Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how FreePeriod (operated by Jayandree Govender)("we", "us", or "our") collects, uses, stores, and shares personal information when you use FreePeriod at https://freeperiod.co.za(the "Service"). We are based in South Africa and process personal information in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) and, where applicable, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar laws.

1. Who we are

Service: FreePeriod
Responsible party: FreePeriod (operated by Jayandree Govender)
Address: 17 San Te Fe, Seaward Estates, Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Privacy contact: janiestribe@gmail.com

2. Information we collect

We collect the following categories of personal information:

Account and profile information

• Email address, display name, and authentication credentials (or Google sign-in profile data)
• Teaching preferences you provide during onboarding or in Settings: default subject, grade or year group, and curriculum
• Subscription plan, trial status, generation usage counts, and account creation date

Content you provide

• Lesson plans generated and stored in your account (title, subject, grade, curriculum, duration, structured lesson content)
• Documents you upload (PDF, DOCX, XLSX) such as curriculum documents and lesson templates
• Text extracted from uploaded documents to align AI-generated lesson plans with your curriculum
• Prompts and instructions you enter when generating a lesson
• Exported files (DOCX, XLSX) created from your lesson plans

Payment information

• If you subscribe to a paid plan, Lemon Squeezy processes your payment. We receive billing metadata (such as customer and subscription identifiers and plan status) but do not store your full card number on our servers.

Technical and usage information

• Essential session cookies set by Supabase to keep you signed in
• Server and hosting logs (IP address, browser type, request timestamps) generated by our hosting provider
• AI usage metadata such as model used and token counts associated with lesson generation

We do not use advertising cookies, Google Analytics, or similar marketing trackers at launch.

3. How we use your information

We process personal information for these lawful purposes (POPIA Condition 6):

• Providing the Service: creating and managing your account, generating lesson plans, storing your content, and enabling exports
• AI processing: sending lesson prompts and relevant curriculum text to AI providers so they can generate lesson content for you
• Billing: managing subscriptions, trials, and payments through Lemon Squeezy
• Security and abuse prevention: authenticating users, enforcing plan limits, and protecting the Service
• Support and communications: responding to your requests and sending service-related messages
• Legal compliance: meeting legal obligations and responding to lawful requests

4. AI and third-party processors

We use trusted third parties to operate FreePeriod. They process data only as needed to provide their service to us:

• Supabase — authentication, database, and private file storage for your uploads and account data (hosted in eu-north-1 (Stockholm, European Union))
• Anthropic — processes lesson prompts and curriculum context to generate lesson plans for paid (Pro and Pro+) subscribers using Claude models
• Google— provides Gemini models for free-tier lesson generation and, if you choose "Continue with Google", OAuth sign-in (email and basic profile only)
• Lemon Squeezy — payment processing for paid subscriptions; card details are handled by Lemon Squeezy, not stored by us
• Vercel — application hosting, CDN, and infrastructure logs (hosted in iad1 (Washington DC, United States))

When you generate a lesson plan, the text you provide (including extracted curriculum content from uploads) is transmitted to the applicable AI provider for that request. Do not upload documents containing unnecessary personal information about students or colleagues.

5. International data transfers

Your data may be stored and processed in Supabase database and file storage in eu-north-1 (Stockholm, EU); application hosting on Vercel in iad1 (Washington DC, US); AI providers (Anthropic, Google) and payment processing (Lemon Squeezy) in the United States. Our processors may also process data in other countries. Where required by POPIA (Condition 8) and GDPR, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as processor agreements and standard contractual clauses offered by our providers. By using the Service, you acknowledge that cross-border transfers may occur to deliver the Service.

6. Cookies

We use essential cookies required for authentication and session management (via Supabase). These are strictly necessary to operate the Service and do not require a marketing cookie banner. We do not set non-essential tracking cookies at launch.

7. Data retention

• Active accounts: we retain your account data and content while your account is active
• Account deletion: when you delete your account, we schedule permanent deletion of your personal data within 30 days. During this grace period your account is deactivated and you cannot sign in. Contact us if you need immediate deletion
• Billing records: we may retain limited billing and transaction records as required by tax and accounting law after account deletion
• Server logs: hosting logs are retained for a limited period for security and troubleshooting

8. Security

We implement reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including HTTPS encryption in transit, access controls, row-level security in our database, and private storage buckets for uploaded files. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure.

9. Your rights

Depending on your location, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate information (via Settings or by contacting us)
• Request deletion of your account and personal data
• Export your lesson plans before deletion
• Object to or restrict certain processing where applicable
• Lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa) or your local supervisory authority

To exercise these rights, email janiestribe@gmail.com or delete your account in Settings. We will respond within the timeframes required by applicable law.

10. Children

FreePeriod is designed for teachers and education professionals. It is not directed at children under 13 (or 16 in the EU where applicable). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version on this page and update the "Last updated" date. Material changes may be communicated by email or in-app notice where appropriate.

12. Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices:
janiestribe@gmail.com
17 San Te Fe, Seaward Estates, Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

See also our Terms of Service.