Help, terms, privacy and refunds

Reading without an account

The site remembers a few things in your browser. Nothing in this table is sent to us unless you send it, and the only row you can send is as:predict-answers. Clearing your browser data removes all of it.

If you make an account

An account saves your progress and answers across devices. It is the same account on the website and in both apps.

The weekly review reminder is the third optional email, after the one-time welcome and release notes. It is off unless you turn on Reminders in settings, it goes to Pro accounts only, and it is sent at most once every seven days. It says how many questions are due for review and links to your review queue. It is never sent when nothing is due, and it names no lesson and says nothing else about your progress. The number is worked out from your answers and is written in the email, so the email service that sends it sees that number.

So that we can tell whether the reminder helps anyone come back, each week about a tenth of the accounts it would have gone to are left out of it on purpose. They are picked by a calculation on the account id and the week that looks at nothing you have done, so they are drawn afresh each week, and an account left out gets the row in the table above. We then compare the accounts that were sent it with the ones left out, by counting how many answered a question in the three days after it was, or would have been, sent, using the dates already on the answers. That is a count for each group. No result is kept against any account.

Progress from before you signed in stays in that browser. The predictions you answered as a guest are the one exception, and only if you ask: your dashboard, the review queue page and the Buy Pro form in your account settings offer to add them to your account, and nothing is uploaded until you press the button.

Your code and your input never reach us

Code you write and input you run a lesson on are processed in your browser and never sent to us. The first time you run Python, your browser downloads it from a public content delivery network, which sees your IP address the way any website does.

Cookies

Two first-party cookies, neither for advertising, on the website only:

• as_session keeps you signed in, for up to thirty days.
• as_hint holds your account id, address, name, whether the address is confirmed and your plan, so the page header can show them without asking the server every time. It lasts thirty days.

If analytics is turned on and you allow it, it adds two first-party cookies that last thirteen months and are deleted when you withdraw. The apps set no cookies.

Measurement, and how you are asked

No analytics service is on today. If one is turned on:

• In the EU, the EEA and the UK nothing loads until you agree.
• Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track count as a refusal.
• You can change your mind any time: Privacy choices.
• The identifier is random, and nothing that would be sent names your account.

What would be measured, once a service is turned on and you have allowed it:

• The pages you open, with nothing after the ? but a campaign tag such as utm_source, and the page you came from.
• What you do in a lesson: lessons opened, predictions right or wrong, code runs and whether they passed, never the code. Searches by length and result count, never the words. Sign-up, sign-in and checkout steps. Reports by reason, never what you wrote.
• That you copied the link from the share card in your account settings, or sent it from your phone's share sheet, and which of the two - never who it went to. The link is the same for everyone and holds nothing about you.
• With each of those, the version of the site.

Server logs

Our server logs each request so we can fix problems: what was asked for, whether it worked, how long it took, and your account id if you were signed in. It never holds your IP address, your email address, a password, a cookie, or anything you typed. In a sign-in, password-reset, confirmation or unsubscribe link, the secret is left out of the line. Errors are logged with the secret in a sign-in, password-reset or unsubscribe link taken out. Old logs are dropped as new ones are written.

No log of IP addresses is kept today. If our hosting starts one, it will not record the address of the page asked for, it will be kept for about ninety days, and this policy will say so first.

Who else is involved

• An email service sends our email: sign-in links, confirmations, the welcome, release notes and the weekly review reminder if you turn them on, and receipts. It receives your address and the message, and each optional email carries a random id of our own record of that send, so a spam report can be matched to the message. It receives nothing else, with one exception: the reminder says how many questions are due for review, so they see that number.
• Google, only if you choose to sign in with it. Google tells us your address, your name and its id for your account.
• Apple, only if you choose Sign in with Apple. Apple tells us its id for your account, an address (yours, or a relay address if you chose Hide My Email) and, the first time, your name. When you delete the account, we tell Apple to forget the link.
• The payment company, if you buy Pro on the website. It receives your card or bank details, which never reach us. It is named at checkout and on your receipt. In the apps, the App Store or Google Play takes the payment.
• Our hosting provider, which runs the site and its database and keeps the backups.
• A content delivery network, only if you run Python, as your code and your input describes.
• Analytics services (Google Analytics and PostHog), only once turned on and only if you allow them. Not on today.
• A bot check on sign-up. It receives your IP address and technical details of your browser, never what you type.
• An error-reporting service receives details of unexpected errors: what failed, the page or endpoint, and what the page or server did just before, including what it wrote to its console. An address in a report has nothing after a question mark, the secret in a one-time link is taken out wherever it turns up, a line written to the console included, and an email address in an error message is replaced before the report is sent. It never receives your IP address or cookies.

Nobody else. Data is not sold, not shared for advertising, and not handed to anyone for their own purposes.

Keeping it, and deleting it

Progress and predictions are kept while the account exists. Sign-in links last fifteen minutes, password resets thirty, address confirmations twenty-four hours, and sessions thirty days, and each is deleted after it expires.

Deleting the account removes it and everything linked to it, with four deliberate exceptions named below. Deleting your account says how. An account switched off for two years is deleted the same way, with an email thirty days before. A sign-up never confirmed is deleted after thirty days, unless it holds a purchase.

