Privacy Policy

This policy explains how we handle your data in Ishraqa. Your privacy is a trust we take seriously: we collect only what the app needs to work, never sell your data, and show no ads.

1. What stays on your device

Stored on your device only and never sent to our servers: favorites without an account, saved articles, points and badges, interests, mood notes you write on the mood page, appearance, font and local notification settings, and books you downloaded for offline reading.

2. Your account

• Email address: to sign you in with a one-time code, or through your Google account if you choose. Never used for marketing.
• Name and country: we ask for your full name and country when you create an account, and you may add your region or state. We use country and region to place you in your country's community for reading challenges and to show opportunities and features that fit where you live.
• Your public profile: display name, photo, bio, region and country, social links if you add them, and a verified badge if you earn one. These are visible to other app users.
• Username (@): every account has a unique username that is visible to app users and used for mentions, search and your profile link. We suggest one from your name; you can change it from your profile once every 30 days. When you change it, we reserve your old username for you for 14 days and redirect its old link to your profile; then it is deleted from our records and becomes available to others.

3. What you post and share

• "Your Culture" posts and their images.
• Discussions: your comments and replies on articles, books, quotes, "Your Culture" posts, "Echo" recordings and projects; your reactions (❤️ 😂 😮 😢 👏); and people you @mention. Comments and their authors' names are visible to app users, and anyone you mention is notified. In club discussions, the message you reply to (the quote) and members you mention are visible to club members.
• Club messages: discussions, quotes, polls, voice notes, events and your attendance. Visible to club members, and in public clubs possibly to others.
• "Echo": your voice recordings (stories, proverbs, poetry, voice replies) with their title, description and region. If you record an elder in your family, you confirm they agreed to publication; we store the time of that confirmation, and we do not ask for the speaker's name, only a general description you choose. You can also add a cover image to your recording. The cover is public together with the recording, is reviewed with it, and disappears with it if it is hidden or deleted. Our moderators can remove an inappropriate cover without deleting the recording.
• Language clubs (classes):
• Homework: your written answer, voice recording (up to 5 minutes) or attachment (an image or PDF), plus your grade, rubric scores, and the teacher's written or voice feedback, revision requests and resubmissions. Stored in private storage; only you, the club's teacher and its moderators can see it — never other students.
• Quizzes and placement tests: your answers and score, visible to you and the teacher. Grading is automatic on our servers.
• Live sessions and attendance: when you check in we store your status (present/late) and check-in time; the teacher can adjust it (absent/excused). Visible to you and the teacher. The session itself runs on an external platform chosen by the teacher (such as Zoom, Google Meet or Jitsi); we only store its link, and what happens there is governed by that platform's policy.
• Word review: your spaced-repetition schedule is private to you.
• Learning days and the leaderboard: visible to the teacher; your name and points appear to class members on the leaderboard.
• Gradebook, report card and certificate: the teacher sees the class gradebook and can export it to follow up with students. Your report card and certificate are visible to you and the teacher, and shared only if you choose.
• Developer clubs: tasks (title, assignee, reviewer, due date, pull-request link), project milestones and the weekly stand-up (what you did, what's next, what's blocking you). Visible to team members and the Ishraqa team; a blocker you post notifies the team leads. Club visitors only see the club's aggregate pulse (tasks done and open, number of contributors). A project's public repository link is shown in the club with its public GitHub stats.
• Developers hub:
• Your GitHub username, if you choose to add it. We read only your public GitHub data (your public repositories and their stats) to show on your profile. We never request access to your account or to private repositories.
• Coding challenge solutions: your repository link, hidden from others until the challenge closes, then visible to everyone for claps.
• Mentorship: if you become a mentor, your skills and bio appear in the mentor list, but the contact method you enter is revealed only to people whose request you accept. If you request mentorship, your message and topic are visible only to the mentor you asked. There is no direct messaging in the app, and no requests between people who have blocked each other.
• Spaces (universities, institutes, authors, organizations):
• Your membership, role and status, visible to the Space's members.
• Joining with an institutional email: if a Space accepts a specific email domain (e.g. @uni.edu), we check the domain of your verified email on our servers, without showing it to the Space's admins and without storing an extra copy.
• If you create a Space: its name, description, logo, website, country and email domain. It becomes public after our team approves it; renaming it or changing its type after approval sends it back for review.
• Private library files (PDFs) and Space posts are for members only. The uploading institution is responsible for the rights to its files, and we remove anything validly reported.
• Communities: your membership in a community (your school, university, state or country) is not shown to anyone by default. If you choose "Show me", your name and photo appear on the community page among its members and readers. Community numbers are aggregated, and reading minutes are not shown for communities with fewer than 3 readers so no individual's reading can be inferred.
• Competitions: your entry (title and text, or a link to your "Echo" recording, project or article) is public with your name. Your votes are private; everyone sees vote counts only. In reading competitions, your points come from your reading minutes and appear on the competition board. Winners' names and badges are public.
• Gifts, sponsorships and pledges: the gifted book and your message, and the pledge details and contact method you write in it.
• Sponsorship requests ("Sponsor Ishraqa"): the sponsor's name (individual, company or organization) and logo if uploaded, a contact method (email, phone or WhatsApp), what they offer (an amount and currency, books, prizes, mentoring or devices), their message, what they want to sponsor, their visibility choice (name and logo, name only, or an anonymous "generous sponsor"), and their consent. Contact details and the message are visible only to the Ishraqa team and the requester. The sponsor sees their request's status and our messages; our team keeps internal notes to follow up. Once assigned, the sponsorship is shown to the recipient and its visitors only as the sponsor chose, never with contact details. No payment happens in the app.
• Support conversations ("Contact us"): your name if you enter it, your email for replies, and your message. If you send it while signed in, it is linked to your account and becomes a conversation: our team replies in the app, you can reply back, and we store the conversation's status and when each reply was read. Only you and the relevant Ishraqa team members can see it. Email replies remain available, and are the only option if you contacted us without an account.

