Privacy Policy

1. Overview

This policy explains what personal information AlignWellz collects, why, who handles it and how it's protected, including the personal information of children who use the Service under a parent or guardian's account. We process personal information in line with South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Protecting children's privacy comes first in every decision we make about this Service.

2. Our promises about children

• Only a parent or guardian can create an account. Children do not have accounts, passwords or email addresses of their own with us.
• We use a child's information only to teach them and to show their parent how they are getting on.
• We never sell children's information, never show them adverts, and never share it with advertisers or data brokers.
• We do not ask children for contact details, and we do not build a profile of a child for any purpose other than helping them learn.
• We do not make or keep voiceprints or any other biometric identifier of a child, and we do not use a child's voice to identify them.
• AlignWellz does not receive or keep recordings of a child's voice (see section 4).
• A parent can read and erase the learning notes we keep about their child, ask us to delete everything, and withdraw consent at any time.

3. Who is responsible for this data, and consent

The account holder (a parent or guardian) creates and controls the account. Under POPIA, a child's personal information may only be processed with the prior consent of a parent or guardian, or another person with legal authority over the child. When you add your child, we ask you to tick a box to confirm that you are their parent or legal guardian and that you agree to the processing described in this policy, for the purpose of providing the Service to your child. We keep a record of that agreement: that you agreed, for which child, which version of this policy and when. You can withdraw your consent at any time by asking us to delete your child's profile; the Service cannot be provided without it.

4. Information we collect

• Account information: the parent's name, email address, and password (stored as a secure hash, never in plain text).
• Student profiles: a child's name and grade, added by the account holder.
• Learning activity: chat messages with the AI tutor, uploaded homework photos or PDFs, practice question attempts, study plans, goals, and the progress and mastery information calculated from that activity.
• Learning notes: short notes, written automatically from a child's tutoring conversations, about how that child learns (for example which kinds of examples help). The tutor reads them so it can teach in the way that suits the child. They are not meant to contain contact details or other personal information, a parent can read them on the child's page and erase them at any time, and they are deleted with the child's profile.
• Talking time: when a child talks to the tutor we count how many seconds of voice they have used each day (a number, nothing else), so we can apply the daily talking-time limit of their plan.
• Consent records: that a parent agreed to this policy for a child, which version, and when.
• Payment records: the amount, date, and status of payments. We don't receive or store card numbers — those are handled directly by our payment processor, Yoco.
• Support messages: the name, email address and message you send through our support form or to our support email address, and the messages and number if you contact us on WhatsApp. If you are signed in when you use the form, the message is linked to your account so we can help with it.
• Basic usage events: things like account creation or a checkout being started, logged so we can understand how the Service is used and fix problems. On our public homepage we also count which sign-up button was clicked. That count doesn't use cookies, doesn't record your IP address and isn't linked to you, and it isn't sent if your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal.

Voice

Children can talk to the tutor in the Chrome and Edge browsers. The browser itself turns their speech into text and speaks the tutor's answers. Depending on the browser, the speech-to-text step may be done on the browser maker's servers (Google for Chrome, Microsoft for Edge), under their own privacy terms. AlignWellz does not receive, record or store that audio; we receive only the words as text, like a typed message. If you would rather your child's speech does not go to the browser maker, your child can type to the tutor instead, which always works.

To give the tutor a clear voice, especially in Afrikaans, we may send the tutor's own sentences (as text, which can include your child's first name) to Microsoft's Azure speech service. It runs in Microsoft's South Africa North data centre, turns the text into sound and sends the sound back, under Microsoft's own terms. Microsoft does not receive your child's voice from us, only the tutor's words. When the clear voice is not available, your browser's own voice is used instead.

5. How we use this information

• To provide the AI tutoring, practice, and progress-tracking features of the Service.
• To let a parent see their child's progress across subjects.
• To apply the free trial and the daily talking-time limits.
• To process payments and manage subscriptions.
• To answer the questions and requests you send to support.
• To keep the Service secure and working properly, and to improve it over time.

We don't sell personal information, and we don't use children's learning data for advertising.

The tutor is an AI, a computer program, and it can make mistakes. It does not make decisions about a child that have a legal effect on them.

6. Who we share information with

We share information only with service providers who help us run AlignWellz, and only as needed to do that:

• Anthropic (United States) — processes tutoring conversations and uploaded homework to generate the AI tutor's responses.
• Neon (database, on Amazon Web Services in N. Virginia, United States) — stores our database.
• Vercel (Washington D.C., United States) — runs the application and stores uploaded homework files.
• Yoco (South Africa) — processes payments; they receive what's needed to charge you, not your full account data.
• Resend (United States) — sends the emails we send you, such as password-reset links and replies from our support team.
• Microsoft Azure speech (South Africa North) — turns the tutor's sentences into spoken audio, as described in section 4. It does not receive your child's voice.
• Your browser's speech service — only if your child uses voice, as described in section 4. We do not choose or control it.

We don't share personal information with advertisers or data brokers.

AlignWellz doesn't train AI models on your or your child's information. Anthropic's commercial terms also state that Anthropic may not train its models on customer content from its services. Uploaded homework photos and PDFs are sent to Anthropic so the text in them can be read, and short excerpts of conversations are sent to Anthropic to write the learning notes described above.

7. Sending information outside South Africa

Most of the providers above work in the United States, so your child's information is stored and processed outside South Africa. POPIA allows this where the receiver is bound by rules that protect information in a way that is substantially similar to POPIA, or where the parent consents. We rely on your consent, given when you add your child, and we only use providers whose terms limit what they may do with the information we send them (for example, Anthropic's terms do not allow it to train its models on our customers' content). If you do not agree to your child's information being handled outside South Africa, please do not add your child, or ask us to delete their profile.

8. Cookies

We use a session cookie to keep you signed in — that's it. We don't use third-party advertising cookies or trackers on the Service.

9. How long we keep information

We keep account and learning data for as long as the account is active, so progress history stays available. We do not keep recordings of anyone's voice. If you'd like your account and your children's data deleted, contact us and we'll action that request.

10. Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including encrypted connections, hashed passwords, and checks that make sure a parent can only ever see their own children's information. No system is completely secure, but we work to keep this data protected. If we learn that someone has gained access to your information without permission, we will tell you and South Africa's Information Regulator, as POPIA requires.

11. Your rights

Under POPIA, you can ask us to:

• Tell you what personal information (yours or your child's) we hold.
• Correct information that's wrong or out of date.
• Delete your account and associated personal information, including your children's.
• Object to a particular use of your information, or withdraw your consent.

You can also lodge a complaint with South Africa's Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za) if you believe your information hasn't been handled properly.

12. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change to how we handle personal information, we'll let you know before it takes effect.

13. Contact us

For any privacy question, or to exercise any of the rights above, contact us at info@alignwellz.com.