Who we are
PairPal helps students aged 13 and over find study partners who take the same subjects, chat, compare past-paper scores and track study time. This policy explains what the PairPal iPhone app, the website at pairpal.app and the waitlist collect, why, who can see it, and how to delete it. Questions go to pairpal@gymshackles.com.
Information you give us in the app
- Account: your email address and password. The password is stored only as a salted hash, never as readable text. We also record that you accepted the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines.
- Profile: first and last name, username, date of birth, school, subjects, a short bio and up to nine photos. If you verify a school email address, we keep that address too.
- What you share: messages, photos, files and links you send in chats (with the link title and picture your own phone fetched), reactions, score results you post and study time you log.
- Safety: reports you send, the students you block and your “who can find me” setting.
Information created as you use PairPal
We record who you chose to study with or passed on, your matches and chats, read receipts, when you signed in and basic technical details such as your IP address and request times. These are used to run the app, limit repeated attempts and protect accounts. Before launch, your phone also keeps a pass showing that the access password was entered.
PairPal does not show ads, does not track you across other apps or websites, does not sell personal information and does not use third-party analytics in the app.
What other students see
Other students can see your first name and the first letter of your last name, username, photos, bio, school, subjects, any verification tick, and your weekly study time on leaderboards. They never see your email address, full last name or date of birth.
You only see, and are seen by, students in your own age group: 13 to 17, or 18 and over. In Settings you can choose to be found only by students at your school. Messages are visible to the people in that chat. Blocking someone hides you from each other everywhere and closes your chat.
How we use information
- To run PairPal: your account, suggesting study partners by subjects and school, chats, score challenges, study time and leaderboards.
- To keep students safe: keeping age groups apart, filtering slurs and sexual content, reviewing reports, removing content and suspending accounts that break the rules.
- To send emails you ask for: password reset codes and school email codes.
- To fix problems, prevent abuse and improve PairPal.
PairPal includes clearly labelled test profiles that reply automatically. Their replies are written by simple rules on our own server; your messages to them are not sent to any AI service.
Moderation
When you report a profile, message or chat, the PairPal team sees what you reported and the recent messages of that chat so we can act on it, usually within 24 hours. The student you report is never told who reported them. Content that breaks the Community Guidelines is removed, and serious cases can lead to an account being suspended or reported to the authorities.
Services that process data
- Hetzner hosts our servers and database in Helsinki, Finland, in the European Union.
- Cloudflare protects and routes traffic to pairpal.app and api.pairpal.app.
- Resend delivers code emails.
- On the website, the waitlist is recorded by the ThatLev waitlist service and a Google-hosted Apps Script, and anonymous page interaction data is relayed to ThatLev’s analytics endpoint.
These providers process information only to provide their service to PairPal.
Keeping and deleting your information
Your information stays while you have an account. You can delete your account at any time in the app: Profile → Settings → Delete account. This permanently deletes your profile, photos, messages, files, score results and study time from PairPal. Chats you were in show “Deleted account”.
Reports are kept until they are resolved and deleted 180 days later. Uploads that were never sent are removed within a day, and expired sign-in sessions and codes are removed automatically. Encrypted backups are kept for disaster recovery and replaced on a rolling basis, so deleted information leaves them as older backups expire.
Your choices and rights
You can see and change your profile in the app, block or report anyone, choose who can find you, and delete your account. You can also email pairpal@gymshackles.com to ask for a copy of your information, a correction or deletion. If you live in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you also have the right to object to or restrict processing and to complain to your data protection authority. We use your information because it is needed to provide PairPal under our terms, and to keep the service safe.
Students under 18
PairPal is for students aged 13 and over and is not directed at children under 13. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 13, we delete it. Students under 18 only meet other students under 18, and their date of birth is never shown. A parent or guardian can contact pairpal@gymshackles.com to ask about or delete their child’s account.
Security
Connections to PairPal are encrypted. Passwords are hashed, your sign-in is kept in the iPhone Keychain, and photos and files are only delivered to students allowed to see them. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a password you don’t use anywhere else.
The website and waitlist
If you join the waitlist, we receive the email address you submit, along with details such as campaign parameters, the referring page, browser and device details, language, time zone and page-load timing. The home page records a page view, scrolling progress, broad tap positions, page dimensions and time on page, but never the contents of the email field. The connecting IP address is turned into a one-way key to limit repeated signups. You can ask to leave the waitlist at any time by emailing pairpal@gymshackles.com.
Changes and contact
We will update this policy as PairPal changes and show the new effective date above. Questions about privacy can be sent to pairpal@gymshackles.com.