Privacy
Who we are
Silika is a virtual science lab ("we"). Contact: hello@silika.app.
Silika is used in three ways, and who decides about your data depends on which:
- Individuals and families sign up themselves at silika.app and use the lab at lab.silika.app. We are responsible for their data.
- Training centres sign up at silika.app and get their own address (centre.silika.app). The centre decides who joins; we hold the data for the centre.
- Schools are set up by us at their own address. The school decides who may use Silika and holds the main responsibility for its pupils' data; we process it on the school's behalf.
Who can sign in
- Individuals, families and centres: any Google account that Google has verified. A parent signs in with their own account for a child. Google sets a minimum age for its accounts; younger children use Silika through a parent's account or with a teacher.
- Schools: only accounts managed by the school's own Google Workspace, and only people the school's system lists. A school account signs in at the school's address, not on silika.app.
What we collect
- From Google at sign-in: your Google account ID, email address and name. We do not receive or store your Google password, and we do not store your profile photo.
- When you sign up: the kind of account (individual or centre) and, for a centre, its name and address on Silika.
- From a school's system (schools only): name (English and Mongolian), role (pupil, teacher, staff), student number, grade, programme and classes, and class lists.
- What you do in Silika: which activities you have learned and explored, quiz answers and scores, safety and practice checklists, investigations and project notebooks, the steps recorded while you work in a virtual lab, grains, levels, streaks, badges and lab certificates, homework, and teachers' marks and comments on write-ups.
- Live rooms: when you join a teacher's live room, your name, your answers, whether they were correct and how long they took.
- Plans and payments: your plan, trial and renewal dates; for QPay payments, the QPay invoice number, amount, status and when it was paid; for invoices, the invoice number, the customer's name, the amount and whether it is paid. Payments are made in your bank's app through QPay: we never see your card or bank account details.
- Messages to us: what you send through the contact form (name, email, school or centre, role and message).
- Sign-in sessions: a session cookie (we store only a scrambled form of it) and your browser's description, so you stay signed in for up to 7 days. When you sign in on silika.app and are sent on to your lab, a one-time code valid for two minutes carries the sign-in across.
Why we use it
- To let you sign in, send you to your own lab, and show the right activities for your grade, classes or plan.
- To save your progress and, where there is a teacher, to show them what you have prepared before a physical lab, including whether you are lab-ready and safe to take part.
- To run live lessons, homework and marking.
- To run your trial and plan: to know what you have paid for, to check payments with QPay, to issue invoices, and to remind you before your plan ends.
- To answer your messages.
- For schools that connect their own system: to send lab-readiness, best quiz scores and badges back to it.
We do not sell personal data, show advertising, or use it to build profiles for anyone else.
Who can see it
- You.
- Your teachers, tutors and the centre's or school's staff, for the classes they teach: class lists, progress, readiness, recorded lab work, badges and marks.
- A school's own system, for schools that connect one: it receives readiness, scores and badges.
- Our team, to set up accounts, answer messages and handle plans and payments.
- Our service providers, only to run Silika: Render (hosting and database, Singapore), Google (sign-in, email and the Manrope font) and QPay (payments).
Each account's data is kept apart from every other account's in the database. Silika has no advertising, analytics or tracking tools, and does not send your data to AI services. We will update this page before that changes.
Stored on your device
Silika keeps some things in your browser so it works smoothly: your language and light/dark choice, the live room you are in, a copy of your progress and projects and any changes not yet sent, calculator history and practice-exam results. Signing out or clearing your browser's site data removes them.
How long we keep it
- Live-room answers are deleted after the school year in which the room was held.
- When a plan ends, your work is kept, not deleted; you can still use the free activities and pick up where you left off if you renew.
- When someone leaves a school, their account is closed and their email removed.
- Payment and invoice records are kept as long as the law requires for accounting.
- You can ask us at any time to delete your account and your work.
Your rights
You can ask to see, correct or delete your data, ask questions or complain. Individuals, families and centres: write to hello@silika.app. Pupils and staff of a school: contact your school, which may ask us to help.
Security
Silika is served only over HTTPS. Sign-in cookies cannot be read by scripts. The database is reachable only inside the hosting provider's private network, each account's rows are kept apart by the database itself, and the links to schools' systems are signed. Payments are confirmed by asking QPay directly, never by trusting a message alone. Changes to lesson content are logged.
Changes
We will post any change to this page and update the date above. If a change matters to how we use your data, we will also tell account holders by email.