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Sinjab Academy

Privacy Policy

How Sinjab Academy collects, uses and protects your personal data, and the choices you have.

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Who we are

Sinjab Academy is an online teaching platform for eye care professionals and students. It is run by Sinjab Academic Consultancy FZE, United Arab Emirates. We are the controller of the personal data described here.

You can reach us at support@sinjabacademy.org for anything in this policy.

This policy covers our website and learning platform (sinjabacademy.org, including the app subdomain), the Sinjab Academy mobile apps, and the email and push messages we send. Our Terms and Conditions apply to your use of the service.

The information we collect

Account information. When you create an account we ask for your name, email address, password, country, medical specialty and subspecialties. A nickname and your institution are optional. Your password is stored only as a scrypt hash and never in readable form. Sign-up requires you to confirm your email address.

Sign-in with Google or Apple. You can sign in with a Google or Apple account. If you do, Google gives us your name, email address and profile photo. Apple gives us your email address and, the first time only, your name; if you choose Apple's Hide My Email, the address we receive is a private relay address that forwards to you. If you already have an account with us under the same confirmed email address, the two are joined. We keep the sign-in tokens the provider issues with your account, and delete them when you delete your account.

Profile photos. We do not offer photo uploads. If you joined with Google, we show your Google profile photo. Otherwise we show your initials, or your browser fetches an avatar image from Gravatar, which receives only a one-way hash of your email address.

Learning records. Your enrollments, lesson progress, where you paused each video, your quiz attempts and answers, your saved SARSA assessments, your Razeen AI conversations and what you make with its study tools, and your conversations with the Sinjab Academy Assistant.

Requests you send us. Approval requests and request forms you send from the assistant, with the details they need: for example the name in your passport, your nationality and your travel dates for a visa invitation letter, or your institution's name and address for an invoice.

Telegram. If you connect Telegram, your Telegram account id, chat id, name, username and time zone, as described under Telegram below.

Payment records. Purchases are handled by Stripe or PayPal. Card numbers never reach our servers. We store the payment reference, amount, currency, coupon used and the payment processor's customer or payment identifiers.

Support and messages. Support tickets and their messages, images you attach to a ticket (images only, re-encoded so location metadata is removed), and contact form submissions.

Event registrations. Your name and email (from your account) and the answers to the questions an event organiser defines for its registration form.

Communication settings. Which email categories and notifications you have turned on.

Information recorded automatically

  • IP address and browser type, recorded with your sign-in sessions, our security audit log and contact form submissions. We use them for security, fraud prevention and abuse protection. Rate-limit records hold IP addresses for about a day.
  • Sign-in activity: when you signed in, from which device and browser, so you can review active sessions.
  • Video playback positions, so you can resume where you left off.
  • The pages you visit on our website, and how you use the website and app, described under Analytics below.
  • How you found us. When you create an account we keep, with your account, the first page you opened in that visit, the website that linked you to us, and any campaign tags in the link you followed (for example utm_source or a referral code). We do not use cookies or browser storage for this: it stays in your open browser tab until you sign up and is then saved once. If you sign up with Google or Apple, it travels back to us in the sign-in link. If your account was created for you rather than through sign-up, that is recorded instead.
  • The days you studied. For each day you complete a lesson, watch a recording, submit a quiz, use Razeen or use SARSA, we keep a note of that day and whether you used the website or the app, so we can count active members and see how members keep learning over time.
  • Error reports, described under Error monitoring below.

We do not run advertising, and we do not sell your personal data.

Razeen AI

Razeen is our AI study companion. It answers questions using passages from the textbooks in our library and, for a course you can open, from that course's recorded lectures. It also offers study tools: quizzes, notes you can download as a PDF, flashcards with a review schedule, Teach me lessons, the case of the week and a case simulator.

