Privacy Policy

HIS Pods, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Cape Coral, Florida. We operate a Christian-grounded, AI-assisted mastery learning platform for K–12 students. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use it, and the rights you have over it.

We do not sell personal data. We do not run advertising. Ever.

If you have questions, contact us at privacy@hispods.com.

1. Who This Policy Covers

This policy covers all users of:

• learn.hispods.com — our Family tier, used directly by homeschool families
• school.hispods.com — our School tier, accessed through a participating school
• app.hispods.com — the student learning app

Because our platform serves children under 13, the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) governs how we handle their data. We take this responsibility seriously. A school using our School tier is also subject to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and California residents have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Each of these is addressed in its own section below.

2. Information We Collect

Family Accounts (Family Tier)

When a parent or guardian creates a family account, we collect:

• Parent email address and a display name for the family
• Acceptance records — the timestamp when you accepted our Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy, and your COPPA parental consent attestation
• Subscription and payment metadata — your plan status and billing history. We do not store card numbers; all payment processing is handled by Stripe (see Section 5).

Child Profiles

Each child profile contains only what is needed for learning:

• A display name chosen by the parent — this does not need to be the child's legal name
• Age or grade level, collected at sign-up for COPPA age-gating and to set the starting curriculum
• Avatar selection — a cosmetic choice from pre-made options; no photographs are ever uploaded

Learning and Progress Data

As a student works through lessons, we record:

• Lesson completion history and which skills have been practiced
• Mastery scores per skill — a numeric estimate (0 to 1) of how well the student understands each concept, updated as they practice
• Practice problem history — which problem IDs the student has seen, whether responses were correct, and how long they took
• Stars earned (our in-app reward currency), items owned in the Star Store, and daily streak data
• Session timestamps

This data is what makes personalized, adaptive learning possible. It stays with the student's account and is never used for advertising.

Technical Data

• Browser and device type, to ensure the app works correctly as a Progressive Web App
• IP address, used only for security and fraud prevention; not stored long-term or linked to learning records
• Service worker cache state, which lives only on the student's device and is never transmitted to our servers

School Tier Additional Data

Schools that use our School tier provide student roster data — including student names, teacher assignments, and class enrollment — through their school administrator. We treat this as school-owned data, subject to FERPA (see Section 7). Schools may also collect attendance records and grades through our platform; these remain under the school's control and are accessible to authorized parents and teachers.

3. How We Use Information

We use the information we collect for these specific purposes:

• Delivering personalized learning — adapting lesson difficulty, spiral review, and placement to each student's actual skill level
• Tracking progress — giving students, parents, and teachers accurate information about what a student has mastered and what comes next
• Running the platform — authenticating accounts, processing payments, preventing fraud, and keeping the service secure
• Communicating with you — sending transactional emails like account confirmations, password resets, and subscription receipts. We do not send marketing email without your explicit opt-in consent
• Improving our curriculum — we may analyze aggregated, de-identified performance trends across all students to identify lessons or problems that need improvement. This analysis never involves individual-level identifiers

We do not use student data to build advertising profiles, to target ads on any platform, or for any purpose unrelated to the educational service.

4. How We Use AI

HIS Pods uses an AI service (Claude, by Anthropic) as part of our PathFinder adaptive placement assessment. PathFinder determines where a student should begin in our curriculum and helps route them to appropriately challenging material throughout their learning journey.

What we send to the AI: When PathFinder analyzes a student's responses, we send anonymized performance data — specifically, which answer was given, whether it was correct, and how long the student took. We do not send the child's name, email address, account ID, or any other direct identifier to Anthropic.

What we do not send: We never send a child's name, email, profile photo, school name, or any information that could identify the specific student to the AI service.

What Anthropic does with this data: Anthropic processes the data under our service agreement. They do not use anonymized response data submitted via the API to train their models.

This is the only way we currently use AI in the platform. If that changes, we will update this policy and notify users.

