Privacy Policy

What we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with and the choices you have.

Last updated 11 November 2026

Who we are

Crowela is an AI assistant for learning, work and everyday life. It is run by Crowela Platforms (“Crowela”, “we” or “us”), which is responsible for the personal information described here.

This policy covers the Crowela website at crowela.com and the Crowela apps. If anything is unclear, email privacy@crowela.com.

What we collect

We collect what you give us, what we need to run your account safely, and what you create in Crowela.

Account details: your phone number or email address, or your Google account ID and email if you sign in with Google. Your first and last name, date of birth and country.
Security details: the devices and sessions you sign in on, with IP address, browser or device type, and when they were last used.
What you send: your chats, the photos you attach and any files you upload.
Study and exams: your study profile (such as level, subjects and school, if you add one), your quiz, practice and mock exam answers, your marks and your progress.
Images and video: the prompts you write and what Crowela creates.
Wallet and payments: top-up amounts, currency, status and payment references, and the payer’s name and card country if the payment partner sends them back.
Guardian consent: for young people who need it, the guardian’s phone number or email, their relationship to the young person, the spending limit they set, and a record of how they gave consent, including the time, IP address and device.
Schools: if you join a school on Crowela, your school, classes and role.
Your choices: your privacy settings and when you changed them.
Activity records: a log of important actions on your account, such as changes to your settings, with IP address and device type.

How we use it

To create your account, sign you in and keep it secure.
To answer your questions and run the features you use, such as chat, voice, study, exam marking and image creation.
To apply the right protections for your age, and to ask a guardian for consent where the rules need it.
To take top-ups and keep financial records.
To send sign-in codes, security alerts (for example when a new device signs in) and guardian consent requests.
To prevent fraud and abuse, and to check that Crowela is allowed where you are.
To understand how Crowela is used, if analytics is on for your account. See Analytics and cookies.
To meet our legal duties.

We never sell your personal information.

Adults on personal accounts can choose to join the improvement programme in Privacy settings. Only then may we use some of their chats to make Crowela better. It is off unless you turn it on, and it is never offered to under-18s or to accounts set up by a school.

AI and your messages

Answers in Crowela are written by AI models run by other companies (AI providers). Crowela is AI and can make mistakes.

Chat: to answer you, we send your message, up to the last 16 messages of that chat and any photos you attach to an AI provider. We do not add your name, age or contact details.
Exam marking: written exam answers are sent to an AI provider with the marking scheme so they can be marked.
Voice: with Live Speech, your recording is sent to our voice provider to be turned into text. We do not keep the recording. When Crowela reads an answer aloud, the answer text is sent to the voice provider.
Images and video: your prompt is sent to our media provider. Images it creates are checked by an automated safety service before you see them.

AI providers process this information for us, to run Crowela, under their terms with us. When an under-18 or a school account chats, we only use AI providers that are approved for that use, do not train on what is sent and keep it for no more than 30 days.

Payments

Top-ups are handled by our payment partners. Ziina handles cards. Paynow handles EcoCash, OneMoney, InnBucks and some card payments in Zimbabwe.

You enter card details in the payment partner’s secure form. Crowela never sees or stores your full card number, expiry date or security code.
For mobile money, we send your mobile money number and the amount to Paynow to request the payment.
We keep a record of each payment: amount, currency, status, references, and the payer’s name and card country if the partner sends them back.

Payment partners also handle your information under their own privacy policies.

Signing in with Google

If you choose Continue with Google, Google sends us a signed token. We check it against Google’s public keys and use only:

your Google account ID, so we can recognise you next time
your email address, which Google must have verified

Google’s token can also include your name and profile photo. We do not store or use them. We get no access to your Google account, contacts, files or any other Google data, and we never post anything for you. You give us your name and date of birth yourself, in About you.

Analytics and cookies

We use a few essential cookies. Crowela needs them to work, so they are always on:

crw_session keeps you signed in.
crw_csrf protects your account from forged requests.
crw_device recognises this device for sign-in security. It lasts up to 400 days.

On crowela.com these names start with __Host- or __Secure-. Your browser also stores your model choice, your voice choice and where to take you after you sign in.

Our website loads Google Tag Manager on every page, so Google receives basic technical details such as your IP address and browser. We use Google Consent Mode. Advertising storage and ad signals are always off. Analytics storage starts off for every visitor, and is only switched on when you are signed in and your analytics setting is on:

In the EU, the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, analytics stays off until you turn it on.
Everywhere else, analytics is on for signed-in accounts unless you turn it off.

You can change this at any time in Privacy settings. Cloudflare may also show a quick check (Turnstile) when many sign-in codes are requested from one network, to stop bots.

Messages we send

Sign-in codes and security alerts may be sent by WhatsApp, SMS or email. Guardian consent requests reach the guardian the same way. We use SMS in Zimbabwe only.

