Privacy

What we keep

Your account: your name and email from Google or Apple (if you use "Hide My Email," we only get Apple's private relay address), and which plans and packs you have. What you make: lessons, quizzes and classes you create on the website. Students in a class: only the name the teacher types, a PIN, their answers and grades, and which assigned videos they watched.

Smart Chalk questions, notes and photos

When you ask a question, use Study mode with your notes, or take a photo, it's sent to our AI provider (Anthropic) to write the answer, and may be checked by a safety service (OpenAI's free moderation) first. We don't save your photos, and we keep only a count of how many questions you asked, not the questions. Our providers don't use them to train their models under their API terms. Essays you fix in the Chrome extension are sent to our AI provider to be edited and are not saved on our servers. Your saved answers, flashcards and practice tests are kept only on your own device (in the app, the extension or your browser), not on our servers. Deleting the app or clearing your browser data removes them.

YouTube (YouTube API Services)

Smart Chalk uses YouTube API Services to publish our own lesson videos on our own YouTube channel, Smart Chalk (@smartchalkmedia). By using Smart Chalk, you also agree to the YouTube Terms of Service. YouTube is a Google service, and Google's handling of data is described in the Google Privacy Policy.

What YouTube data we access: only the Smart Chalk channel, which our owner connects once with Google sign-in. Through the API we upload our lesson videos, set their titles, descriptions, thumbnails and captions, and add them to our subject playlists. We never ask teachers, students or other visitors to connect their YouTube accounts, and we don't read, collect or store anyone else's YouTube data.

What we store and why: a sign-in token for our channel (kept on our server so uploads can run), our channel's name, and the YouTube IDs of the videos and playlists we create, used only to manage our own uploads. We don't sell or share this data with anyone, and we don't use it for advertising.

Cookies: YouTube API Services don't place cookies on your device through Smart Chalk. Smart Chalk itself uses only a sign-in cookie to keep you signed in, and no advertising or tracking cookies.

Removing access and deleting data: the channel owner can remove Smart Chalk's access at any time from Google's security settings at https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions, or by clicking Disconnect on the Smart Chalk owner page, which deletes the stored token right away. Any other stored YouTube data (video and playlist IDs) is deleted within 30 days of a request or of access being removed. To ask about YouTube data, contact us as described below.

Payments

Payments on the website go through Stripe. In the app they go through Apple or Google, with RevenueCat telling us what you bought. We never see your card number.

What we don't do

We don't sell your information, show ads, or track you across other apps and websites. We don't ask children for any personal information; children use Ask Smart Chalk through a parent's account.

Camera

The app uses your camera or photo library only when you tap "Take a photo," to send that one picture with your question.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account any time: in the app under Account → Delete account, or by emailing us. This deletes your account, classes and private lessons, and cancels website payments. If you subscribed in the app, also cancel it in your phone's subscription settings. Videos you shared to the public library stay, as described in the terms.

For schools and districts

Student data belongs to the school. We keep only the name a teacher types, a PIN, answers, grades and video watching, and use it only to run Smart Chalk for that school; written answers are graded by our AI provider without student names. We follow FERPA and COPPA, never sell student data or show students ads, and delete a school's student data when asked. Read and print our Student Data Privacy Agreement, or send us your district's agreement to sign.

Contact

Questions about privacy: email the address on your Smart Chalk receipt, or reply to any Smart Chalk email.