Privacy Policy

Effective: October 5, 2026

Teacher Elf is a flashcard, language practice, and classroom tool for teachers and learners. This page explains what personal data we collect, why we need it, who we share it with, and what choices you have.

For parents and schools: Student accounts are created and managed by teachers, and students don't need an email address. If your child uses Teacher Elf in class, your child's school can tell you how it handles consent and student data. You are also welcome to contact us.

1. Who we are

“Teacher Elf” means the Teacher Elf web service and its operator. If you have a privacy question or want to use your rights under this policy, reach out via our contact page.

2. Information we collect

Account information

• Your username, a hashed password, and, if you add them, your email and name. These are stored by Clerk, the service that handles sign-in.
• For student accounts a teacher creates: a generated password the teacher can view and re-print to share with the student. It is stored encrypted in our database.
• Your account role (Teacher, User, Student, Admin), when you were last active in the app, and, for teacher accounts, when you confirmed that you are at least 18.

Content you create

• Flashcard decks, individual cards, and language settings.
• Learning paths, classes, assignments, and form responses.
• Forum posts and comments (including any name or display name you attach to them).
• Speaking and dialogue practice: we record that a line was practiced, never the audio. Your recording stays in your browser.

Study, AI, and error data

• Study progress: how well each card is remembered and when it's next due.
• AI Tutor and other AI features: when you chat with the AI Tutor or generate cards, sentences or translations, the text involved is sent to an AI provider (Groq or OpenAI, and for teachers' features also Google Gemini) to produce the result. Students' requests never go to Gemini. We don't include your email or username. Students can use the AI Tutor only when their teacher switches it on for the class. AI Tutor messages are also checked by OpenAI's moderation service, and a flagged message is kept only as a count, not linked to the student. Learners who signed up on their own and aren't in any class always have access.
• Photo imports (OCR): the text is read from the photo in your browser, and the photo is not uploaded. If you choose to tidy up the result, only the text is sent to Groq. The reading engine and its language data load from the jsDelivr CDN, which sees your IP address.
• Speech recognition: when you speak to the AI Tutor or in speaking practice, your browser's built-in speech recognition turns your voice into text. Depending on your browser, the browser maker (for example Google in Chrome) may process the audio. Teacher Elf receives only the text and never stores audio.
• Error reports: when something goes wrong, details (the page address without its query string, technical details about the error, and the browser and device type) are sent to Sentry so we can fix it. We don't attach your name, email, user ID or IP address, and passwords, tokens and names are filtered out before anything is sent.
• Anonymous analytics: Vercel Web Analytics counts page views and traffic patterns without cookies. The counts are combined before any data leaves the request, so no visitor can be identified.

Other data the app keeps

• Teacher notes: private notes a teacher writes about a student, visible only to that teacher. Teachers are asked not to record health information or diagnoses.
• Display preferences: reading and display settings a teacher turns on for a student, such as an easy-to-read font or larger text. No reason or diagnosis is recorded.
• Points and streaks: the points a learner earns, which days and weeks they practiced, and a level we keep for internal use. If a teacher turns on a class leaderboard, classmates and the class teacher see each learner's first name (or username), generated avatar and weekly points. New classes start with it off.
• Game scores and duels: best scores in deck games, and the moves of two-player duels between classmates.
• Live Quiz: the nickname, avatar and answers of each player in a game. The host and the players in that game can see the nicknames and scores. We also keep a count of each game that started: when it started, its game mode, and how many players and questions it had. It names no players.
• AI usage records: for each AI request, which feature and provider was used, how many tokens it took, and whether it worked, so we can control costs and spot problems. The text of the request is not stored.
• Feedback and messages: feedback you send through the app and messages you send through the contact page.
• Support access: a Teacher Elf administrator can view the app as another user to help with a support request. Each time is logged, and saved student passwords can't be viewed this way.

