Privacy Policy

Who runs it and whose data

Foothold is a personal, family-run website — a maths practice space built by a parent (Jesse) for his family and other known learners. It is not a school product, not a commercial service, and not affiliated with any school, education department, or curriculum authority.

Jesse runs the site for his family and invited learners. It holds account information about these learners and the practice they do.

What is stored

Each learner has a private SQLite database on the server. A separate account registry stores sign-in information. Stored data includes:

• Usernames, display names, credential hashes, and sign-in sessions
• Practice progress for each skill and warm-up fact
• Session history
• Every answer attempt, including whether it was right and which hints were used
• Optional “How I knew” reflections and transcripts of AI-tutor conversations
• Worksheet uploads and the answers read from them
• Homework photos uploaded from Settings
• Ready-token links that open a prepared homework session
• Times-tables practice events
• Settings: the student's name for greetings, interest tags used only to flavour tutor dialogue, and display preferences

Worksheet photos

Worksheet photos are stored on the server's disk and automatically deleted after a retention window (90 days by default; configurable by the operator).

Cookies

There is exactly one cookie: foothold_session, set after signing in with your username and passphrase. It lasts 90 days and holds an opaque identifier for your sign-in session.

There are no analytics, no trackers, no advertising cookies, and no ads.

The optional AI tutor

When the operator has configured an Anthropic API key, tutor chat messages (the current problem and the conversation) and worksheet photos are sent to Anthropic (the maker of Claude) to generate replies and read handwriting.

Without a key configured, nothing is sent anywhere and hints come from pre-written hint ladders. Anthropic is the only third party that ever receives any data.

Who can see the data

Learners see their own progress, settings, and homework. The administrator can manage access and review learner workspaces. Reusable authored lessons contain no other learner's private progress.

Where it lives

The site runs on a small server in Sydney, Australia, served over HTTPS. The database is backed up nightly on that server. Backups are kept for 14 days.

No selling, no sharing

Data is never sold and never shared with anyone beyond the optional Anthropic tutor calls described above.

Your choices

The Settings page has an “Export my data” button that downloads everything Foothold has stored about progress and settings — every session, attempt, worksheet and setting — as one JSON file.

The operator can wipe all practice progress for a fresh start on request (a documented reset).

Contact

Jesse runs the site. Family members can talk to him directly. Anyone else can use the GitHub repository at github.com/jesterG1979/foothold.