Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

• Account information: name, email, password (hashed), grade, country, board (for students in India), avatar, and an optional phone number.
• Parent / guardian contact: a parent or guardian email is required for every student account; a parent or guardian phone number is optional. We use them to notify the parent of the account's creation, to send class updates, and to handle parental requests (access, correction, deletion).
• Free-class call-back requests: If you ask us to call you about a free class, we keep your first name, phone number, email address and the best time to reach you, together with your answers to the short questions (your child's grade, the subject, what would help most and when they can learn) and which ad, post or page brought you there. We use this only to contact you and set up the class. If the request does not become a family account within 90 days, we delete it. We never ask for your child's name at this step.
• How a family found us: when a parent or guardian makes a family account, we keep which ad, post or page brought them (the campaign tags in the link they arrived on), so we can see which of our channels help families. We never record this on a child's account.
• Learning data: test results, mastery progress, lesson activity, spaced-repetition state, badges, and streak information generated through normal use of the Service.
• Live-class data: for live one-on-one or group classes booked through GlowGrades, we use Daily.co to deliver the video call and to produce a text transcript of the class audio. We do not store the underlying audio or video file. See Section 3 for the detailed retention rules.
• Messages: direct messages exchanged between teachers and students or families on the platform.
• Payment information: wallet top-ups and class payments are processed by Stripe, and teacher payout details are collected by Stripe (or, in all teacher payouts). We do not store your card or bank details.
• Technical data: browser type, device type, IP address, and approximate location (the country; in error reports also the city, see Sentry in Section 6) for security, debugging, and platform reliability. If you turn on push notifications, a device token for your phone or tablet.
• Analytics: usage events to understand feature performance. See Section 5.
• Public social-media comments: When someone comments on our Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn or YouTube posts, mentions us on Instagram or X, publishes a public Instagram post under a parenting hashtag we follow, or publishes a public post on X or a public video on YouTube that matches a parenting or tutoring topic we follow, we may keep a copy of what they wrote (up to 2,000 characters; for a video, its title and description), a link to it, when it was posted and, for comments and mentions only, the name or username shown with it (we keep no name or username for a post or video we found), so a member of our team can decide whether to reply. Answers to a few common questions (how to book, prices, subjects, ages and class times) are written in advance by our team and may be sent automatically; every other reply is approved by a person. Every reply is signed “— GlowGrades team”. An AI service (OpenAI) reads the words to help draft a reply; if it suggests the writer may be under 18, we delete the words and the name straight away and never reply. To ask us to delete what we hold or to stop replying to you, email hello@glowgrades.com.
• Direct messages: if you message us on Instagram or Facebook, we keep the words you send (up to 2,000 characters) and your account's platform id so a member of our team can reply. Answers to the common questions listed in our Instagram message menu are written in advance by our team and sent automatically; every other reply is approved by a person, and every reply is signed “— GlowGrades team”. If our check suggests you may be under 18, we do not reply and we delete your message straight away. Kept for 90 days, or sooner once we no longer need it, unless you ask us to delete it earlier by emailing hello@glowgrades.com.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To provide and operate the GlowGrades learning experience.
• To generate personalized AI-powered practice questions, lessons, study plans, and progress reports.
• To produce post-class summaries for the teacher (a recap of topics covered and suggested follow-up) and a separate, age-appropriate summary for the student, and — at a teacher's request — an AI-generated analysis of a student's recent results to help the teacher plan.
• To process wallet top-ups, class payments, and teacher payouts via our payment providers (see Section 6).
• To send transactional emails (e.g., password resets, parent notifications, class reminders, post-class summaries). We do not send marketing emails without your consent.
• To send transactional WhatsApp messages at a phone number you provide (e.g., class summaries, class reminders ~15 min before scheduled classes, booking notifications to teachers, payment alerts). For a family (parent) account we send them only if you tick the WhatsApp box shown next to your phone number; a phone number alone does not opt you in. For a teacher or student account, giving a phone number at signup and accepting our Terms opts you in. You can opt out at any time by replying STOP to any WhatsApp message or by switching the WhatsApp setting off in your account.
• To help you book a free class when you write to our WhatsApp number. If you message us, we reply in that chat and first ask whether you are a parent and whether we may message you on WhatsApp about your booking and classes. If you say yes, we keep your number, your answer and the three choices you tap (your child's age range, the subject and the time that suits); we do not ask for your child's name in WhatsApp. You finish on our website, where you give your name, email and your child's first name. We send at most one reminder in that chat if you have not finished. If you say no, or reply STOP at any time, we keep your number on a do-not-message list so we never message you again; only writing START to us removes it. If you tell us you are a student, we ask you to have a grown-up message us and keep nothing else. You can reach a person from the chat at any time.
• To send push notifications to your phone or tablet, only after you allow them on the device; each category can be switched off in the app.
• To investigate and prevent abuse, fraud, and security incidents.

