Privacy Policy

Last updated 24 October 2026 · Applies to stickwise.app and the Stickwise app

Stickwise is a learning app: GCSE revision, tools for teachers and their classes, and a Library where you can study documents you import. This page explains, in plain English, what information we hold about you, why, and what you can do about it. We collect only what the app needs to work, we never sell it, and we never show adverts.

Who we are

Stickwise is run by Manpreet Arora, an individual based in the United Kingdom, who is responsible for your data (the "data controller"). For anything about your data, email [email protected].

What we collect

• Account details — your email address, a password (stored only as a scrambled hash, never readable by us), or, if you use "Continue with Google", the name and email Google gives us. Nothing else from your Google account.
• Profile — the username you choose and whether you told us you're a student, teacher, parent or other.
• Learning data — which cards you've reviewed, how you rated them, your streak, cards and decks you write yourself, your exam dates, tier and course-option preferences, and the scores and answers from games you play.
• Classes and friends — the classes you join or create, the join codes, your friend list and game invites. For class assignments, we store the assigned course and topic, task type, tier, target, due date, your reported completion count, your best and latest score on a class quiz and how many times you took it, and when your progress was updated.
• An account your teacher made for you — if your school or teacher made your Stickwise account, we also hold the name your teacher entered (only that teacher sees it), your login card's code (stored only as a scrambled hash, never readable by us), whether you have signed in yet, whether your teacher switched on friend requests or public games for your account (both start off), a record of what your teacher did with your account (for example printing a new login card), and, if your class came from Google Classroom, your school email address. See Schools and teachers.
• Library — the text of documents you import into your Library and the study notes made from them, as explained in Your Library and imported documents below.
• Technical basics — the kind of browser and device you use, and standard server logs, kept by our hosting providers to keep the site running and secure.

We do not use tracking cookies or advertising trackers. The app stores your progress, preferences and login token in your browser's local storage so it works offline and keeps you signed in. Guest study progress stays on that device. Site requests and technical error reports still reach our hosting provider, and using an enabled AI feature sends the text needed for that feature to the AI provider.

Why we use it

• To run the service you signed up for: saving your progress, syncing it across your devices, running games, classes and scoreboards. (Legal basis: performing our contract with you.)
• To mark typed answers. Typed answers are marked in your browser against the mark-scheme key terms. If the smart examiner is switched on for the site, the question and your answer text are also sent to an AI marking service (Google Gemini) to check them against the mark scheme; your name and email are never sent with it.
• To keep the service safe and fix problems. Automatic app error reports contain a fixed error category, a recognised script name, line number, app view, course code and build version. They do not include the original error message, answer text or a full page address. (Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running a secure service.)

Who can see what

• Your full profile, including your role, streak and existing rating, is private to your account. Other students can find you by username so they can send a friend request; you can switch this off on your profile at any time. Friends, people exchanging friend requests and classmates can still see your username so they can recognise you.
• Game results and answers are visible to participants and members of the associated class. Public games list their title and host's username. A game invitation link lets a signed-in person open and join that game; class games additionally require class membership. Share links only with the people you want to invite.
• Decks you choose to publish to the community are visible to everyone, with your username as the author. Other decks are private unless you use sharing to give selected friends or classes you teach access. They can study the shared deck and save a private copy. Removing access stops them opening the shared deck again; copies they have already saved remain theirs.
• Your email, course preferences and individual study progress are private to you, except for task progress you share by opening a class assignment. The class owner can see your completion count or lesson percentage for that assignment; classmates cannot. Existing progress in the assigned topic can count. The app does not send your individual lesson answers or unrelated study history to the class owner. Leaving a class stops access to its tasks, but the class owner retains previously reported task progress while the class and account records exist. Authorised service operators can access them to run the service, investigate a problem or respond to your request.

Your Library and imported documents

When you're signed in, you can import a document into your Library, such as a PDF, an ebook, a subtitle file or text you paste in. Your browser reads the file, and the file itself stays on your device. Only its text is sent, part by part, to our server (hosted by Cloudflare), which passes it to our AI provider, Anthropic, to make your study notes, flashcards and lesson questions. Anthropic receives the text with the document's title and author, never your name or email address. Anthropic is based in the United States. If a PDF has pages whose tables or charts are drawn as pictures rather than text, your browser also sends pictures of those pages, so that your notes can include their figures.

