Privacy Policy — IvyLearn

The short version

IvyLearn has no accounts, no passwords, and no email sign-up. There's no advertising and nothing that follows you around the web. The study progress you build up — completed questions, saved questions, review timing — is stored only in your browser, on your own device. IvyLearn never sees it.

There is one deliberate exception: if you choose to start or join a Battle, the answers and marks from that battle are shared with the friends who have the code. That's covered in full below.

Profiles are a nickname, not an account

The first time you open Practice or Timed practice, you're asked "Who's studying?" and can type any name, like "Amahle" or "Thabo." That's a profile: a label stored on your device so more than one person sharing the same phone or computer doesn't overwrite each other's progress. It isn't verified, isn't linked to an email or password, and isn't shared with IvyLearn or anyone else. Two people who happen to type the same name on different devices are completely unconnected — there's no central account behind it.

What's stored on your device, and only there

Everything below is saved using your browser's local storage — the same private space a browser already uses to remember a site's settings. It stays on the specific device and browser you're using:

Your profile name, the nickname described above
Which questions you've marked as understood, flagged for review, or haven't tried yet
Questions you've saved to come back to later
Your own self-marked scores after checking a memo
The review schedule IvyLearn builds up so questions you missed come back at a sensible time

IvyLearn keeps no copy of any of this. If you clear your browser's site data, switch devices, or use a private/incognito window, it can't be recovered — there is nowhere else it exists to restore it from.

What actually reaches the server

During normal solo studying, two things — and both are anonymous:

When you mark a question correct or incorrect, IvyLearn sends a small anonymous signal — just the question's ID and whether it was marked correct — so the app can track how commonly a question is answered correctly across everyone who uses it. Your name, profile, or device is never included.
If you're the site administrator uploading or managing past papers, the PDF and its metadata (subject, year, exam board) are sent for processing. This has nothing to do with student data.

So from solo practice there is no server-side record of who you are, what you personally scored, or which questions you personally struggled with. Battle mode is the one place you choose to send more than that, and it's described in its own section below. Anonymous visit counts are covered under Cookies and visitor counts.

How past papers get processed

Turning a scanned PDF into individual questions with topics and difficulty levels uses two outside services:

Supabase stores paper and question data (text, images, topic and difficulty tags) and hosts the question and memo images you see while studying.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) reads text from scanned pages and helps classify a question's topic, difficulty, and transcription.

Only the past-paper content itself — page images and question images — is sent to these services. Your profile name, progress, scores, and saved questions are never sent to Supabase or AWS, because that information never leaves your browser in the first place.

Battle mode is the one exception

Everything above describes solo studying, which never leaves your device. Battle mode is different, and deliberately so: it only works if your friends can see how you did.

When you join a battle, these things are sent to the server and stored there:

The name you type for the scoreboard — this can be a nickname, and it doesn't have to be your real name
A photo of your working, if you take one
Any answer you type
The marks you give yourself afterwards

Anyone with the 6-character battle code can see those things once you submit. Nobody — including your friends — can see your answers before you submit your own.

About the photos

Photos deserve their own explanation, because a picture of your page can show more than you intended — handwriting, a name in the corner, whatever else is on the desk. So:

The full-size photo from your camera is never uploaded. Your phone shrinks it first, and the original stays in your own camera roll.
Photos are stored privately, not on a public address, and are only shown through temporary links that stop working after a short while.
They are deleted along with the battle itself.
Taking a photo is optional. You can type an answer instead, or submit nothing at all.

Check what's in frame before you shoot, the same way you would before sending it to a friend — because that is effectively what you're doing.

Battles and everything in them are deleted automatically after 48 hours. Your solo progress, saved questions, and review schedule are never part of a battle.

If you'd rather share nothing, simply don't start or join a battle. Every other part of IvyLearn works exactly as before, entirely on your device.

Cookies and visitor counts

IvyLearn doesn't use cookies. There's no advertising, no ad pixels, and no third-party trackers following you around the web — nothing about how you use the site is sold or shared for marketing.

There is one thing being counted: IvyLearn uses Vercel Web Analytics, provided by the company that hosts the site, to see how many people visit and which pages get used. It's deliberately the least invasive option available:

It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device.
It records the page visited, roughly where in the world the request came from, and what kind of device and browser it was — not who you are.
It can't link your visits to your study progress, your profile name, or anything you do in a battle.
It doesn't follow you to other websites, and the numbers are only ever looked at in aggregate.

Its only purpose is knowing whether IvyLearn is actually being used and which parts are worth improving.

Separately, and like most websites, the hosting provider may automatically record basic technical details such as IP address and request time for security and reliability. IvyLearn's own code doesn't read or use this information.

Device permissions

IvyLearn never asks for your camera, microphone, or location, and the site is configured to block those requests outright, even if a future update tried to add one by mistake. The only device feature it uses is offline caching, covered next, which is standard for a site that can also be installed as an app.

Using IvyLearn offline

Installing IvyLearn, or opening it while offline, uses your browser's caching to keep recently viewed pages, questions, and images available without an internet connection. This cache holds past-paper content only. Your personal study data — profile, progress, saved questions — is stored separately in local storage as described above, and isn't part of this cache.

Grade 12 students and younger users

IvyLearn is built for Grade 12 students, most of whom are 17 or 18. Because there's no sign-up, no email collection, and no personal information gathered beyond an optional nickname stored on your own device, there's no account for a parent or guardian to review — there's simply nothing centrally stored to show them. If a parent or guardian has a question about how IvyLearn works, they're welcome to use the contact details below.

Your control over this data

Because your solo study data lives only in your browser, you're already in complete control of it. Clearing your browser's site data for ivylearn.online (sometimes labelled "cookies and site data") removes your profile, progress, saved questions, and scores immediately and completely, since that's the only place any of it exists.

Battle data is the exception, because it lives on the server so your friends can see it. Clearing your browser won't remove a battle you've already submitted — but the whole battle, photos included, is deleted automatically within 48 hours. If you want something removed sooner than that, get in touch.

South Africa and POPIA

IvyLearn is run from South Africa. Because the site collects no personal information beyond what's described on this page, its footprint under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) is minimal — but you're welcome to get in touch with any question or request about your data at any time.

Changes to this policy

If how IvyLearn handles data ever changes, this page will be updated and the date at the top will change with it. Any meaningful change will be reflected here in the same plain language this page is already written in.

Questions

Reach out any time with anything about this policy or your data.

Go to Contact