StudyZone Privacy Policy

Effective Date: April 13, 2026 · Last Updated: October 4, 2026

1. About this Policy

StudyZone ("StudyZone", "we", "our", or "us") operates the StudyZone mobile application, website, and related online services (collectively, the "Services"). This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, how we use it, with whom we share it, and the choices and rights you have. It is designed to meet the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA, the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Google Play's User Data and Families policies, and other applicable laws.

By installing, accessing, or using the Services you agree to the practices described below. If you do not agree, please uninstall the app and contact us for assistance.

2. Information We Collect

We collect information in the following categories:

We do not collect precise GPS location, microphone recordings outside of user-initiated voice features, contact lists, SMS messages, or health data.

3. How We Use Your Information

• Provide, maintain, and improve the Services.
• Create and authenticate accounts, restore soft-deleted accounts, and sync your progress across devices.
• Personalize learning content, recommendations, and notifications based on your educational level and usage patterns.
• Process subscriptions, entitlements, and in-app purchases through Google Play Billing.
• Power AI features such as AI tutors, study schedule generation, quiz generation, and answer explanations.
• Operate messaging and social features — deliver messages, show read receipts, handle reports, and moderate user content.
• Detect, prevent, and respond to fraud, abuse, spam, and security incidents (e.g., rate limiting, login lockout, abuse reporting).
• Analyze usage to fix bugs and improve UX and performance.
• Send account, security, and service updates (these are essential and cannot be opted out of while your account is active).
• Send optional marketing and educational tips when permitted by your preferences and applicable law.
• Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Use.

4. Legal Bases for Processing (GDPR / UK GDPR)

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases:

• Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): Creating and maintaining your account, delivering purchased content, processing payments, providing customer support.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): Improving the Services, product analytics, security, fraud prevention, moderation, internal business operations. We balance these interests against your rights and freedoms.
• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)): Optional analytics, personalized advertising, marketing emails, and any sensitive personal data collection. You may withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)): Tax, accounting, consumer protection, and responding to valid legal requests.
• Vital interests / public interest (Art. 6(1)(d–e)): Exceptional safety situations.

5. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We may share data with:

• Service providers (processors) acting on our instructions — hosting, databases, crash reporting, analytics, push notifications, email delivery, content delivery, customer support tooling.
• Sub-processors engaged by our service providers under written data-processing terms.
• Payment partners — Google Play Billing handles all in-app purchases and stores payment details directly; we only receive the purchase state.
• Educational partners & teachers — when you subscribe to a teacher or enroll in a course, limited progress data may be shared to deliver the content.
• Other users — content you post publicly or send in chats is visible to recipients; reports you submit are routed to our moderation team.
• Legal, regulatory, and safety — when we believe disclosure is required by law or necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of StudyZone, our users, or others.
• Business transfers — in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale, subject to the recipient honoring this Policy.

6. Third-Party Services We Use

The table below lists our key sub-processors. Each link points to their own privacy policy.

7. AI & Machine Learning Features

Some features use large language models and other machine-learning systems (for example, the AI tutor, study schedule generator, quiz generator, and answer explanations). When you use these features:

• Your prompts and the conversation context are sent to our AI provider to generate a response.
• We instruct our providers not to train their general models on your inputs where such controls are available.
• Do not submit highly sensitive personal data (national ID, health information, financial details) to AI features.
• AI responses can be inaccurate and are not a substitute for a qualified teacher or professional advice.
• We retain AI interaction history only as long as needed to render your session, improve quality, and investigate abuse.

8. User-Generated Content & Moderation

Messaging, chats, and content you post in StudyZone may be reviewed by automated systems and, when reported or flagged, by our human moderators. We take action against content that violates our Terms of Use, including spam, harassment, sexual content involving minors, hate speech, violent extremism, and copyright infringement. Reports are retained to enforce safety decisions and appeals.

9. Push Notifications

We send push notifications for account security, social interactions, learning reminders, and important product updates. You can disable non-essential notifications from the device settings or in-app preferences at any time. Security and transactional notifications may continue while your account is active.