We do not use student voice recordings or transcripts to train any machine-learning model, to identify any individual by voice (no voice biometrics), or for any advertising purpose.

3. Live Class Recording & AI Processing

When a teacher conducts a live class on GlowGrades, the class audio is processed in real time by Daily.co (our video-call provider) and transcribed into text. The resulting text transcript is sent to OpenAI (gpt-4o-mini) to produce structured summaries used by the platform. We do not retain the raw audio or video file.

• What is stored: the text transcript of the class audio, plus four derived AI-generated summaries (an internal admin analysis, a teacher recap, a parent-facing message draft, and a student-safe class recap).
• Who can read what:
  • The full transcript and the admin analysis are visible only to GlowGrades operations staff for quality monitoring.
  • The teacher recap is visible only to the teacher who taught the class.
  • The AI-drafted parent-facing message and the student-safe summary contain no verbatim quotes and are checked against a list of forbidden terms (no scores, no judgemental language, no admin metrics) before they are stored; a draft that fails the check is discarded. The teacher may edit the parent-facing message before it is sent.
• Retention: the verbatim transcript is automatically deleted 30 days after the class ends — from our database and, by a deletion request to Daily.co, from their systems. The four derived summaries persist for the lifetime of the account because they contain no verbatim content. Since 5 October 2026 the internal admin analysis is written in the AI's own words and any phrase found word-for-word in the transcript is removed before it is saved; admin analyses saved before that date may contain short quoted phrases. They are visible only to our operations staff and are deleted with the account.
• Not an emotion-recognition system: the "sentiment" field in our internal admin analysis describes the overall tone of a session (e.g., engaged, neutral, low energy) at session level, derived from text only. We do not classify individual student or teacher emotional states, and the field is never shown to students or parents. We believe this falls outside the scope of "emotion recognition systems" under EU AI Act Article 5.
• Notice: teachers and students see a notice on the live-class pre-join screen and in our Terms before joining a class. By joining, all participants consent to this transcription. Teachers and students may decline to use camera or microphone and still attend.

4. Children's Privacy (COPPA, GDPR, DPDP)

GlowGrades is designed for grades 1–12, which means our entire student user base consists of minors. We treat every student account as a minor account, regardless of jurisdiction.