When you ask a question or use a study tool, we send to our AI model provider your request, up to about three earlier exchanges in the same conversation, and the library or lecture passages selected for it. We also send the question, or a shortened English rewrite of it, to DeepInfra, which turns it into a vector so we can search the library. Your name, email address and account identity are not sent to either provider, unless you type them into a question yourself.

We store your conversations, and what you make with the study tools (your quizzes and answers, your notes, your flashcards and how each review went, your case answers and your simulator sessions), in your account so you can return to them. When you delete a conversation, it is deleted from our database straight away. Deleting your account removes all of it. Our team can read in full the answers that were refused, rated down, flagged or reported, to correct mistakes and improve the library.

Before your first question in the mobile app, a notice tells you what is sent with your question, and your agreement is recorded on your device. Razeen answers are for education only. They are not medical advice and do not replace clinical judgement. Please do not enter patient names or anything else that could identify a patient.

Lectures. To make captions, and so that Razeen can answer from a lecture, we send the audio of our recorded lectures and live sessions to the speech-to-text service of DeepInfra, which returns the text. The text becomes the lecture's captions, held with the video on Bunny.net, and is added to Razeen's library for that course. If you spoke during a recorded live session, for example to ask a question, your words can be part of the transcript. If you would like them removed, write to us.

Dictation. On the website you can dictate a question with the microphone button. Your browser turns your speech into text with its own speech recognition; some browsers use their maker's online service for this, for example Google in Chrome and Apple in Safari. We never receive the audio. The words appear in the box for you to check, and nothing is sent until you press send.

Read aloud. On the website, Read aloud uses an AI voice when it is available. We send the text of that answer, not your question, to DeepInfra, which turns it into speech; for languages other than English it does this through Inworld AI. We keep only how long the text was and what it cost, never the text or the audio. When the AI voice is not available, Read aloud uses the voices of your browser or device and we receive nothing for it; a few browsers offer online voices run by the browser's maker.

A tool for our staff. A staff-only image tool, not offered to members, sends a teaching image a staff member uploads to DeepInfra once, so the AI can describe it. We do not store or log the image, and images with writing, dates, names or other identifying marks are refused before any description is shown.

Sinjab Academy Assistant

The assistant on our website and in the app is an AI. It answers questions about our courses, programs, dates and prices. When you are signed in, it also answers questions about your own account: your courses and access, your next live sessions, your recordings and progress, your certificates, receipts and support requests. It can make mistakes, and you can ask for a person at any time.

When you send a message, we send to our AI model provider your message, up to the last eight messages of the same conversation, and only the facts needed to answer it, such as a course title, a session date, your enrollment status or the date of a certificate. We never send your email address, account or order numbers, payment details, links or certificate serial numbers. When a question needs a search of our pages, we send it to DeepInfra to turn it into a search vector, as we do for Razeen.

The assistant reads only your own records, through the same checks the rest of the site uses. It cannot give access, apply discounts or take payments. It can do a few things for you, and each one happens only when you confirm it on the card the assistant shows:

  • register you again for a live session you can already join, and email you your join link;
  • send a password reset email to the address on your account;
  • lift a block on your email address after our emails to it bounced, so they reach you again;
  • email you a receipt or a certificate again;
  • send our team a support request, a request form (such as a visa invitation letter, an invoice in your institution's name or a group purchase), or a request for approval (an access extension, an exam retake, or a correction to the name on a certificate).

A support request is sent with the conversation attached, so our team does not have to ask you again. A person decides every approval request; the assistant never grants one. We record each decision and the staff member who made it.

When you open the assistant it may show "Pick up where you left off": your open support requests, drafts you did not send and answers you marked as not solved. The list is built from those records, nothing extra is stored for it, and you can clear it at any time.

If you are not signed in, it answers general questions only, and before your first message a Cloudflare Turnstile check confirms you are not an automated program. If you ask it for a password reset, the address you type is used for that one email and is not stored. To protect the assistant from abuse, we record a code made from your network address and a random identifier stored in your browser, not the address itself.