Microphone permission is requested only when you tap record; nothing is recorded in the background. Photos permission is requested only when you pick an image.

4. Your activity in the app

If you are signed in, we store on our servers: - Reading sync: the book you are reading and your page, your bookmarks, and daily reading time with a random device code (so minutes are not counted twice) — so you can continue on any device, and to track your goal, your club's streak and community challenges. Private to you. Clubs and communities see totals, not who read what. Without an account this stays on your device. - "My highlights": text you highlight in books, with its color, your note, the book title and page. Private to you, unless you turn it into a card and share it yourself. - Days you open the app and your streak: we use them to compute your streak and protection days (you earn one for every 7 days in a row, and it keeps your streak safe if you miss a day), and to celebrate milestones such as "Day 10 with Ishraqa". No extra data is collected for this. - "Your week on Ishraqa" and "Picked for you": your weekly recap and the books, articles, clubs and voices we suggest are computed when you open them from data we already have (your reading, interests, community and favorites). They are not stored, not visible to anyone else, and never used for advertising. You can share your weekly card if you like. - Your interactions: likes, follows, listens, club memberships, awards, reports and block lists. - Moderation records: when a post is edited, deleted or hidden we keep a short record to protect the community and resolve disputes. - Team action log: Ishraqa is run by a team with specific permissions (content, articles, moderation, competitions, partnerships, opportunities). When a team member takes an administrative action (reviewing a post, approving a Space, announcing winners, following up a sponsorship…) we record who did what, when, and a short summary of the change, for accountability and community safety. We do not log what members do with their own content. The log is internal and never public, and entries older than one year are deleted.

5. Notifications

• Morning, reading and deadline reminders are scheduled on your device.
• Daily-article, club and account-activity notifications are sent through a notification service using a device notification token, linked to your account only when signed in and removed when you sign out.
• Other notifications include: replies, @mentions and (grouped) reactions on your comments; in your class: new lessons, homework, quizzes or announcements, session times and reminders, graded or returned homework, and certificates; in developer clubs: tasks assigned to you, review requests and results, and team blockers (for leads); new coding challenges, mentorship requests and replies; support replies; your Space or sponsorship request status; competition launch, closing reminder and results; "Your week" on Monday morning, and a gentle evening streak reminder.
• Control each type in Settings, or turn them off in your phone settings. Your notifications are also kept in an in-app inbox.

6. Analytics and crash reports

We use Google Analytics for Firebase for general usage analytics (screens and events), and a crash reporting service that includes technical device and system information when a crash happens, to improve the app. Neither includes your name or email, and the advertising ID is never collected. Learn more about how Google uses data.

7. Artificial intelligence

We use an AI provider for specific tasks: - Reviewing content before publication: the text of "Your Culture" posts and the titles and descriptions of "Echo" recordings, to detect abuse and violations. Our review team makes the final call in unclear cases. - "Remind me where I was", explanations and discussion questions: only the text of books and quotes is sent, never your personal data. - The "Club Spirit" award: challenge discussion messages are sent with anonymous codes instead of names and accounts, so the content is judged, not the people.

We never send the provider your email or name. The provider does not use what we send to train its models, and keeps it only for a limited period for safety purposes before deleting it.