• We require a parent or guardian email at signup. We notify the parent that the account has been created and explain how to access, correct, or delete the child's data. The parent may opt the child out at any time using the one-click link in that email or by contacting us at the address below; opting out deletes the student account and its data.
• Practice needs no further step; live classes need a parent's yes. A child can practice questions and see their progress straight away. Before a child can join a live video class, have a class transcribed, or have an AI summary of a class written, we need an explicit yes from the parent or guardian. A parent gives it once, when they make their family account, by ticking: "I'm this family's parent or guardian. For each child I add to GlowGrades, I agree to live video classes, transcription of those classes, and AI class summaries." That one yes covers every child the parent then adds to the family or claims into it (if a parent had already said no for a child through our emailed link, that no stays until the parent changes it on their family page). We use it only after the person who made the family account has shown that the email address is theirs — through the link in our email or by signing in with Google or Apple on that same address; until then it is saved but not used, and the child can practice but cannot join a live class. Families who made their account before this tick existed are asked the same question once, for each child in the family now and later, on their next visit. A child who signs up without a family account can join classes only after the parent or guardian named on the account says yes through a link we email to that address, where the parent can turn any of the three off before agreeing (a choice left unticked is treated as no); we never send that link to the child's own sign-in address. To give a yes later, use your family page; to withdraw one, email us at the address below.
• We collect only the minimum information necessary to deliver the Service.
• We do not show advertisements inside the student learning area, and we do not run advertising or measurement trackers inside the learning area or on the sign-up page. We do not sell or rent children's data to anyone. On our public marketing pages we use limited, consent-based advertising-measurement cookies that are never used to profile children (see the Cookies and Analytics section below).
• Parents and guardians may at any time email hello@glowgrades.com to request a copy of their child's data, correct it, or have it deleted. We will action verified parental requests within 30 days.
• This section is intended to comply with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) for children under 13, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Article 8 for children under 16 in the EEA / UK, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP) 2023 of India for users under 18.

5. Cookies & Analytics

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies. Essential cookies (for login sessions and security) are always set when you use the Service — without them the Service cannot work. Non-essential analytics cookies (set by PostHog, our product-analytics provider, and on our public marketing pages by Google Analytics) are only set after you accept them via the cookie banner shown on your first visit. You may decline analytics at any time by clicking "Decline" in the cookie banner; analytics will not be collected and any previously-set analytics cookies will not be reused. Separately from cookies, our servers record a small number of product events (for example "a test was completed") against your account id for signed-in actions, so we can see which features work; these never include transcript, message, or answer content.

On our public marketing pages (for example the home page, the free-trial page and teacher profiles) we also count, on our own servers and without any cookie, which steps visitors take — a grade picked, a sample question tried, a button tapped, how far down a page they read — under a random number that lives only in that browser tab and is discarded when it closes. These counts hold no name or email, are never joined to an account, and are used only to see where families stop. For each visit we also note the kind of device (phone, tablet or computer), whether the page opened inside an app like Facebook, the country, and the rough time of day — never the device's identity, your IP address or anything that identifies you. On the home page and the free-class page we also count which answer was picked in each question (for example "grade 4" or "Math"), never anything typed into a form.

On our public marketing pages only — not the student learning area and not the sign-up page — we use Meta (Facebook) advertising and measurement cookies to understand how our ads to parents perform. These are set only after you accept "Advertising" cookies in the cookie banner, are never used to profile children, and send no name, email, or contact details to Meta. You may decline them at any time; previously-set advertising cookies will not be reused. We do not set these cookies for visitors in India.

Our public marketing pages — for example the home page, the pages for teachers and teacher sign-up, teacher profiles, blog posts, and the subject, standards and practice pages — also carry Google Analytics 4 (Google LLC), which loads only after you accept analytics cookies in the banner. It sets its own cookie to tell a returning browser from a new one, and receives the address of the page you viewed with everything after the "?" removed, the page title, the page you came from, your browser and device type, language and screen size, and, as with any web request, your connection's IP address — never your name, email or account id. It is never loaded inside the student learning area, on the student or family sign-up pages, or on any signed-in page, and we have switched off Google's "signals" and ad personalisation, so these counts are not used to build an advertising profile. If you decline analytics, or decline later, it does not load and a previously-set Google Analytics cookie is not reused.

Your banner choice is stored in your browser. To change it later, clear this site's data in your browser and the banner will ask again — or email us at the address in Section 14 and we will record your choice for you.

6. Data Sharing & Service Providers

We do not sell or rent your personal information. With your consent, we share limited, non-identifying advertising-measurement data with Meta (Facebook) as described in the Cookies and Analytics section; we never share data from the student learning area for advertising. We use the following service providers ("processors"), each acting on our instructions under a written agreement. Where a provider offers an AI model, we state whether our data may be used to train it.