We keep your conversations so you can return to them: for 90 days if you were signed in, and 30 days otherwise. After that they are deleted. A conversation you delete is removed at the next daily clean-up. We also record how each answer performed (how long it took, which features it used, and your rating) without the text of the conversation. Authorised staff can read a conversation to resolve your support request or to investigate a problem, and every such reading is recorded.

Please do not share patient information with the assistant. A first check on our own servers runs before anything is sent: messages it catches are not sent to the AI and are not stored. Messages the AI recognises as containing patient details are not answered and are not stored.

Telegram

You can connect the assistant to Telegram in Account settings and then ask it questions in a private chat. You confirm the connection on our website. While it is connected we keep your Telegram account id, chat id, name, username and time zone. Your messages there and the replies also pass through Telegram, which holds them under its own privacy policy.

Once you are connected, the assistant reminds you of your live sessions in the chat. You can turn reminders off in Account settings. To disconnect, use Account settings or send /stop to the bot. Nothing about your Telegram account is kept once it is disconnected.

Some course groups on Telegram can also ask Razeen. In a group, the questions and our answers are stored against the group, not against anyone's account, and the raw messages Telegram sends us are kept in our webhook records.

SARSA

SARSA is a clinical planning tool for refractive surgery. You enter measurements of an eye (refraction, keratometry, tomography and similar values), the patient's age and whether they are a day or night worker, and it evaluates treatment options.

An assessment is saved to your account as you go through it. Two optional fields ask for a patient full name and a chart or record identifier. Enter them only if you are permitted to store that information here under the rules that apply to you. Many colleagues leave these fields blank or use a local code. Your free-text clinical notes are stored as you write them.

You can download an export of your assessments, and delete them, on the website. Deleting your account removes all of them, including deleted ones. SARSA is decision support for qualified clinicians. It does not replace clinical judgement or your own examination of the patient.

Learning records

We keep your enrollments (including their access end dates), which lessons you completed, how far you watched each video, your quiz attempts including your answers, and your cohort memberships, for as long as your account exists. Enrollments are also our record of what you bought or joined, so they are kept after account deletion, no longer linked to your name.

Live sessions. For a course with live sessions, we register you with Zoom using your name and email address, so Zoom can send you your own join link. Zoom runs the session under its own terms. Sessions are usually recorded, and members enrolled in the course can watch the recordings.

Certificates carry your name, the course, the issue date and a serial number. Anyone who has a certificate's serial number or link can open its public verification page and see that the certificate is genuine. The page is not listed in search engines, but it is public. After you delete your account, the certificate stops showing your name but remains verifiable.

Payments

Card payments run through Stripe Checkout, on Stripe's own page. PayPal payments run in PayPal's own window. Your card details go to the payment processor and never through our servers. If you choose PayPal, our payment page then loads PayPal's checkout script, which contacts PayPal and keeps its own identifier in your browser's local storage. We remove that identifier when you sign out. If you pay by card, PayPal's script is not loaded.

We receive and store the payment reference, the amount and currency, the course or event purchased, the coupon if any, and the processor's customer and payment identifiers. We email you a receipt and keep a copy you can download from your account as a PDF. Our receipt is not a tax invoice.

Payment processors send us confirmation events. We keep these transaction records as accounting and dispute-handling records, and they remain after account deletion.

Events, contact and support

The contact form asks for your name, email and message; prize and teaching proposals add a few details such as an abstract link or your institution. We record the submission with your IP address and browser type for spam protection, and email you an acknowledgement.

Support tickets are visible to our support staff. When you write to support, our team may use AI tools to read your message and draft a reply. A member of our team checks and sends every reply. Attached images are re-encoded on upload, which strips location metadata. Unattached uploads are removed within a day.

Email, newsletters and notifications

We send transactional email your account needs: address verification, password resets, security notices, receipts, enrollment and event confirmations, certificate issue, and replies to your tickets. These are always on while your account is active.

