Privacy Policy
What we collect while you study here, who else it reaches, and how to get it back or have it deleted.
Last updated 10 September 2026
The short version
A summary, not a substitute. The numbered sections below are the policy.
We do not sell your data
No advertising networks, no tracking pixels, no third-party analytics. We run no ads, so there is no profile of you to sell.
Your work is read by AI
Tutor chat, teach-back, blurting and written-answer feedback send what you wrote to Google to generate a reply. Section 4 covers exactly what leaves.
Card details never reach us
Payments run through Stripe on their own hosted pages. We store whether you are subscribed, and a Stripe reference. Never a card number.
You can get it back, or get it gone
Pause or delete your account yourself from Settings. Deletion has a 30-day grace period during which you can undo it; after that it is permanent.
1Who we are
Sprouting From The STEM LLC, a Texas limited liability company ("we," "us"), operates this note-taking and AI study platform. This policy explains what we collect when you use the website and the student, parent and instructor apps, why we collect it, and what you can ask us to do about it.
It covers our own services only. If you follow a link to somebody else's site, their policy applies there, not this one.
2What we collect
Almost all of it is something you typed, and the rest keeps the lights on.
- Your account. Your name, your email address, and a password that is stored hashed, never as text we can read. If you sign in with Google or GitHub instead, we receive your name, email address and profile picture from them, and no password.
- Your learning. The courses and lessons you open, the answers you submit, your scores, streaks and study plans, and your language and vocabulary practice.
- What you write and upload. Notes, notebooks, mind maps, documents and any files you add to your workspace.
- Your conversations with the tutors. Messages you send, the answers you give back when a tutor asks you to explain something, and the feedback it returned.
- Billing. Whether you have an active subscription and a reference that identifies you to Stripe. Card numbers are entered on Stripe's own pages and never reach us.
- Messages you send us. What you write in the contact form, and the address you ask us to reply to.
- Technical records. The ordinary server logs our hosting provider keeps, including browser and device type and IP address, used to keep the service running and secure.
3How we use it
We use what we collect to:
- run your account and keep you signed in;
- save your progress so it is still there tomorrow;
- decide what to show you next, and what to bring back for review;
- generate tutoring, feedback and practice material;
- take payment and manage subscriptions;
- answer you when you contact us;
- find bugs, prevent abuse and keep the platform secure.
We do not sell your personal data, we do not share it with advertising networks, and we do not build an advertising profile of you. We run no ads.
4AI features and your work
Tutoring, feedback and practice generation on this platform are produced by an AI model that we do not run ourselves, so using those features means sending your work to somebody else to process. This section is the part of the policy most worth reading.
Which features. Chatting with a tutor, explaining a topic back in your own words, writing out what you remember from memory, getting written answers marked, and generating practice material.
What is sent. The message or answer you submitted, and the lesson or exercise text it relates to, so the reply makes sense in context. It goes to Google's Gemini API, which returns the response you see.
What we do not do. We do not use your work to train AI models, and we do not publish it or show it to other learners. If you would rather a piece of writing were never processed this way, keep it out of the AI features and use your notes instead.
5Who else processes your data
We keep this list short on purpose. These three companies process data on our behalf so the platform can work, and each is bound to use it only for what we ask.
7How long we keep it
We keep your account and your learning history for as long as your account is open, because that history is the product: progress, streaks and review scheduling all depend on it. When you ask us to delete your account we remove it and the work attached to it. Records we are required to keep for tax and accounting, such as proof of a payment, are kept for as long as the law requires and then deleted.
8Your rights and choices
You can ask us to:
- give you a copy of the data we hold about you;
- correct anything that is wrong;
- delete your account and the work attached to it;
- stop sending you email that is not about running your account.
You can pause or delete your account yourself from Settings. For a copy of your data, a correction, or to ask a person to delete your account instead, use our contact form and choose General. We may need to check you are who you say you are before we act on a request made this way. Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone once the grace period ends.
If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, these are your rights under the UK GDPR and the GDPR, including access (Article 15), correction (Article 16) and erasure (Article 17), and you may complain to your national data protection authority. If you are in California, you have the right to know what we collect and to ask us to delete it, and we will not treat you differently for asking.
9Children
The platform is open to all ages, but we do not allow anyone under 13 to use it. Creating an account requires confirming you are 13 or older, and we ask again during setup. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 13, we remove it immediately — not on a delay, and not something the account itself can undo.
Accounts can still be linked to a parent, who can see the learner's progress. If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child under 13 has gotten past this and created an account, contact us through the contact form and we will remove it.
10How we protect it
Traffic between you and us is encrypted in transit. Access to the database is governed by per-row rules, so an account can only read its own data, and access by our team is limited to the people who need it. Passwords are stored hashed and cannot be read by us or recovered. No online service can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise, but if a breach affects you we will tell you.
11Changes to this policy
When this policy changes we update the date at the top of the page. If a change materially affects what we do with your data, we will say so directly rather than relying on you noticing a new date.
12Contact us
Questions about this policy, or about anything we hold on you, go through our contact form. Choose General and a person will read it.
Want your data, or want it gone?
Send the request through the contact form and choose General. Tell us which account it concerns and what you want done with it.