Privacy policy

Clintech Academy, of Douala, Littoral Region, Cameroon, decides how and why your personal data is processed here. For anything in this policy, write to privacy@clintech.academy.

1. What we collect

Because you gave it to us

• Account: name, email, password (stored only as a hash), and optionally a photo, phone number, country and biography.
• Instructor application: your expertise, background, and any identity document you upload for verification.
• Course work: quiz answers, assignment submissions, project files, and questions you ask an instructor.
• Payment: the amount, currency, and the reference our payment provider returns. We never receive your card number or mobile money PIN.
• Newsletter: if you subscribe, your email address and language, and when you confirmed. It is used for the newsletter and nothing else, and every newsletter has a link to leave the list in one click.
• Your classes: the documents you upload and the web pages you link to in your own classes, and the study path made from them. They are private to you.

Because you used the service

• Progress: which lessons you opened, how far through a video you got, time on a lesson, quiz scores. This is what makes resume, progress and certificates work.
• Technical: IP address, browser and device type, and error logs. IP addresses in our audit log are stored hashed, not in the clear.
• Country: the country your prices are shown for, worked out once from your IP address so prices appear in your own currency, or chosen by you in your settings or at the bottom of any page.
• AI conversations: what you ask Buddy and what Buddy replies, so the conversation has memory and so we can meter usage.

2. Why, and on what legal basis

3. Who else sees your data

We do not sell personal data. We use a small number of processors, each handling only what their job needs:

• Supabase — database, authentication and public images.
• Cloudflare R2 — course video, submissions, documents, and the sources you add to your classes.
• Stripe (cards) and Fapshi (mobile money, such as MTN MoMo and Orange Money) — payments. They handle the payment itself under their own terms and privacy policies.
• OpenRouter and the AI model providers it routes to — Buddy and the other AI features. What is sent: your question and the conversation so far, the course material or class sources it is about, and your first name (or the display name you chose) so that Buddy can speak to you by name. What is not: your email address, surname, account id or payment details. Requests go only to providers that do not keep or train on what they are sent.
• Cartesia — Buddy’s voice. The text of Buddy’s answers is turned into speech; nothing about you is sent.
• Deepgram — transcribes instructors’ course video and audio for captions and transcripts.
• Resend — sends our email: account messages, receipts and notifications, and news if you asked for it.
• ipapi.co — the first time you visit, your browser asks it which country your IP address is in, so prices show in your currency. It is asked once; the answer is kept in your browser, and nothing else about you is sent.
• Wikimedia Commons — now and then the tutor pins a freely licensed picture to the board, a photograph or a map. Your browser loads it from Wikimedia’s servers, which see your IP address as they do for anybody reading Wikipedia. What the picture shows is searched for by our servers; nothing about you goes with the search.

When you speak a question instead of typing it, your browser turns your voice into text. Most browsers do that on their maker’s servers — Google for Chrome, Apple for Safari — under their own privacy terms rather than ours. We receive only the text, never the audio.

When you link a web page to one of your classes, our server fetches that page, as any visitor’s browser would, to read it for you.

Instructors see the names, progress and submitted work of students enrolled in their own courses. They do not see your email address, payment details, or anything about other instructors’ courses.

We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim.

4. Where your data is held

Our processors operate data centres outside Cameroon, including in the United States, so your data is transferred internationally. We use providers that offer contractual protections for those transfers, including standard contractual clauses where they apply.

5. How long we keep it

• Account and course records: while your account is open, then up to 12 months.
• Certificates: kept indefinitely, so a certificate stays verifiable by whoever you show it to. It stores your name, the course, and the date.
• Payment and tax records: ten years, because accounting law requires it.
• Identity documents from instructor verification: deleted within 90 days of a decision.
• AI conversations: 12 months, then deleted.
• Your classes and their sources: until you delete them, or your account.

6. Buddy, automatic transcription and AI study tools

Buddy is an AI tutor, not a person: its answers, drawings and voice are generated by AI models, and can be wrong.

Where enabled, we transcribe course video and audio so that lessons have captions, are searchable, and can be read rather than streamed — which matters on a metered connection. Transcription runs on the instructor’s material, not on students.

Buddy answers using the course you are studying, or the sources you added to a class, plus your conversation with it and your first name. Your conversations are not used to train anyone’s models, are not sold, and are not shared with instructors.

Speaking a question is optional. Your browser asks before it uses your microphone, and the audio stays with your browser and its maker (see section 3); we never receive or keep it.

7. Your rights

You can ask us to:

• give you a copy of your data, or send it to another service;
• correct anything wrong — most of it you can edit yourself in settings;
• delete your account and data, subject to the retention periods above;
• stop news email — from the link in any of them, or in your settings — or withdraw any consent you gave;
• object to, or restrict, processing based on legitimate interests.

Write to privacy@clintech.academy. We answer within 30 days. If you are not satisfied you may complain to the data protection authority in Cameroon, or in your own country if you are elsewhere.

8. Cookies

We use cookies that are necessary for the service to work: keeping you signed in, remembering your language, and remembering the choice you made about cookies. We ask before setting any other kind — analytics or marketing — and set none of them until you agree. Our cookie policy lists every cookie, and you can change your choice at any time from “Cookie settings” at the bottom of every page.

9. Children

Clintech Academy is not for children under 16. If we learn that an account belongs to one, we delete it. A parent or guardian who believes their child has an account should write to privacy@clintech.academy.

10. Security

Passwords are hashed. Course media is private and served through short-lived signed links. Access to student data is enforced in the database itself rather than only in application code. Administrative actions are logged. No system is perfectly secure, and if a breach affects you we will tell you and the relevant authority as the law requires.

11. Changes

Changes appear here with a new date at the top, and we will tell you about significant ones by email. See also our terms of service and refund policy.