1. Information Collection

Personal Information
When you register on CoverTheGaps.com, we collect personal information such as your name, email address, and other information you provide voluntarily.

Profile and Public Information
Certain information you provide, including but not limited to your name, display name, username, avatar, profile description, learning progress, or activity history, may be visible to other users of the platform and may be publicly accessible on the internet. This includes display in user directories, class rosters, teacher dashboards, and community features.

Automated Information
We automatically receive and record information from your device and browser, including your IP address, software and hardware attributes, and the requested page.

Cookies
We use cookies and similar technologies to enhance your user experience, analyze traffic, and improve the quality of our services. You may control cookies in your browser, but disabling them may limit your use of certain features.

2. Use of Information

The information we collect may be used to:

• Operate, personalize, and improve our services;
• Display your information to other users where necessary for the platform to function (e.g., teachers viewing students, classmates viewing each other, directories of participants);
• Provide customer support and respond to your requests;
• Conduct research and analysis;
• Communicate important notices and updates;
• Enforce our Terms of Use.

3. Information Sharing and Disclosure

Public Display

• Your profile information (including name, username, and avatar) may be publicly available and indexed by search engines.
• Certain user actions (e.g., completed lessons, participation in exercises, comments, or uploaded materials) may be visible to other users or to the general public depending on platform settings.

Third-Party Service Providers
We may share your information with third-party service providers who perform services on our behalf, such as hosting, analytics, support, and speech-to-text transcription. Where an exercise turns your speech into text, the recording is sent to OpenAI for transcription; OpenAI acts as our processor and the audio is not retained by us afterwards. Some of these providers operate outside your own country, including in the United States, so using the platform may involve an international transfer of your data.

Legal Requirements
We may disclose your information if required by law, regulation, or legal process, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, security, or property, or that of our users.

4. Voice Recordings

Some features — the pronunciation check, reading aloud, shadowing, dictation, and the speaking exercises — record your voice while you use them. You start each recording yourself, and your browser asks for microphone permission before anything is captured.

What we do with a recording
We analyse it to work out which sounds you produced, so that we can show you where they differed from the sounds you were aiming for. For some exercises we also convert your speech to text so that an answer can be checked.

How long we keep it
Recordings are processed once and then deleted. We do not store your voice, and we do not use it to train any model. Where an exercise needs your speech turned into text, we keep the text — your answer — and not the audio.

Who processes it
Pronunciation feedback is produced by our own speech models, running on our own servers. Speech-to-text for exercises is performed by OpenAI, acting as our processor; the recording is sent for transcription and is not retained by us afterwards. This may involve a transfer of your data outside your own country, including to the United States.

What we never do
We do not use your voice to identify you, we do not build a voiceprint, and we do not sell or share recordings with advertisers.

Your choices
Refusing microphone permission leaves every other part of the platform working; only the speaking features become unavailable. Because recordings are not kept, there is no stored audio to ask us to delete — but you may ask us anything about this section, or exercise the rights described in Section 7, using the contact details in Section 9.

5. Responsibility of Users

• You are solely responsible for the accuracy of the information you choose to share in your profile or through the platform.
• By providing personal information (e.g., real name, photo), you acknowledge that it may be viewed by other users or the public.
• We are not responsible for the use, copying, or distribution of your publicly available information by third parties.

6. Security

We take reasonable measures to protect your personal information. However, no method of storage or transmission over the Internet is completely secure. You acknowledge and accept that you share data at your own risk.

7. Users’ Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have rights under applicable law, including GDPR (EU) or CCPA (California), such as the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict use of your personal data. You may exercise these rights by contacting us.

8. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any material changes will be posted on this page with a revised effective date. Continued use of the platform after updates constitutes acceptance of the new Privacy Policy.

9. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or wish to exercise any of the rights described in Section 7, please contact us at talgat.v1994@gmail.com.