10. Advertising

The Services may contain advertising served by Google AdMob or similar ad networks. These networks may use the advertising ID and coarse device information to deliver and measure ads. You can reset or opt out of personalized advertising from your device settings ("Reset advertising ID" / "Opt out of ads personalization"). We do not knowingly show personalized ads to users under the age of consent in their region.

11. Cookies & Similar Technologies

Our website uses cookies and local storage to remember your language preference, authentication state, and product analytics. The mobile app uses similar local storage via secure device APIs. You can clear cookies and app storage through your browser or device settings.

12. International Data Transfers

StudyZone is operated from Egypt and our backend runs on cloud providers whose data centers may be located in the European Union, the United States, and other countries. When we transfer data outside your jurisdiction, we rely on appropriate safeguards, including the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, and supplementary technical measures such as encryption in transit and at rest.

13. Data Retention

14. Security

We apply administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your data, including TLS encryption in transit, encrypted storage, least-privilege access controls, password hashing, secret management, rate limiting, circuit breakers around security-critical systems, and continuous monitoring for anomalous activity. No system is perfectly secure — please use a strong, unique password and enable device security features.

Breach notification: If a personal-data breach affects you, we will notify you and the relevant supervisory authority without undue delay and within the timeframes required by applicable law.

15. Children's Privacy

StudyZone is intended for students aged 13 and older (or the minimum digital age of consent in your country, whichever is higher — for example, 16 in parts of the EU). We do not knowingly collect personal data from children below that age without verifiable parental consent. Parents or guardians who believe a child has provided us data without consent can contact us at mostafa@studyzone.app to request deletion.

Teachers and schools using StudyZone with students are responsible for obtaining any parental consents required by local law.

16. Your Rights

Subject to your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Delete your data ("right to be forgotten"), subject to legal retention obligations.
• Restrict or object to certain processing, including direct marketing and legitimate-interest processing.
• Data portability — receive a copy of your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Withdraw consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
• Not be discriminated against for exercising your rights.

To exercise these rights, email mostafa@studyzone.app. We will respond within 30 days (extendable by up to 60 days for complex requests). We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.

17. Account Deletion

You can delete your StudyZone account at any time through the app (Profile → Edit Profile → Delete Account, or Support → Delete Account) or at studyzone.app/delete-account. Deleting your account:

• Logs you out immediately;
• Permanently removes your account and personal database records. You cannot restore a permanently deleted account;
• Uploaded files are deleted in the background, normally within 24 hours. We retain only records required for legal, accounting, or safety reasons;
• Backups are rotated continuously and any residual copies are deleted within 35 days of the primary deletion.

Older app versions may offer temporary deletion with a recovery window. Use the latest app's permanent deletion option to erase the account. Deleting StudyZone does not cancel an Apple subscription; manage renewal in your App Store subscriptions.

18. California Residents (CCPA / CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have specific rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act:

• Right to know the categories and specific pieces of personal information collected, sources, purposes, and recipients.
• Right to delete personal information we have collected from you.
• Right to correct inaccurate personal information.
• Right to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal information.
• Right to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. We do not sell or share personal data as those terms are defined under the CCPA.
• Right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights.

You can make a verifiable consumer request by emailing mostafa@studyzone.app. You may designate an authorized agent to make requests on your behalf.

19. EEA / UK Residents (GDPR & UK GDPR)

If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, StudyZone is the data controller for the personal data described in this Policy. You have all the rights listed in Section 16 above, including the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. For questions about this Policy or to contact our privacy team, email mostafa@studyzone.app.

20. Google Play Data Safety

Our Google Play Data Safety form reflects the practices described in this Policy. If we change the data we collect, use, or share, we will update both disclosures before the change takes effect.

21. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect product changes, legal requirements, or user feedback. We will update the "Effective Date" above and, for material changes, notify you in-app, by email, or through a prominent banner. Continued use of the Services after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

22. Contact Us