Privacy Policy
Last updated: 15 September 2026
[LEGAL NAME — founder to fill from ENTITY_FIELDS.md] trading as Interlinked (ABN [ABN — founder to fill]) runs Interlinked at interlinkedstudy.com. This policy explains what we collect, why, who else sees it, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read by a fifteen-year-old and by their parent, because both of them are here.
We are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles. Most of our users are under 18, so we also build to the Children’s Online Privacy Code, which is being registered by 10 December 2026.
The short version
- We collect what the product needs to work, and we have gone through the list twice to remove things it does not.
- We do not keep the schoolwork you paste. We store a SHA-256 fingerprint of it and a 280-character excerpt, so the same material is recognised and so you can tell your lessons apart.
- We do not sell your information. We do not run advertising trackers. We do not profile anyone for advertising, ever.
- We do not ask your date of birth. Explaining schoolwork does not need it. The only age question is at checkout, because a subscription is a contract.
- You can see your data, correct it, download it, and delete your account from your settings.
1. What we collect
When you create an account
- Your email address.
- Sign-in records: when you signed in, and from roughly where (derived from your IP address).
When you set up your profile
- Your year level, subjects, interests (up to five), what you are aiming at after school, what kind of pressure you are under, and how explanations land best for you.
- Free-text answers you type, including what you find hard and what makes you switch off.
When you build a lesson
- A SHA-256 fingerprint of the material you pasted, and a 280-character excerpt of it.
- The lesson that comes back, and which of your interests it used.
- Counts: how many lessons you have built, and when, so we can apply your plan’s limits.
When you pay
- Stripe collects and holds your card details. We never see or store them. We keep your Stripe customer id, your plan, and your payment and refund history.
- A record that whoever set up the subscription confirmed they were 18 or over, and when. It is kept against the subscription, not against the student’s profile.
Automatically
- Basic technical information used to keep the service running and to catch faults: browser and device type, the page you were on (never the query string), a scrubbed error message, and — for a failure on our servers — which request failed and how many tokens it used. This is handled by Sentry, our error-monitoring provider. It never receives your name, your email, your IP address, a cookie, what you pasted, your onboarding answers, or anything a lesson said back to you, and it does not record your screen.
What we do not collect: your name is not required, we do not ask for your date of birth, we do not ask for your address, we do not ask for your school, and we do not use cookies or pixels from advertising companies.
2. Sensitive information
We do not ask for sensitive information — health, beliefs, background — and you should not put it into the product.
Some of it may arrive anyway, because a free-text answer about what you find hard can turn into something personal. Two things happen.
First, if what you write suggests you are in distress, the product stops rather than answering and shows you a message with a helpline rather than a lesson. It is not a person watching; it is an automated check, and it is there because the alternative is a study tool answering a question that was not really about chemistry. If you need someone now: Lifeline 13 11 14 (call, or text 0477 13 11 14, both 24 hours a day). Outside Australia, findahelpline.com lists services by country.
Second, we do not use anything like this to profile you, target you, or build a picture of you beyond making the explanation fit.
3. Why we collect it
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| To create your account, sign you in, and send you things about the service | |
| Age declaration at checkout | To confirm a subscription is being set up by an adult, because a subscription is a contract |
| Profile answers | To build explanations out of things you already understand — this is the product |
| Source fingerprint and excerpt | To check the explanation against your material, and to label your lessons |
| Lesson counts | To apply your plan's limits |
| Payment records | To take payment, issue refunds, and meet tax record-keeping obligations |
| Technical information | To keep the service running and fix faults |
We do not use your information for anything else without asking you first.
4. Who else sees it
We use these providers. Each one only receives what it needs.
| Provider | What it does | What it receives | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database and sign-in | Account, profile, lessons, usage | [SUPABASE PROJECT REGION — founder to confirm from the dashboard] |
| OpenAI | Generates and checks explanations | The material you paste and the relevant parts of your profile, at the moment you build a lesson | United States |
| Stripe | Payments | Your email and payment details | United States, Ireland, Australia |
| Vercel | Hosting | Requests to the site | United States and global edge network |
| Sentry | Error monitoring, so we know when something breaks | Scrubbed crash reports — never your paste, your answers, or a lesson's content (see §1) | United States |
| Resend | Sends the one-off email when you ask a parent to set up billing | The parent's email address and a one-time checkout link — nothing about you or your schoolwork | United States |
Because some of these are overseas, your information is disclosed outside Australia — mainly to the United States. We take reasonable steps to ensure they handle it in line with the Australian Privacy Principles, and each is bound by its own agreement with us.
We do not use your material to train AI models. Our AI provider’s standard API terms exclude customer data from training by default, and we have not changed that setting.
We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to prevent a serious threat to someone’s life, health or safety.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers.
5. How long we keep it
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Account and profile | While your account is open |
| Lessons | While your account is open, or the last 10 on the free plan |
| Source fingerprints and excerpts | Until you delete your account |
| Usage counts | 13 months, so rolling limits work |
| Payment and tax records | 5 years, as Australian tax law requires |
| Technical logs | Vercel and Sentry's own default retention for platform logs and error reports — we do not separately configure a shorter period |
When you delete your account we delete your profile, your lessons and your usage records. Payment records are kept for the period tax law requires, and then deleted.
6. Keeping it safe
Everything travels over HTTPS and is encrypted at rest by our database provider. Access to production data is limited to those who need it. Our database enforces row-level rules so one account cannot read another’s data. We do not log what you paste, and we do not log the explanations that come back.
No system is perfectly safe. If a data breach happens that is likely to cause you serious harm, we will tell you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.
7. If you are under 18
- We do not ask how old you are to use Interlinked. Explaining schoolwork does not require it, so we do not collect it. The only age question is at checkout, and it is asked of whoever is paying.
- You need your parent’s or guardian’s permission to use Interlinked.
- A subscription has to be set up by a parent or guardian in their own name. Your account stays yours; only the billing sits with them.
- We do not show advertising, and we do not build a behavioural profile of anyone, at any age. Because most of the people here are under 18, we apply that to everybody rather than to a group we would have to identify first.
- A parent or guardian can ask us what we hold about their child, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete the account, by emailing privacy@interlinkedstudy.com. We will check they are who they say they are before acting, and where the child is old enough to make their own decisions we will take that seriously too.
- The page at /parents explains all of this without the legal register.
8. Marketing
Anything about your account — sign-in links, receipts, a note that you are near your limit — is part of the service and is not marketing.
Anything else, we only send if you have opted in, and every one of those emails has an unsubscribe link that works. Nobody is opted in by default. Because most of the people here are under 18, we keep marketing email to a minimum, and we do not use it to manufacture urgency about grades, exams or falling behind.
9. Your choices
- See what we hold. Download it from your settings, or email privacy@interlinkedstudy.com.
- Correct it. Most of it is editable in your profile. For anything else, email us.
- Delete it. Delete your account from settings. It removes your profile, lessons and usage.
- Use it without telling us much. Your name is not required. An email address is, because that is how you sign in.
- Turn off analytics. See the Cookies and Tracking page.
We will respond to a request within 30 days, and usually much faster. If we refuse a request we will tell you why in writing.
10. Complaints
Email privacy@interlinkedstudy.com with what happened. We will reply within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner: oaic.gov.au, or 1300 363 992. They are the regulator, and you do not need our permission to go to them.
11. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you by email or in the product before it takes effect. The date at the top is the current version.
12. Contact
[LEGAL NAME — founder to fill from ENTITY_FIELDS.md] trading as Interlinked, ABN [ABN — founder to fill]
[POSTAL ADDRESS — founder to fill]
privacy@interlinkedstudy.com