The first thing that survives a deletion is the do-not-send list. If you unsubscribed, or an email to you bounced or was reported as spam, your address stays on it so we never email you again. It holds the address, a normalised form of it so that different spellings of one Gmail mailbox count as one - an unsubscribe from one spelling stops optional email to all of them - the reason it was added, and when it was added. If the reason was a spam report and the report names one of the optional messages in the log below, it also holds a pointer to that message's entry in the log, which says which message it was and when. For every other row the pointer is empty. Nothing else is in it. Write to us to have it removed.

The second is a record of anything you bought, if you did: the amount, currency, date and payment reference, kept for eight financial years as Indian tax and company law require. It no longer names you after the account is deleted.

The third is a log of the optional email we sent you, and like the do-not-send list it keeps your address in full. Each row holds your address, a normalised form of it so that different spellings of one Gmail mailbox count as one, the account id it was sent for, which message it was, and when. There are three such messages today: the one-time welcome, release notes if you turn them on, and the weekly review reminder if you turn Reminders on.

It is kept so that no address is sent too much, and the address, with the normalised form that counts every spelling of one Gmail mailbox together, is what a cap has to be enforced against. It holds nothing else about you: no progress (not even the number a reminder carried), no predictions and no message text. To have it removed, write to contact@algoscope.net.

The fourth is the entry recording when what you bought was switched on or off, if you had anything switched on. It no longer names you after the account is deleted, and is kept so a later refund or chargeback can be settled.

Backups of the database are made every night. Nightly copies are kept for about 14 days and each Sunday's copy for about 8 weeks, so a deleted account is gone from every copy within two months. The clean-up runs right after each night's copy is made and checked. Backups are kept on our own server, and no off-site copy is set up.

What it keeps on your device

Ten values, in the app's own storage. No other app can read them, and neither can we.

While you are signed in, your sign-in token and a note of your plan are kept encrypted on this device only. Signing out deletes both. The app does not collect your contacts, photos or location.

What it sends

Without an account, nothing about you. Signed in, the app sends our server your sign-in details, your progress and predictions, the settings actions you take, and a record of any Pro purchase, which we check with Apple.

Usage sharing is off unless you turn it on in Settings, and it is never linked to your account. Crash reports go to Google from release builds so crashes can be fixed: what failed, the device and the app version, with no account id. Neither is set up today, so the app sends nothing for either.

What the App Store privacy label declares

Linked to you, only if you sign in: your email address, name, account id, progress and any purchase. Not linked to you, for analytics: product interaction and a device identifier. No tracking and no advertising identifier.

What leaves the app, when you ask it to

• Further reading links open in your browser.
• Share this step sends a link to the lesson and step, nothing about you.
• Report a problem writes a message you send yourself, by email, on our public issue tracker or from your clipboard.

Turning it off, and getting rid of it

• Reset progress, in Settings under Data, clears progress on this device.
• Sign out deletes the token and the plan note. Your progress on the device stays.
• Delete account, in Settings under Data, deletes your account, as deleting your account describes.
• Deleting the app removes what it keeps. Sign out first to remove the sign-in token too.

What it keeps on your device

Ten values, in the app's private storage. No other app can read them, and neither can we.

While you are signed in, your sign-in token and a note of your plan are kept encrypted on this device. Signing out deletes both. The app does not collect your contacts, photos or location.

What it sends

Without an account, nothing about you. Signed in, the app sends our server your sign-in details, your progress and predictions, the settings actions you take, and a record of any Pro purchase, which we check with Google Play.

Usage sharing is off unless you turn it on in Settings, and it is never linked to your account. Crash reports go to Google from release builds so crashes can be fixed: what failed, the device and the app version, with no account id. Neither is set up today, so the app sends nothing for either.

Permissions, and the advertising identifier

Two permissions: internet access, for your account, and Google Play billing, to buy Pro. The app cannot read the advertising identifier, and has no ads.

Android's own backup

Android can back up the app's settings and progress to your Google account. Your sign-in token is never backed up. You can turn this off in your system settings.

What leaves the app, when you ask it to

• Further reading links open in your browser.
• Share this step sends a link to the lesson and step, nothing about you.
• Report a problem writes a message you send yourself, by email, on our public issue tracker or from your clipboard.

Turning it off, and getting rid of it

• Reset progress, in Settings under Data, clears progress on this device.
• Sign out deletes the token and the plan note. Your progress on the device stays.
• Delete account, in Settings under Data, deletes your account, as deleting your account describes.
• Clearing the app's storage, or uninstalling it, removes everything it keeps.

Who is responsible, and where to complain

The controller is NUB LABS PRIVATE LIMITED, trading as AlgoScope. Its postal address is under contact. Questions and grievances go to contact@algoscope.net, and you will get an answer within 30 days. In the EU or UK you can also complain to your data protection authority.

Children

Accounts and purchases are for people aged 18 and over, as the terms say. Nothing about a reader without an account is collected at all. If you believe someone under 18 has made an account, write to contact@algoscope.net and it will be removed.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, object to how it is used, or withdraw consent. In settings you can download a file of what your account holds, correct your name and address, and delete the account. For anything else write to contact@algoscope.net, and you will get an answer within 30 days.

The file holds your account, sessions, sign-in links, progress, predictions, email choices, which optional emails were sent to the account and when, the times a reminder was held back from it, and purchases. It leaves out passwords and tokens. It does not repeat the address and the normalised form of it that each row of the log of optional email holds. Ask for the log as it is kept and you will be sent it.

Changes

Before we collect anything new, this policy changes first, with a new date. The current version is always at this address.