Last updated 8 October 2026. This page describes what Penguid actually collects and does with data today, verified against the running system rather than written from a template.
Penguid is a school learning platform used in Kazakhstan: a knowledge map with topic explanations and adaptive practice problems, plus classroom tools — rosters, homework graded from a photo, summative tests graded against a rubric, and knowledge checks by code. This policy covers the website and the Android app, which is the same service in a wrapper.
Penguid is used by school students (13 and older), their teachers, and school administrators. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from a user under 13 who is not enrolled through a school account set up by that school's staff.
Most student accounts are created by a school: a teacher or head teacher uploads a class list and the platform issues logins. A person can also create their own account directly, with an email address confirmed by a one-time code.
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Name (first and last) | shown to the student's own teacher and school; identifies whose work is whose |
| Username and password (password is hashed, never stored in readable form) | signing in |
| Email address — only for a person who registers on their own; a school-issued account (the way most students join) has none by default | confirming that self-created account, and account recovery for it |
| School, class ("grade"), subgroup | so a teacher sees their own class, not the whole school |
| Answers to practice problems, level, topics passed | the adaptive practice itself — problems get easier or harder based on this |
| Photos of homework and of summative-test answer sheets | reading the handwritten answer to grade it; see below, this is the most sensitive data we hold |
| Scores and grades | the student's own record; shown to the student and their teacher |
| A transcript of a recorded lesson, if a teacher uses that feature | turned into study notes for the class — see the audio note below |
| Interface language, last time seen | the site remembers the chosen language and shows a teacher who is actually using the platform |
When a student's homework or test answer sheet is graded by photo, the picture is stored as-is in our database (as binary data, not shared publicly by default) and is sent to a third-party AI service to read the handwriting (see "Third parties" below). We do not use these photos for anything other than grading that specific piece of work and, where a teacher explicitly corrects what the AI misread, improving that reading in the future.
If a teacher records part of a lesson to get study notes, the audio is sent in short pieces to a third-party speech-to-text service and is not saved anywhere by us — only the resulting text transcript is kept. The recording itself never touches our database.
The database runs on a server in Almaty, Kazakhstan — a plain SQLite file on that server's own disk, not a separate hosted database service. Text and numeric data (accounts, grades, answers) and photos, stored as binary data, live in that same file, not on a separate file server. The server is backed up nightly to guard against the disk being the only copy.
To do its job, Penguid sends specific pieces of data to a small number of outside services. We do not sell data to anyone, and we do not use it for advertising.
| Service | What it gets | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Google (Gemini API) | the photo of a homework or test page, to read it | handwriting recognition |
| A secondary AI provider (used as a backup when the primary is unavailable) | the same photo, only when the primary service can't be reached | keeps grading working during an outage; reads handwriting somewhat less accurately |
| A speech-to-text service | short pieces of lesson audio, in real time | turning a recorded lesson into text; audio is discarded after transcription, not stored by us or, to our knowledge, retained by the transcription service beyond the request |
| Google Sign-In | the Google account info a user chooses to share, if they sign in with Google | an alternative to a password |
| Our email provider (Gmail) | the email address, to send a one-time signup or reset code | account verification |
Course-writing and general AI features of the site (explanations, practice-problem generation) use large-language-model providers as well, but those work from the curriculum content and a student's practice answers, not from photos of a specific child's handwriting.
Access is controlled by account role, re-checked on the server on every request — a browser cannot claim a role it doesn't have.
For a school-enrolled student, the school is the data controller under Kazakhstan's Law "On Personal Data and Their Protection" (No. 94-V) — the school is the party a parent or guardian gives consent to, and Penguid acts as the processor on the school's behalf, under the terms agreed with that school.
An account and its records are kept for as long as the account exists. A school administrator can remove a student's account, which deletes their login, progress, answers, and lesson notes — and, since 30 September 2026, the photos of their homework and summative work as well. Until that date those photos were not reliably removed with the account; this page said so, and the gap is now closed: the images are deleted before the rows that name them, because a row removed first would leave the picture with no address and no way to find it again. A cleanup pass for images no longer referenced by any record remains available for anything left from before. A school itself can be removed only by our own administrator, and that does delete the school's tests, homework, and summative-work records together with their photos.
To request that a specific account and its data be deleted, contact us at the address below; we will action it directly rather than asking the school to do it, if that's easier for you.
Passwords are never stored in plain text (bcrypt, industry-standard hashing). Sign-in uses a random token sent over HTTPS, not a session cookie that a script could read. Photos of student work require being signed in to view, and access is checked against who the photo actually belongs to — a student sees their own; a teacher sees their own class's; a school administrator sees their own school's; nobody sees another school's. This was tightened in two steps in September 2026, after we found the photos had first been reachable by direct link without any login at all, and then, briefly, by any signed-in account that knew the link.
Most of Penguid's users are minors. We collect only what is needed to run the class and grade work, do not use their data for advertising, and do not knowingly allow a child to create an account outside a school-managed process without an email address they or a guardian control for verification.
Questions about this policy, or a request to see, correct, or delete your data: ipak5911@gmail.com.