We keep a scrambled (hashed) copy of who each message went to and whether it arrived, not the message itself.

News and offers are off unless you turn them on in Privacy settings, separately for WhatsApp, SMS and email.

Children and guardian consent

You give us your date of birth when you set up your account. We use it only to apply the right protections for your age, and it is not shown to other users. You cannot change it yourself; our support team can, after checks.

We look at the country of your phone number, the country you tell us and the country you connect from. Where their rules differ, the strictest one applies:

Minimum age to use Crowela: 13 in Zimbabwe, the UK and the US; 15 in France; 16 everywhere else.
Guardian consent: if you are under 18, a parent or guardian must agree before you can chat or create images. This does not apply in the UK, the US, France, Ireland, Germany or the Netherlands, where you can join on your own once you reach the minimum age.

We send the guardian a link. They confirm their phone number or email with a code, tell us how they are related to you, confirm they are an adult and set a monthly spending limit. Consent lasts one year and then needs to be renewed. A guardian can withdraw consent at any time, and ask us to delete the young person’s account, by emailing privacy@crowela.com.

If someone is under the minimum age, we close the account and delete their contact details, profile and age checks. A scrambled device marker stops a new sign-up from that device for 24 hours.

Under-18s are never part of the improvement programme.

Schools (CrowEd)

Schools can use CrowEd to run classes on Crowela. If you join a school:

school admins, and your teachers for their own classes, can see the papers and quizzes you attempt in school and your marks
they cannot see your chats
every time they look, we record it

When a school sets up CrowEd, we collect the school’s name, town and registration number, and the email addresses of the people it invites. If your place at a school ends, your own Crowela account carries on as before.

Who at Crowela can see your information

Our staff see your information only when their job needs it, for example to help you or to keep people safe.

Most staff see contact details masked, such as +263 ****12, and names as initials.
Only a few roles can see full details, and only for users in the countries they cover.
Staff tools never show the content of your messages or the files you upload. Staff with full access can see chat titles.
Every time staff open an account, we record it.

How we protect it

Connections to Crowela are encrypted.
Sign-in codes, sign-in links and session tokens are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form.
Sign-in cookies cannot be read by scripts on the page.
Staff sign in with two-step verification, and sensitive changes need a second staff member to approve them.
Uploaded files can only be opened by the person who uploaded them.
Important actions are recorded in a tamper-evident log.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your information at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Where your information is stored

Crowela’s servers, database and file storage are run by Crowela Platforms. Some of our providers, including our AI providers, process information in other countries, including the United States. Where the law that applies to you requires safeguards for sending information abroad, we put them in place.

How long we keep it

We keep your information while your account is open, and after that only for as long as we need it for the reasons in this policy.

Sign-in sessions end after 30 days without use, and after 90 days at most.
Voice recordings for Live Speech are not kept.
When you delete a chat, it leaves your history straight away, but it is not erased from our systems at that moment. To have deleted chats erased, email privacy@crowela.com.
Payment records are kept for as long as tax and financial laws require.
Guardian consent records are kept while the consent applies, and afterwards as proof of consent.
The log of important actions is kept so we can show what happened and when.

When you ask to delete your account, you have 7 days to change your mind. After that we delete your personal information, except what we must keep by law or for safety and security, such as payment records.

Your rights and choices

You can use these rights in Crowela, or by emailing privacy@crowela.com:

See and download your data: on your Account page you can download a file with your account, contact details, consents, devices, sessions and chat titles. It does not include message text, study and exam records, wallet history, guardian consent records or uploaded files. Email us for a copy of those.
Correct it: edit your name and contact details on your Account page. To fix your date of birth, email support@crowela.com.
Delete it: delete single chats from your history, or delete your whole account on your Account page.
Sign out devices: see where you are signed in, and sign out, on your Account page.
Change your choices: turn analytics, news and offers, and the improvement programme on or off in Privacy settings.
Object or complain: tell us if you disagree with how we use your information.

We may need to check it is you before we act. We aim to reply within 30 days. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live. In Zimbabwe, this is the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).

Data protection law

We handle personal information in line with the data protection laws that apply to you. For users in Zimbabwe, this is the Cyber and Data Protection Act [Chapter 12:07]. If you live elsewhere, your local law applies too and may give you further rights.

We use your information because:

we need it to provide Crowela to you
the law requires it
it is in our legitimate interest to keep Crowela safe and working, in a way that does not override your rights
you agreed, for example to analytics where consent is needed, to news and offers, to the improvement programme or, as a guardian, to a young person using Crowela

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top of this page. If a change affects how we use your information, we will tell you in Crowela before it takes effect.

Contact us

Crowela Platforms

Privacy questions and requests: privacy@crowela.com
Everything else: support@crowela.com

Using Crowela is also covered by our Terms of Service.