Privacy Policy
Last updated November 1, 2026
The short version
- Schools are in charge of student data. We use it only to run Verela for the school.
- We don’t sell data, show ads, or use student work to train AI models.
- We don’t send students’ names, email addresses or ID numbers to the AI. What students type, and the reading itself, are sent as written.
- Schools choose how long data is kept, and professors can export or delete any student’s data.
- Our website uses no cookies, analytics or tracking pixels.
- Who this covers
- What we collect
- How we use it
- AI and Jot
- Who we share it with
- Students, FERPA and children
- How long we keep it
- Security
- Cookies and browser storage
- Where data is stored
- Your choices and rights
- Changes and contact
1. Who this covers
This policy explains how Verela (“we” or “us”) handles information in the Verela app, which students and professors open from their school’s learning management system (LMS), in the public demo, and on our website, getverela.com.
When a school uses Verela, the school decides how it’s used and controls its students’ records. If your school has an agreement with us that says something different from this policy, the agreement controls.
2. What we collect
| What | Where it comes from | Why we need it |
|---|---|---|
| Name, role, course name and code, and LMS identifiers. Email address and student ID number if the school’s LMS shares them. | Your school’s LMS, each time you open Verela | To sign you in, show the right course and send grades back to the LMS. We store LMS user and course identifiers as scrambled codes. |
| Class list: names and roles of people in a course | Your school’s LMS | To show professors who has and hasn’t done each reading. We don’t keep email addresses from the class list. |
| Student work: messages teaching Jot, Jot’s replies and notebook, quiz results, live-check and oral-exam answers, time taken on each answer, grades, feedback, practice answers and questions about a grade | Students, Jot and the grading tools | To run the assignment, grade it and show results to the student and professor |
| Accommodations, such as extra time or paste allowed | Professors | To apply them to the student’s assignments |
| Readings, links, questions, grade changes, messages to students, course settings and questions asked about class results | Professors | To set up and run the course |
| Signs of bots: whether the browser looks automated, and whether the connection comes from a cloud data center (we keep the provider’s name, not your IP address) | Your browser and connection | Shown to professors as flags. Flags never change a grade on their own. |
| Exam scores uploaded for the exam check | Professors | To compare Verela grades with exam results. The file is processed in memory and only overall statistics are kept, with no student identifiers. |
| Demo request: name, email, school, role, LMS and course, plus the country the request came from and the page it was sent from | The form on our website | To reply to you about a demo or pilot |
| IP address when someone starts the public demo | Your connection | To limit how many demos start from one place. Kept for one hour. |
What we don’t collect
- Passwords. You sign in through your school’s LMS.
- Audio. Voice answers are turned into text by your browser, and Verela receives only the text.
- Keystrokes or typing rhythm.
- Age or date of birth.
- Advertising or tracking cookies.
3. How we use it
- To run Verela: signing in, showing assignments, having Jot respond, grading, sending grades to the LMS, and giving professors dashboards, class briefings and briefing emails.
- To keep Verela safe: limiting request rates, flagging possible bots and investigating misuse.
- To improve Verela: using overall, de-identified information, such as how often a question is answered correctly. If a school opts in, the shared library combines question statistics across classes, as counts only, with no student information.
- To reply to you when you request a demo or contact us.
We don’t sell personal information, show ads, build marketing profiles of students, or use student work to train AI models.
4. AI and Jot
Verela uses Claude models from Anthropic for Jot, grading, question drafting, class briefings and answers to professors’ questions about results.
- What we send: the reading, the course and assignment name, assignment settings, and what students type, as written. For a professor’s question about class results, students are replaced with codes such as S1 and S2.
- What we don’t send: students’ names, email addresses, student ID numbers or LMS identifiers. If a student types a name into a message, though, it’s sent as written.
- Training: Anthropic’s commercial terms don’t allow it to train its models on what we send. Anthropic may keep that data for a limited time to run its service and check for misuse, as its own policies describe.
