Privacy Policy

CIE Buddy is a study platform for Cambridge International (CAIE) students, offered by StudyPal, a startup based in Mumbai, India. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean StudyPal and CIE Buddy, and “you” means the person using it.

Contact: contact@studypal.co.in, or 501 Avanti Apartments, Flank Road, Sion (East), Mumbai 400022, India.

CIE Buddy is for students aged 13 and over, and many of our users are under 18. If you are under 18, please use CIE Buddy with the knowledge of a parent or guardian, and show them this policy. A parent or guardian can contact us at any time to see, correct or delete their child's data, or to withdraw any permission their child gave.

Some things are optional and happen only if you say yes, such as detailed usage analytics and screen recordings (section 5). If you are under 18, please only say yes if a parent or guardian agrees.

We do not show advertising, we do not sell anyone's data, and we do not build profiles to target anyone with ads. If we learn that someone under 13 has an account, we will delete it and its data.

Your account:

• Your email address, your name, and your Google profile photo if you sign in with Google.
• Your password is handled by Google Firebase. We never see it.

What you put into CIE Buddy:

• Your level and subjects, planner ratings, and flashcards you create.
• Questions you ask the AI tutor, including any photos you attach, and its answers. Your question history is kept so you (and any teacher you link) can look back at it.
• Text or images you pick out of a past paper to have it explained, and the question's text to find its mark scheme. Past-paper PDFs you open stay on your device; only what you choose to send leaves it.
• Your ratings of AI answers (👍 / 👎 and the reason).

Your learning activity: what you study and how it went (for example, a flashcard rated “Hard”, a chapter marked “Confident”, a question asked about a topic), linked to syllabus topics. We use it to work out which topics you know well and which need work.

If you choose to:

• Link a teacher: they can see the questions you ask.
• Join early access: your phone number, so we can message or call you about new features. You can leave at any time in Profile.
• Buy CIE Buddy Pro: payment is handled by Razorpay. We receive the order and payment IDs and whether it succeeded, never your card or bank details.

How you use the website (usage analytics): anonymous by default, and in more detail only if you allow it. See section 5.

• To run CIE Buddy: your account, your subjects, your planner, flashcards and history.
• To answer your questions and explain mark schemes, using AI (section 7).
• To track your progress by topic and suggest what to revise next.
• To find and fix bugs, see which features help, and improve them (section 5).
• To take payments and keep the records the law requires.
• To reply when you contact us, and to tell you about important changes.
• To keep CIE Buddy secure and prevent misuse.

We rely on your agreement when you create an account (and a parent's or guardian's, if you are under 18), on what we need to provide the service you asked for, and on our legal obligations. Detailed analytics and screen recordings rely only on your separate permission, which you can withdraw at any time.

We use PostHog, an analytics service that stores its data in the European Union, to see which features help and where the site is confusing or broken. There are two levels:

Anonymous (always, unless you've set your browser to “Do Not Track”): we count things like which pages are opened, which features are used, errors, and how fast pages load. Nothing is stored on your device for this, it isn't linked to your account, and there are no screen recordings.

Detailed (only if you allow it): the same, but linked to a random account ID, so we can see how people use CIE Buddy over time, plus screen recordings of some visits, so we can watch where something went wrong. We ask the first time you sign in, and you can change your answer at any time in Profile → Account → Usage analytics. Saying no changes nothing else about CIE Buddy.

Either way, we set it up to collect as little as possible:

• You are never identified by your name, email or phone number.
• Your questions, the AI's answers, your photos and your flashcards are never included in analytics events. In screen recordings they are hidden, as is everything you type, your name, email, phone number and profile photo.
• Your IP address is used only to estimate your country, then discarded.
• Screen recordings are deleted after 30 days.

PostHog also uses AI to look through these recordings (with the hidden parts still hidden) and usage figures for bugs and signs that something is frustrating people, and reports them to us.

Separately, our servers record how each AI answer performed (which model, how long it took, whether it failed), without who asked or what was asked.

We store only what CIE Buddy needs on your device: keeping you signed in (Firebase), your settings (theme, sidebar), work in progress such as study events waiting to be sent, and your analytics choice.

If you allow detailed analytics, PostHog also stores an identifier in a cookie and your browser's storage. If you don't, it stores nothing. We use no advertising cookies.

When you ask a question, have a mark scheme or flashcard explained, or make flashcards from notes, what you send (text and any photo) goes to an AI model to write the answer. We mainly use Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service, which doesn't use your data to train its models. Some older features may use Google's Gemini.

We may review samples of questions and answers to check and improve the quality of answers, for example to compare AI models before switching to a new one.

AI answers can be wrong. Check important answers against your notes and mark schemes.

We don't sell your data or share it for advertising. We share it only with the service providers that run CIE Buddy for us, who may use it only to provide their service to us:

• Google Firebase: sign-in and our database.
• Microsoft Azure: our servers (in India) and AI models (in the United States).
• Vercel: hosts the website.
• PostHog: usage analytics and screen recordings (European Union).
• Razorpay: payments.
• Google: email, when you write to us.

We also share data if you ask us to (for example, with a teacher you link), if the law requires it, or to protect our users or CIE Buddy. If CIE Buddy is ever sold or merged, your data would move to the new owner under this policy.

Some of these providers store data outside your country, including in the United States and the European Union. We only use providers that protect it to the standards the law requires.

• Your account, study data and history: until you ask us to delete your account.
• Screen recordings: 30 days.
• Usage analytics: while it's useful for seeing how CIE Buddy is used over time, or until you ask us to delete it.
• Payment records: as long as tax and accounting law requires, even after you delete your account.

You (or your parent or guardian) can ask us to:

• Show you the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct it if it's wrong.
• Delete it, along with your account.
• Stop using it for something you agreed to, such as early access or usage analytics.

Email contact@studypal.co.in from your account's email address, or use “Request account deletion” in Profile → Account. We may ask you to confirm who you are, and we will reply within 30 days. Deleting your account also deletes the analytics linked to it; any screen recordings expire within 30 days. If you're not happy with how we handled a request, tell our grievance officer (section 13), and you can also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Data is encrypted in transit, access to it is limited to the people who need it, and passwords and payment details are handled by specialist providers (Firebase and Razorpay). No system is perfectly secure, but if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

We update this policy when what we do changes. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change matters to you, we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

For anything about your data, contact our grievance officer, Krish Shah, at contact@studypal.co.in, or write to 501 Avanti Apartments, Flank Road, Sion (East), Mumbai 400022, India.