RaisedHand
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Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal information the RaisedHand mobile app collects, why we collect it, who we share it with, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read by students and by their parents or guardians — plain language, no fine print.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

Before you publish: replace [YOUR REGISTERED ENTITY NAME] and [YOUR REGISTERED ADDRESS] below with the legal name and address of the person or company that operates RaisedHand. POPIA requires a responsible party to be identifiable.

RaisedHand (“RaisedHand”, “we”, “us”) is a peer-to-peer homework help app for South African high school students in Grades 8–12. The Android app is published as com.raisedhand.app; an iOS version is also available. This policy covers the app and this website.

The responsible party for the purposes of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) is [YOUR REGISTERED ENTITY NAME], [YOUR REGISTERED ADDRESS], contactable at kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com.

1. Information we collect

Information you give us when you sign up

  • Your phone number. We use it for one thing: sending the one-time PIN (OTP) that signs you in, and recognising your account on your next sign-in. Your phone number is never shown to other users, never attached to your posts, and never shared with advertisers.
  • Your display name. This is the name other students see.
  • Your avatar. A profile picture, if you choose to upload one.
  • Your grade. Grade 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 — used to route your questions to students studying the same work.
  • Your school. Optional. You do not have to give it, and you can remove it later.

Content you create in the app

Everything you post is stored so it can be shown in the app: your questions, your answers, comments and replies, your votes and best-answer choices, your bookmarks, direct chat messages to other users, community posts, and any attachments you upload — photos, PDFs and videos.

Information collected automatically

  • Device and diagnostic information. Device model, operating system version, app version, language, and crash and error reports (including the technical stack trace of what went wrong). We use this to fix bugs.
  • Push notification token. An identifier issued by Firebase Cloud Messaging so we can send a notification to your device — for example when someone answers your question.
  • Advertising identifier. The advertising ID your Android or iOS device provides, used by Google AdMob to serve and measure ads. See Advertising for the limits we place on this.
  • Usage information. Which subjects and grades you browse, who you follow, and what you interact with — used to build your “For You” feed and to detect abuse.

What we do not collect

We do not collect your precise location, your contacts, your calendar, your health information, your ID number, or any payment or banking information. RaisedHand is free and does not take payments.

2. How we use your information

  • To operate the service — store and display your questions, answers, attachments, chats and profile.
  • To authenticate you — send the OTP to your phone number and keep you signed in.
  • To deliver notifications — tell you when your question is answered, when someone replies to you, or when you receive a message.
  • To rank and personalise feeds — sort answers by votes, surface trending questions, and build your “For You” feed from the students you follow and the subjects you use.
  • To detect and act on abuse — investigate reports, find spam and rule-breaking content, and enforce our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.
  • To fix crashes — diagnose and repair errors using crash diagnostics.
  • To serve ads — show the ads that keep RaisedHand free, subject to the restrictions in the next section.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your phone number for marketing.

Under POPIA we process your personal information because it is necessary to provide the service you asked for (the contract between us in our Terms of Service), because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the community safe and the app working, and — where the law requires it — because you, or your parent or guardian on your behalf, have consented.

4. Third parties we share with

RaisedHand runs on services provided by other companies. We share only what each one needs to do its job. We do not sell personal information to anyone.

Third-party services used by RaisedHand and the data each receives
Service What it does for us What it receives
Supabase Hosting, database, authentication and file storage — this is where your account and your posts actually live. Your phone number, display name, avatar, grade, optional school, all content you post, attachments, and technical connection logs. Supabase privacy policy
Google Firebase
(Cloud Messaging)		 Delivers push notifications to your device. Your device’s push notification token and the content of the notification being sent. Firebase privacy information
Google Firebase
(Crashlytics)		 Reports crashes and errors so we can fix them. Device model, operating system version, app version, and the technical details of the crash. Firebase privacy information
Google AdMob Serves the ads that keep RaisedHand free. Your device’s advertising identifier, IP address, and general ad interaction data. Requests are tagged non-personalised and child-directed. Google advertising policy · Google privacy policy

A condensed, side-by-side version of this — the same information as it appears in our Google Play Data safety declaration — is on our Data Safety page.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it — for example a valid court order or a lawful request from the South African Police Service — or where we genuinely believe it is necessary to prevent harm to someone.

