Privacy policy

Effy is available on the web (effystudy.com) and as an iPad app. Both use the same account and the same data, and this policy covers both.

We store your email address, the lecture material you upload (the file is kept for as long as the lecture exists), and what you create in Effy: notes, quizzes, sheets with handwriting, and chats. To write the notes and answer you, we send content to the AI model Claude from Anthropic. We count which parts of Effy are used, to make the product better, but never what you write. We sell nothing, show no ads, and do not use your material to train models.

Effy AS (a Norwegian private limited company, organisation number 938 696 764, Hamar, Norway) is the controller of the personal data described here. Questions about privacy go to contact@effystudy.com.

• Your account. Your email address. You sign in with a one-time code or a one-time link we email you, or with Google on the web if you choose. With Google sign-in we store only an account identifier from Google, not your profile. Codes and links are stored only as a cryptographic hash and expire after a few minutes. When you create an account, we at Effy get an email alert with your address and your answers to the setup questions (name, school, programme), so we can write to you personally and ask how Effy works for you. If you tell us you do not want such emails, we send no more.
• The material you upload. Lectures and past exams. The lecture file is kept as a PDF for as long as the lecture exists, so you can view it next to your notes, and is deleted when you delete the lecture, the course or your account. Past exams are kept in storage only while the job runs. Clips you add to your notes are stored as images with the notes. The text and page images extracted from a lecture are kept, because the notes, the quiz and the chat read them. The text extracted from past exams is stored with the course, so you can add more exams without uploading everything again, and practise on questions from past exams.
• What we make for you. Courses and lectures, notes, quiz questions, cards, exam analyses, and mock exams with feedback.
• What you write yourself. Your edits to the notes, your answers to quizzes, exercises and mock exams, and your sheets: the handwriting and drawings, and a text transcript of each page that the AI makes so the chat can read it.
• The chat. Your questions and the answers, per lecture. If you ask about something you ringed on a sheet, a small image of that part and its transcript are stored with the question.
• Your progress. What you have read and taken, and where you left off.
• Your AI consent. When you said yes in the iPad app.
• Payments and usage. Subscription, usage, and how much AI use each action cost (number of tokens), for billing and to prevent abuse. Card details are handled by Stripe and never pass through our servers.
• Usage statistics. Which pages are visited, how long they are open and in use, and which features are used (for example that a lecture was uploaded or a quiz answered) and what the AI use costs (number of tokens), linked to your account id, together with the school, study programme and start year from onboarding. Never the content: not your lectures, notes, chats, answers or email address. Before you sign in, the visit is anonymous. Your approximate location (country and city) is read from your IP address, and then the address is discarded: the IP address is not stored with the statistics.
• Session recordings. When you are signed in on the web, we record how the site is used: which screens you are on, where you click and scroll. All text and everything you type is replaced with asterisks before anything leaves your browser, and your notes, chats, sheets, quizzes, flashcards, exam analyses, mock exams, lecture files and images are left out entirely. A small sample of visits before sign-in is recorded the same way. Recordings are used to find bugs and understand where Effy does not work, are linked to your account id, and are deleted after 30 days.
• Error reports. When something breaks in the app or on the website, a technical report about the error is sent, for the same purpose as the usage statistics: to fix bugs in the service. It shows where in the code it went wrong, which device and version you use, and your account id. We do not attach your content (lectures, notes, chats), your email address or your IP address; in rare cases an error message may quote a few characters from where the error occurred.

We do not use your data for profiling, targeted advertising or automated decisions with legal effects for you.

The notes, quizzes, feedback and chat answers are written by Claude, an AI model from Anthropic. To do that we send Anthropic what each task needs: the lecture text and page images, the note and the quiz, the questions you ask in the chat, the answers you ask us to assess, images of the pages of your sheets and of what you ring with the AI lasso, and their transcripts. We use Anthropic's commercial API. Anthropic processes this on our behalf, and under Anthropic's commercial terms, content sent through the API is not used to train its models. See also Anthropic's privacy policy.

In the iPad app we ask before anything is sent to the AI for the first time, and nothing is sent until you say yes. To withdraw your consent, write to contact@effystudy.com. Without the AI, Effy cannot make notes or answer you, so the account can then only be used to read what is already there. You can also delete your account.

