Privacy Policy

This policy covers the whole of Hello Aida's activities. It is the only privacy policy you need to consult to understand how we handle personal information.

It also serves as the notification to data subjects required by section 18 of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013, which we call POPIA throughout.

Who it applies to

• Parents and guardians who open an account, or who contact us
• Learners using Aida, whether through a parent's account or a school
• Teachers, principals and administrators at schools that use Aida
• Anyone who visits helloaida.ai

What it does not cover. Once information reaches one of the providers named in section 7, that provider's own agreement with us governs how it is held there. We tell you who they are and what we have contracted with them, and we link to their policies.

If anything here is unclear, write to our Information Officer at the address in section 2. We would rather explain it than have you guess.

Which role we are in matters, and it depends on how the learner got here.

If you opened the account yourself, as a parent or guardian, or as an adult learner studying for yourself, we are the responsible party. We decide what is collected and why, and this policy governs. Your agreement with us is our Terms of Service.

If a school enrolled the learner, the school is the responsible party and we are its operator under sections 20 and 21 of POPIA. The school decides what is processed and why. We process only on its written instructions, which are set out in our School Agreement with that school. This policy still tells you what we do, but your first point of contact for a request about your child is the school, and the school's own privacy notice governs its side of the relationship.

If you are not sure which applies to you, ask us and we will tell you.

From the account holder, the parent, guardian or school staff member:

• Name and email address
• School and role, for staff accounts
• Billing records. We never receive or store full card numbers, our payment providers hold those

About the learner

What we never collect. South African identity numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, financial account details, biometric data, or anything about race, religion, politics, health or family circumstances.

A learner may nonetheless mention something personal in a conversation. We do not seek it, we do not build a profile from it, and section 6 explains what happens if it suggests they are at risk.

The model providers do not train on your child's data. We contract with every provider named in section 7 that learner conversations, uploads and voice are not used to train, fine-tune, distil or evaluate their models. That is a contractual commitment, not only a policy of ours.

We may use anonymised and aggregated data to improve Aida. Once information has been irreversibly stripped of anything that could identify a learner, it is no longer personal information under section 6(1)(b) of POPIA. We may use it to improve how Aida teaches: which explanations land, where learners get stuck, which topics need better coverage, which languages need work. We do not attempt to re-identify it, and we do not pass it to the model providers for their own training.

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information, and we do not share it with advertising networks or data brokers.

Automated decisions. Aida's progress reporting describes what a learner has done. It is not a judgement about them. We do not make decisions about a learner that have legal consequences, or that significantly affect them, based solely on automated processing, which is what section 71 of POPIA is concerned with. Where a school uses our reporting to inform a placement or an intervention, that decision belongs to the school and a person makes it.

What a school sees, and what it does not. Where a school holds the licence, it receives reporting on how Aida is being used: how many learners in each grade, which subjects, and which topics learners are asking about.

Those reports are built so that no learner can be picked out of them.

• Questions are generalised to topics. EG: A teacher sees "quadratic equations, 14 learners".
• No names, no learner identifiers
• Small groups are suppressed. We do not report a breakdown covering fewer than four learners, or topic detail covering fewer than ten.
• Anything our safety system has flagged is excluded before the data ever reaches a report. A learner's disclosure of distress is handled under section 6 and never surfaces in a teacher's dashboard
• Anything outside the subject scope the school has set is excluded

We are deliberate about the wording here. Learner questions in their original form are personal information even with the name removed, because a teacher who knows the class can often tell who wrote them. That is why the reports carry topics rather than sentences.

Almost every Aida learner is a child. Under POPIA a child is anyone under 18. Section 34 prohibits processing a child's personal information unless a gateway in section 35 applies, and for us that gateway is the consent of a competent person, normally a parent or guardian.

Adult learners. If you are 18 or older and studying for yourself, you are your own account holder and you consent for yourself. Section 34 does not apply to you and the rest of this section is about children.

Children under 18 can register for and use a learner account, with parent or guardian consent where required. Only someone aged 18 or older may start and pay for a paid subscription, including a card-verification trial or a discounted subscription. An adult may pay for a child's separate learner account. Having a bank card does not remove this age requirement.

