This Privacy Policy describes how Scolah, Inc. (“we”, “us”, or “our”) collects, uses, shares, and protects personal data when you use our services, including:
- Scolah — a family platform for families looking after the people they care for, such as children and older parents, and for the schools that children attend
- Scolah Compass — a social protection and case management platform for NGOs and government agencies
- Scolah Care — a platform connecting families with the care facilities looking after their elderly relatives
By using our services, you agree to the practices described in this policy. If you are using Compass as a beneficiary of a social protection programme, please also refer to your programme operator’s own privacy notice — they are the data controller for your beneficiary record.
1. Who We Are
Scolah, Inc. is the developer and operator of the Scolah suite of products. For all privacy matters, you can reach us at:
- Privacy enquiries: privacy@scolah.com
- Legal enquiries: legal@scolah.com
2. What Personal Data We Collect
2.1 Scolah App (Family Platform)
Account information
When you create an account, we collect your full name, email address, phone number, date of birth, gender, postal address (city, state/region, country), and an optional profile biography. If you add an emergency contact, we store their name, phone number, and relationship to you.
Authentication data
Your password is stored as a salted one-way hash — we never see your plain-text password. If you enable multi-factor authentication (MFA), your TOTP secret and backup codes are stored encrypted. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive and store a link to your OAuth2 provider identity.
Profiles of the people you care for
When you add someone you care for, such as a child or an older parent, we collect their full name and date of birth. For a child, you may also add their school enrollment details.
Activity and health data
We collect the activity logs you create: feeding records, temperature readings, diaper changes, nap records, and free-form activity notes. If you attach photos or media to an activity, those files are stored on our secure media servers. When you use the AI Photo Log feature, your photo is sent to our AI service, which runs on models we host on our own infrastructure (see §5), for activity extraction, and is not retained on our servers unless you explicitly save the activity.
Goals, reminders, and family data
We store the goals (such as a child’s development goals) and reminders you create, as well as family relationship records (for example co-parents, guardians, or other relatives who share care) and the sharing permissions you set between family members.
Device and usage data
We collect your device’s push notification token to send you push notifications. A crash-reporting service collects crash reports and diagnostic information (such as device model, operating system and app version) from our mobile apps. Server access logs capture your IP address and device type.
Payment data
The Scolah app is free for families, so we do not collect payment or billing information from family members. Schools are billed under their own agreement with us.
2.2 Compass (Case Management Platform)
Caseworker and staff accounts
For agency staff, we collect full name, email address, role, and agency affiliation, along with the authentication data described above.
Beneficiary records
Compass stores the following data about programme beneficiaries: full name, date of birth, gender, national identification number, phone number, email address, and residential details including district, community, street address, and geographic code. Beneficiary records may also include profile photographs and custom fields defined by the deploying agency, which may contain additional sensitive personal or financial information depending on the programme.
Applicant records
For individuals applying to a programme, we collect full name, date of birth, gender, phone number, email address, geographic location, a profile photograph, a scan of their identity document (ID card), and the responses to the application form (content varies by programme and agency).
Case and programme records
We store case notes, field visit records, Proxy Means Test (PMT) assessments, eligibility scores, intervention records (such as counselling, referral, medical, or legal aid actions), disbursement history, and proof-of-life photographs collected during beneficiary verification checks.
Communication data
Where an agency has enabled the WhatsApp integration, we store conversation data between caseworkers and beneficiaries via that channel.
Uploaded documents
Caseworkers may upload government-issued identification, medical records, and other supporting documents as part of a case file.
2.3 Scolah Care (Elderly Care Platform)
Family member accounts
Family members who connect to a care facility through Scolah Care provide their full name, email address, and their relationship to the resident. Authentication follows the same pattern described in §2.1.
Resident profiles
Care facilities create a profile for each resident, which may include the resident’s full name, date of birth, room or ward identifier, allergies, current prescription medications and schedules, and advance care directives.
