shown for specific features (such as the API terms) are the whole agreement between you and us about the service. If any part is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. If we do not enforce a right at once, we have not waived it. We may transfer these terms to a successor of USAnaru™; you may not transfer them without our consent.