Privacy policy

Literacy Trail is a tool for the adults who teach reading. It records which lessons you taught, how each one went, and what to bring back next. This page explains what that means for the information you and your students leave in it.

The short version: we do not sell anything about you or your students, we show no advertising, we do not use student records to train anything, and you can export or delete everything at any time.

Who we are

Literacy Trail is the data controller for account information and for the records you create in the app, unless you use it through a school or organization, in which case see Schools and organizations below. You can reach us at hello@literacytrail.com.

What we collect

Your account

Your email address, and your name if you give one. If you sign in with Google we receive your email address, name and profile picture URL from Google, and never your Google password. We also store your timezone and your notification preferences, because reminders are sent in your local morning.

The records you create

For each student: a first name, an optional last name or initial, and an optional grade. Then the teaching record itself, which is lesson names, dates, how you rated each lesson, review items, schedules, checkpoints and any notes you write.

We do not ask for and have no field for a student's date of birth, address, phone number, email address, photograph, government identifier, health record or assessment score. Please do not put those in a note.

Payment

Card details are entered on Stripe's own checkout page and never reach our servers. We store the identifiers Stripe gives us, your plan, its status and its renewal date, so the app knows what you are entitled to.

Technical information

Our host and our database keep short-lived operational logs. When you submit the contact or feedback form we store your browser's user agent string and a one-way hash of your IP address, which is used to stop the form being abused and cannot be turned back into your address. Rate limiting works the same way, on hashes only.

The app keeps an activity log of significant actions on your own account, such as deleting a student. You can read your own entries; nobody else can.

Messages you send us

If you use the contact or feedback form we keep your email address, your message and the page you sent it from, so we can reply.

Why we use it

• To run the service: your roadmap, calendar, review queue and reports.
• To send the emails the service depends on: sign-in links, password resets, receipts and the reminders you switched on.
• To take payment and manage your subscription.
• To keep the service standing up: preventing abuse, finding errors, and keeping backups.
• To answer you when you write to us.

Where the UK or EU General Data Protection Regulation applies, we rely on performance of our contract with you for running the service and taking payment, on our legitimate interests in keeping the service secure and working, and on your consent where you have given it, such as reminder emails. You can withdraw consent at any time in Settings.

Who processes it for us

These are the only companies that handle your data, each under contract and only on our instructions. We do not sell data, we do not share it with advertisers, and there are no third-party advertising or tracking scripts on this site.

• Supabase (United States): the database and the sign-in system. This is where your records live.
• Cloudflare (global): hosting, content delivery, the bot check on our forms, and delivery of our emails. The bot check receives your IP address and a token; it does not read the page or set an advertising cookie.
• Stripe (United States): payments and subscription billing.
• Sentry (United States): error monitoring, so we hear about a fault before you have to report it. Reports are scrubbed before they leave our server: no request bodies, no query strings, no cookies, no authorization headers, and record identifiers in a web address are replaced with a placeholder. Student names and note text are not sent.
• Google: only if you choose to sign in with Google.
• Resend (United States): a fallback path for transactional email if our primary provider is unavailable.
• PostHog: product analytics, measuring which features are used. Events carry counts and anonymous identifiers only, never student names, note text or message content. This is off unless you see it named in an updated version of this page.

Cookies and local storage

We use no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, so there is no consent banner to dismiss. What we do set:

• Sign-in cookies from Supabase that keep you logged in. Removing them signs you out.
• lt_in, a marker that you are signed in, so pages can be routed without a database call.
• lt_pwreset, set only when you follow a password reset link, readable only by our server and expiring after fifteen minutes.
• lt_ref, set only if you arrive through someone's referral link, so the invite pass and referral credit can be applied.
• In your browser's local storage: a draft of the setup wizard, and the date you last dismissed a prompt. These never leave your device.

Students and children

This is the part that matters most, so it is worth being exact.

• Students never have accounts, never sign in, and never interact with Literacy Trail. We collect nothing from a child directly.
• Everything recorded about a student is entered by the responsible adult: the parent, tutor, teacher or specialist. By entering it, you confirm you have the authority to do so.
• We ask for the least that makes the tool work. A first name is the only required field.
• Student records are never used for advertising, never sold, never used to build a profile of a child, and never used to train machine learning models.
• When you delete a student, identifying fields are removed immediately. When you delete your account, the records you own go with it.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe a record about your child is held here by someone without authority, write to hello@literacytrail.com and we will investigate and act.

Schools and organizations

Where a school, district or tutoring centre sets up Literacy Trail for its staff, that organization decides what is recorded and we act on its instructions as a service provider. The organization is responsible for notices to families and for any consent its own rules require. Requests about a specific student should go to the organization first; we will support them in answering it.

Where your data is held

Records are stored in the United States. Our pages are served from a global content network, which means a request may be handled close to you, but the database itself stays in the United States. If you are in the UK or EU, that is a transfer outside your region, and our providers rely on standard contractual clauses for it.

How long we keep it

• Your records, for as long as your account exists. Cancelling a subscription does not delete anything; your records stay readable and exportable.
• Deleted students and deleted accounts are removed from the live database straight away.
• Encrypted database backups are kept on a rolling basis for disaster recovery and age out on their own, so a deleted record can persist in a backup for a short period before it is overwritten.
• Messages you send us, for as long as needed to deal with them and keep a record of the exchange.
• Billing records, for as long as tax and accounting rules require.

How it is protected

Access rules are enforced by the database itself, not only by the app, so a record can only be read by its owner, by someone it was explicitly shared with, or by a member of an organization it belongs to. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are hashed by our sign-in provider and checked against known breached-password lists. Access to production systems is limited to the people who run the service.

No service can promise perfect security. If a breach affects your data we will tell you and the relevant regulator as quickly as the law requires.

Your rights

You can do most of this yourself, immediately, without asking us:

• See and correct anything, by opening it in the app.
• Export any student, or your whole account, as a file. Settings, then Your data.
• Delete a student, or your entire account with everything in it.
• Turn off reminder emails in Settings.

Depending on where you live you may also have the right to object to or restrict processing, to complain to your data protection authority, and to confirmation that we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in California law. We do not, and we do not discriminate against anyone who exercises a right. Write to us and we will answer within one month.

Changes

When this policy changes we update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how your information is used, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions, requests or complaints: hello@literacytrail.com. See also our terms of service.