Privacy at Bowerstead
Bowerstead is a private place for one parent to plan and keep the records of their family’s homeschool. This page explains, plainly, what we store, how we use it, and the control you have.
The short version
- Only you have an account. Your children never log in, and we never contact them.
- We keep the least we can about your children: a first name, a grade level, and (only if you add it) a legal name used on transcripts you issue.
- We don’t sell or rent your family’s data, and we don’t use it to train anything.
- You’re in control. Export a complete copy, or delete everything, anytime, from Settings.
Who has an account
Bowerstead is parent-only. You enter information about your own children. No child signs in, is contacted, or interacts with Bowerstead, so children never provide information to us directly.
What we store
About you: your email and how you sign in, your homeschool’s name, the country you homeschool in and, if that’s the United States, your state, your homeschooling approach if you choose to share it, and (if you add it for transcripts) a mailing address for the letterhead.
About each child: a first name and grade level; and, only if you choose to issue a transcript, that child’s legal full name, used only on the transcript.
What you record: the notes, photos, and grades you capture; your subjects, plans, terms, and exams; and the attendance those add up to.
What we deliberately don’t collect: a child’s email, phone, date of birth, location, or health data, nothing beyond the above.
Your photos and files
Files you upload are stored privately, scoped to your account, reachable only through short-lived links we generate for you, never a public URL.
How we use your data
To run Bowerstead for you: store your records, generate the transcripts and bundles you ask for, and show your progress back to you. And to make it better: on the website we look at how it is used, with every word you see or type hidden first (PostHog, below). We don’t profile your family or train models on your data.
Who else touches your data
We keep this list short and current:
- Supabase stores your data and files for us, in the United States, under a data-processing agreement.
- Vercelruns and serves the app. Requests pass through it, and two of its measurement services receive data about visits: Speed Insights takes page addresses and timings such as loading and interaction speed, and Web Analytics counts page views along with where you arrived from, your approximate location, and your browser and device. Page addresses are stripped of your children’s record identifiers and of every search term before either measurement is sent. Neither one receives your homeschool record content, and neither sets a cookie. Our cookies and tracking page has the full accounting.
- Google Ads tells us whether an advert we paid for brought somebody here. It runs on our public pages and on three fixed pages that follow something you just did — the one where you choose how to pay, the first time you see it after creating an account; the one after you finish setting up; and the one after a payment — and on nothing else: never a page that shows a child, a plan, or a record. What it receives is the public address you landed on, the click identifier Google put in the link, the fact that an account was created, and the fact that a purchase happened. Those last two each carry a scrambled one-way code so the same one is not counted twice; nothing can be read back out of it. It never receives your name, your email, or one word of your homeschool. It also lets Google remember that your browser visited, so our adverts could appear for you elsewhere later; you can switch that off in your Google ad settings. In the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland we ask before any of it runs. Our cookies and tracking page has the full accounting.
- Metadoes the same job for our adverts on Facebook and Instagram. It runs on the same public pages and on two of those fixed pages: the one where you choose how to pay, the first time you see it after creating an account, and the one after a payment. What it receives is the public address you landed on, Meta’s own cookie identifiers, the fact that an account was created, and the fact that a purchase happened, with its amount and currency. Each of those last two carries a scrambled one-way code so the same one is not counted twice. When a payment goes through, our server also tells Meta about that purchase, in case the page after paying closed too soon, and only if Meta’s cookies were already on your browser; it adds your browser’s name and version, and nothing else. Meta never receives your name, your email, or one word of your homeschool from us. It also lets Meta remember that your browser visited, so our adverts could appear for you on Facebook and Instagram later; you can manage that in your Facebook ad preferences. In the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland we ask before any of it runs.
- PostHogshows us where people get stuck and what they use on the website: the home page, creating an account, setting up, choosing a plan, the page after paying, and the screens inside your account. It receives the pages you see, how far you scroll, what you tap, a recording of how each page moves, and a count of a few named moments, such as a lesson marked done or a report made. Everything you type is hidden in your browser first, and from creating an account onward every word on the screen is hidden too, so it never receives a child’s name, your email, or anything about your homeschool. Once you are signed in it also receives a code for your account that only we can match back to you, and which kind of plan you are on. It never runs in the phone app, or in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland. It keeps this in the United States, stores no IP address, and deletes recordings after 30 days.
- Sentry helps us fix errors, with your family’s personal details (names, notes, grades, addresses, email) scrubbed out before anything is sent. It runs on our website and servers, not inside the phone app, and never receives your child’s information.
- Anthropic answers the help chat and reads the contents pages you scan. When you ask Bower something, your question and the chat so far go to Anthropic’s Claude so it can reply from our help pages. When you scan a book’s contents page, the photo of that page, or its text if you chose a PDF, goes to Claude with the subject’s and the curriculum’s names, so it can list the lessons for you to check. Before anything goes, we replace your children’s names, email addresses and phone numbers in what you typed. It receives nothing else: not your name or email, not your account, not a record, a grade or a photo of your family. Anthropic does not use any of it to train its models and deletes it within 30 days, unless its safety checks flag a request as misuse, which it may keep for up to two years. We keep none of the conversation and no copy of the page ourselves. We count how many questions your family asks Bower, and how many pages you scan, each day, so that no one account can run up the cost. The count holds the day and the number, never what was asked or scanned. Nothing goes to Anthropic until you send Bower a question or scan a page, so you can stop at any time, and the rest of Bowerstead works without them.
