Joseki is built by Cardan Marketing Solutions, based in Calgary, Alberta. This page describes exactly what we collect from a student and parent using Joseki, why, and what a parent can do about it.
The short version
Nothing is sold. Nothing is public. Study results, mistakes, and essays are held on the student's own device by default, and the only things that ever reach our server are what the app needs to coach the student or report back to the parent. We collect a last name now, for one specific reason — to check that a multi-child discount is actually being used by one household, not shared between friends. We still don't collect school names, health information, or passwords — there are none; accounts use one-time join codes instead.
Who this is for
Joseki is offered to students in Alberta Grade 9 and up. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13. If we learn that we've collected information from a child under 13 without a parent having set up the account, we'll delete it.
What we collect
From a parent, at registration
- An email address, first name, and last name, so we know who to send a report to.
From a student
- A first name, last name, and grade level. The last name exists for one reason: confirming that a multi-child discount is being used within one household, not shared between friends — it isn't used for anything else, and we still don't collect a school name.
- Quiz results: which topics were answered correctly, which were missed, and which wrong answer was chosen (the wrong answer chosen is what tells us what to teach next).
- Vocabulary/word-check results.
- Essay text and timing behaviour (how long spent planning versus writing) from the diagnostic essay tool, if used.
- Answers to setup questions about study habits, schedule, extracurricular commitments, and post-secondary goals — this is used to plan a realistic study schedule, not to judge the student.
- A random device identifier, generated on the device, used only to prevent abuse of the review feature (rate limiting). It isn't tied to a name.
- A mobile number, only if a parent turns text reminders on. It is optional, it is never asked for at signup, and it is deleted the moment either the parent or the student turns the setting off.
What we deliberately don't ask for: health information, diagnoses, disability status, or anything clinical. If a parent wants to tell us something that matters, there's a free-text field for it — we don't go looking for it.
What stays private, even from a parent
Before a study session, a student answers a short honesty rundown — where their phone is, whether they're distracted, that kind of thing. Those specific answers are never shown to a parent. They're stripped out on our server before a parent's report is generated. Honest self-report about distraction only works if the student trusts it stays private, so we built it that way rather than promising it and hoping.
How it's used
- Running the trainer. Scores, mistakes, and vocabulary results are stored on the student's own device and used to decide what question comes next. This works offline.
- The coaching review. When a student requests a review, we send Anthropic's Claude API the performance data needed to diagnose what went wrong — subject, missed topics, and which wrong answer was picked. We do not send a name. Claude returns a diagnosis and new practice questions, which are checked against a validator before they're shown to the student.
- The parent report. A parent can see their own child's scores, mistakes, and essay results — never another family's.
- Aggregate research. While we run a small pilot to see whether the training approach actually helps, results may be pooled into overall statistics — for example, average scores across everyone using the app. Individual results are never published or shared outside a family's own report, and any statistic drawn from a group too small to stay anonymous is withheld rather than shown.
What a student writes, and when we would contact a parent
Some parts of the app ask a student to write in their own words — an assignment broken into the questions their teacher asked, a question typed into Ask me, an answer to a practice question. We keep what a student writes and what the app said back, so that we can see where the app helped and where it got in the way, and improve it. That record is held against the student's account, is deleted when the account is deleted, and is not shown on a parent's report.
We may review what is written, and we reserve the right to contact a parent or guardian if a student writes something that suggests they may be at risk of harm, or may pose a risk to someone else. We may also contact a parent about serious misuse of the service. We would rather tell a family about something that turned out to be nothing than stay quiet about something that was not.
What this is not. This is not a monitoring, supervision, counselling or crisis service, and nothing here should be relied on as one. We do not read everything, we do not watch in real time, and we cannot promise that anything a student writes will be noticed, understood correctly, or acted on. Nobody here is a counsellor, a psychologist or a clinician. If a young person is in danger or in crisis, contact your local emergency services or a crisis line — not us.
Students are told this in the app, in plain language, before they write anything. A student who knows how this works is better placed than one who finds out afterwards.
Mobile numbers and text messages
If a parent chooses to turn on text reminders, we store the student's mobile number so we can send them. It is used for that and nothing else. We do not sell mobile numbers, and we do not share them with third parties for marketing. The only company that sees the number is Twilio, the carrier service that delivers the message on our behalf.
Two kinds of message go out on that number: the study rundown the student scheduled themselves, and a reminder ahead of an exam or assignment they put on their own calendar, at a lead time the student chooses. Up to two messages a day. Replying STOP ends them, and turning the setting off deletes the number rather than flagging it. Full details of the text reminders.
Who we share data with
- Anthropic (the Claude API) — for the coaching review described above, for reading an assignment into the parts it asks for, and for reading a finished piece of writing back against them. We also review samples of app use, including what students have written, to work out what to improve. Names, email addresses, school names and account identifiers are removed before anything leaves for that review, and each student is represented by a code rather than by who they are.
- Cloudflare — our hosting and storage provider. Data submitted to our server is stored in Cloudflare's infrastructure.
We do not sell data, run advertising, or use third-party trackers or analytics on the app itself.
How long we keep it, and how to delete it
What a student writes, and what the app said back, is kept for up to 400 days and then deleted automatically. Anything flagged for review under the section above is kept for the same period, so that a pattern over a term is visible rather than a single moment.
We keep account and study data for as long as the account is active, so a parent's report stays useful term over term. A parent can request deletion of their family's data at any time by emailing [email protected] — we'll confirm once it's done. (We're working on making this a one-tap option inside the app itself rather than an email request.)
Security
We use reasonable technical measures to protect the data described above — access to it requires a private token, and nothing is stored with a password to leak in the first place, because there are no passwords. No online service can guarantee perfect security, and we'll tell affected families directly if that ever changes.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we'll post the update here and change the date at the top of the page.
Contact
Questions about any of this: [email protected]