Safety & Trust
AlgeBridge lets students message and video-call tutors. Here is exactly what the app allows today, and what it does not do yet.
Who can see your data
Row-level security decides what each account can read. A student reads their own records, tutor profiles without their email, the leaderboard and the group chats they are in. Only a teacher account makes a class, a student joins only with the class code or by accepting an invite, and the teacher then sees the name, email and progress of the students in it. Tutors never see student email addresses, and see student names and photos only for the students they may reach. Passwords are hashed and never visible to us.
Staff accounts need a code
Tutor and teacher accounts need an access code from AlgeBridge. It is one shared code per role, not a personal invite, and it is the only check the app makes before an account becomes staff.
Messages
A student can send direct messages only to a tutor, teacher or AlgeBridge admin, never to another student, and the database enforces it. Group chats are started by a tutor, who can add only students they may reach, and a student can leave any group chat.
Personal information stays out
Before a direct or group message is sent, the AlgeBridge app reads it, together with the sender's last few messages there, for phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, social media usernames, links to other sites, plans to talk somewhere else, questions like "what school do you go to", and requests to keep a chat secret. A student's message with any of these is not sent, and the student is told why. A tutor or teacher is warned and can still send it, except a request for secrecy, which the app does not send. The same check runs on answers in Archie's Book a tutor form and on profile bios. It runs in the app, so a program that writes to the database directly skips it; the database's own check covers phone numbers and email addresses only.
Calls
In the app, only a tutor or an AlgeBridge admin can start a video call, and only with a student. It rings only if the student is online and the caller has a tutor, teacher or admin account, and they can decline. The ring shows the caller's name from their profile. Video and audio are never recorded. The database is looser than the app: it also accepts a ring from a student to a tutor or teacher.
If a student is in danger
Each message to Archie and to the Hints extension is checked 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 reads a student's last two messages together, so a sentence split in two counts. A match goes to no AI service, and the student gets a calm card: talk to a trusted adult or school counselor now, call or text 988 or text HOME to 741741 from any phone, chat with 988 online from a computer, 988's Spanish line, and 911 in danger. Archie checks in the browser, so a match is not sent anywhere, saved into a booking or sent to a tutor; the extension checks on AlgeBridge's server, where the words stop. A message the list misses goes to the AI, which is told to send the student to a trusted adult (the extension's AI is also told to answer with a signal that shows the same card). Words typed into a report are checked too, and the report is still saved. Nobody is alerted automatically.
Deleting an account
Delete your account from your account page. That removes your profile, progress, notebook, direct messages and the group 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. Photos you uploaded, feedback and reports you sent and call recaps stay stored; email us and we will remove them.
Leaderboard, on unless turned off
Every student agrees at sign-up to be on the leaderboard. It shows a first name and last initial, Bridgeys, skills finished and best house piece to signed-in AlgeBridge users only, never to visitors who are not signed in, and never with an account id. Unticking "Shown on the board" on the leaderboard page hides a student. School accounts are never shown.
School mode
A school can run AlgeBridge with direct messages, group chats, video calls, the tutor directory and booking, the tutors' workspace, the leaderboard and the team games turned off. Their pages show "Turned off for school accounts" instead. A few links to them still appear (on lessons, in the account menu, and on the profile, sign-in and Bridgey House pages) and lead to that notice. Lessons, practice and Archie stay. The For schools page lists exactly what the switch does.
No ads, no selling data
AlgeBridge is free, shows no ads, and does not sell your information.
Report and block
Every message in a direct or group chat, every call, every conversation and every group has a Report button. A report saves the reason, the place and which message was reported, quoted from the database's own copy, for an AlgeBridge admin to read, and the person is not told who reported. Reports wait in a list for an admin to read, so a report is not read right away: a student in danger should tell a trusted adult or call 911. A block is kept with your account, so the blocked person cannot message you, call you or add you to a group chat on any device. One account can send at most 30 reports an hour. An AlgeBridge admin can remove an account.
Rules the database enforces
These 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.