Privacy policy

The short version

• We use what you select, say or ask only to explain it to you, and to keep your lessons so you can go back to them.
• We do not sell your data, show ads, or use tracking or analytics tools.
• The Chrome extension reads a page only when you ask it to, and only what you selected or boxed.
• To have your data deleted, write to hello@xplain.to.

What we collect

Your account. Your email address, your name and your password (stored only as a one-way hash, never in readable form). When you sign in we keep a sign-in session with the time, your IP address and your browser's name, so you stay signed in and we can spot misuse.

Your lessons. When you are signed in, we keep a record of each lesson: the documents and pictures you open (so a lesson can be reopened with its document), what you select in them (the text, and a picture of a selected area), your questions (typed, or spoken and turned into text), the explanations xplain gives, pictures of the whiteboard when you ask about it, and what you do in the reader (for example opening a document, pausing, or changing the language). You can see your lessons in the reader.

Your voice. When you tap to speak, the sound from your microphone is streamed to our speech provider to be turned into text, and only while you are speaking to xplain. We do not keep the recording; the text is kept as your question. The tutor's voice is made from the text of its explanation and is not kept either.

The waitlist. When you ask for an invitation on xplain.to, we keep the email address, name and answers you give (what you are, and what you would like explained). With them we keep your browser's language, your IP address and the country, region and city it belongs to (as Cloudflare works it out), and how you found xplain: the tag in the link you followed, if it had one (such as xplain.to/?ref=…), the page that linked to xplain.to (without anything after a ? or #) and the first page you opened. We use this to invite you, to see who xplain is useful to and where they hear about it, and to stop abuse of the form. While you look around xplain.to, how you arrived is remembered in that browser tab until you close it, and is sent only with the form.

Invitation links. Every account has its own invitation link (xplain.to/join?invite=…). If you ask for an invitation through someone's link, we keep whose link it was. The person who invited you sees on their account page that someone they invited joined, by the first letters of your email address (for example ad•••@example.com), and receives a credit once you ask your first question. The link's code is remembered in your browser until you send the form.

Exported videos. A lesson saved as a video is kept for 30 days so you can download it, then deleted.

In your browser. The reader remembers settings such as the theme, the language and the width of the document panel in your browser's own storage. These stay on your device.

The Chrome extension

The extension lets you select or box something on any web page and have xplain explain it.

• It reads a page only when you click its menu item, its toolbar button or its keyboard shortcut, and only on that tab.
• It then takes only what you chose: the selected text and the passage around it, or the text inside the box you drew; a screenshot of the visible part of the tab, cut down to that area (or the whole visible screen on pages it cannot draw on, such as Chrome's PDF viewer); and the page's title and address (the site and the page only, without anything after a ? or #).
• It hands this to the xplain reader, which opens in a new tab and shows it to you. Nothing is sent or kept until you press Explain or ask a question about it. Then it is treated like a document you opened yourself: it is kept with your lesson if you are signed in (of a whole screen, only the part you boxed) and sent for an explanation.
• It does not read your browsing history, does not run on pages until you click, and does not send anything anywhere except to xplain.
• It keeps the capture only until the reader has received it, and deletes it after 10 minutes if the reader never does. It keeps one setting, where xplain opens (a tab or a window), in Chrome's storage.

Why we use it

• To explain what you asked about, out loud and on the whiteboard.
• To invite you, if you asked for an invitation.
• To keep your lessons, so you can reopen and replay them.
• To keep the service working and safe: preventing abuse, fixing errors, and understanding where explanations go wrong so we can improve them. People who run xplain can look at lesson records for these reasons.

Who it goes to

We do not sell or rent your data. To run xplain we use these providers, each only for its part:

• Anthropic: the AI that writes the explanations. It receives your question, what you selected (text and pictures) and the text around it.
• Soniox: speech. It receives your microphone audio while you speak to xplain, and the text of the tutor's explanations to turn into its voice.
• Google Cloud: hosting, the database and file storage, in Europe (Belgium).
• Cloudflare: the network in front of xplain, protection against attacks, a check that a real person is signing in, and the country and city an IP address belongs to.
• Resend: email. It receives your email address and name to send you your invitation and links to choose a password.

We may add or change AI providers (for example, other AI model providers such as OpenAI or Google). This list is updated before any new provider receives your data.

We may also disclose data if the law requires it.

Data leaving Europe

xplain's servers and storage are in Europe, but some of the providers above are based in the United States (Anthropic, Soniox and Resend), and Cloudflare's network spans the world, so your data can be processed outside the European Union. Where it is, it is protected by the safeguards in those providers' data processing terms, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. You can ask us for details at hello@xplain.to.

How long we keep it

• Your account and lessons: until you ask us to delete them, or your account is closed.
• Waitlist requests, with their IP address and how you found xplain: until you ask us to remove them.
• Database backups: 14 days, then they are replaced.
• Exported videos: 30 days.
• Voice recordings: not kept.

Your choices

You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete your account and lessons, by writing to hello@xplain.to. You can use xplain without speaking (type instead), and remove the extension at any time from Chrome's extensions page. Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to object to how we use your data or to complain to your data protection authority.

Security

Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS). Lesson files are kept in private storage, reachable only by our service. Passwords are stored as hashes, and access for the people who run xplain requires a second sign-in step.

Children

If you are under 16, use xplain only with a parent's or guardian's permission. If you think a child has given us data without permission, write to us and we will delete it.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update it here and change the date at the top. For important changes we will tell you in the reader or by email.