Privacy statement

Who we are

Heapso is an online planning service for teachers in New Zealand. In this statement "we", "us" and "Heapso" mean the operator of Heapso. We follow the Privacy Act 2020 and its information privacy principles (IPPs). When a school buys Heapso, the school is responsible for its staff's use of the service and we act on the school's behalf as set out in our data processing agreement.

What we collect and why

We only collect what we need for these purposes (IPP 1), and we collect it from you directly wherever we can (IPP 2).

We don't sell personal information. We never use your plans, uploads, or school or student information for advertising. The only advertising use is measuring our own ads, described under Measuring our ads, and you can turn it off.

If you share a plan by public link, anyone with the link can see it along with your name (and your school's name, if you choose to show it). Items you publish to the shared library show your first name and last initial to other signed-in teachers, and community posts show your name to them.

Keeping the free plan fair

To stop people making lots of free accounts, and to keep Heapso fast for everyone, we use a few light-touch checks:

• A device cookie with a random ID (not your name or email). It lets us notice when many free accounts are made on the same browser. We don't fingerprint your device. Clearing your cookies removes it.
• A quick "are you human" check on the sign-in form, from Cloudflare Turnstile. Most people never see it.
• Your IP address, to slow down large numbers of sign-ups from one network. Schools often share one IP address, so this never blocks a teacher on its own. We keep the IP address you signed up from with your account.
• A simplified copy of your email address (for example ignoring dots in Gmail addresses and anything after a "+"), so one inbox can't collect the free plan many times over.
• Your school email, if you add one for bonus credits. We send it a link to confirm it's yours. We keep a one-way, scrambled copy of each address that has unlocked the bonus, even after an account is closed, so the same address can't unlock it twice. It can't be turned back into the address.

If these checks get something wrong, email us at hello@heapso.com and a person will look at it. Free accounts that look duplicated share one free allowance rather than being closed.

Cookies

Inside Heapso we only use our own cookies, and none of them are for advertising:

• a sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in;
• the device cookie described above (kept for up to about 13 months);
• a cookie that remembers which school you're working in;
• if you arrive through a colleague's referral link, a cookie that remembers the referral for 60 days;
• a cookie that remembers your display settings.

On our public pages (the home page, pricing, schools, about, sign-in and these legal pages) we also use ad cookies, described below. Our pages load fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser connects to Google to fetch them.

Measuring our ads

We advertise Heapso on Facebook, Instagram and Google. To see which ads help teachers find us, we use the Meta Pixel and the Google tag on our public pages only. They never run inside Heapso once you're signed in, on student quiz or slide pages, or on shared plan links.

• In your browser: Meta and Google set their own cookies (such as _fbp and _gcl_au) and are told which public page you viewed. Our own cookie, hp_attr, remembers for 90 days which ad or link you arrived from.
• From our server: when you create an account, start a trial, or pay for a plan or credits, we tell Meta and Google what happened, when, and the amount paid. We send a scrambled (hashed) copy of your email address (and, to Meta, of your account ID), the ad click IDs and ad cookies above, and your IP address and browser type, so they can match it to an ad.

We never send your name, your plans or anything you type or upload, or any school or student information. Meta and Google may use what we send under their own terms. We delete the click IDs, ad cookies, IP address and browser details we keep after 90 days.

To turn it off, use the button below or "Turn off ad cookies" in the notice on our public pages. We remember your choice on this browser for a year (hp_ads_optout), load no ad tags and send nothing to Meta or Google. If you're signed in, or create your account while it's off, we stop sending events for your account too. You can also email privacy@heapso.com.

Student information

Please don't enter information that identifies a student when planning: names, National Student Numbers, dates of birth, contact details, addresses, or health or learning-support details tied to a named student. Use initials or "Student A" instead. Heapso shows a warning if something you type looks like a student's details, and our AI instructions tell the model never to repeat students' names or identifying details. The check is a safeguard, not a guarantee, so the responsibility stays with the teacher and school.

Marking (Pro and school plans). To mark student work, you paste it or upload it as a PDF, Word file, text file or photo. Heapso removes names, student ID numbers and similar details it finds before the work is saved or sent for AI marking, shows you what it removed, and labels each piece "Student A", "Student B" and so on. Please check, and remove names before uploading where you can: no automatic check is perfect, and a photo is sent to our AI provider to be read before anything can be removed from it.

• PDF, Word and text files are read and not stored. Photos are deleted as soon as they've been read, and within a day at most.
• The student's work, and quotes from it, are deleted automatically after the period you choose for each marking session: 1, 7, 14 or 30 days (14 by default). You can delete it sooner.
• Grades, comments, next steps and your own marks stay until you delete the marking session.
• Marking sessions are private to you. Your school's admins can't see them.