You can also add a document just to read it, without study notes. Then we keep the file itself in your account, so you can open it on any device where you sign in. It is stored by Supabase, our database provider, in a private space that only your account can open: it is never public, and we don't share it. Your devices also keep a copy of a book once you open it there, so it opens without the internet. We delete the file when you remove the book, and when you delete your account. Nothing about it is sent to our AI provider unless you choose to make study notes from it.

You can also import an article by pasting its link. Our server then fetches that one page (or PDF) from its website and passes it straight back to your browser, which picks out the article's text; from there it is imported like text you paste in. The website sees a request from Stickwise's server, never your name, email address or cookies. Neither the link nor the page is kept. We keep only the times you imported from a link, for a day, so that we can limit how often it is used.

If you choose Saver, your study notes are made a little later, when Anthropic has spare capacity, for fewer credits. With Fast, a document's parts after the third are made the same way, in the background while you read the first ones. So that this can carry on after you close Stickwise, our server keeps the text of each of these parts (and any pictures of its pages) in our database, which Supabase runs for us, until that part's notes are made. Then the text is deleted, and it is never kept for more than three days. The notes made from it wait in the same database until Stickwise on your device collects them, for up to 30 days. Anthropic keeps the results of this kind of request for up to 29 days, under its own terms.

For the Library we process:

• Document text — the text of each document you import, with its title and author, and pictures of any PDF pages whose tables or charts are drawn as pictures. With Saver, and for a Fast document's parts after the third, they are kept for up to three days while the notes are made.
• Documents you add to read — the file itself, its name and size, and its title, author and cover, kept until you remove it or delete your account.
• Study notes — the notes, flashcards and lesson questions made from that text.
• Your Library and progress — the books in your Library, and your flashcard and lesson progress on them.
• Usage records — how many pages you import, when, and from which document, so we can apply your allowance and keep track of our costs; and, for a day, the times you imported from a link.

Your Library is private to you and is not shown to other users. Our AI provider's terms do not allow it to use your content to train its models.

When you're signed in, the study notes in your Library are saved to your account, so they appear on your other devices. So are your place in each book, your lesson answers and results, and your daily recall, so you can carry on where you left off on another device. They are kept in our database, which Supabase runs for us. They stay until you remove them, which you can do at any time: removing a book deletes its notes from your account too. Deleting your account deletes them all. When you sign out, your Library leaves that device once it is saved to your account.

Schools and teachers

Teachers and tutors can add a class to Stickwise, make accounts for their students, set work and see how it is going. When a school uses Stickwise with its pupils, the school decides how its pupils' class information is used, and we handle that information for the school under a data processing agreement. For anything a pupil does on their own, such as their own study, decks and friends, we are responsible as the rest of this policy explains. Parents and pupils can ask the school, or us, about their data.

Adding a class. A teacher can paste a class list, upload a spreadsheet (CSV or Excel) or choose a photo or screenshot of a list. A list or spreadsheet is read in the teacher's browser, and only the names leave the device: other columns, such as dates of birth or groups, are left out and never sent. The teacher checks every name before any account is made.

Reading names from a picture. If a teacher chooses a photo or screenshot, the picture is sent once, through our server, to our AI provider Anthropic, whose Claude AI returns only the names it can read. We do not keep the picture. Anthropic receives it without the teacher's name or email address, may keep it for up to 30 days under its own terms, and does not use it to train its models. We record only who asked for a picture to be read, when, and what it cost, for 90 days, so that we can keep to a daily limit.

Google Classroom. A teacher can bring a class across from Google Classroom. Google then asks the teacher to let Stickwise see, read only, their Google Classroom classes, the students in them and those students' school email addresses. Our server uses that permission once, to list the teacher's classes and the students in the class they choose, and then hands the permission back to Google (if the teacher stops part-way, it runs out within an hour). We do not keep it, and we keep nothing else from Google except the names, and the school email addresses, of the students the teacher then chooses to add. A school email address lets that student also sign in with their school Google account.

Stickwise's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use information from Google only to make and run the class the teacher asked for. We never sell it, never use it for advertising, never use it to train AI models, and no person reads it unless the teacher asks us to help, or we must for security or by law.

