Safety and privacy

Our safeguards for learners under 18

Learners under 18 can use Tutortle, so we're building these safeguards in from the start. No learner under 18 will join until each one is in place.

• Checking ages: see Accounts and ages
• Screening and filtering content: see How every message is checked
• Monitoring and reporting: see Monitoring and reporting
• Guidance on safe use: see Using Tutortle safely
• Saying it's an AI: see You'll always know it's an AI
• Child-safety and data-privacy laws: we'll comply with the laws that apply wherever we offer Tutortle.

You'll always know it's an AI

Tutortle is an AI tutor, not a person. It says so when a learner first meets it, and whenever it's asked. It never claims to have feelings, a body or a life outside the app, and it doesn't present itself as a friend in place of the real people in a learner's life.

Accounts and ages

Every learner gets settings for their age group, which decide what topics and tone are allowed.

If you're 18 or over

• You create your own account and confirm that you're 18 or over.
• You choose your quiet hours, how many check-ins a week you get, and whether to switch on voice check-ins.
• You can download or delete your data at any time.

For learners under 18

• A parent or guardian creates the account, confirms they're the learner's parent, and gives consent before it starts. Learners under 18 can't sign up on their own.
• As a parent, you see your child's progress, choose their quiet hours, and decide how many check-ins a week they get and whether voice check-ins are on.
• You can download or delete your child's data at any time.

There are no ads, no public profiles, and no way for learners to contact each other.

How every message is checked

The safety layer sits outside the tutor. The tutoring helpers can't change its rules or switch it off.

1. Before tutoring. A learner's message is screened for safety concerns, and names, schools and contact details are removed.
2. While tutoring. The tutor works within the topics and tone allowed for the learner's age group.
3. Before anything is shown or said. The safety check reads every reply, including feedback on answers, check-ins and voice check-in scripts, and either lets it through, rewrites it, stops it, or holds it.
4. When something is held. A trained person reviews it before anything is sent.

If a learner is in distress

If a learner mentions self-harm, abuse or being in danger, Tutortle stops tutoring. It shows a short message, written by people rather than generated, with emergency and child-support contacts for the learner's country, and it alerts a member of our team straight away.

Monitoring and reporting

We record each decision the safety check makes (what kind of message it was and whether it was let through, rewritten, stopped or held) without keeping the conversation itself. Whenever we change the tutor's instructions or the AI model behind it, we test the safety check again on example messages labelled by teachers, and count what it misses.

If anything worries you, write to contact@tutortle.com. A person reads every report.

Check-ins without pressure

Tutortle's check-ins invite, they don't push. There are no guilt messages about broken streaks, no countdowns and no fake urgency. Nothing is sent during your quiet hours, or beyond the number of check-ins a week you've chosen. For learners under 18, a parent sets both.

Voice check-ins are being built. They're off until switched on. Before each call, the safety check approves a short script that starts by saying Tutortle is an AI. If the conversation goes off the script, the call ends kindly and continues in the app. If a learner mentions self-harm, abuse or danger on a call, the same distress steps apply.

Using Tutortle safely

• Tutortle is an AI and can make mistakes. Check anything important with a teacher or another source you trust.
• You don't need to share your full name, school, address or phone number to learn. Keep them to yourself.
• If something Tutortle says feels wrong or upsetting, stop and tell someone you trust (for younger learners, a parent or teacher), or write to us.
• Tutortle can't help in an emergency. If you or someone else is in danger, call your local emergency number.
• Parents: talk with your child about what they're learning, and look at their progress together.

What we collect

• From adult learners and parents: name, email address and consent records.
• About learners: a first name or nickname, their age, and the subjects they're studying.
• Learning progress: a progress record of which topics are solid or shaky, review dates, and answers to exercises.
• Conversations: the messages exchanged with the tutor, kept only as long as described below.
• Voice check-ins (being built): the text of what's said on the call, handled like conversations.

We don't sell personal data or use it for advertising. We share it only with the service providers we need to run Tutortle, and the privacy notice will list them.

How the AI handles your data

Tutortle's tutoring uses AI models from a provider, under commercial terms. Before any text is sent, we remove names, schools and contact details, and learners are identified only by a random ID. That's our own rule, and it holds whatever our provider's terms say.

Our provider's commercial terms don't let it train its models on what we send without permission. We plan to ask it not to keep conversation content once a reply is returned. Even then, content its safety systems flag may be kept for up to two years.

Voice check-ins need a voice provider to turn approved scripts into speech and what you say into text. Your speech can only be screened after it's turned into text, so we'll publish how voice data is handled before voice check-ins are switched on.

The privacy notice will name every provider we use.

How long we keep data

• Learner records will be encrypted when stored.
• Conversations are deleted on a fixed schedule. We keep a compact progress record while the account is open.
• Closing an account deletes its data, apart from anything the law requires us to keep.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct, download or delete your data, and to object to how it's used. Write to contact@tutortle.com.

This page describes commitments for a product that isn't live yet. A full privacy notice will be published before the closed beta opens.

Contact us

Questions, concerns or a safety report: email contact@tutortle.com. We read every message.