3. How we use your information

• To run Teacher Elf: signing you in, saving your decks, scheduling reviews, and syncing your progress across devices.
• To give you the features you ask for: translating text, reading text aloud, running the AI Tutor, searching Unsplash for images, and reading text from photos (OCR).
• To support classes: sharing decks and assignments between teachers and their students, and letting teachers review student work and reset student passwords.
• To keep the site running well and fix bugs (Sentry, server logs).
• To improve Teacher Elf using anonymous, combined analytics (Vercel Web Analytics).

4. Services we use

We share personal data with the services below so they can help us run Teacher Elf. Each one follows its own privacy policy, linked from its name.

5. Where your data goes

Several of the services above are based in the United States, so your data may be processed or stored there. The table above shows where each service is based.

6. Children and students

Teacher Elf is made for learning, and many of the people using it are students. This is how it works for younger users:

• You need to be at least 13 to sign up on your own, and at least 18 to sign up as a teacher.
• Children under 13 use Teacher Elf only through an account their teacher creates for them. Students don't need an email address. Teachers who create student accounts should follow their school's rules for using online tools with students.
• Teachers can see and reset their students' passwords. They can also delete a student's account, for example when a parent or the school asks.
• We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 in any other way. If you think a child under 13 has signed up on their own, contact us and we will delete the account. Parents with questions can ask their child's teacher or contact us.

7. How long we keep data

• Your account and content are kept while your account exists. When you delete your account, your account, your private decks and the content you created are removed from our database, and your sign-in record at Clerk is deleted at the same time. A few things remain: decks you made public stay available without your name, forum posts and comments stay as written by a deleted user, and audit logs and AI usage records keep only an internal ID, not your name. Counts of the Live Quiz games you hosted stay, without any link to you.
• Audio: we don't store audio recordings. Speaking practice saves only that a line was practiced.
• Database backups are kept for 90 days so we can recover from a disaster, then permanently deleted.
• Error reports and analytics are kept for as long as Sentry and Vercel Web Analytics keep them, as described in their policies.

Some data is deleted automatically after a set time:

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see, correct, move, or delete the personal data we hold about you, and to object to or limit some uses of it. If you are in the EU/EEA or the UK, data protection law gives you these rights, and you can contact us or your local data protection authority. You can:

• Export your decks as JSON from your account settings.
• Delete your account from the settings page. This removes your data from our database, except what section 7 says remains, and your sign-in record from Clerk.
• Get a copy of your data, or ask us to correct it, through our contact page. If your teacher created your account, you can also ask your school, which can make the request for you.
• Complain to a data protection authority, such as Datatilsynet in Norway or Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten (IMY) in Sweden, or the authority where you live.
• Reach out via our contact page for any other request.

9. Security

All traffic uses HTTPS, our database provider stores data encrypted, and we add our own extra encryption for sensitive fields such as saved student passwords. No system is perfectly secure. If we ever learn of a breach that affects your data, we will tell you as the law requires.

10. Cookies and similar technologies

Teacher Elf only uses cookies the service needs to work: sign-in cookies that keep you signed in, a NEXT_LOCALE cookie that remembers your language for up to a year, and a short-lived cookie that is set only while a Teacher Elf administrator views the app as another user, for example to help with a support request. We do not use analytics or advertising cookies. Page views are counted without cookies (Vercel Web Analytics), so there is no cookie banner and nothing to opt out of.

Your browser's local storage also keeps a few things on your device, such as whether sounds are on, which tips you have dismissed, the deck languages you used last, unsaved drafts, your AI Tutor chat history (for 24 hours) and your Live Quiz seat (for 6 hours). They stay on your device and are not sent to us. Logging out clears the chat history, Live Quiz seats and your recent items, and clearing your browser data removes everything.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The “Effective” date at the top shows the latest version. We will announce important changes in the app, or by email to teachers who manage student accounts.

12. Contact

Questions about your privacy, or requests about your data? Reach out via our contact page.

See also our Terms of Service.