5. Third-Party Services

We share data with a small number of trusted service providers who help us operate the platform. Each is contractually required to use your data only to provide services to us:

We do not share your data with any other third parties for any purpose. We do not use Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, or any advertising technology.

6. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

Because our platform serves children under 13, we comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and treat the protection of children's data as our highest priority.

Parental consent is required. Before a child under 13 can use our platform, a parent or guardian must create the family account, review this policy, and provide verified parental consent. Children cannot create their own accounts.

What we collect from children under 13 is limited to what is described in Section 2 — a display name, age or grade level, avatar selection, and learning progress data. We collect nothing beyond what is necessary to provide the educational service.

No marketing to children. We do not market to children, show them third-party advertisements, or use their data for any purpose outside of education.

Parental rights. At any time, you may:

• Review the personal information associated with your child's account by logging into your parent account or emailing privacy@hispods.com
• Request correction of inaccurate information
• Request deletion of your child's account and all associated data — we will complete deletion within 30 days of a verified request
• Refuse to allow further collection of your child's data by closing the account

To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@hispods.com from the email address on the parent account.

7. School Records and FERPA

When HIS Pods is used through a school, student education records are governed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). In this context:

• The school is the data controller for student education records. HIS Pods acts as a "school official" under FERPA, meaning we access student data only to fulfill the educational function the school has contracted us to perform.
• Student records are not shared with third parties outside of the service providers listed in Section 5.
• Parents and eligible students (age 18 or older) retain their FERPA rights to inspect and request correction of education records. These requests should first be directed to the school; HIS Pods will cooperate fully with any such request the school forwards to us.
• When a school's contract with HIS Pods ends, we will delete or return all school-owned data in accordance with the data processing agreement between HIS Pods and that school.

If your child's school uses HIS Pods and you have questions about your FERPA rights, contact the school's designated records official or email us at privacy@hispods.com.

8. No Sale of Personal Data

We do not sell personal information. Period.

This applies to all users — adults and children alike. We do not sell, rent, license, or trade personal data to data brokers, advertisers, or any other third party. Our business model is based on subscriptions and school contracts, not on monetizing user data.

California residents: under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), you have the right to know this, and to request that we not sell your data. We do not sell it. You can confirm this or exercise other CCPA rights by emailing privacy@hispods.com.

9. Data Retention

We keep your data only as long as we need it:

• Active accounts: account and learning data is retained while your account remains active
• Deleted accounts: upon account deletion, personal data is removed within 30 days, except where retention is required by law (for example, transaction records for tax compliance)
• Child data (COPPA requests): deleted within 30 days of a verified parental request
• School data: retained per the school's data processing agreement; deleted when the contract ends
• Session logs and IP logs: 90-day rolling window, then deleted

10. Data Security

We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your data. All data in transit uses TLS encryption. Data at rest is stored in Microsoft Azure, which maintains SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications. Access to production data is restricted to authorized personnel on a need-to-know basis.

No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a breach that affects your personal data, we will notify you as required by applicable law.

11. Your Rights and Choices

Regardless of where you live, you can contact us at privacy@hispods.com to:

• Access a copy of your personal data
• Correct inaccurate data
• Delete your account and associated data
• Ask questions about how your data is used

California residents have additional rights under CCPA, including the right to know what categories of personal information we collect and disclose, and the right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights. We do not discriminate. To submit a CCPA request, email privacy@hispods.com.

EU and international users: GDPR does not apply to HIS Pods as we are a U.S.-based non-profit without an EU establishment. However, we respect data subject rights from users anywhere in the world and will respond to access, correction, and deletion requests regardless of location.

12. Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify parents by email and post the updated policy at hispods.com/privacy at least 14 days before the changes take effect. For changes affecting how we handle children's data, we will obtain fresh parental consent if required by COPPA.

The "Last Updated" date at the top of this document reflects when changes were last made.

13. Contact Us