• Supabase — authentication and database hosting (US).
• Vercel — web hosting and edge delivery.
• Daily.co — live-class video and audio-to-text transcription.
• OpenAI — AI question generation, lesson generation, class summary generation, explanations of practice mistakes, reading practice tips aloud, a teacher's prep notes before the next class, matching class topics to practice, and drafting replies to public social-media comments (it receives the words of the comment only, never the name or username). It receives class transcripts only when the parent or guardian has said yes to AI class summaries, with the names we know replaced by placeholders. For practice and teacher features it receives a student's grade, practice questions, the answers they chose and scores; for a teacher's prep notes it also receives what the student's last class covered (its topics, any homework, and sometimes a short summary of the class). Before any of it leaves, the student's name is taken out: the full name wherever it appears, and each part of the name on its own where it is written as a name, with a capital letter and as a whole word. Three things can still slip through: a name part typed in lower case or as a plural ("the Smiths"), a name part on its own in a script that has no capital letters, such as Hindi or Chinese, and a name, or a spelling of it, that we were never told, such as a friend mentioned in passing. Inputs are scoped to the minimum needed for each task. Under OpenAI's API terms our data is not used to train their models.
• Google (Gemini API) — AI practice-question and study-plan generation, practice tips after a quiz (including the short note in the practice report email), the teacher-requested performance analysis described in Section 2, and drafting help for teacher profiles and blog posts. For the practice and performance features Google receives a student's country, curriculum, grade, subject, topics, scores and when a topic was last practiced; for practice tips it also receives the questions they got wrong and the answers they chose. For drafting help Google receives what the teacher has written about themselves and their post — their headline, bio and subjects, and a post's topic, title and draft — with the teacher's own name swapped for a stand-in before it leaves and put back on our side; anything else typed into those boxes goes as written. None of these requests carries a student's name, a transcript or a message from our records. Under the Gemini API terms we use, our data is not used to train Google's models.
• NVIDIA (NIM API) — writing and independently checking practice questions, drawing pictures for lessons and cover pictures for teachers' blog posts, and sorting our curriculum into skills and topics. For questions and that sorting it receives curriculum details only (subject, curriculum, grade or age range, topic, skill, and practice questions from our question bank), with no information about any student. For a lesson picture it receives a short picture description that our lesson AI writes from the subject and topic, also with no information about any student. For a blog cover picture it receives the words the teacher writes or picks to describe the picture (one ready-made suggestion quotes the blog's title), plus our own style words. Under NVIDIA's API terms our data is not used to train their models.
• OpenRouter — routes some practice-question generation requests to third-party AI model providers. Receives curriculum prompts only — no student personal data. Under OpenRouter's terms our data is not used to train models.
• Stripe — wallet top-ups, class payments, and teacher payouts (Stripe Connect).
• Resend — transactional and notification email delivery.
• Meta Platforms (WhatsApp Business Platform) — delivery of our WhatsApp messages: the transactional messages described in Section 2 and, for teachers who opted in, occasional reminders to finish their teaching profile (add a photo, set a class price). Meta receives the phone number each message goes to (a teacher's or a parent's; for a student account with no separate parent number, the number saved on that account, which may be the student's own) and the full text of each message: our wording plus the details we fill in, which can include the student's name (in some messages the full name as entered on the account), the teacher's name, the subject, the student's grade, the skills a class covered, class dates and times, a class price and whether it was approved, and links back to GlowGrades. A class-summary message can carry a link that opens that class's whiteboard, with the class title and the teacher's and student's names, without signing in, for anyone who has the link. Meta also tells us whether each message was delivered and read, and passes us any message sent to our WhatsApp number, with the sender's phone number and WhatsApp profile name (we keep the message and the number, not the profile name). When you use our booking chat, Meta also carries our questions and the choices you tap (age range, subject, time). This is separate from Meta's advertising role below.
• Apple — delivery of push notifications to iPhone and iPad. When you turn notifications on, Apple receives a device token for your device and the text of each notification so it can be delivered. We send these to Apple directly; no other push service is involved.
• Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) — delivery of push notifications on Android, in the same way: a device token and the text of each notification.
• Sentry — error tracking. When something breaks, on our servers or in your browser, Sentry receives a report of what went wrong and where in our code, the addresses of the pages and services involved with everything after the "?" removed, the identification string your browser or app sends with each request (it names the browser, the device and their versions; some apps, Facebook's and Instagram's among them, add their own version, a language and region setting, the screen size or the mobile network's name), the account id of the signed-in user (in reports from our servers only), and our internal id numbers for the records involved; for about 1 in 10 server requests it also receives timing data in the same form. We have set Sentry not to keep internet (IP) addresses, but it still records roughly where each report came from, such as the country and city. Reports are set up to leave out names, email addresses, phone numbers, passwords, sign-in links or codes, cookies, and anything typed into the app — no transcript, answer, or message content.
• PostHog — product analytics (in your browser only after you accept; on our servers as described in Section 5).
• Google (Google Analytics 4) — visit counts for our public marketing pages, in your browser only after you accept analytics cookies and never inside the student learning area or on any signed-in page. It receives the page address without anything after the "?", the page title, the page you came from, your browser and device type, language and screen size, and your IP address — never a name, email or account id — with Google signals and ad personalisation switched off (Section 5).
• DiceBear — draws the cartoon avatars shown for students and teachers who have not uploaded a photo. Your browser or the app fetches each picture from DiceBear directly, so, as with any web request, it sees your connection's IP address and browser or device type. The request carries only a fixed label from our avatar picker or a scrambled code made from the name — not the name itself, an email or an account id.
• Meta Platforms, Inc. (Facebook) — advertising and conversion measurement for our marketing campaigns, on public marketing pages only and only with your consent. No child personal data is sent; sign-up measurement is performed server-side using only an advertising click identifier.

