Privacy Policy

Who is responsible for your data

When a school, college or university gives you Scholar, that institution decides what is recorded about its students and staff — courses, marks, attendance — and is responsible for it. We run Scholar for them and handle that data on their instructions. Their own privacy notice applies too, and requests about their records are best sent to them first.

When you use Scholar on your own — your own homework, timetable and study plans — Varaxis is responsible for your data.

What we collect

• Your account: your name and email address, and your password stored only as a one-way hash. If you sign in with Google or GitHub, that provider gives us your name, email address and profile picture — nothing else, and never your password.
• What you put in: the tasks, deadlines, subjects, notes and timetable you add (typed, dictated or uploaded), your study sessions, files you attach, and posts in study groups you join.
• What your institution records: the courses you are in, work set and handed in, marks and feedback, attendance, announcements, links to parents or guardians the institution has added, and a log of changes to records (for example, who changed a mark and when).
• Settings: your preferences, and — if you connect one — which AI provider you use and your API key for it, which is encrypted before it is stored; and, for a teacher who connects one, access to their Google calendar for creating meetings, encrypted the same way.
• Proctored tests, only while you sit one: webcam pictures and a record of flags — see Proctored tests.
• Error reports: when something breaks, a technical report of the error, with IP addresses, cookies and request headers removed.
• Usage counts, only if you allow them: see Cookies.

We do not ask for your date of birth, phone number, home address or location. We don’t record your screen, capture what you type or click for analytics, or build an advertising profile of you. We use your camera and microphone only during a proctored test, and only as described below.

How we use it

• To run Scholar for you and your institution: show your work, plan your study, keep records.
• To keep it working and secure: fix errors, stop abuse, keep an audit trail of changes.
• To understand which features get used — only with your permission, and only as counts.
• To meet legal obligations.

We don’t sell your data, share it with advertisers, or use it to train AI models.

AI features

Some features — reading homework from a photo or a sentence, study suggestions, the study coach — can use an AI provider. You or your institution choose which: Google Gemini, Groq, OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, or a model you run yourself. When one is connected, the text (or image, or audio) needed for that request is sent to it and handled under that provider’s own terms. Where Scholar supplies the provider itself, requests go through our account with it.

With no provider connected, Scholar uses a built-in reader that sends nothing anywhere. AI answers can be wrong; check anything that matters.

If you dictate, your browser’s own speech recognition may be used, and some browsers (such as Chrome) send that audio to their maker to turn it into text.

Proctored tests

A teacher can choose to proctor a test. Before it starts, you are told exactly what is recorded, and the test does not open until you tick a box agreeing to it. While you sit it:

• Camera: a small still picture about every 30 seconds, at moments that vary, and one whenever something is flagged. No video is recorded.
• Microphone: only how loud the room is, measured in your browser. No sound is recorded, stored or sent anywhere.
• Flags: leaving fullscreen, switching tab or window, opening the test again (a reload, another window or another device), copying, pasting, blocked shortcuts, a second screen being connected, a camera that looks like virtual-camera software, no face or more than one face in view, looking away, and noise — each with the time it happened.
• Face check: done on your own device by software Scholar serves itself. No picture is sent to anyone to do it, and it is not facial recognition: it checks that a face is there, not whose it is.
• Your answers are saved to Scholar as you go, so reloading the page puts them back.
• Your name is shown faintly across the questions on your own screen. It is not recorded anywhere by being shown.

Leaving the test. A teacher can set a limit on how many times you may leave the test screen — exiting fullscreen, switching to another window, tab or app, or reloading the page. Each time, you are warned on screen, and at the limit the test is handed in automatically with the answers you have (or, if your browser does not hand it in, with the answers last saved). You are told the number before you start, and the teacher sees that the test was handed in this way. Nothing a camera or microphone check notices — a face, a sound — ever counts toward it.

The pictures and flags are seen only by the test’s teachers and your institution’s administrators. A flag is a prompt for a teacher to look, not a finding, and never changes a mark by itself. Everything is deleted 30 days after the test closes, unless a teacher marks the sitting as under review, in which case it is kept until they clear it. Pictures are stored with Scholar’s other files, as described below.

Who can see your data

• You.
• Your institution’s staff, according to their role: a teacher sees work, marks and attendance for the courses they teach, and the record of a proctored test they set; administrators see their institution’s records.
• Parents or guardians your institution has linked to you. You can see who is linked.
• Classmates, in two places: study groups you join, and marks leaderboards, which show the top ten on a published test by name. You can choose not to be named, from the leaderboard on your course page; you then appear as “A classmate”.
• People you share with, if you share your planner from Settings.

Services we use

These companies process data for us, only to provide their part of Scholar:

• Vercel — hosting, and storage for uploaded files.
• Our managed PostgreSQL provider — the database.
• Google and GitHub — sign-in, if you choose them.
• Google Calendar and Google Meet — if a teacher connects their Google account to schedule online classes. Scholar then creates each meeting on that teacher’s own calendar, sending Google the class’s name, the meeting’s title and its time — no student’s name or email. The teacher can disconnect at any time from the class’s Online classes tab, which also revokes Scholar’s access at Google.
• Sentry — error reports.
• PostHog (EU) — usage counts, only if you allow them.
• The AI provider you or your institution connect, as above.

Some of them are based outside your country, so your data may be processed abroad.

Children

Scholar is used by students, many of them under 18. If you are under 18, you need a parent or guardian to agree to your using Scholar — or your institution to provide it — before you create an account, and you confirm this when you sign up.

We collect only what Scholar needs, never show ads, and don’t track children for advertising or profiling. A parent or guardian can ask to see or delete their child’s data by writing to us from the address below; for records an institution keeps, the institution can do this too.

Download or delete your data

• Download everything we hold about you as a file: Settings → Account → Download.
• Delete a task from your dashboard at any time; it is removed straight away.
• Delete your account: Settings → Account → Delete account. It takes effect immediately and removes your account, your coursework, timetable, study history, settings, groups you own and your posts from our live database. Copies in our database provider’s backups expire on its backup schedule.
• Can’t sign in? Email ishaan.seal2007@gmail.com from the address on your account with the subject “Delete my Scholar account”. We confirm once it is done, within 30 days.

Some records belong to your institution rather than to you — for example work you handed in, or the fact that a mark was changed. Deleting your account removes your name from the change log; to have the rest deleted, ask your institution.

How long we keep it

For as long as your account exists, or until you delete the item. Your institution decides how long its records are kept, except proctored-test pictures and flags, which are deleted 30 days after the test closes unless a teacher is reviewing them. Error reports and usage counts are kept by those services for a limited period and then deleted.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can ask to see, correct, download or delete your data, to withdraw consent, and to object to or limit how it is used. Most of this you can do yourself in Settings; for anything else, write to us. You can also complain to your data protection authority — in India the Data Protection Board, in the UK the ICO, in the EU your national authority.

Security

Everything travels over HTTPS. Passwords are stored only as hashes, API keys are encrypted, and each person sees only what their role allows. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Emails and notifications

Scholar does not send marketing email. Reminders are notifications on your own device, which you can turn off in your browser or Settings. If we ever send email that isn’t strictly about your account, every message will have a one-click unsubscribe link.

Cookies

We use only the cookies Scholar needs to work, plus usage counts if you allow them. The cookie policy lists every one.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, we update the date at the top. If a change affects how your data is used, we will say so in the app before it takes effect.

Contact and grievances

Varaxis Scholar is provided by Varaxis. Write to ishaan.seal2007@gmail.com about anything on this page, including privacy requests and complaints. We reply within 30 days, and sooner where the law asks for it.