Privacy

Polya exists to help you learn from your own course materials. This page explains, in plain language, what Polya stores, who helps us run it, how long we keep it, and how to remove it.

Who is responsible for your data

Polya is owned and operated by Noel Jubil Sason, an individual developer and the founder of Scope. Polya is not run by a company. Noel Jubil Sason decides how the information on this page is used and is responsible for it (in privacy-law terms, the data controller). On this page, "we" and "us" mean Noel Jubil Sason. For any privacy question, write to hello@askpolya.com.

What Polya stores

• Your account: your name and email address from the Google account you sign in with, or the email address and password for an account set up that way.
• Your Canvas connection: your school's Canvas address and the Canvas access token you provide, stored encrypted. We also keep a security log of when the connection was used: the time, your school's address, and the kind of action.
• The course materials you bring in for the courses you choose (readings, slides, pages, assignments and lecture transcripts), plus the search index Polya builds from them.
• The study mode and study note you set for each course, your conversations with Polya, and your practice checks.
• A record of what you do in Polya, such as connecting or importing a course, starting a conversation, asking a question or opening a citation. It's linked to your account and never includes what you asked or read. We use it to understand whether Polya is working.
• A count of visits: a random number your browser generates, plus the date and time. It tells us how many people use Polya.
• Daily usage counts, so we can apply fair-use limits.

How it's used

Only to run Polya: importing the courses you pick, tutoring you from them, and keeping the service working and fair to everyone. We don't sell your information or your course materials, we don't use them for advertising, and there are no third-party analytics or advertising trackers in the product.

Who helps us run Polya

• Anthropic writes Polya's tutoring replies. To answer, it receives your question, the relevant passages from your course, your recent conversation, and any lecture notes you add to a question.
• Google reads your course files (including text in images and scanned pages) and builds the search index that lets Polya find the right passage for each question.
• Supabase stores Polya's data and files, and Vercel hosts the website.

They process this data on our behalf under their terms for business customers. We don't let them use your materials or conversations to train their models.

Using Polya in ChatGPT or Claude

If you connect Polya to ChatGPT or Claude, that assistant can see the names of the courses you've added, the study mode for each, and passages from your materials when you ask about a course. Polya only receives what the assistant sends to look something up, like which course and what to search for. It never receives your chat history. What you say in ChatGPT or Claude is covered by OpenAI's or Anthropic's own privacy policy. The connection can only read; it can't change anything in Polya or Canvas. You can disconnect it at any time in the assistant's settings.

Texting Polya

If you text Polya, your first text gets a link that connects your phone to your Polya account. After that, Polya also stores:

• The phone number or Apple ID you text from, linked to your account.
• Your texting settings: whether Polya may text you first, your quiet hours, and your time zone.
• Short notes Polya keeps so it can pick up where you left off, like a goal or how you like help. Ask Polya what it remembers, or ask it to forget something, at any time.
• Assignment plans you make with Polya, the assignments you tell it are done, and a record of which reminders it has already sent you.
• If you connect Gradescope, your Gradescope sign-in, stored encrypted, so Polya can see what's submitted and graded.

Photon delivers texts between your phone and Polya. Anthropic writes Polya's replies, the same way it does on the website. Text "stop" and Polya stops texting you first. Ask it to disconnect your number and the link to your account is removed.

Your Canvas access token

It's never shown in the app after you enter it, and it's used only to read the courses you choose to connect. Nothing is ever posted back to Canvas. Email us at any time to remove it. Removing it from Polya doesn't switch it off in Canvas; you can do that yourself in Canvas under Account, then Settings, then Approved Integrations.

Your course materials

They remain yours and their authors'. Polya uses them only to help you study: answering your questions with citations back to the exact page, slide, or lecture moment.

How long we keep it

We keep your data while your account is open. Nothing is deleted on a timer, so your courses are there when you come back.

• Remove a course from your library and its materials, files, search index, conversations and study mode are deleted right away.
• Ask us to delete your account and we'll delete it, along with everything above, within 30 days. Your Polya account is the same account you use for other Scope apps, such as Lectra and the Scope browser extension, so deleting it removes your data there too.

Short-lived copies held by the services that help run Polya, and copies in our backups, are removed on those services' and our backups' own schedules rather than the moment you ask.

Removing your data

You can remove any course yourself from your course list. To remove your Canvas connection or your whole account, email hello@askpolya.com from the address you sign in with.

Age

Polya is made for college students and isn't meant for children under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top.

Contact

Questions about any of this? Write to hello@askpolya.com.