Privacy Policy

Who we are

AlgeBridge is a free course in core Algebra 1 skills for students in grades 7 to 10, at learn.algebridge.org. This policy explains what we collect, why, who processes it, and the choices you have. It describes what the app does today, including what it does not do yet.

What we collect

• Account info: your email, your real first and last name, and your role (student, teacher or tutor). If you sign up with a password, it is stored hashed by our sign-in service, Supabase, and nobody at AlgeBridge can read it. If you sign in with Google, Google gives us your name and email.
• Learning progress: skills completed, practice results, XP, Bridgeys, streaks, the interests you pick or describe, and your notebook. It is saved to your account, and the teacher of any class you are in can read it.
• Profile: an optional photo and bio. Photos are not at a public link: only the people allowed to see you, while signed in, can open yours. A bio with a phone number, email address or social media username is not saved.
• Messages and calls: direct messages, group messages, requests for help from a tutor, and call records, including the text recap written after a call.
• Leaderboard: on unless you turn it off. Your first name and last initial, Bridgeys, skills finished and best house piece are shown to signed-in AlgeBridge users, never to visitors who are not signed in, and never with your account id. You agree to this when you create your account. Untick "Shown on the board" on the leaderboard page to hide yourself. School accounts are never shown.
• Visit counts: AlgeBridge counts visits to algebridge.org and to this site as daily totals: the page, with any account, group or call id taken out, the site that linked to it, and whether it was a phone, tablet or computer. A random code your browser makes fresh each day lets one visit count once that day. It is never tied to your account, name, email or IP address, and the next day a new one replaces it. Admins, bots and browsers that send Global Privacy Control are left out, and only AlgeBridge admins see the totals.
• Feedback: what you send through the feedback page, the page you sent it from, and a contact email (your account email unless you change it).
• Reports: if you report someone, the reason you pick, any details you add, where it happened (the conversation, group or call), the account you reported, and which message you reported, if any. Reports are saved for an AlgeBridge admin to read and are not shown to the person reported. The report quotes the message from the database's own copy, and one account can send at most 30 reports an hour. Reports wait in a list for an admin to read, so a report is not read right away.
• Blocks: the people you block are kept with your account, so a blocked person cannot message you, call you or add you to a group chat on any device. The person you block is not told.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your data.
• We do not show ads.
• We do not record video calls. Video and audio go straight between the two browsers and are not stored.

Who can see your data

Accounts and data are stored with Supabase (a Postgres database) and protected by row-level security, which decides what each account can read:

• A student can read their own records, tutor profiles without their email, the leaderboard, and the members and messages of group chats they are in.
• Only a teacher account can make a class. A student joins one only with the class code or by accepting the teacher's invite, and the teacher can then read the name, email and progress of each student in it.
• A tutor never reads student email addresses. A tutor sees the name and photo only of students they may reach (see the safety rules below) or who are in their own group chats.
• A student in a teacher's class is a school account: only their teacher and AlgeBridge admins can message or call them, tutors do not see their requests for help, and they are not on the leaderboard.
• AlgeBridge admins can read every profile.

Teacher and tutor accounts need an access code from AlgeBridge. It is one shared code per role, not a personal invite.

Services that process your data

• Supabase stores accounts, progress, messages and photos, and carries messages and call signals live.
• Vercel hosts the website.
• Stripe processes contributions from adult supporters. See Payments and contributions.
• Groq, with OpenAI as a backup, writes three kinds of text. Archie, the study helper, gets the problem on screen with its hint and worked solution, the conversation, and the student's first name and picked interests, never a last name or email. Interests get only the words a student types about them; tapping a listed interest uses no AI. Word problems set in an interest get a problem the app made and the chosen topic. The Hints extension is described below.
• Anthropic or OpenAI, when one is set up, writes the recap after a tutoring call. It gets both people's names, the call's captions as a transcript labeled by speaker (if captions were on), and the student's notebook. The recap is saved with the call record and sent to the other person as a message. Without either service, a template on our own server writes it.
• Google: if anyone turns on captions in a call, the browser's speech recognition turns the audio into text, and in Chrome that is a Google service. Google also handles "Continue with Google" sign-in if you choose it.
• YouTube plays the lesson videos, embedded from youtube-nocookie.com. Your browser contacts YouTube when a lesson's video player loads.
• Google Analytics counts visits: which pages open, when, the browser and screen size, and a rough location worked out from the IP address, which Google does not keep. It sets a cookie with a random ID so one visitor over several days counts once. It gets no name, email, answer or message, the advertising features are off, and browsers that send Global Privacy Control are left out. Pages reach it with any account, group or call id taken out, and admins are left out. The demo frames on algebridge.org are counted there, not here.

AlgeBridge checks each message to Archie, and each question to the Hints extension, against a list of phrases that suggest self-harm, abuse or danger: English, the common ways to say it in Spanish, Haitian Creole and Portuguese, the commonest phrasings in French, German, Italian, Polish and Vietnamese, and a few phrases in Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, Korean and Hindi. Archie also reads a student's last two messages together. A match goes to no AI service, and the student gets fixed text: talk to a trusted adult or school counselor now, call or text 988 or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line) from any phone, chat with 988 online, or call 911. On the site this shows as a card with those as buttons. Archie checks in the student's browser, so a match is not sent to our server, not saved into a tutor booking, and not sent to a tutor. The Hints extension's check runs on our server, so its words reach our server and stop there. A message the list misses goes to the AI service like any other, and the AI is told to send the student to a trusted adult. Nobody is alerted, and the message is not stored.