Login cards. A login card shows a student's username, an 8-digit code and a QR code that signs them in. Students need no email address. We store the code only as a scrambled hash. Ten wrong codes in a row lock a card for 15 minutes. To stop guessing, we note the time of each wrong code with a scrambled form of the network address it came from, never the address itself, and delete these notes after a day. A teacher can print a new card at any time, and the old code stops working at once.

What a teacher sees. For the students in their classes, a teacher sees the name they entered, the username, whether a student has signed in yet, whether a card is locked, and progress and quiz scores on the work set in that class. A teacher never sees a student's other study, decks, friends or other classes.

Settings a teacher chooses. Friend requests and public games are off for an account a teacher makes, until that teacher switches them on from the class page. Class games always work. A teacher can also switch off reading names from pictures and the Google Classroom import for themselves. If a teacher switches friend requests off again, the friendships those students made on Stickwise end. Our database enforces each setting, and the student's own screens say that their school switched it off.

A record of what teachers do. We keep a record of what a teacher does with the accounts they made: making an account, adding it to or taking it out of a class, a new login card, a name change, deleting the account, and changes to the settings above. Each entry says who did it and when, and names the student by username only, never by the name the teacher typed or the code on their card. The teacher sees the record on the class page and can download it for their school's safeguarding lead. We delete each entry after a year, also when the account it is about has been deleted, so that a school can still check what happened. A school can ask us to delete a student's entries sooner.

Accounts a teacher makes. These accounts are kept out of username search, and their usernames cannot be changed, because they are printed on the login card. The teacher who made an account looks after it and can delete it. A student who wants their account deleted can ask their teacher, or email us. If a student brought across from Google Classroom already has a Stickwise account, we never add them or change their account: they are invited to join the class the next time they sign in with that school Google account, and the invitation lapses after 60 days.

Subscriptions and payments

Stripe processes payment details. Stickwise does not store your full card number or security code. We store billing identifiers linked to your account, your plan, payment and subscription status, access dates, and relevant refund or dispute records to run your subscription, prevent fraud and handle support requests. Stripe collects billing information during checkout. See Stripe’s privacy notice. If you pay from the European Union, Stripe works out the VAT for your country from your billing address. We also keep the country your internet connection is in (Cloudflare, our host, tells us the country; we don't keep the internet address itself) with the payment, as a record of where you were for VAT. EU VAT rules require these records to be kept for 10 years.

Billing information needed for accounting or legal obligations may be retained after your account closes. Other billing data is kept only as long as needed to manage the subscription, resolve a dispute or meet those obligations. Contact us for details about records associated with your account.

Who helps us run Stickwise

We use a small number of trusted providers, each bound by their own privacy commitments and only used for the purpose stated:

We never sell your information and we don't share it with advertisers.

Age

Stickwise is for students aged 13 and over. If you're under 13, please ask a parent or guardian to create and manage the account. Parents: if you'd like to see or delete your child's data, email us from the address above. If a school or teacher made the account, you can also ask them.

How long we keep it

Support emails, and any notes we make while handling a request, are deleted 30 days after the request is closed.

The text of a document you import with Saver, and of a Fast document's parts after the third, with any pictures of its pages, is deleted as soon as its notes are made, and after three days at the most; notes waiting for your device to collect them are deleted after 30 days. The times you imported from a link are deleted after a day.

For classes: a picture of a class list is never kept, and the record of who had one read is deleted after 90 days. Notes of wrong login-card codes are deleted after a day, and class invitations after 60 days. A teacher's name for a student is deleted once the student is in none of that teacher's classes, unless the teacher made the student's account. An account a teacher made stays until the teacher deletes it, or until we delete it at the school's or the student's request; deleting it removes its login card, the teacher's name for it and its class places. The record of what a teacher did with the accounts they made is deleted entry by entry after a year.

We keep account data while your account exists. To request deletion, email the support address above; there is currently no account-deletion button in the app. Tell us if your request also concerns public game results or published decks so we can include these in the response.

Your rights

Under UK data-protection law you can ask us to show you the data we hold, correct it, delete it, or send you a copy. Just email us — we don't make you jump through hoops. If you're unhappy with how we've handled something, you can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll say so in the app. The date at the top always shows the current version.

See also the Terms of Use.