Privacy Policy

Information You Provide to Us

When you create an account or use the platform, you may give us:

• Account details — your name, email address, phone number, and password (if you set one). You can sign in with an email and password, a phone number (verified by a one-time code we send you by SMS), or your Google account. Passwords are handled securely by Firebase Authentication and are never visible to us.
• Payment confirmation — the bank or mobile-money reference and any payment screenshot you upload when you request access to a paid course, AI credits, or other paid features.
• Content you create — the code, projects, and websites you build in the playground, along with any text, images, or files you add to them.
• Communications — messages you send us for support, along with comments, ratings, course replies, and challenge submissions you post.

Information We Collect Automatically

As you use the platform we collect:

• Usage and progress data — lessons viewed, video watch progress, exercises and quizzes completed, and features used.
• Device and technical data — device type, operating system, browser, app version, and approximate region.
• Diagnostics — crash reports and error logs used to keep the app stable.
• Notification tokens — a push-notification identifier so we can send you updates about your account and courses.
• We keep in-app analytics deliberately lightweight and sampled, and we never record your keystrokes or capture screen recordings. Our marketing websites do, however, use third-party advertising and analytics tools that involve cross-site tracking — see “Cookies, Analytics, and Advertising” below.

Guest Sessions

You can explore parts of Qwiklo as an anonymous guest before signing up. Guest activity is stored under a temporary anonymous account. If you later create a full account, we merge your guest progress into it. Guest data that is never linked to an account is periodically cleared.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve the platform and your experience.
• Verify manual payments and grant access to paid courses, AI credits, and other entitlements.
• Personalize content, track your progress, and issue certificates of completion.
• Run features such as XP, leaderboards, challenges, and prizes.
• Send you account, course, and support notifications.
• Detect, prevent, and address fraud, abuse, and technical problems.

Service Providers We Share Data With

We run the platform on trusted infrastructure providers that process data on our behalf. We share only what each provider needs to deliver its part of the service:

• Google Firebase (Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions) — your account, app data, and uploaded files.
• Google Analytics (GA4) and BigQuery — usage analytics for the app and our websites.
• Google Ads, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, and LinkedIn — advertising and ad-measurement partners. Our marketing websites include these partners’ pixels and tags, which collect device and cookie identifiers and page-visit events to measure how our ads perform and to show you relevant ads. See “Cookies, Analytics, and Advertising” below.
• Google Crashlytics — crash and error diagnostics.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging — push notifications.
• Resend — delivery of transactional and notification emails (for example account verification, password reset, and service updates), and delivery-status reports for those emails. Your email address and the content of the message are shared with Resend so it can send the email on our behalf.
• Cloudflare (R2 storage and CDN) — hosting and delivery of images, assets, the websites you publish, and files attached to messages you exchange with us.
• Cloudflare Email Routing — receiving email you send to our support and contact addresses so our team can read and reply to it.
• Google Gemini — AI-powered features in the playground. The prompts and code you submit to the AI assistant are sent to Google to generate a response.
• Unsplash — when you search for stock photos, your search terms are sent to Unsplash.
• Google (Sign in with Google) — when you choose to sign in with Google, Google confirms your identity and shares basic profile information such as your name and email address with us to create or access your account.
• GeezSMS (and a backup SMS provider) — delivery of one-time verification codes and account-related text messages. Your phone number and the message content are shared with the provider so it can send the SMS on our behalf.
• These providers may store data on servers outside Ethiopia (primarily on Google Cloud, Cloudflare, and Resend infrastructure).

Payments

Qwiklo uses manual payment confirmation. When you pay by bank transfer or mobile money, you submit a reference or screenshot, and we grant access after verifying it. We retain payment records — with personal details minimized — for accounting, tax, and dispute-resolution purposes, even after an account is deleted. We never store full card numbers or bank login credentials.

Public and Shared Content

Some of your activity is visible to others by design:

• Certificates you earn may be verifiable through a public link.
• Comments, ratings, and challenge entries you post may be shown to other users alongside your display name.
• Websites you publish are served publicly on the internet and can be viewed by anyone who has the link.

Personal Data in the Sites You Publish

The websites you build with Qwiklo may contain other people’s personal information — for example guest names on a wedding invitation, customer details on a business page, or photos of individuals. When you include such information, you are responsible for it: you must have the right and any necessary consent to publish it, and you act as the controller of that data. We host and serve this content on your behalf. If someone asks to have their information removed from a site you published, it is your responsibility to remove it (or ask us for help).

Communications and Support Records

To provide support and keep an accurate record, we store the emails and SMS messages we exchange with you — including any files attached — together with which member of our team sent or handled each one. We keep these communication records for about two years. Verification codes we send by SMS are never stored in readable form, and the short-lived internal copy used to send them is deleted within a few days.

Cookies, Analytics, and Advertising

We use cookies and local storage to keep you signed in, remember your preferences, and understand how the platform is used. In addition, our marketing websites use analytics and advertising cookies and pixels:

• Analytics — Google Analytics (GA4) helps us understand, in aggregate, how visitors find and use our websites.
• Advertising cookies and pixels — we and our advertising partners (Google Ads, Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn) set cookies and similar technologies on our marketing websites to measure the performance of our ads and to show you relevant ads on those partners’ platforms. These partners may link this data with other information they hold about you under their own privacy policies.
• Your choices — you can clear or block cookies in your browser settings (some features, such as staying signed in, may stop working). You can also opt out of personalized advertising directly with the networks: Google Ads Settings (adssettings.google.com, which also covers DoubleClick), Meta’s Ad Preferences, TikTok’s Ads settings, LinkedIn’s advertising preferences, and industry opt-out tools such as youradchoices.com.

Data Retention

We keep your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the service. When you delete your account, we remove or anonymize your personal data as described below, except for records we are legally or operationally required to retain (such as financial records).

Your Rights and Choices

You can:

• Access and update your profile information from within the app.
• Delete your account from the app settings (available to learners and customers). This permanently removes your private data, anonymizes content you shared publicly, and unlinks or removes your published sites. Financial records are retained with personal details stripped. Staff and agent accounts are closed by contacting us so any outstanding work can be handed over first.
• Turn notifications off from your device settings.
• Contact us to ask about the personal data we hold about you.

Children

Qwiklo is intended for users aged 13 and older. If you are under the age of majority in your country, you should use Qwiklo only with the involvement of a parent or guardian. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13; if you believe a child has provided us their information, contact us and we will remove it.

Security

We use industry-standard measures — including encrypted connections and access-controlled infrastructure — to protect your information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the platform evolves. We will revise the “Last updated” date above and, for significant changes, provide a more prominent notice. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised policy.

Language

This policy is provided in English, Amharic, and Afaan Oromoo. If there is any conflict between the versions, the English version governs.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, contact us by email at [email protected] or on Telegram at t.me/qwiklo.