We also send informational email about your courses and events: course announcements, live session reminders (including a short "Get ready" email the day before your first live session in a course), new course campaigns and course email sequences. For account holders these are on by default. You can turn each category off, or stop all of them, in Notification preferences in your account. Every informational email also carries an unsubscribe link, and supports one-click unsubscribe in most mail apps.

If you join the newsletter through the public sign-up form, we ask you to click a confirmation link before we send you anything. If you were already on our mailing list, your subscription choice stays as it was, and every email includes an unsubscribe link.

In-app notifications appear in your account. Push notifications on the mobile app are sent only if you allow notifications. We store a push token for your device, its platform and your app version, and send notifications through Expo's push service together with Apple's and Google's services. We remove the registration when you sign out or delete your account. You can turn notifications off in the app or in your device settings; a few security notices, such as a password change, are always sent.

Many of our emails include a link that opens the assistant on that email's topic. The link carries only the topic and, for a course email, the course. It holds nothing personal, works for 14 days, and your own details still need you to sign in.

We record whether email we sent you bounced or was marked as spam, so we can stop mailing broken or unwilling addresses.

Cookies and local storage

We use as few cookies as we can.

  • Sign-in session cookie. A single cookie keeps you signed in. It is HttpOnly, secure in production, restricted to the site (SameSite Lax) and expires at most 30 days after you sign in, or sooner if you sign out. Without it you cannot stay signed in.
  • Two-factor sign-in cookie. If you use two-factor authentication, a short-lived cookie carries the verification step.
  • Cloudflare and Turnstile. Our site sits behind Cloudflare, and forms are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile. Cloudflare may set its own security cookies as part of that protection.
  • Assistant cookie. If you use the assistant without signing in, a cookie holds a random identifier so your conversation continues and our usage limits apply to you fairly. It expires after 30 days.
  • No analytics or advertising cookies. Our analytics tool, PostHog, sets no cookies. If you are signed in and usage analytics is on for you, it keeps a random analytics number and your choice in your browser's local storage so your visits link up; it removes them when you sign out or switch usage analytics off. We run no advertising trackers.
  • Local storage. The site stores small UI preferences in your browser, for example that you dismissed an announcement. If you choose PayPal on a payment page, PayPal's checkout script keeps its own identifier there until you sign out. The mobile app keeps your sign-in and settings on the device in encrypted storage.

Analytics and error monitoring

Analytics on our website and apps run on PostHog (United States). We use them to understand how Sinjab Academy is used and to decide what to improve.

  • Everyone. Your browser sends analytics to our own site, which passes them on to PostHog. For visitors who are not signed in, PostHog counts visits without cookies or storage on your device: it combines your IP address and browser details with a secret that changes every day to make a temporary visitor number, then discards the IP address, so it cannot connect your visits from one day to the next. It records the pages you visit (addresses without query strings, apart from the campaign tags utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content and ref, which tell us which link or campaign brought you), the site that sent you (without its query string), how quickly pages load, when you leave them, pages that were not found, which of our buttons you click, how far you watch lesson videos, and the words you search for in our faculty directory and the app catalog.
  • Members with usage analytics on. These records, and what you do on our services (for example enrolling, completing lessons, submitting quizzes, using Razeen's tools or making a payment), are linked to a random analytics number that we create for this purpose, together with the country in your profile and how your account was created. They are never linked to your name, email address or account number. We do not send PostHog the text of your Razeen questions or assistant messages.
  • Your choice. You decide whether usage analytics is linked to your account, under Help improve Sinjab Academy in Account settings on the website or in the app, and you can change it at any time. If your account country is in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Jordan or the United Arab Emirates (or, if your account has no country, if you visit from one), it is off until you say yes, and we ask you once. Elsewhere it is on until you switch it off. When it is off, PostHog is not loaded on our pages and we send PostHog nothing about you. We keep a record of each answer you give, when, where, and which wording you saw.
  • Privacy signals. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, we treat it as a no and do not load PostHog.