We apply no lower age threshold. There is no "under 13" or "under 14" rule in South African law. A 17 year old is as much a child under POPIA as a seven year old, and we treat them that way.

Where a parent starts a paid subscription. The payer declares that they are 18 or older at paid checkout. This declaration applies to the payer, not to learner registration, and is not independent age verification. We record who consented, to which version of which document, and when, and we will give a parent that record on request.

Where a school enrols learners. The school is the responsible party and it decides the lawful basis on which its learners are enrolled. In most schools this works as follows. The school tells parents that Aida is available. Use of Aida is not compulsory. A parent who does not want their child to use it tells the school, which deactivates the account, asks us to delete the child's data, and confirms in writing when that is done.

Under our School Agreement the school must give parents written notice before enrolment, honour a withdrawal at any time afterwards, and keep the record. The school warrants to us that the basis it relies on is lawful, and it issues the parent notice. Where a school obtains express parental consent instead, which we recommend and support with a template and a verification flow, that consent governs.

A parent may opt out at any time, before enrolment or afterwards, by telling the school or writing to us at hello@helloaida.ai. There is no deadline on that right. A learner is never disadvantaged academically for it.

Withdrawing consent. A parent may withdraw at any time, as easily as it was given, directly with us or through the school, at hello@helloaida.ai. We deactivate the learner immediately and delete their personal information as set out in section 9. Withdrawal does not undo processing that was lawful before it.

If a learner turns 18 they may take over their own account, with their agreement and the account holder's.

Conversations are monitored for safety. Aida scans for signals that a learner may be at risk, including references to self-harm, to being hurt by someone, to neglect, and to immediate danger. By using Aida, the account holder consents to this monitoring on the learner's behalf, which is also the consent required under the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act 70 of 2002. Monitoring is for safety and service quality only. It is not used for marketing, profiling or product research.

Aida is not monitored in real time. Nobody at Hello Aida watches conversations as they happen, at night or over a weekend. This is why Aida gives a learner a 24-hour helpline inside the conversation, in the moment, rather than waiting for a person to look.

What happens when a signal is detected

• Aida stops tutoring and responds calmly, in the learner's language, suited to their age
• It never gives instructions, methods or specifics about self-harm, under any framing
• It points the learner to a real person and to a helpline
• It raises a flag for human review

Timings. A flag is reviewed within 4 business hours. Business hours are 08:00 to 17:00 South African time, Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays. A flag raised outside those hours is reviewed on the next business day. Where a risk to life appears immediate, we may refer it directly to the authorities without waiting.

Every clock runs from the moment a person reviews the flag, not from when the learner typed. A flag raised late on a Friday is reviewed on Monday and notified that day.

A person decides, always. Automated detection decides what a human sees. It never decides what happens next. Every decision to contact a parent, a school or an authority is made by a named person, recorded with reasons.

We do not promise a child secrecy. The Learner Rules tell a learner plainly that a parent can see their conversations, because inviting a confidence we cannot keep would be worse than not inviting it.

In an emergency, call 112 from a mobile, 10111 for the police, or 10177 for an ambulance. Childline South Africa is on 116, free from every network, 24 hours a day.

Tell us if we handle something badly, at hello@helloaida.ai. We would rather know.

We name every processor rather than describing them by category, because a parent is entitled to know who handles their child's words.

Aida is model-agnostic. We are not built on one AI provider. A learner's question may go to any of the model providers above, chosen on subject, language, the kind of task, and availability, and that choice changes as the models change. We would rather tell you who they all are than pretend there is only one. We update this list before adding a provider, and schools get advance notice and a right to object under the School Agreement.

Every processor is bound in writing to process only on our instructions, to keep the information confidential and secure, to tell us promptly of any compromise, and not to use it to train models.

Processing outside South Africa. The model providers operate in the United States, which has no adequacy finding under POPIA. Learner messages, uploads and voice are transmitted there to produce a response.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, where it is necessary to protect a child from harm as described in section 6, or to our professional advisers under confidentiality. If our business is sold, personal information may transfer to the buyer, and we will tell you before that happens.

