Privacy Policy

Branchy is an AI tutor for VCE Mathematical Methods, run by D CARMELI & Y CARMELI (ABN 38 499 440 440) (“Branchy”, “we”, “us”). This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

It covers everything that carries the Branchy name:

• our website, including the free founder call booking and the pricing page
• the Branchy web app: your dashboard, the voice and whiteboard tutor, exam marking, spaced repetition and the teacher dashboard
• the Branchy apps for iPhone and Android, which photograph exam papers and send them to your Branchy account

We handle personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. If you have a question at any point, contact us using the details in section 11.

We collect only what we need to run Branchy. Most of it you give us directly; some is created as you use the tutor and the exam marker.

Account details

Email address, password (stored hashed by our sign-in provider), nickname, profile picture, whether you're a student or a teacher, subjects, and how you heard about us.From you when you sign up or edit your settings. If you sign in with Google, Google shares your name and email with us.

Learning profile

Your goals, preferred name, how you like to be taught (pace, directness, encouragement), and topic-by-topic progress.From you, and from the tutor as you work with it.

Tutoring sessions

Session times and length, a session plan and summary, homework set, questions flagged for a teacher, and moments the tutor re-explained something.Created by the tutor during and after each session.

Engagement signals

How long you take to reply, how long your replies are, and an engagement score the tutor uses to adjust its pace.Worked out from your replies. We do not use your camera.

Personal notes

Short notes about things you mention to the tutor, such as an upcoming SAC, so it can bring them up later.Taken by the tutor from what you say.

Exam papers and marking

Photos and scans of your exam pages, the text read from them, marks, mistakes, mistake types, explanations, flags and comments you add, and spaced repetition cards.You upload them on the website or with the Branchy app; our AI reads and marks them.

Calendar and to-dos

Events and to-dos you add, and founder calls you book.From you, and from our booking provider when you book a call.

Payments

What you bought, amounts, credits, and PayPal order and subscription IDs.From PayPal after you pay. We never see or store your card or bank details.

Question reports

The question you reported, your reasons and comments.From you.

Teacher links

Which teachers you've connected to, and your link code.From you and your teacher.

Technical data

Sign-in cookies, IP address, browser and device type, and server logs.Collected automatically from your browser or phone.

Voice.When you hold the talk button, your voice is streamed to our speech-to-text provider so the tutor can hear you. We don't keep audio recordings or full transcripts of your conversations. We keep the session summaries, notes and signals listed above.

We don't ask for sensitive information such as health, religion or ethnicity. Please don't share it with the tutor. If you do, ask us and we'll delete it.

We use your information to teach you, and to run and improve Branchy. Specifically, to:

• create and secure your account, and sign you in
• run tutoring sessions that remember where you're up to and adapt to how you learn
• read, mark and explain your exams, find patterns in your mistakes, and schedule revision
• show your progress on your dashboard, and to teachers you've chosen to connect with
• take payments, track session credits and keep payment records
• book and remind you about founder calls
• answer your messages and question reports, and fix mistakes in our marking
• keep Branchy secure, prevent misuse and meet our legal obligations

We don't sell your information, and we don't use it for advertising. We'll only email you about your account and the service unless you've agreed to more.

Branchy is built on AI models from other companies. When you use the tutor or the exam marker, the parts of your information each task needs are sent to them:

• The tutor:your spoken words go to Deepgram to be turned into text. That text, with your learning profile and recent progress, goes to OpenAI to plan the tutor's answer. The answer goes to Cartesia to be turned into speech.
• The exam marker:your exam page images and the text read from them go to Google's Gemini to read, mark and explain each question and sort your mistakes.

We use these providers' paid business services, under which they don't use your information to train their models. They may keep it for a short time to detect abuse, under their own terms.

AI can be wrong. Scores are added up by our own code, not by the AI, and you can report any question you think was marked wrongly. Branchy's marking is a study aid. It isn't an official VCAA result.

We share your information only with the service providers that run Branchy, with teachers you choose to connect to, and where the law requires it. We never sell it.

