Privacy Policy
Version 1 · Last updated 6 October 2026
The short version
- NEIQ helps you track your marks, practise, and get help from an AI tutor.
- We only collect what we need for that. We never sell your information or show you adverts.
- If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must agree before NEIQ saves your marks or you can use the AI tutor.
- Only you, your linked parent or guardian, and a small number of NEIQ staff can see your profile and marks.
- You can download a copy of your data or delete your account at any time, in Profile → Your data.
1. Who we are
NEIQ is run by [COMPANY OR OWNER NAME], [REGISTRATION NUMBER, if a company], [PHYSICAL ADDRESS], South Africa. Under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) we are the "responsible party" for your information.
Our Information Officer is [NAME]. Contact them at [EMAIL ADDRESS] about anything in this policy.
2. What we collect
| Information | Why we need it |
|---|---|
| Your name, email address and password (or Google sign-in) | To create your account and let you sign in. |
| Your date of birth | To give you the right privacy protection for your age, and to know whether a parent must agree first. |
| Your role (learner or parent), grade, school and subjects | To show you the right topics, past papers and questions. |
| A parent or guardian's email address (learners under 18) | So your parent or guardian can link to your account and give consent. |
| Your marks, including photos of report cards or test scripts you choose to scan | To show your progress and suggest what to practise. |
| Your "Check what you know" results | To show which topics you know well and which need practice. |
| Your AI tutor conversations, including any pictures you add | To answer your questions and let you go back to earlier chats. |
| Things you add to your profile: photo, skills, interests, sports, achievements, dream career | To build your profile. These are optional. |
We do not collect your location, contacts or ID number, and we do not use advertising or tracking cookies. To see which parts of NEIQ are used most, we count how many times each screen is opened and how many past papers are downloaded each day. Those counts never record who did it. The app stores a few settings on your device (for example, the tutor mode you last used) and keeps an offline copy of your data so it works without signal.
3. Children and parental consent
Most NEIQ users are under 18. Under POPIA, we may only process a child's personal information with the consent of a parent or guardian.
- When a learner under 18 signs up, they give a parent or guardian's email address. The parent or guardian signs in to NEIQ with that email and confirms that they agree.
- Until they agree, the learner is in limited mode: NEIQ does not save their marks or tutor chats, and the AI tutor and photo scan are switched off.
- A parent or guardian can withdraw consent at any time by unlinking the learner's account in their Profile.
- A linked parent or guardian can see the learner's profile and marks, and download a copy of that information. A learner's tutor chats stay private to the learner.
4. How we use AI
The AI tutor and the photo scan of marks use Google's Gemini AI. When you use them, your message, picture, grade and subjects are sent to Google to produce an answer. [CONFIRM: Google does not use this data to train its models under our paid Gemini API terms.]
AI never makes decisions about you. It doesn't give official grades or decide whether you qualify for anything. Marks only count once you have checked and saved them, and the tutor guides you to the answer instead of just giving it.
Talking to My Tutor. If you speak to My Tutor instead of typing, your recording is sent to Google's Gemini AI to write down what you said. We don't keep the recording; only the written words are saved with your tutor chat. Replies are read aloud by your own phone or computer, so nothing extra is sent anywhere.
Keeping you safe in My Tutor. Each message you send to My Tutor is checked by AI for signs that you might be hurting yourself, being hurt or abused, being bullied or in danger. If it is, My Tutor answers with care and shows free helplines, and a person on NEIQ's safety team is told so they can follow up. We keep what you wrote, when, and what kind of worry it was, for 30 days; then it is deleted automatically. Only NEIQ's safety team can see it. We do not tell your parent or guardian automatically. If we believe you are in serious danger, we may contact someone who can help, as the law allows. Rude or sexual messages are only counted (not kept), and the tutor simply steers back to school work.
5. Who can see your information
- You.
- Your linked parent or guardian, once they have confirmed the link (see section 3).
- NEIQ administrators, only when needed to run the service, fix problems or keep users safe.
- Our service providers, who store and process data for us under contract: Google (Firebase for sign-in and the database, Google Cloud to run the app, and Gemini for AI).
Other learners, teachers and schools cannot see your profile or marks. We never sell or rent your information, and we only share it with others if the law requires it.
6. Where your information is stored
Your profile, marks, results, tutor chats and their backups are stored on Google's servers in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the app runs there too. Two things are handled by Google outside South Africa: your sign-in account (name, email and password, kept securely by Firebase Authentication), and the messages and pictures you send to the AI tutor or photo scan while Gemini works out an answer. Google is bound by data protection laws and contracts that give protection similar to POPIA, as section 72 of POPIA requires.
7. How we keep it safe
- All data is sent over encrypted connections and stored encrypted by Google.
- Security rules on our database decide who can read or change each record, so the app can't show your information to the wrong person even by mistake.
- Only a small number of NEIQ staff have administrator access.
If there is ever a data breach that affects you, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as soon as reasonably possible.
8. How long we keep it
We keep your information while you have a NEIQ account. When you delete your account, we delete your profile, photo, marks, results, tutor chats and sign-in straight away. Copies in our nightly backups are removed within 14 days.
If a parent or guardian answered a request to link to your account, we keep a short record of that: whether they agreed, when, and which consent wording they saw. Your name is removed from it. We keep this to show that consent was handled properly.
Messages flagged by My Tutor's safety check (see section 4) are deleted automatically after 30 days.
We also keep an activity history: a record of when a parent, guardian or NEIQ admin looked at or changed a learner's information, and when consent was given or withdrawn. It can't be changed, and only you and NEIQ admins can see the entries about you. Each entry is deleted after two years, including after an account is deleted, so we can show that your information was protected. Google also keeps a technical log of every time the database is used, for 30 days.
9. Your rights
Under POPIA you (or your parent or guardian, if you are under 18) can:
- See your information: Profile → Your data → Download my data saves a copy of everything we keep about you.
- See who has looked at it: Profile → Your data → Who has looked at your information.
- Correct it: edit your profile and marks in the app, or ask us to fix anything you can't change yourself (such as your date of birth).
- Delete it: Profile → Your data → Delete my account.
- Withdraw consent: a parent or guardian can unlink a learner's account at any time.
- Object or complain: contact our Information Officer at [EMAIL ADDRESS]. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa at inforegulator.org.za.
10. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a way that affects you, we will tell you in the app before the change applies. The date at the top shows when it last changed.