1. Why You Are Receiving This Form

Scire ("AI Study Buddy") is a retrieval-grounded AI learning companion designed for students aged 6 through postgraduate. Because your child is under the age of digital consent, we are required by law—including India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act, 2023) and global equivalents—to obtain your verifiable parental or guardian consent before collecting, processing, or storing any of your child's personal data.

This form explains — in plain language — exactly what Scire does, what data it collects from your child, how that data is protected, and what choices you have. Please read it carefully before signing.

If your child's account is being created by a school or institution, the institution is responsible for distributing this form and collecting your consent. Scire will not activate your child's account until a signed consent form (or equivalent verifiable consent) is on record.

2. What Scire Is — And What It Is Not

What Scire does

Scire answers your child's study questions using only retrieved reference material from trusted academic sources (e.g., Wikipedia, PubMed, Project Gutenberg, The Met Museum, arXiv, NLM Open-i). It does not generate answers from free-floating internet knowledge. Every answer carries inline citations so your child can verify the source.

Scire adapts to your child's age through one of four learning personas:

What Scire is NOT

• Not a search engine. It does not crawl the open internet.
• Not a generic chatbot. It refuses to answer when it cannot find reliable source material, rather than guessing.
• Not a substitute for professional advice. It is an educational aid, not a medical, legal, or psychological service.
• Not an emergency service. If your child is in distress, please contact emergency services or a trusted adult directly.

3. What Information We Collect From Your Child

We collect the minimum data necessary to provide a grounded, age-appropriate learning experience. We do not serve advertising, build advertising profiles, or sell personal data.

3.1 Account Information

• Email address (or school-issued identifier)
• A one-way hashed password (bcrypt) — we never store passwords in readable form
• Learning persona (age band) and account type (learner)
• Display name (if provided)

3.2 Learning Content Your Child Creates

• Questions your child asks and the AI-generated answers
• Study Library threads — successful answers are auto-saved to your child's private, per-user database record so they can revisit, rename, or delete them as a revision archive

3.3 Usage and Technical Information

• Journey Signals: How a question was started (typed, clicked a starter topic, follow-up, clarification, dig-deeper, or concept-lens) — used to understand which features help learning
• An anonymous session identifier and a turn ID per question — used for internal quality monitoring only
• Performance timings (how long retrieval and answer generation took)

3.4 Device Information

• A locally generated device identifier used solely to enforce licence limits (typically one web device per licence).
• If your child needs to move their account to a new device, our system requires an emailed one-time verification code to evict the old device and enrol the new one. We do not use invasive cross-site device fingerprinting.

3.5 Voice Input (Optional — Requires Separate Consent)

• If your child uses the voice dictation button, their browser's built-in speech provider (Google or Apple, depending on the browser) converts speech to text.
• Recognised text is placed in the composer box for your child to review and edit before submitting. It is never auto-submitted.
• A one-time consent notice naming the speech provider is shown before first use.
• Scire does not store audio recordings. Audio is processed in real-time by the browser's speech engine.

3.6 What We Do NOT Collect

• We do not collect your child's physical address, phone number, or government-issued identifiers
• We do not collect biometric data, GPS location, or browsing history outside the Service
• We do not use third-party advertising trackers, pixels, or cookies for marketing purposes

4. How the AI Works — And Where Your Child's Data Goes

This is the most important technical section. Scire uses a Hybrid Local/Cloud architecture.

4.1 Retrieval Happens First (No AI Guessing)

Before any answer is written, Scire's "Librarian" engine searches trusted sources:

• Keyless academic APIs: Wikipedia, PubMed, PubChem, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Project Gutenberg, The Met Museum, NLM Open-i
• Curated premium library (when your child's plan includes it)

Only the search terms needed to find relevant content are sent to these sources. Your child's name, email, and account details are not shared with them.

4.2 Answer Generation — Two Engines

Once sources are retrieved, Scire's "Professor" engine writes the answer. There are two paths:

Important:

• Cloud is the default engine in the app. The interface shows an "off-device" indicator when Cloud is active.
• Your child (or their teacher) can select the Local engine to keep all processing on-device.
• Scire never trains AI models on your child's questions or answers.
• The specific third-party model name is not displayed to learners (it is an implementation detail).

4.3 Premium Content Never Leaves the Device

If your child's plan includes access to Scire's protected premium library, any answer that draws on that protected content is forced to generate on-device, regardless of the engine setting. This is enforced at both the interface and server level. Proprietary textbook content is never transmitted to a cloud model.

5. Safety, Moderation & Age-Appropriate Content

Scire employs persona-aware, multi-layered safety moderation on both the incoming question and the retrieved content. This is not a simple keyword blocklist — it is a calibrated, age-specific system.

5.1 What Is Blocked (The 3-Tier Model)

5.2 Self-Harm and Distress

If your child's question indicates self-harm or severe distress, Scire will not return search results. Instead, it responds with a supportive, caring message encouraging your child to speak to a trusted adult. This is a deliberate safeguarding design, not a content failure.