Your account, your material and what we make from it are processed to fulfil our agreement with you (GDPR Article 6(1)(b)). Security, abuse prevention and the usage statistics and session recordings that show what works in the product rely on legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)), and so does a personal email from us asking how Effy works for you. You can object to the usage statistics or the session recordings and opt out of such emails by writing to us; your account is then not recorded. The lecture file is kept so you can view it next to your notes, which is part of the service (Article 6(1)(b)). Keeping other uploaded material after the generation, such as past exams, happens only if you have agreed to it (Article 6(1)(a)), and you can withdraw that at any time. Payment records are kept because Norwegian bookkeeping law requires it (Article 6(1)(c)).

Ad cookies rest on your consent (point a), which you can withdraw at any time under «Cookie settings».

All are bound by a data processing agreement. Transfers outside the EEA rely on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

• Anthropic (USA): the AI model Claude, as described above.
• Railway: hosting of the application, the database and the job queue.
• Cloudflare R2: storage of your lecture files and the clips in your notes, and temporary storage of past exams.
• Resend: sending sign-in codes and links by email.
• Stripe: payments and subscriptions on the web.
• PostHog (stored in the EU): the usage statistics and session recordings described above.
• Sentry (stored in the EU): error reports from the app and the website. The reports contain technical information about the error (where in the code, device, version) and your account id, not content, email or IP address.
• Google: only if you choose to sign in with Google on the web.

The lecture file is kept until you delete the lecture, the course or your account. Other uploaded files are deleted from storage as soon as the generation finishes. If generating a lecture fails, its file is kept for up to 7 days so you can try again without uploading it again, and is then deleted. If you have agreed that we keep them, they stay until you withdraw that.

The text from past exams is kept until a new exam analysis replaces it, or you delete the course or your account. Past questions copied into a mock exam are kept as part of that mock exam. Photos of paper answers are stored until you delete that mock exam.

Session recordings are deleted after 30 days. Everything else is kept for as long as you have an account. If you delete a lecture, a course or a sheet, its content is deleted. If you delete your account, everything is deleted with it and any active subscription is cancelled. We may have to keep payment records longer because bookkeeping law requires it.

You delete your account in the iPad app (the account row at the bottom of the sidebar, “Delete account”), or by writing to contact@effystudy.com from the address the account is registered with.

You can ask for access to the data we hold about you, have it corrected, have your account and content deleted, receive your data in a machine-readable format, have processing restricted, and object to processing based on legitimate interests. Write to contact@effystudy.com and we will reply within 30 days.

If you believe we process your data unlawfully, you can complain to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet (datatilsynet.no), or to the authority where you live.

We only use cookies the service needs to work the way you asked:

• The sign-in cookie, on the web and in the app, which keeps you signed in.
• effy_remember, web only. It is set for one year if you turn off «Stay signed in», so that you are signed out when the browser closes.
• effy_locale, web only. It remembers the language you chose for one year, and is set only when you pick a language or open the Korean page.
• Short-lived cookies during sign-in with Google, Apple or a passkey. They protect the sign-in and disappear after a few minutes.

Your browser also remembers a few choices you make in Effy, such as light or dark theme, view and tool settings on sheets, and the email address and sign-in method you used last, so the sign-in page can suggest it again. This stays on your device, is not sent to us, and can be removed by clearing site data in your browser.

Ad cookies, only if you say yes. When we advertise on Meta (Facebook, Instagram) or TikTok, we ask first. Only if you choose «Accept» do we load their pixels: they set their own cookies (such as _fbp and _ttp) and learn that you visited Effy, signed up or subscribed, so we can see which ads work. We never send them your email, name or content. Meta and TikTok use this under their own privacy policies and may process it in the USA. Your choice is kept for six months in the effy_consent cookie, and you can change it at any time under «Cookie settings» at the bottom of the front page. If you choose «Reject», nothing is loaded.

Everything else is needed for the service you asked for, so it does not need consent. The usage statistics and session recordings store nothing on your device, neither cookies nor anything else; they live only as long as the tab is open. Without your consent to ad cookies, we share nothing with advertisers or other apps.

If we change anything important here, we will tell you by email before the change takes effect. The date at the top says when this policy was last changed.