No session recording, no ad tracking, no third-party advertising. We do this because we have a legitimate interest in understanding how our courses and features are used, so we can improve them and plan new ones; where the law where you live requires your consent, we ask for it first.

Error monitoring runs on Sentry (EU data centre) for the website and the mobile apps. When something breaks, we receive the error, the page it happened on and technical details. We configure Sentry not to send your IP address or cookies as standard fields, we remove authentication details, and we reduce your identity to an internal id. We do not record screen replays. Technical application logs are kept for 30 days.

The mobile app

The Sinjab Academy apps sign in with your email and password, or with Apple or Google as described above, and keep your sign-in session in your device's encrypted keychain storage. The app asks for access to your photo library only so you can attach screenshots to support tickets. When it reads an answer aloud, it uses your device's own voices. It does not use the camera or microphone, does not collect your location, contains no advertising and no tracking for advertising, and does not use your device's advertising identifier. If you are signed in and usage analytics is on for you, it sends PostHog the screens you open, when the app is opened or closed, which notifications and links you open, the app version and update, your device model, operating system version, language and time zone, linked to your analytics number and a random number for this installation. It sends nothing to PostHog when you are signed out or usage analytics is off.

When the app crashes or hits an error, it sends a technical error report to Sentry as described above, with the device model, the operating system and app versions, and a random identifier for this installation of the app. When the app checks for updates, it contacts Expo's update service, which receives a random installation identifier.

The app links to this policy, our Terms and Conditions and our data pages on the website. You can download your data on the website, and delete your account in the app or on the website.

Service providers

We use a small number of companies to run Sinjab Academy: hosting, storage and email delivery (Amazon Web Services), website delivery and security (Cloudflare), video streaming (Bunny.net), payments (Stripe and PayPal), live sessions (Zoom), the AI services behind Razeen, the assistant and our team's support replies, speech-to-text for lecture recordings, the AI voice for Read aloud, the Telegram chat if you connect it, website and app analytics, error monitoring, and push notifications for the mobile apps. Each one uses your data only to provide its service to us and only on our instructions, and receives only what that service needs. If you would like the current list of the companies we use, write to us and we will send it.

Where your data is stored, and international transfers

Our application and database run in Amazon Web Services in Ireland (European Union). Your account data is stored there. Some of our providers process data in other countries, mainly the United States, and the AI service that drafts the answers of Razeen and the assistant runs in Singapore. Website and video content is delivered from servers around the world.

Sinjab Academy is based in the United Arab Emirates, so your data will be transferred to and processed in countries other than your own, including countries whose data protection laws differ from yours. Where a transfer out of the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom is covered, we rely on the safeguards in our provider agreements, principally the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. For members in the UAE, transfers are made in line with the UAE data protection law, including to providers we have contracts with and, where required, on the basis of your use of the service.

How long we keep your data

We keep personal data only as long as we need it.

  • Account and profile data: until you delete your account.
  • Learning records (progress, quiz answers, SARSA assessments, Razeen conversations and study tools): until you delete them or your account.
  • Read aloud records (how long each text was and what it cost, no text): kept as spending records; when you delete your account they stay with no link to you.
  • Enrollments: kept as records of what you bought or joined, including after account deletion.
  • Approval requests you sent from the assistant: until you delete your account.
  • Telegram connection: until you disconnect it or delete your account.
  • Assistant conversations: 90 days for signed-in members and 30 days otherwise, then deleted; sooner if you delete them or your account. Records of how answers performed, without conversation text, are kept for 12 months.
  • Certificates: kept so verification links keep working, with the holder name replaced after account deletion.
  • Payment and transaction records: kept as accounting records, including after account deletion.
  • Security audit log: kept as a security record, including after account deletion.
  • Support tickets and contact submissions: kept as the record of the support we gave. When you delete your account, your own messages in them are anonymised; our team's replies and internal notes stay as written. Contact submissions that were never linked to an account are anonymised only on request.
  • Email delivery records (what we sent you and whether it bounced): kept as a record of communication.
  • Sign-in sessions, with the device, browser and IP address recorded for them: end at most 30 days after sign-in, or immediately when you sign out. The record of a session that ended without a sign-out is deleted about a week later.
  • Analytics records: kept by PostHog for up to seven years. When you delete your account we ask PostHog to delete the records linked to your analytics number, then delete that number.
  • Your answers to the analytics question, how you found us and the days you studied: until you delete your account. Our long-term statistics keep only daily totals, never who did what.
  • Rate-limit records: about a day. Application logs: 30 days. Database backups: 14 days, rolling. A one-off backup taken before major maintenance is deleted within 90 days.