Payments and contributions

Contributions are processed by Stripe, Inc. When you contribute, you enter your payment details directly on Stripe's secure checkout page. Algebridge never receives or stores your full card number or bank details.

From Stripe, we receive your email address, your name if you choose to give it, the amount and date of your contribution. We use this information only to send receipts, answer your questions, keep financial records, and, if you wish, thank you.

We do not sell, rent, or share contributor information with anyone, and we do not add contributors to marketing lists without their permission. Stripe's handling of your information is described in its privacy policy at https://stripe.com/privacy.

Contributions are made by adults. Students do not need to contribute or provide any payment information to use Algebridge.

Your choices

• Lessons and practice need a free account, so your work saves and your teacher can see it. Pages that work without an account, like the games, keep what you do only in your browser.
• You can delete your account at any time from your account page. That deletes your profile, progress, notebook, class memberships, leaderboard entry, help requests, every direct message you sent or received, and the group chat messages you sent. Those messages are first kept for 90 days, readable only by AlgeBridge admins for a safety review. After that, nobody can read them. These stay stored until you email us to remove them: photos you uploaded, feedback and reports you sent (they keep the message and contact email, no longer linked to you), and call records (the time and recap stay, no longer linked to you).
• You can change your profile photo and bio whenever you like. To remove a photo, email us and we will.
• You are on the leaderboard unless you turn it off, and one checkbox on the leaderboard page hides you.
• You can report any message, person, group or call, and block anyone you talk to. A block is kept with your account and works on every device.
• You can leave any group chat.

Safety rules the database enforces

These rules are checked by the database itself, whatever app talks to it:

• A tutor or teacher can message or call a student only if the student is in that teacher's class, asked for help and that tutor took the request (or named that tutor on a request in the last two weeks), or wrote to them first, and never after the student blocks them.
• Only a teacher account can make a class, and a student joins one only with the class code or by accepting a teacher's invite. Nobody is put in a class without agreeing.
• A student who joins a teacher's class becomes a school account wherever they sign in: the app turns school mode on for them, the database lets only their teacher and AlgeBridge admins message or call them, their requests for help are hidden from tutors, and they are kept off the leaderboard.
• Tutors do not see student email addresses, only the names and photos of the students in the first rule or in their own group chats, and students do not see tutors' email addresses.
• A block is kept with the account, so the blocked person cannot message, call or add the student to a group chat on any device.
• The database itself refuses a student's message with a phone number or an email address, whatever app sends it, including one hidden with invisible characters or sent a few digits at a time, and refuses a profile bio with contact details.
• A report quotes the reported message from the database's own copy, and each account can send at most 30 reports an hour.
• Profile photos are not at a public link. A student's photo opens only for that student, AlgeBridge admins and the staff in the first rule or in their group chats, and a tutor's or teacher's photo for anyone signed in.
• The leaderboard never hands out account ids.
• A deleted account's messages are kept for 90 days, readable only by AlgeBridge admins for a safety review. After that, nobody can read them.
• Students can leave a group chat, and a tutor can add to a new group chat only students they are allowed to reach.

AlgeBridge Hints browser extension

AlgeBridge Hints is our Chrome extension. It spots Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 problems on the pages you visit and gives step by step hints, never the answer. It works without an account.

• Reading the page, the extension looks for math on the page you have open, right on your computer. Nothing from the page is sent just because you opened it.
• When you ask for a hint, check an answer, or ask a question, it sends AlgeBridge only that one problem (up to 600 characters), the hints you have already seen for it, the answer or question you typed, if any, and which kind of help you asked for. It also sends back a sealed note our server made for that problem on your last hint, which only our server can open. Nothing else from the page goes with it: no page address, no browsing history, no cookies, and no AlgeBridge login. The text is processed by the AI service we use (Groq, with OpenAI as a backup) to write your hint. We do not log or save it.
• A random install ID, made when you add the extension, goes with each request. It is not linked to your name, email, or AlgeBridge account. Our server holds it, your internet address, and a scrambled fingerprint of the problem only in memory, to count requests over the last 10 minutes so no one can ask for too many hints or answer checks in a short time. We do not save them to a database.
• Settings and counts, your on or off choice, how problems are shown, and any sites you paused are saved in Chrome's extension storage (and synced to your Chrome profile if you use Chrome sync). Today's count of problems spotted and hints used stays on your device.

The extension has no ads and does not collect your browsing history. When you pause it on a site or turn it off from its toolbar button, it sends nothing from those pages. Removing it from Chrome clears its settings and counts from your browser.

Children's privacy

AlgeBridge is meant for students in grades 7 to 10. It does not ask for a birth date or age, and it does not record a parent's or school's consent. If you are under 13, please use AlgeBridge with a parent, guardian, or teacher, and only create an account with their permission. A parent or guardian can email us to see or delete their child's data.

Contact

Questions? Email info@algebridge.org.