← Explica
# Explica Privacy Policy
**Template — not legal advice.** This reflects what the software actually does today, which is the hard part. Before selling to a school, have a lawyer review it, and fill in every `[BRACKETED]` field. Districts routinely reject vendors whose policy doesn't match their own agreement.
**Last updated:** 8 September 2026
**Provider:** Mathias Reimer, sole proprietor. Contact at the address below.
**Contact:** hello@explica.app
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## 1. Who this covers
Explica is used by students and teachers, usually under an agreement with a school. Where a school is the customer, the school is the **data controller** and Explica is the **data processor** — we handle student data only on the school's instructions. Individual subscribers are their own controller.
## 2. What we collect
| Data | Why | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Name, email address, profile picture | Sign-in and identifying you to your teacher | Google sign-in |
| Google account ID | Linking your sessions | Google sign-in |
| Text you highlight, plus the page title and URL | Producing the explanation, and showing your teacher your activity if you're in a class | You |
| Writing you submit for an assignment | Teacher review and feedback | You |
| Large-paste events in assignments, including the pasted text itself | Academic-integrity signals for your teacher | You |
| Reading activity on an assigned PDF: active time, which pages you spent time on, how many words you looked up | Showing your teacher engagement with the set reading | You |
| Words you save to your own vocabulary list | Your personal revision list, visible only to you | You |
| Class membership, organization membership, licence records | Access control and billing | School / teacher |
**We do not collect:** passwords (sign-in is handled by Google), payment card numbers (handled by our payment processor), browsing history, or the content of pages you visit that you did not highlight.
**Private practice writing is not sent to any teacher and is not stored on our servers** — it stays in your browser.
### A note on reading activity
If your teacher sets a reading assignment, Explica records how long the reading was open and in use, which pages you spent time on, and how many words you looked up. It does not record anything about you beyond that: no camera, no keystrokes, no reading speed profile, and nothing at all about what you do in other tabs or applications.
Time only counts while the reading tab is focused and you're interacting with it, so leaving it open in the background records nothing. Your teacher sees these numbers as engagement signals — they are explicitly not treated as proof that you did or didn't read something.
### A note on AI accuracy
Explanations are generated by an AI model, and models get things wrong. An explanation may be
inaccurate, incomplete, or confidently mistaken — particularly for rare words, dialect, older
texts, or a passage highlighted without enough surrounding context.
Explica is a study aid, not an authority. Students should treat explanations the way they
would treat a helpful classmate's answer, and teachers should not use them as a source of truth
for assessment. Nothing here replaces a dictionary, a grammar reference, or a teacher.
## 3. How we use it
Only to run the service: generate explanations, show teachers class activity, enforce access, and provide support. **We do not sell personal data, share it with advertisers, or use student data to train AI models.**
## 4. Who we share it with (subprocessors)
| Subprocessor | Purpose | Data |
|---|---|---|
| **Anthropic** (Claude API) | Generating explanations and writing feedback | The text you highlight or write |
| **Google** (Sign-In) | Authentication | Email, name, profile picture |
| **Railway** | Running the service and storing data | All stored data |
| **Stripe** | Subscriptions | Billing contact and payment details |
Anthropic does not train models on data submitted through its API. Confirm the current terms at anthropic.com and reflect them accurately — this is the question schools ask most.
Keep this list current and notify customers before adding a subprocessor; most school agreements require it.
## 5. Where data is stored
[REGION, e.g. United States]. If you sell to schools in the EU/UK, you need an answer on international transfers (Standard Contractual Clauses) before you sign anything.
## 6. How long we keep it
Retention is enforced automatically by a daily job, not by manual cleanup:
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| The explanation generated for a lookup | 90 days, then permanently deleted |
| The lookup itself (the word, the date) | 12 months, then permanently deleted |
| Submitted and in-progress assignment work | While the class exists |
| Uploaded reading PDFs and reading activity | While the class exists; deleted with it |
| The text of a flagged paste | 6 months, then permanently deleted (the count and size remain) |
| Words you saved yourself | Until you remove them or delete your account |
| Private practice writing | Never leaves the browser — we never store it |
| Account details | Until the account is deleted |
Deleting a class permanently deletes its assignments and submissions. Deleting an account removes that person's lookup history and writing.
Schools can request export or deletion of their students' data at any time: hello@explica.app. Retention periods can be shortened for a school that requires it — say so in your agreement.
## 7. Children and students
Explica is designed for classroom use and is likely to be used by students under 18, and under 13 in some settings.
- **US (FERPA):** Student records are handled as school-official data under the school's direction, used only for the purpose the school authorised.
- **US (COPPA):** Where students are under 13, we rely on the school to provide consent on behalf of parents, as permitted for educational services. **You must have this in your school agreement.**
- **UK/EU (GDPR):** The school is the controller and determines the lawful basis.
You will also likely be asked to sign state-specific agreements (for example the California SOPIPA requirements, or a state student-data-privacy addendum such as the NDPA). Budget for that in your sales process.
## 8. Your rights
Access, correction, deletion, export, and objection. Students at a school should contact their school first, since the school controls the data; the school can then contact us.
## 9. Security
See `SECURITY.md`.
## 10. Changes
We'll notify customers of material changes at least 30 days in advance.