Privacy Policy

Aqilo is operated by Smaks Enterprise (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2024/634827/07.

For the purposes of POPIA we are the responsible party for the personal information described in this policy. The service itself runs at app.aqilo.tech; this website is the public information site.

Our Information Officer is Richard Semakaleng Ndweni, who can be reached at privacy@aqilo.tech.

We collect the minimum needed to run a homework-help service. There is no advertising profile and nothing is sold.

• To give your child an explanation of the work in front of them, pitched at their grade and curriculum.
• To give you, the adult, a plain-English summary you can use to help.
• To track which topics are sticking and which need revisiting, which is what makes practice and study plans useful.
• To send the weekly summary email of what your child practised.
• To ask a parent or guardian before a learner under 18 can start, and to keep a record of their answer.
• To manage your account, plan and payments.
• To keep the service secure, and to prevent abuse.

We rely on the lawful bases set out in POPIA, including performance of our agreement with you and your consent where required.

This is the part that matters most, so it is worth being direct about how Aqilo is structured.

A parent or guardian can hold the account. They create it, add a learner, and are the person we deal with.

A learner can also register themselves. If they are under 18, their account stays locked until a parent or guardian says yes. We send the parent or guardian a private link, or give the learner one to open with them if the parent does not use email. The page shows what we hold and what we would add, and asks for their name and their relationship to the learner. Someone else, such as a teacher, may help carry the request, but only a parent or legal guardian can give the permission. Nothing the learner would do on Aqilo is stored until they say yes.

A parent or guardian can withdraw that permission at any time from the same link. The account locks again, and we delete what is held if they ask. Because we ask for a birth year and not a full date, a learner turning 18 this calendar year counts as 18.

We do not market to children. Learner accounts are left out of our marketing emails.

Under POPIA, information about a child is special personal information, and it may generally only be processed with the consent of a competent person — normally the parent or guardian. By adding a learner to your account, or by approving a learner’s own account, you confirm that you are that person and that you consent to us processing that learner’s information as described here.

We deliberately hold very little about a learner: a name, a grade, a curriculum, an avatar and their learning activity, and if they register themselves, their email address and birth year.

A parent or guardian who holds the account can see what is held about each learner, correct it, or delete it, at any time, using the rights set out in section 8. A parent or guardian who approved a learner’s own account has no sign-in of their own, so we send them the weekly summary if they gave an email address, and they can use those rights by writing to privacy@aqilo.tech.

We use a small number of established service providers (POPIA calls them operators) to run Aqilo. They may only process information on our instructions.

• Supabase— stores the database and manages sign-in.
• Anthropic— generates the explanations. The question, and the homework photo where one is used, are sent for this purpose.
• PayFast— processes payments. Card details are entered on PayFast, not on Aqilo. We never see or store a card number; we keep only a payment reference.
• Resend— delivers our emails, such as the weekly summary, account emails and requests to a parent or guardian.
• Vercel— hosts the website and the application.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

We may disclose information if the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim.

Aqilo’s database and the servers that run the service are hosted in Ireland. This means personal information is processed outside South Africa, and POPIA sets conditions for sending personal information across a border.

Access to family data is restricted at the database level so that one household cannot read another’s. Sign-in is handled by our authentication provider rather than by us storing passwords ourselves, traffic is encrypted in transit, and administrative access is limited and logged.

No online service can promise perfect security, and we do not. What we can say is that we hold deliberately little, that homework photos are not retained, and that you can delete everything yourself at any time.

We keep your account information and your family’s learning history for as long as your account is open, because the history is what makes progress tracking work.

If you delete your account, that information is deleted with it, as described in section 8.

Some records, such as payment records, may need to be kept for longer to meet legal and accounting obligations.

Under POPIA you may:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you or a learner on your account.
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
• Ask us to delete it.
• Object to how we are processing it.
• Withdraw consent you have given, where our processing relies on consent.
• Complain to the Information Regulator.

This website does not use tracking, advertising or analytics cookies.

The application at app.aqilo.tech sets a session cookie when you sign in. It is strictly necessary — it is what keeps you signed in — and it is not used to follow you around the internet.

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page. Where a change materially affects you, we will tell you.

Questions about this policy, or about information we hold, can be sent to privacy@aqilo.tech.

See also our Terms of Use.