- Loops sends our email: the codes that create your account, reset your password, or confirm a deletion, the welcome note, occasional product news, and the waiting-list updates. It receives your name and email, your homeschool’s name, your state, your plan and its dates, and whether you’ve finished setup and started using the main features, so what we send matches where you actually are. That last part is dates and yes-or-no answers: that you saved something, never what you saved. No child’s name, no records, no grades, no photos. Your address went to Loops if you joined the waiting list before we opened, goes there again when you create an account, goes there each time you ask for a code, and goes there if you download a transcript from our free transcript tool. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing never affects your account or stops your codes.
- Stripe takes the payment when you buy a plan on our website. It handles billing only, and never your homeschool records.
- Apple, Google and RevenueCattake over when you buy a plan inside the app instead. Apple takes the payment on an iPhone and Google Play takes it on an Android phone, and RevenueCat tells us whether your plan is active. The only thing we send RevenueCat is your account’s ID number, which is a random string: not your name, not your email, and nothing at all about your children. Everything else it holds comes from whichever store you bought through, and it is all about the subscription rather than about you.
- Google and Apple sign you in, if you choose Continue with Google or Continue with Apple. They learn that you signed in to Bowerstead, and we get your email address (or the one Apple makes to hide it) and an account number that is theirs. We ask Apple for nothing else. On a phone, Google also sends your name and a link to your profile photo; our sign-in provider keeps them with your sign-in record, and Bowerstead never shows or uses them. Neither ever sees anything about your children. If you delete your account, we also ask Apple to forget that you used it with Bowerstead.
Two advertisers, named above, and all either is told is that an advert worked, and for a purchase, what it came to. Nobody is sold your data, and no analytics we run can see your child’s information.
If you joined the waiting list
If you signed up before we opened, there was no account yet, so the only thing we held was what you typed into the form: your first name, your email, and whether you said yes to hearing from us. If you arrived from a link we shared, we also keep which campaign sent you, which says nothing about you personally. It goes to Loops so we can email you, and nowhere else. Ask us at contact@bowerstead.com and we’ll delete it.
If you used the free transcript tool
Our free transcript generator asks for an email address before it gives you the PDF. We keep that address, the grade level you selected, and the date, so we know which advice is worth sending you. That’s the whole record.
What you typed into the transcript itself is not stored. Your student’s name, their course names, grades and credits are used to render your PDF and then discarded. The file is never saved on our servers, never uploaded anywhere, and no account is created. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and you can ask us at contact@bowerstead.com to delete your address entirely.
If you ask Bower
Bower, our help chat, is an AI. It answers from our help pages and a short fact sheet about the app, and it cannot see your account, your children or your records. Your question goes to Anthropic, as the list above says, with your children’s names taken out first; please leave them out yourself too. The conversation lives only while the chat is open. When Bower cannot help, it writes a short message to us that you read, change and send yourself, and that message is kept as described next.
If you report a problem
When you use Report a problem, or send a message to us from the help chat, we keep what you write and the screen you were on, plus a few details that help us find the problem: your app version or browser, your screen size and time zone, whether you were online, and how many captures were waiting to sync (the number, never the captures). A person reads it and replies to the email address you sign in with.
What you write stays with your data in the United States. We learn that a report has arrived from an email sent through Loops, which says only which screen and app version it came from, never what you wrote or who you are. Your reports are part of your export and are deleted with your account. To have one removed sooner, email contact@bowerstead.com.
Where your data lives
Your data stays in the United States (US East), and so do our backups. We take one every day and keep the last seven. We build with data-protection-by-design as our standing posture, wherever you are.
Your control
Export: download a complete copy of everything, in one archive, from Settings. Delete: delete your account from Settings. This permanently removes everything, yours and your children’s, including files. It can’t be undone.
How we protect it
Encrypted in transit, stored in private buckets, isolated at the row level so only your account can reach it. Your password is never stored as you typed it, only as a one-way scrambled form that cannot be turned back into it. When you choose one, it is checked against passwords already leaked from other sites, using only the first few characters of a separate one-way fingerprint of it, never the password itself.
Cookies
We use the cookies that sign-in needs, two that remember which country your prices were chosen for, and advertising cookies: one set by the Google Ads tag since 8 September 2026, and up to two set by the Meta pixel since 13 October 2026, both described above. We also count page views, with a cookieless measurement that stores nothing on your device and cannot follow you to another website. On the website, and only outside the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland, PostHog sets one measurement cookie of its own, described above. In the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland you are asked before any advertising cookie is set, and declining leaves both tags switched off. Outside those countries we do not ask, and we would rather write that here than let a missing banner imply otherwise. The full accounting, cookie by cookie, is on our cookies and tracking page.
Children’s privacy
Bowerstead is designed so we never collect personal information directly from a child; only a parent holds an account. If you believe that has somehow happened, contact us and we’ll remove it.
A note on claims
We won’t wave badges we can’t stand behind: no “certified” for any law, no “compliant in all 50 states.” What’s true: parent-only accounts, minimal child data, no data sales, and full export and deletion in your hands. Transcripts you make are parent-issued, the kind colleges accept.
Changes
If we change how we handle your data, we’ll update this page and the date above.
Contact
Questions about your privacy? Email contact@bowerstead.com.