Daily care logs
Care staff record daily logs against each resident’s profile. These logs may include medication administration records (doses, times, administered by whom), meals and appetite notes, activities (physiotherapy, social activities, outdoor time), sleep records, mood observations, and photographs from activities.
Wellbeing and health data
We store trend data derived from daily logs: activity frequency, medication adherence rates, appetite and sleep patterns. This data is displayed to authorised family members as a weekly summary.
Incident and alert records
Falls, missed medications, unusual health changes, or other incidents are recorded as alerts. These are flagged to designated family members and care staff as configured by the facility.
Medical records (emergency access)
Facilities may store allergies, prescriptions, and advance directives so they can be shared with hospital staff in an emergency.
2.4 Device security data (all our mobile apps)
To protect your account, our mobile apps register the phone or tablet you sign in on. We store:
- a public key created in your device’s secure hardware; the private key never leaves the device
- on Android, the details the device’s hardware certifies about that key: the security level of the key store, whether the device starts up verified and locked, its security patch level, and the app’s package name and signing certificate
- the results of the app’s integrity checks: whether the device appears rooted or jailbroken, whether hooking or debugging tools are attached, whether it is an emulator, and (on Android) whether the app was installed outside Google Play
- when the device was registered and last used, and whether you signed it out
These checks run on your device and their results are sent only to our servers. We use this data to stop a stolen session being used on another device and to decide whether sensitive actions, such as payments, documents and account changes, can go ahead from a device. We do not use it for advertising or to track you across other apps or sites. You can see and sign out your devices in the app.
3. How We Use Your Data
| Purpose | Data involved |
|---|---|
| Delivering and personalising our services | Account info, profiles of the people a family cares for, activity data, case records |
| Sending notifications (email, SMS, push) | Email address, phone number, push notification token |
| AI-powered features (activity recognition, goal analysis, risk assessments) | Activity photos, goals, case summaries — processed by Scolah’s own AI service, described in §5 |
| Fixing crashes and improving reliability | Crash reports and diagnostic data from our mobile apps |
| Authentication and account security | Credentials, MFA secrets, IP address, access logs |
| Protecting sessions and sensitive actions from our mobile apps | Device public key, attestation details, integrity check results (§2.4) |
| Payment and subscription management | Subscription status, routed to payment providers |
| Fraud prevention and abuse detection | Server logs, IP address, access patterns |
| Legal compliance and dispute resolution | Account records, audit logs |
4. Legal Basis for Processing
Where applicable law requires us to identify a legal basis for processing, we rely on:
- Performance of a contract — to deliver the services you have signed up for
- Legitimate interests — to maintain security, prevent fraud, improve our services, and send service-related communications
- Consent — for optional features such as marketing communications or analytics tracking where required by law
- Legal obligation — to comply with applicable laws and lawful regulatory requests
For Compass beneficiary data: The deploying agency (the NGO or government body running the programme) is the data controller for beneficiary and applicant records. Scolah, Inc. processes this data on the agency’s behalf as a data processor under a Data Processing Agreement. If you are a beneficiary, please direct data rights requests to the agency that enrolled you.
5. Data Sharing and Third-Party Processors
We share personal data only with third parties that are necessary to operate our services. All sub-processors are bound by Data Processing Agreements that restrict their use of your data.
| Category | Purpose | Data shared |
|---|---|---|
| Email delivery | Transactional email delivery | Email address, name, message content |
| SMS delivery & workflow messaging | SMS delivery and SMS-based workflow integration | Phone number, SMS/message content |
| Push notifications & crash reporting | Mobile push notifications and crash diagnostics | Device token, crash reports and diagnostic data |
| Cloud file storage | File and media storage | Uploaded photos, documents, ID card scans |
| AI models (hosted and operated by Scolah on our own infrastructure; no third-party model provider) | Generating AI responses (activity recognition, goal analysis, AI assistant, risk scoring) and text embeddings for search. Requests are processed by an AI service operated by Scolah and are not sent to an external AI company. We do not use the data to train models. | The content of each AI request, which can include personal data: activity photos, goals, conversation context, and case or knowledge-base text. Requests are not automatically anonymised. |
| Vector database (operated by Scolah on our own infrastructure) | AI retrieval (semantic search over knowledge base and case content) | Embedded document vectors |
| Payment processor (optional — only active if your organization enables it) | Processes disbursement payments, using the provider your organization has configured in Settings | Payment amount and programme reference |
| OAuth sign-in | Social sign-in authentication | OAuth token, email address, display name |
We do not sell personal data. We do not share data with advertisers or use it for targeted advertising.