5. Advertising

RaisedHand is free and is paid for by advertising through Google AdMob. Because our audience includes minors, we apply stricter settings than an ordinary app:

  • All ad requests are tagged as non-personalised. Ads are not targeted at you based on a profile of your interests or your behaviour.
  • All ad requests are tagged as child-directed and age-restricted, which limits AdMob to ad categories that are appropriate for a younger audience and restricts the use of advertising identifiers for personalisation.
  • No ads are shown before you finish signing in. A signed-out visitor never sees an advertisement in the app.
  • We never give advertisers your phone number, your display name, your grade, your school, or anything you have posted.

You can reset or limit your advertising identifier at any time in your device settings: on Android, Settings → Google → Ads; on iOS, Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.

6. What other users can see

It is worth being clear about this, because it is the part people most often get wrong.

Other users can see: your display name, your avatar, your grade, your reputation points, badges and leaderboard position, and everything you post publicly — questions, answers, comments, votes you cast on content, and attachments you upload to a public thread.

Other users cannot see: your phone number, your email if you contact us, your device information, your crash reports, or your advertising identifier. Direct chat messages are visible only to you and the person you are chatting with.

Treat anything you post publicly as public. Please do not put your phone number, home address, school timetable or other personal contact details into a question, an answer or an attachment — our Community Guidelines prohibit this precisely because it puts students at risk.

7. Children and teens

You must be at least 13 years old to use RaisedHand. If you are between 13 and 17, you may only use RaisedHand with the permission of a parent or legal guardian, and that parent or guardian is agreeing to this policy on your behalf.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If we learn that we have, we will delete the account and the information linked to it.

If you are a parent or guardian

You can ask us to show you what personal information we hold about your child, correct it, or delete it and close the account. Email kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com from an address we can reach you on and tell us:

  • your child’s display name and the phone number the account uses;
  • that you are the parent or legal guardian; and
  • what you want us to do (show, correct, or delete).

We may ask you for enough information to be satisfied that the account really is your child’s — we would rather ask an awkward question than hand a child’s data to the wrong person. We respond within 30 days.

8. Your rights under POPIA

The Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 gives you the following rights over your personal information. They are free to exercise.

  • Access. Ask us to confirm what personal information we hold about you, and to give you a copy of it.
  • Correction. Ask us to fix information that is wrong, misleading or out of date. Most of it — display name, avatar, grade, school — you can edit yourself in the app under Profile.
  • Deletion. Ask us to delete your personal information and close your account. See the next section.
  • Objection. Object to us processing your personal information on the grounds set out in section 11(3) of POPIA.
  • Complaint. Complain to us, and complain to the Information Regulator if you are not satisfied with how we handled it.

To exercise any of these, email kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com. We respond to requests within 30 days.

Complaining to the Information Regulator

You can lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa) at any time:

9. Deleting your account and data

You can delete your account from inside the app at Profile → Settings → Delete Account, or by emailing kagiso.thobane.73@gmail.com from the account in question.

Deleting your account removes your profile, your phone number, your avatar, your direct chat messages, your bookmarks and your notification tokens. Questions and answers you posted publicly may remain in the app in anonymised form — detached from your name and profile — so that threads other students are relying on do not break.

The full detail, including exactly what is kept and for how long, is on our Account & Data Deletion page.

10. How long we keep information

  • Account information (phone number, display name, avatar, grade, school) — for as long as your account is open. Deleted within 30 days of a deletion request.
  • Public content (questions, answers, comments) — kept while it is useful to other students; anonymised rather than removed when you delete your account.
  • Direct chat messages — deleted when you delete your account.
  • Crash and diagnostic data — retained by Firebase Crashlytics for up to 90 days.
  • Moderation records (reports, suspensions, bans) — kept for up to 12 months so that a banned user cannot simply come back, and so we can defend a decision if it is challenged.
  • Encrypted backups — deleted data can persist in routine backups for up to 30 days after deletion, after which the backups expire and are overwritten.

11. How we protect information

Your data is stored with Supabase on managed infrastructure. Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit using TLS, and data is encrypted at rest by our hosting provider. Access to production data is limited to the people who need it to run the service. Row-level database rules restrict what any given signed-in account can read or change.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a security breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

12. International transfer of data

Our service providers — Supabase, Google Firebase and Google AdMob — operate data centres outside South Africa, so your personal information is processed abroad. We only use providers that commit contractually to protecting personal information at a standard comparable to POPIA, as section 72 of POPIA requires. By using RaisedHand you agree to this transfer.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app changes or the law changes. When we do, we will change the “Last updated” date at the top of this page, and for anything significant we will tell you in the app before the change takes effect. Continuing to use RaisedHand after a change means you accept the updated policy.

14. Contact us

Questions, complaints, or a request to access, correct or delete your information:

We respond to privacy requests within 30 days.