Privacy Policy

1. Analytics & behavioural data

We partner with Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioural metrics, heatmaps, and session replay to improve and market our products and services. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of products/services and online activity. Additionally, we use this information for site optimisation, fraud/security purposes, and advertising. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit the Microsoft Privacy Statement .

2. Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand how visitors engage with our site, which pages are most useful, and how people find us. Google may use cookies and similar technologies to collect information about your use of our site. You can learn more in the Google Privacy Policy .

3. Information we collect

When you register, book a lesson, or contact us, we may collect your name, email address, phone number, grade, subjects of interest, and any messages you send. We use this information to provide tutoring services, schedule lessons, communicate with you, and improve the platform.

4. How we use your information

• To deliver tutoring sessions and related services.
• To personalise your learning experience and recommend content.
• To communicate scheduling, billing, and account updates.
• To analyse website usage and improve our products and marketing.
• To maintain security and prevent fraud.

5. Sharing & disclosure

We do not sell your personal information. We share data only with the specific service providers who help us operate the site and deliver services, and only as necessary for those purposes. These include: Supabase (database and hosting), Resend (sending account, billing, and notification emails), Meta (Facebook/Instagram advertising — we send a hashed, non-reversible version of your email or phone number to help measure ad performance, never raw contact details), and PDF4.dev (generating PDF documents such as tutor payslips). Additional protections apply to learners' information — see section 7 below.

6. Artificial intelligence

Some features use AI, including the AI Study Helper chat, automatically generated practice quiz questions, and suggested lesson plans for tutors. Where you interact with these features, the text you enter is processed by our AI provider (via Lovable's AI Gateway) to generate a response. Please don't include sensitive personal information in these conversations that isn't relevant to the study question itself. AI-generated content is a supplement to, not a replacement for, a real tutor.

7. Protecting children's and parents' information

We work with learners under the age of 18, and we treat their information with extra care. In line with South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), personal information of a child is processed only with the consent of a parent or legal guardian, and only for the purpose of delivering tutoring services.

Specifically, we commit to the following:

• We never sell, rent, or trade a learner's or parent's personal information to any third party, under any circumstances.
• We never share a learner's name, photograph, face, video likeness, voice recording, school, grades, report cards, or session notes with anyone outside of that learner's own parent or guardian, their assigned tutor, and the Smarty Pants staff who need it to deliver the service.
• We do not use learner photographs, video, faces, voices, names, or schoolwork in marketing, advertising, social media, or testimonials without separate, explicit, written consent from a parent or guardian — and that consent can be withdrawn at any time.
• Online lessons are private, one-on-one sessions. We do not publish, distribute, or repurpose lesson recordings or whiteboard content.
• Tutors can only access information for the specific learners assigned to them, enforced at the database level, not merely by application settings.
• Parents and guardians may request access to, correction of, or deletion of their child's personal information at any time by contacting us.

If you believe a child's information has been collected or handled incorrectly, please contact us immediately and we will investigate and correct it.

8. Your choices

You can manage or disable cookies through your browser settings. You may also request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information by contacting us.

9. Contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, please contact us.