How your data is handled

Everything is scoped to your account and used only to make the product work:

• The study material you upload (files, photos, links, lecture recordings) and the searchable text extracted from it.
• Your questions, the answers you received, saved study guides, practice-quiz scores, and review-card schedules.
• Your email address (for sign-in) and, if you subscribe, your billing status, never card numbers.

We don't sell data, run ads, or use tracking cookies, one essential cookie keeps you signed in.

• Supabase hosts the database, file storage, and authentication.
• Vercel hosts the application.
• AI providers (such as Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, HuggingFace, and OpenAI where enabled) process your question and the relevant passages of your material transiently to generate answers, guides, quizzes, and transcriptions. They are processors, not owners, of that content.
• Stripe / PayFast handle payments; card details go to them directly and never touch our servers.

Under the Protection of Personal Information Act you can access, correct, or delete your personal information:

• Access & export, your question history can be exported from the History tab; your guides download as markdown.
• Deletion, Account → Delete account permanently removes your uploads, questions, guides, quiz history, and the account itself, immediately and irreversibly. No email required, no waiting period.
• Questions or complaints, contact isaacgumbi@gmail.com. You may also lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa.

When a teacher or classmate shares a library, members get read-only access for questions, they can never change or delete the material. Class insights shown to a library owner are aggregate-only: they appear only with two or more members, cover topics across the whole class, and never identify or rank individual students. Per-student surveillance is deliberately not built.

Study Grounded is a study tool, not a social platform: there is no public profile, no messaging, no ads, and answers come only from material the learner or their class uploaded. Learners under 18 should use the service with the consent of a parent or guardian, and a guardian may request deletion of a learner's account at any time via the contact above.

Every answer cites the exact passages it came from, the topic gate refuses questions the material doesn't cover, and Tutor mode guides learners with hints and questions instead of handing over answers. Teachers can recommend it knowing it works from approved material, not the open web.