Service providers. Each one handles only what its job needs, under its own privacy terms.

Supabase

Database, sign-in and file storage (exam photos, profile pictures).Sydney, Australia

Vercel

Hosts the website and web app.Servers in Sydney; global delivery network

OpenAI

AI that plans the tutor's teaching.United States

Deepgram

Speech-to-text for the tutor.United States

Cartesia

Text-to-speech for the tutor.United States

Google

Gemini AI for exam marking, and “Sign in with Google”.United States and other countries

PayPal

Payments and subscriptions.Australia and other countries

Cal.com

Booking founder calls.United States and European Union

Resend

Sending account emails such as password resets.United States

Apple and Google

Distributing the Branchy phone apps.Under their own app store terms

Teachers.A teacher, tutor or parent can see your progress only after you give them your link code. They get a read-only view of your marked exams, mistake patterns and progress. They can't change your work, and they never see the text our AI reads from your exam pages. You can disconnect a teacher at any time in Settings.

Branchy staff.Our founders can see totals across all students and the question-report queue. Our admin tools don't show any individual student's work, sessions or profile.

Other cases.We may disclose information if the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or as part of selling or merging the business, in which case this policy would continue to apply.

Your account, learning data and exam photos are stored in Sydney, Australia. Some of it is sent overseas to be processed, mainly to the United States, by the AI, speech, booking and email providers listed in section 5.

We choose providers with strong security and privacy commitments and send each one only what its task needs. Their countries' privacy laws may not protect your information in the same way as Australian law. By using Branchy, you agree to this overseas processing. If you have concerns, contact us before you sign up.

Most Branchy students are in Years 11 and 12, so many are under 18. If you're under 18, please make sure a parent or guardian knows you're using Branchy and has read this policy.

Parents and guardians can contact us to ask what we hold about their child, to correct it or to have it deleted. We'll check that you are the student's parent or guardian before we act.

We design Branchy with younger users in mind. We don't show ads, we don't sell data, we don't ask for sensitive information, and teachers see a student's work only when the student shares their link code.

Schools and teachers who invite students to Branchy are responsible for having the consent their own school policies require.

We protect your information with encrypted connections (HTTPS), passwords stored only in hashed form, database rules that let each account reach only its own data, and staff access limited to what the job needs. No system is perfectly secure. If a data breach is likely to cause you serious harm, we'll tell you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), as the law requires.

Your profile picture is stored at a public web address so it loads quickly. Anyone with that exact address can view it, so use a picture you're comfortable sharing. Your exam photos and everything else are private.

We keep your information while your account is open. When you delete your account, we delete your profile, sessions, exams, exam photos, marking results, cards, notes and teacher links. Copies in backups and provider logs are removed as those roll over, usually within 30 days.

We keep payment records for as long as Australian tax law requires, usually 5 years, even after you delete your account.

You control your information. You can:

• See and change it: edit your nickname, picture and study settings in Settings, and see your exams and progress on your dashboard.
• Disconnect a teacher: remove any connected teacher in Settings.
• Delete your account: in Settings, choose Delete account. It deletes your data straight away, as described in section 8. The Branchy apps have the same option.
• Ask us: for a copy of what we hold about you, to correct something, or to delete a particular item. Contact us using section 11.

We'll reply within 30 days and won't charge you. If we can't do what you ask, we'll explain why.

We use only the cookies Branchy needs to work, mainly the ones that keep you signed in. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies, and we don't run third-party analytics.

The booking page and the pricing page load Cal.com's and PayPal's own tools, which may set their own cookies under their privacy policies. If you block cookies, you won't be able to sign in.

For any privacy question, request or complaint, email us at brainwavetute@gmail.com. You can also write to D CARMELI & Y CARMELI, 2 Deanlea Court, Hawthorn East VIC 3123.

We'll acknowledge a complaint within 7 days and try to resolve it within 30 days. If you're not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.

We'll update this policy when Branchy changes, and the date at the top will always show the latest version. If a change significantly affects how we use your information, we'll tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.