We may also disclose information when required by law, court order, or to protect the safety of users.

7. Marketplace Nature

GlowGrades is an independent platform. Teachers using the Service are independent providers — not employees, agents, or contractors of GlowGrades. We facilitate connections between students and teachers and provide the technology (scheduling, video calls, transcription, messaging, content, and class payments). When classes are booked and paid for through the platform, payment is processed by our payment providers as described in Sections 1 and 6. Any tuition fees, gifts, tips, or other payments arranged between teachers and students or parents outside the platform's payment tools are not collected, processed, mediated, or guaranteed by GlowGrades. Personal data exchanged directly between teachers and students or parents (for example, in DMs about non-platform arrangements) is not managed by this Privacy Policy.

8. Data Retention & Deletion

• Account data: retained while your account is active. Deleted on request or when you delete your account.
• Learning data (test results, mastery progress, lesson activity): retained while your account is active; deleted with the account.
• Verbatim class transcripts: automatically deleted 30 days after the class ends (see Section 3).
• AI-derived class summaries (no verbatim content; internal admin analyses saved before 5 October 2026 may hold short quoted phrases, visible to our operations staff only): retained for the lifetime of the account.
• Message and notification delivery records (email, WhatsApp, push): retained while the account is active; deleted with the account.
• WhatsApp booking chats (your number, your yes or no, and the three choices you tapped): automatically deleted 30 days after your last message in the chat. The do-not-message list (numbers that said no or STOP) is kept so we can keep that promise; writing START to us removes your number from it.
• Operational audit logs (records of our automated question-quality checks and generation runs): automatically deleted 365 days after they are written. They contain no student personal data.
• Free-class call-back requests: automatically deleted 90 days after they are made, unless they have become a family account (then they are deleted together with that account).
• Public social-media comments: automatically deleted 90 days after we first saw them; the words and name of anyone who may be under 18 are deleted as soon as our check runs.
• Aggregated, anonymized analytics: retained indefinitely (does not identify any individual user).