5.3 Image Safety and Child-Appropriateness

• Universal Image Gate: All images are screened for nudity, sexual content, and graphic material before being shown to any learner. Clinical-body topics permitted for Mid-School (e.g., puberty, the reproductive system) show text only, with no images.
• Child-Appropriateness (Distress) Filter: Starter images (sourced from a curated, kid-safe stock library like Pexels) are screened for disaster, violence, death, or human-distress markers that the child did not ask about. An innocent question will never return a photo of a disaster or someone in pain.
• The App Vets Its Own Suggestions: Every starter topic, follow-up question, and "dig deeper" suggestion that Scire proposes passes the same safety checks before it is shown. Scire will never offer a topic it would then refuse.

6. Third Parties Your Child's Data May Touch

We deliberately rely on keyless, public, academic sources to minimise data sharing. We do not sell your child's data.

We do not share your child's data with: Advertisers, data brokers, social media platforms, or any third party for marketing purposes.

7. Data Retention and Deletion

7.1 While the Account Is Active

• Account data, Study Library threads, and usage records are retained as long as the account is active.
• Study Library threads are scoped exclusively to your child — no other learner can see them.

7.2 Trials and Subscriptions

• Dynamic Trials: Your child's account is auto-provisioned with a time-limited trial. The specific duration is dynamically assigned by our system based on the selected plan or institutional agreement at the time of creation.
• Expiration: If a trial or subscription lapses without renewal, premium content and features lock. Account data is retained until deletion is requested.

7.3 When the Account Is Deleted (Cascade Erasure)

• When your child's account is deleted (by you, by your child's school administrator, or upon your request), all learner-scoped content is permanently erased in the same database transaction (cascade delete).
• This includes all Study Library threads, device bindings, and personal telemetry.
• This deletion is immediate and irreversible.

7.4 Audit and Telemetry Logs

• Administrative actions, security logs (e.g., device move codes, password resets), and usage analytics are retained for 48 months for governance, compliance, and product improvement purposes.
• Credentials and passwords are never written to audit logs.

8. Your Rights as a Parent / Guardian

Under the DPDP Act (India), COPPA, GDPR-K, and applicable data protection laws, you have the right to:

How to Exercise These Rights

• School-managed accounts: Contact your child's school administrator first. They manage the roster and can initiate account changes.
• Direct requests to Scire: Email with the subject line "Parental Rights Request — [Child's Full Name]."
• We will respond to verifiable requests within 30 days.

9. Institutional / School Deployment

If your child's account is being created and managed by a school, college, or educational institution:

• The institution acts as a data controller (or joint controller) for your child's data and is responsible for obtaining your consent.
• The institution manages rosters, seat allocations, learning-stage assignments, and content access through the Scire Admin Console.
• Bulk onboarding passwords are one-time by default — a shared class password expires after first use, and your child will be prompted to set their own private password immediately.

10. Consent Declarations

Please tick each box to indicate your consent. Consent for the core service is required. All other consents are optional.

10.1 Core Consent (Required)

• ☐I confirm that I am the parent or legal guardian of the child named in Section 12 below, and I have the authority to provide this consent.
• ☐I have read and understood this Parental Consent Form and the Scire Privacy Policy.
• ☐I consent to Learn with Scire collecting and processing my child's personal data (as described in Section 3) for the purpose of providing the educational Service, including account creation, answer generation, Study Library storage, and safety moderation.
• ☐I understand that my child's questions and retrieved reference material may be transmitted to a cloud AI model for answer generation (the default engine), and I consent to this processing. I understand I can opt for the Local (on-device) engine instead by contacting Learn with Scire or my child's school administrator.

10.2 Optional Consents

• ☐Voice Input: I consent to my child using the optional voice dictation feature. I understand that audio is processed by the browser's built-in speech provider, that Learn with Scire does not store audio recordings, and that recognised text is placed in the composer for my child to review before submission. (If not ticked, the voice input button will be disabled.)
• ☐Usage Analytics for Institutional Reporting: I consent to my child's anonymised usage data being shared with my child's school or institution for educational progress monitoring. (If not ticked, only the minimum data required for service operation will be visible to the institution.)

10.3 Acknowledgements

• ☐I understand that Scire is an educational aid and not a substitute for professional medical, legal, financial, or psychological advice.
• ☐I understand that Scire employs safety moderation but that no automated system is infallible. I will encourage my child to speak to a trusted adult if they encounter content that makes them uncomfortable.
• ☐I understand that I may withdraw my consent at any time by contacting or my child's school administrator, and that withdrawal will result in the deactivation and/or deletion of my child's account.

11. Withdrawal of Consent

You may withdraw your consent at any time. To do so:

• Email with the subject line "Withdrawal of Consent — [Child's Full Name]"
• Or contact your child's school administrator if the account is institution-managed.

Upon withdrawal, your child's account will be deactivated immediately, and if requested, all personal data will be permanently erased via cascade deletion. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.

12. Contact Information & Grievance Redressal

If you have any questions about this form, your child's data, or how Scire works, or if you wish to exercise your rights under the DPDP Act or other applicable privacy laws:

Appendix A: Glossary of Key Terms

This form is a legal document. Please retain a copy for your records. If you have any questions before signing, contact or your child's school administrator.

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