When you delete your account we do not keep a grace-period copy of your account data.

Your rights and choices

Wherever you live, you can:

  • Access and download your data. Download a machine-readable JSON copy of your data from Account settings, or ask us for a copy.
  • Correct your data. Edit your profile in your account, or ask us.
  • Delete your account, as described below.
  • Object to or restrict processing, and withdraw consent, for example by turning off informational email, push notifications, Razeen or Help improve Sinjab Academy.
  • Ask about automated processing. We do not make decisions about you by purely automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you also have the rights to rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability and objection under the GDPR or UK GDPR. If you are in the UAE, the federal data protection law gives you comparable rights, including to request correction or deletion and to stop processing, and you can complain to the UAE Data Office. You can also complain to your local data protection authority. We answer requests within 30 days. We may ask you to verify your identity first.

Deleting your account

Delete your account yourself: on the web, in Account settings under Delete account (you confirm by typing DELETE MY ACCOUNT and then your password, or, if your account has no password, by signing in again with Google or Apple; if you use two-factor authentication you also enter a code from your authenticator app), or in the mobile app's account settings (for some accounts the app sends you to the website to confirm). Deletion takes effect immediately. We email a confirmation to your address.

Deletion removes: your sign-in sessions and credentials, your two-factor setup, connected sign-ins, push registrations, Razeen conversations, notes, quizzes, flashcards and their reviews, case answers and simulator sessions, assistant conversations and approval requests, SARSA assessments, learning progress and quiz answers, notifications, event registration answers, ticket attachments, your newsletter subscription, your analytics choices, how you found us, the days-you-studied record, your analytics number and the analytics linked to it at PostHog, and your Telegram connection and reminders if any.

Deletion anonymises: your profile fields, your support tickets (their subject is removed) and your own messages in them, contact form submissions you sent while signed in, your webinar registrations, your newsletter preferences, and your Read aloud records. If you are one of our faculty, your public faculty profile stays as part of the academy's content, no longer linked to your account; write to us to change or remove it.

We keep, as records: payment and transaction records, your enrollments, the security audit log, email delivery records, certificates with the holder name replaced by a placeholder, and our team's replies and internal notes on your support tickets, which are kept as written and may include your first name and the details of your request. Apart from what those replies and the email delivery records contain, these retained records are no longer linked to a usable identity.

Children

Sinjab Academy is a professional service for clinicians, eye care professionals and students in higher education. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will delete it.

How we protect your data

We use technical and organisational measures including: encryption in transit (HTTPS with HSTS) and at rest (encrypted database storage and backups); passwords stored as scrypt hashes; optional two-factor authentication; strict browser security policies; rate limiting and account lockout; signed verification of payment and webhook messages; a security audit log of privileged actions; least-privilege access to production, with secrets held in a managed secrets service; and attachments re-encoded to strip hidden metadata. Staff can access member data only through the staff dashboard and only for their role, and their significant actions are audited.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. If something goes wrong, we will tell you where the law requires it.

Changes to this policy

We will post any change on this page and update the effective date. If a change affects account holders materially, we will also email you before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions, requests or complaints: support@sinjabacademy.org

Sinjab Academic Consultancy FZE, United Arab Emirates