8. How we use data

Only to run the app: sign-in, content and interactions, clubs and challenges, notifications, content review and reports, protecting the community from abuse and fake accounts, and improving the app. This includes running classes (grading, attendance, progress, certificates), developer clubs (tasks, reviews, stand-ups), Spaces and communities (membership checks and showing you only if you choose), competitions (fair voting: three votes per user, no self-voting), mentorship, sponsorship and support, reading sync, and personalizing what we suggest to you inside the app. We do not sell your data or share it for advertising, and we never use your recordings, grades or reading for advertising or to train AI models.

9. Who processes data with us

We rely on a small number of trusted service providers; they process data on our behalf, only under our instructions, and are bound to protect it:

• A hosting and database provider: database, files, recordings, images, attachments and sign-in, on secure servers in the European Union.
• A notification service and a crash reporting service, and Google Analytics for Firebase for analytics.
• An AI provider that does not use data to train its models: for the tasks in section 7.
• An email service: only to send your sign-in code, from noreply@ishraqa.app.
• GitHub (only if you add your username or a public repository link): we read data that is already public, and we send GitHub nothing about you from Ishraqa.
• Payments: optional support is processed by Google Play; we never see your card details.

We may disclose data if required by law, or to protect the safety of our users.

10. Retention and deletion

• Account data is kept while your account exists.
• Things you delete yourself, such as comments and club messages, move to "Deleted items" where you can restore them for 30 days; after that they are permanently deleted with their files automatically.
• Homework (recordings, attachments, answers, grades and teacher feedback) and attendance are kept while you are in the class and the class exists. You can delete your own recording or attachment before it is graded, and replaced files are removed from storage automatically. Deleting a club deletes its classes and submissions.
• Reading sync and "My highlights": delete any highlight at any time; all of it is deleted with your account.
• Previous username: reserved for you for 14 days, then deleted from our records.
• "Echo" cover: remove it at any time; a replaced cover is deleted from storage; it is deleted with its recording or your account.
• Communities and Spaces: leaving removes your membership immediately, and you can turn off "Show me" at any time. Files and posts you uploaded as a Space admin belong to the Space and remain after you leave or delete your account, without your name, unless the institution asks us to remove them.
• If you own a Space or club and delete your account, ownership passes automatically to its admin or moderator, otherwise to the longest-standing member; a Space with no other members is deleted with its files.
• Developer clubs: your stand-ups are deleted with your account. Tasks you created or were assigned belong to the team's project and remain, without your name.
• Mentorship: withdraw a pending request or stop appearing as a mentor at any time; your requests and mentor card are deleted with your account.
• Competition entries: withdraw your entry while the competition is open. After results, winning entries and their authors stay in the competition record, and are deleted when you delete your account.
• Sponsorship requests: withdraw a request until it is assigned. When you delete your account, your contact details, message and logo are erased, an individual's name is replaced with "Former sponsor", and unassigned requests are withdrawn; our team keeps the sponsorship record (its type, recipient and status history, and a company's or organization's name) because it is an existing commitment to the recipient.
• Support conversations: kept without your name or email and unlinked from your account, for up to one year so we can show that deletion and privacy requests were fulfilled, then deleted.
• Team action log: entries older than one year are deleted.
• GitHub: removing it from your profile removes your username and fetched data.
• Delete your account: Account → Delete account. Your account, public profile, posts, comments, reactions and mentions, club messages, recordings, covers, images, activity and notifications are deleted, along with your submissions and their recordings, attachments and voice feedback; your grades, attendance and certificates; your reading sync and highlights; and your memberships, entries, votes and stand-ups. Their files are removed from storage automatically, except what is described above as remaining without your name. Encrypted backups may persist for up to 30 days, then are deleted.
• You can also request deletion through our contact page; we act within 30 days. See Delete account.

11. Your rights

You may access, correct (via "Edit profile") and delete your data, object to processing, or request a copy through our contact page.

12. Children

The app is for a general audience. Accounts are for users aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from younger children; tell us and we will delete such an account.

Classes and Spaces are for universities, institutes and secondary schools, for users aged 13 and over. We do not offer Ishraqa to primary schools. Teachers and institutions must not add anyone under 13.

13. Security

Data travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS), and database access rules prevent any user from viewing another user's private data or modifying it. We review and test these rules continuously.

14. Changes

If we make material changes we will notify you in the app; the last-updated date appears at the top.

Who we are and how to reach us

We are OtwoX Digital Solutions, the team that builds Ishraqa and looks after your data. For any question or request about your privacy or account, contact us, use Account → Contact us in the app, or email ishraqa@otwox.com; we reply within 30 days at the latest.