5. Who we share it with
We share information only with the service providers below, so they can run parts of Verela for us, and only what each one needs.
| Provider | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic (US) | AI models behind Jot and the grading tools | Readings, course names and what students type, as described above |
| Fly.io (US, Virginia) | Hosts the Verela app and its database | All app data |
| Cloudflare | Hosts our website, handles the demo request form and our email routing | Website requests, including IP addresses, and demo requests |
| Google (Gmail) | Our inbox for demo requests | Demo request details |
| An email delivery service | Sends class briefings by email, when turned on | Course name, reading title and class results. No student names. |
| Google Fonts, cdnjs and jsDelivr | Deliver fonts and code libraries to your browser | Your IP address and browser details, as with any web request |
| Your school’s LMS | Receives grades | Each student’s grade for the assignment |
- Voice answers: if you answer by voice, your browser’s built-in speech recognition turns it into text. Depending on your browser, that may use its maker’s online service (for example Google for Chrome or Apple for Safari), under that company’s privacy policy.
- Linked readings: when a professor links a reading, our server fetches that web page. The site sees a request from Verela, not from the professor.
- Within a school: professors see the work of students in their courses, and school administrators can see settings, reports and the access log.
- Other cases: we may disclose information if the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety or our rights, or as part of a merger or sale of our business, in which case this policy and school agreements still apply to it.
6. Students, FERPA and children
- For schools covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Verela acts as a “school official” with a legitimate educational interest, under the school’s direct control. We use education records only for the school’s purposes and don’t share them except with the providers above, as the school directs, or as the law requires.
- Students, or parents of students under 18, who want to see, correct or delete records should contact their school. We’ll help the school respond. Students can also download their own work from inside Verela.
- Verela is not directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from them. If we learn that we have, we’ll delete it.
7. How long we keep it
- Course data is kept until the school deletes it or sets a retention period. School administrators can remove conversation text after 6 months, 1 year or 2 years (grades are kept), and delete whole student records 1, 2 or 5 years after a student’s last activity in a course.
- Professors can export or delete any student’s data in their course. Administrators can see an access log of who viewed, exported, changed or deleted student work.
- Sign-ins end after 12 hours without use, and after 7 days at most.
- Public demo courses are deleted about 24 hours after they start.
- Demo requests are kept as long as we need them to follow up with you.
- When a school stops using Verela, we delete or return its data as its agreement with us says, or when the school asks.
- Deleted data may remain in our hosting provider’s backups for a short time before those backups are replaced.
8. Security
- All connections use HTTPS.
- Sign-in happens through your school’s LMS with signed LTI 1.3 launches, and we store sign-in tokens only in scrambled (hashed) form.
- Role checks mean students see only their own work, and professors only their own courses.
- The database can be read only by the Verela app.
- Rate limits and bot checks protect against misuse, and an access log records who looks at or changes student work.
No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that affects your information, we’ll notify affected schools without undue delay and as the law requires. To report a security problem, email hello@getverela.com.
9. Cookies and browser storage
- Website: no cookies, analytics or tracking pixels.
- App: no advertising or tracking cookies. When you open Verela from your LMS, the sign-in library sets short-lived cookies that are needed to sign you in securely. Your sign-in token is kept in your browser’s session storage, which clears when you close the tab, and preferences such as theme and sound are kept in your browser’s local storage.
10. Where data is stored
Verela’s app and database are hosted in the United States, in Virginia. If you use Verela from outside the US, your information is transferred to and processed in the US.
11. Your choices and rights
- Students can download their own work in Verela, and can ask their school to correct or delete their records.
- Professors can export or delete student data in their courses.
- Anyone can email us to ask what we hold about them, or to correct or delete it. For student records, we’ll work with the school, since the school controls them.
- Depending on where you live, you may have other privacy rights, and we’ll honor them as the law requires. We don’t sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising.
12. Changes and contact
If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we’ll tell school administrators and professors before it takes effect.
Questions or requests: hello@getverela.com