Privacy Policy

The short version

• Chirpo does not store student or teacher names or email addresses. Users are identified by an opaque account number from Google.
• Chirpo stores the activities teachers create and the conversations students have with Chirpo, so teachers can review them.
• Chirpo's database and application servers are in Toronto, Canada. Messages are sent to Google's Gemini AI models to generate replies, and that processing may take place outside Canada.
• We don't sell information, use it for advertising, or use student conversations to train AI models.
• Schools and teachers control student data. Contact us or your school to see, correct or delete it.

Who is responsible for student data

When a school or teacher uses Chirpo, the school (or school board) decides how student information is used, and we process it on their behalf as a service provider. We use student information only to provide Chirpo to that school, following their instructions and this policy. If you are a student or parent, your school is usually the best first contact for questions about your data. You can also contact us directly.

What Chirpo collects

Account information

• Google account ID. An opaque number Google assigns to each account. We store it in the form google:<number> to tell users apart. It doesn't contain a name or email address.
• Sign-in tokens. When you sign in with Google, we receive access tokens that let Chirpo talk to Google Classroom for you. They are stored on our servers, never in your browser, and the sign-in session expires after 30 days.
• A session cookie. Your browser holds one cookie containing a random ID that links it to your sign-in session. It contains no personal information.

Teacher content

• Activities teachers create: title, topic, activity type, learning goals, open and due dates, and settings such as whether students may retry.
• Materials teachers attach, such as text and links.
• Teacher feedback to students, and any changes teachers make to Chirpo's ratings.

Student activity data

• Conversations. The messages a student exchanges with Chirpo during an activity, with timestamps.
• Safety flags. When our safety check flags a message (for example, because it may show distress or contains personal details), we record the category, a short note for the teacher, and which message it was.
• Assessments. For Teach and Assess activities, Chirpo's rating for each learning goal, short quotes from the student's messages that support each rating, a summary for the teacher and feedback for the student.

Google Classroom identifiers

To connect an activity to the right Classroom assignment, we store Classroom's IDs for the course, the assignment, the add-on attachment and the student's submission. These are numbers, not names.

What we ask students not to share

Chirpo never asks for personal details, and it reminds students not to share them. If a student types personal details anyway, such as a name, address or phone number, they become part of the stored conversation, and our safety check flags the message for the teacher.

Information from Google

Chirpo signs users in with Google and works as a Google Classroom add-on. It requests only these permissions:

Chirpo does not request access to your email address, Gmail, Drive files, contacts or class rosters.

InterThread's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use Google user data only to provide and improve Chirpo's features for the user. We do not use it for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to train general-purpose AI models.

How we use information

• To run activities: generating Chirpo's replies, saving conversations, and letting students resume or review them.
• To show teachers transcripts, safety flags and assessments for their own classes.
• To show students their results once their teacher releases them.
• To keep Chirpo safe and secure: screening messages, preventing misuse and fixing problems.
• To meet legal obligations.

We don't use student information for advertising, build marketing profiles of students, or sell or rent information to anyone.

How the AI works with student messages

Chirpo uses Google's Gemini models through Google Cloud's Vertex AI service. To produce a reply, we send the model the teacher's activity (topic, materials and goals) and the conversation so far. We also send each student message to a separate safety check, and at the end of a Teach or Assess activity we send the conversation to the model to produce the assessment.

We do not send names or email addresses to the model. Google Cloud's terms don't allow Google to use this data to train or fine-tune its AI models without our permission. We do not use student conversations to train AI models.

AI ratings are a starting point for the teacher, not a final grade. Teachers can see the evidence behind each rating, change any rating, and decide when students see results.

Where information is stored and processed

• Storage: Chirpo's database (Google Cloud Firestore) is in Toronto, Canada.
• Application: Chirpo's servers (Google Cloud Run) run in Toronto, Canada.
• AI processing: Messages sent to Gemini through Vertex AI are currently processed by Google's global service and may be handled in data centres outside Canada. These messages are processed to produce a reply; they are not stored by us outside Canada. We are working to move AI processing to Canadian data centres as the models become available there.

Who we share information with

We share information only with service providers that help us run Chirpo, and only as needed:

• Google LLC (Google Cloud): hosting, database, sign-in and AI processing.
• Google Classroom: we read the class context needed to confirm your role.

Within Chirpo, a student's conversations and results are visible only to that student and to teachers of the class the activity belongs to. We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.

How long we keep information

• Sign-in sessions expire after 30 days, and are deleted when you sign out.
• Activities, conversations, safety flags and assessments are kept for the school year, so teachers can review student work. We delete them after August 31, the end of the school year they belong to. Teachers should record any results they need to keep, for example in Google Classroom, before then.
• When a school stops using Chirpo, or asks us to delete its data, we delete it within 30 days, except where the law requires us to keep it.

How we protect information

• All connections use HTTPS.
• Sign-in tokens stay on our servers and are never sent to the browser.
• Every request to see or change an activity is checked with Google Classroom to confirm that the person is a teacher or student in that class.
• Data is stored on Google Cloud, which encrypts it at rest.
• Access to production systems is limited to the InterThread staff who need it.

If we learn of a breach affecting personal information, we will notify the affected schools, and the authorities where required, as quickly as possible.

Access, correction and deletion

Students, parents and teachers can ask to see, correct or delete their information. Because Chirpo doesn't store names, we work with your school to find the right records. Contact your school or email us, and we will respond within 30 days. You can also remove Chirpo's access to your Google account at any time from your Google Account's security settings.

Children and students

Chirpo is built for use in schools, under a teacher's direction, through accounts the school provides. We rely on the school to obtain any consent required for students to use it. We don't knowingly collect information from children outside a school's use of Chirpo. If you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.

Read more about how Chirpo protects students on our safety page.

This website

interthreadsoftware.com doesn't use advertising or analytics cookies, and doesn't track visitors. It is hosted on Google's Firebase Hosting, which keeps standard server logs (such as IP addresses) to deliver and secure the site. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts. If you email us, we use your message and address only to reply.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If a change affects how we use student data, we will tell schools using Chirpo before it takes effect.

Contact us

For privacy questions or requests, contact our privacy lead:

InterThread Software
28 Rynard St.
Sunderland, ON, Canada
interthreadsoftware@gmail.com

If you aren't satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or your provincial privacy commissioner.