When an account is deleted — by a teacher, a parent, or a student aged 18 or over from their own Settings; for a student under 18, by their parent or guardian (from their family page, through the confirmation link we email them when the student asks, through the opt-out link, or by email); or by us on a verified request — the deletion runs as soon as it is confirmed and removes every table that holds the student's data, including learning records, messages, notification delivery records, device tokens, and the account itself. Two kinds of record are detached rather than destroyed: a teacher's record that a class took place, and financial records (approved class prices, payments, payouts) that we are required to keep for accounting. In both cases the person is removed from the record — no name, no email, no account link — and only the amount, date and class remain. We keep an internal count of what each deletion removed so we can verify it was complete.

One exception — a reported conversation. If a child or a parent uses “Report a concern” about a conversation, that conversation's messages are kept exactly as they are, and nobody can change or delete them, while our safety team deals with the report — even if an account is deleted in the meantime. Closing the report lifts that lock. Messages we kept only because an account was deleted during the report are then erased by a person on our team as a separate, deliberate step — never while the report has been passed to the authorities — and we check every day for any still waiting.

9. International Transfers

GlowGrades is operated from the United States, and our service providers (Section 6) primarily store and process data in the United States. If you use the Service from the EEA, the United Kingdom, India, or any other country, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, which may have different data-protection laws than your country.

For transfers out of the EEA and the United Kingdom we rely on the EU-U.S. and UK-U.S. Data Privacy Framework where a provider is certified under it, and otherwise on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum) in our agreements with that provider. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards at the address in Section 14.

10. Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the following rights with respect to your personal information:

• The right to access a copy of your data.
• The right to correct inaccurate data.
• The right to have your data deleted.
• The right to receive your data in a portable format.
• The right to withdraw consent (where consent is the lawful basis).
• The right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority (in the EEA / UK) or the Data Protection Board of India.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at hello@glowgrades.com. You can also delete your account at any time from Settings (web) or your profile (app). If you are a student under 18, you can start that any time; because our students are children, the deletion happens once your parent or guardian confirms it — through the link we email them, or on their family page. When we do not know a student's age, we treat them as under 18. We will never treat you differently for exercising a privacy right.

11. California Residents (CCPA / CPRA)

If you live in California, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, gives you the rights in Section 10 plus the right to know what categories of personal information we collect (Section 1), the purposes (Section 2), and the categories of third parties we disclose it to (Section 6).

We do not sell personal information, and we do not sell or share the personal information of anyone we know to be under 16. The student learning area and the sign-up page contain no advertising trackers at all. The only "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising that can occur is the opt-in advertising measurement on our public marketing pages described in Section 5, and it happens only after you choose "Advertising" cookies in the banner. Declining that choice in the cookie banner — or asking us by email to record a decline — is our "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" control.

We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for any purpose other than providing the Service. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf; we will ask the agent for proof of your permission and verify your identity through the email on the account.

12. India (DPDP Act 2023)

If you are in India, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 applies to the personal data we process. We process a child's data only with the consent of the parent or lawful guardian given at signup (Section 4), we do not track or run behavioural advertising directed at children, and we do not set advertising cookies for visitors in India (Section 5).

Grievance Officer. To raise a grievance about how your personal data is handled, write to our Grievance Officer, GlowGrades LLC, at hello@glowgrades.com with the subject line "Grievance". We will acknowledge your grievance and respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may approach the Data Protection Board of India.

13. Security

We use industry-standard security practices, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), authenticated sessions (Supabase Auth), row-level security on our database, and operational secrets stored in our hosting provider's environment-variable vaults. No system is 100% secure, but we take protection of student data seriously and continually review our practices.

14. Changes & Contact

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version will be posted here with a revised effective date. When a change is material, we also show a dated notice at the top of this page, summarising what changed in plain words, for 30 days after the new effective date. Continued use of the Service after that date constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.

Questions about this Privacy Policy or any of your rights? Contact: hello@glowgrades.com. Postal address available on request.