Voice is optional and off unless you turn it on. Where it is used, the audio is sent to a provider named in section 7 and converted to text so Aida can respond. Both the audio and the transcription are kept for the periods in section 9.

Essential cookies keep you signed in, remember your language and theme, and protect against cross-site request forgery. They are necessary for the service to work and cannot be switched off.

Analytics cookies show us which features are used and where learners get stuck. They load only after you accept them on the cookie banner. If you do not accept, no analytics cookie is set and nothing is sent. You can change your mind at any time through the cookie preferences link in the footer.

A note on what Aida is. Aida is a tutor built on general-purpose AI models, shaped for the South African curriculum. It is not a substitute for a teacher, and its answers can be wrong. We would rather say that here than have a learner discover it during exam preparation.

School licences. Where a school is the responsible party, the retention periods in that school's agreement govern, and they may be shorter than the ones above.

When an account closes, or consent is withdrawn, we delete or irreversibly anonymise the learner's personal information within 60 days, except for the categories above that the law requires us to keep. We tell you what was kept, why, and for how long.

Aggregated statistics that cannot identify anyone, for example how many learners asked about photosynthesis in a term, are not personal information and we keep them.

• Encryption in transit and at rest
• Role-based access on least privilege, named accounts, no shared credentials
• Multi-factor authentication for every administrator and staff account
• Access to learner conversations limited to named personnel, only for support, safety review and fault diagnosis, and logged
• School data logically separated from consumer accounts and from other schools
• Regular vulnerability assessment, and a published route for reporting one
• Backups tested for restoration

Who at Hello Aida can read a learner's conversation. A small, named group, and only for the reasons above. Not out of curiosity, not for marketing, not for product research. Access is logged and reviewed.

If something goes wrong. Where there are reasonable grounds to believe personal information has been accessed or acquired by someone who should not have it, section 22 of POPIA requires us to notify the Information Regulator and the people affected as soon as reasonably possible after we establish what happened. We will tell you what was involved, the likely consequences, what we are doing, and who to contact.

Where a school is the responsible party, we notify the school within 72 hours of becoming aware, so that it can notify parents, and we support it in doing so. Our own obligations to the Information Regulator under section 22 are not limited by that period.

Found a security weakness? Tell us. If you report a weakness in good faith, and you keep to every condition below, we will not bring a civil claim, will not report you to law enforcement, will not treat your research as a breach of our Terms of Service, and will not contact your employer or school. Reading the code, headers and cookies our website sends to your own browser is ordinary use of a browser. Nothing in our Terms restricts it.

Write to hello@helloaida.ai with what you found, where, and how to reproduce it. This protection applies only if you keep to all of the following:

• Use your own test account
• Do not access, copy, download or retain anyone else's data, and above all not a child's. If you come across personal information by accident, stop, tell us, and delete what you hold
• Do not degrade the service for learners who are using it
• Do not demand payment or any other benefit in exchange for telling us, or for staying quiet
• Give us a reasonable period before publishing, normally 90 days, and tell us if you intend to publish sooner. We are asking for time to fix it, not for silence

Anyone who steps outside these conditions is not covered by this section, and we reserve every right we have, including those in section 6 of our Terms of Service.

How to use them. Write to our Information Officer, M Hlalele, at hello@helloaida.ai. We acknowledge within 5 business days and respond within 30 days, as POPIA requires. There is no charge for a reasonable request, though we may charge a prescribed fee for a voluminous copy. We will ask you to confirm your identity first, because we are not going to hand a child's conversations to someone who merely says they are the parent.

Where a school enrolled the learner, send the request to the school, which is the responsible party. If you send it to us we will pass it on and help the school answer it within the time its agreement requires.

Complaints. Tell us first, at hello@helloaida.ai, and a person will look at it. If we have not dealt with it properly, you may complain to the Information Regulator. You do not need our permission and you do not have to come to us first.

Contact

This policy sits alongside our Terms of Service, which is the agreement between you and us, and, for schools, our School Agreement. Where this policy and either of those conflict on how we handle personal information, this policy governs.