6. Data Retention
| Data | Retention period |
|---|---|
| Active account data | While your account remains active |
| Uploaded media and photos (originals) | 90 days from the date of upload |
| Server and application logs | 30 days |
| Completed and dismissed reminders | 90 days |
| Account after a deletion request | 30-day grace period, then full anonymisation |
| Anonymised records after deletion | Retained indefinitely in anonymous form |
| Payment and transaction records | As required by applicable financial and tax law |
When you request account deletion, a 30-day grace period begins during which you may cancel the request. After this period, all identifying fields (name, email, phone number) are replaced with opaque anonymous identifiers. You will not be able to log in after anonymisation is complete.
7. Children’s Data
The Scolah app allows parents and guardians to create profiles for children in their care. We collect children’s names and dates of birth as part of the core service. The parent or guardian is responsible for ensuring they have the right to provide this information. Only an adult account holder (see the age requirement in our Terms of Service) can create a child’s profile.
The Scolah app also allows family members to create profiles for adults they care for, such as an older parent. Daily care and health records about an adult are sensitive personal data. The family member who adds an adult is responsible for ensuring they have the right to provide this information, for example the adult’s own agreement or, where the adult cannot give it, a legal authority to act for them (such as a power of attorney or guardianship) under applicable law. An adult whose data is held in the Scolah app may exercise the rights described in §8 directly.
In the Compass platform, beneficiaries may include minors. The deploying agency is responsible for ensuring it holds appropriate legal authority or parental consent to register and process data about minors in accordance with applicable child protection legislation.
8. Your Rights
Depending on your location and applicable law, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you
- Correct inaccurate or incomplete data
- Delete your data (subject to legal retention obligations)
- Restrict processing in certain circumstances
- Receive a copy of your data in a portable format
- Object to processing based on legitimate interests
To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@scolah.com. We will respond within 30 days. For Compass beneficiary records, please contact the agency that registered you — they are the data controller.
See our GDPR & Data Rights page for a full description of your rights and how to exercise them.
9. Security
We protect your data using the following measures:
- Passwords stored as salted one-way hashes; plain-text passwords are never stored or transmitted
- All data in transit encrypted with HTTPS/TLS
- Multi-factor authentication (TOTP) available for all accounts
- Sessions in our mobile apps are tied to a key held in the device’s secure hardware, and sensitive actions need a fresh confirmation (fingerprint, face, device passcode or password)
- Role-based access control and JWT-based stateless authentication
- Rate limiting to prevent brute-force attacks
- Audit logging for account and data access events
- Regular security reviews and infrastructure hardening
No transmission over the internet or electronic storage is entirely secure. If you believe your account has been compromised, contact us at privacy@scolah.com immediately.
10. International Data Transfers
Our infrastructure is hosted on cloud providers, which may process data in regions outside your country of residence. When we transfer personal data internationally, we rely on appropriate safeguards — such as Standard Contractual Clauses — to ensure your data receives equivalent protection. AI requests are processed by models Scolah hosts on that same infrastructure, in the same region as the rest of your data, and are not sent to a third-party model provider. If your organisation runs Compass on its own servers through Scolah Compass Platform, AI requests do not pass through Scolah unless the organisation chooses the Scolah-managed AI option; see our Trust Centre.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you via the platform or by email and update the effective date at the top of this page. Your continued use of our services after the effective date of a revised policy constitutes acceptance of the changes.
12. Contact Us
For privacy questions, data access requests, or concerns about how we handle your personal data:
- Privacy enquiries: privacy@scolah.com
- Legal enquiries: legal@scolah.com