Live quizzes. Students join a quiz you host with a game PIN and a nickname. They don't need an account or give an email address. Nicknames, answers and scores are deleted automatically within 3 hours of the game starting. To stop a game being flooded, we keep a scrambled code for each player's network, deleted with the game. Encourage students to use a nickname rather than their full name.

Class profiles hold numbers and needs for a class or group, never student names. Heapso won't save text that looks like a student's name or details.

If your school connects its student management system to Heapso, we use only staff details and teaching timetables. Student records it sends are discarded without being stored.

Where your information is stored

Your account and planning data is stored by our data hosting provider, Neon, in Sydney, Australia. Files you upload, and images Heapso makes for you, are stored with Cloudflare, and our application runs on Cloudflare's global network, so requests may be handled at a Cloudflare location close to you.

AI processing

When you ask Heapso to generate something, the relevant part of your request (your prompt, chosen curriculum references, any school or personal "How Pip writes for you" instructions, and text or images from files you've asked it to use) is sent to one of our AI providers, OpenAI (our default) or Anthropic, through their business APIs, for processing outside New Zealand (in the United States or other countries where they operate). The result comes back to us and is stored with your account. Cloudflare provides the AI that makes images and lets Pip search files you upload.

• We don't use your content to train AI models.
• Under their standard terms, OpenAI and Anthropic don't train their models on content sent through their business APIs, and Cloudflare doesn't train models on content sent to its AI features.
• OpenAI keeps abuse-monitoring logs of API requests for up to 30 days by default, and Anthropic deletes API inputs and outputs within 30 days by default. Either may keep content longer where the law requires it or to enforce its usage policies.
• If you connect Heapso to ChatGPT or Claude, the plans you open there are handled under your own account with that provider.

Overseas disclosure (IPP 12)

Our data is stored in Australia, and sending information to OpenAI, Anthropic, Cloudflare, Stripe, Meta and Google is a disclosure outside New Zealand. Under IPP 12 we only do this where the recipient is required to protect the information in a way that, overall, provides comparable safeguards to the Privacy Act. We rely on each provider's business terms on confidentiality, security and use of data.

Information from others (IPP 3A)

Sometimes we receive personal information about you from someone else: when a school admin invites you or assigns you a seat, or when your school connects its student management system. When a school gives us your details, we hold them on the school's behalf, and the school is responsible for telling you. When an admin invites you, our invitation email tells you which school invited you and who sent it. This statement is linked from the sign-in page and our website.

Who we share with

We use a small number of service providers to run Heapso. Each only gets what it needs:

• OpenAI and Anthropic: AI generation (overseas, see above)
• Neon: data hosting (Sydney, Australia)
• Cloudflare: hosting, file storage, email delivery, bot checks and some AI features
• Stripe: card payments and receipts
• Meta and Google: measuring our ads (see Measuring our ads; you can turn this off)

In a school account, your school's admins can see your name, email, role, seat and how much you've generated, and any content you choose to share with the school. They can't see your private drafts. We may also disclose information where the law requires it.

Security

We protect information with encryption in transit (HTTPS) and at rest, access controls that keep each teacher's and school's content separate, and audit logging of school admin actions. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your information (IPP 5).

How long we keep it

• Your account and planning content: while your account is open, or until you delete it. A school can set a retention period (30 days or longer) after which content in its school space is deleted.
• Student work in marking and live quizzes: as described under Student information.
• If you leave or are removed from a school, you keep your own plans. The school keeps what you shared with it, and its admins can delete content you created in the school's space.
• If you ask us to close your account, we delete it within 30 days. Copies in our providers' backups roll off within a further 35 days.
• Billing and tax records: 7 years, as required by New Zealand tax law.
• Records of school admin actions and security events: kept while needed for security and to show schools what happened in their account.
• Sign-up network records used for fair-use checks: around 30 days.
• Ad measurement: click IDs, ad cookies, IP address and browser details, 90 days. Which ad or campaign you came from stays with your account while it's open.

Your rights: access, correction, export, deletion

Under IPPs 6 and 7 you can ask to see the personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct it. You can also:

• download your plans, units and worksheets as Word or PDF files, and slides as PowerPoint or PDF files, at any time;
• delete individual items yourself, or ask us to close your account and delete your data;
• ask for a copy of your account data in a portable format.

Email privacy@heapso.com. We'll respond within 20 working days. If you're in a school account, some requests may need to go through your school, which controls school data.

Privacy breaches

If we have a privacy breach that has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm, we'll notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and affected people as soon as practicable, as the Privacy Act requires. For school accounts we'll tell the school promptly so it can meet its own obligations.

Contact and complaints

Our privacy officer can be reached at privacy@heapso.com. If you're not happy with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.

We'll post any changes to this statement on this page and tell you about significant changes by email.