Uriversity is operated by Hyperfoo, Inc., of Berkeley, California ("Uriversity", "we"), the company that builds the Uriversity software and writes its teaching material. This page says what we keep about you, how we use it, who handles it on our behalf, how long we keep it, and how to see it or have it deleted. Questions and requests: privacy@uriversity.com.
What we keep
Your account. Your email address, which is also how you sign in: we send you a link, and we store no password. A display name, which is the part of your email before the @ until you give a name. If you applied to a cohort, the note you wrote, the start you chose and the application's status. Which cohort you are in, and when the account was made.
Your work in the course. The sections you open and when; the lessons you mark as read; your conversations with the AI TA; for each quiz, check and hand-in, whether it is in progress or done and what it took; the exercise notebooks you hand in (their code and the text of their outputs, the three most recent versions) and the results of the checks run over them; what you have typed and not yet sent, kept so you can pick it up on another device and deleted when you send it or clear the box; the feedback notes you send; which shared questions you have seen; the consent you gave and its version; and how much text the AI TA produced for you each day, which is how the daily limits work.
Counts that are about no one. How many times each section was opened by visitors who were not signed in, per day; nightly summaries of how the course is going; and the number of emails that failed to send, by kind.
How we use it
To run the course for you: to sign you in, show you your place in it, answer your questions, check your work, and keep your record so you can return to it from any device. To improve the course: the Uriversity team reads students' conversations, hand-ins and feedback, directly or with the help of AI tools, to find where and how we can improve the course. To keep the service healthy: daily limits, rate limits and counts.
We do not sell your data, and we show no ads.
Who handles it for us
Like most online services, we rely on a small number of service providers. Each handles your data to provide its service to us, under its own privacy terms, linked in the list at the end of this page. The terms of the AI model service we use do not allow the provider to train its models on what we send.
- An AI model provider powers the AI TA. When you ask a question, answer a quiz or talk through a hand-in, the messages of that conversation, the text of the section you are in and, in an exercise, your handed-in notebook are sent to the provider to produce the reply. Your name and email address are not sent. The provider is also asked whether a question is worth sharing with other students and, if so, to reword it with anything identifying removed.
- A hosting provider runs the site and its database in the United States, keeps short-lived request logs as any host does, and takes its own short-term snapshots of the database.
- An email delivery service sends the site's email: sign-in links, application mail, and the copy of each feedback note that goes to the team. It sees your address and the message; open and click tracking are off.
- A mailbox provider holds the team's own mailbox; what you email us sits there.
- A privacy-respecting analytics service counts page views without cookies, and three events: a sign-in link requested, a seat requested, a lesson finished. It never loads on the page a sign-in link opens.
- Content delivery networks serve the fonts and script libraries the pages use, so your browser fetches files from them, as on most websites.
The providers we use today are listed at the end of this page. When one changes, that list changes; this section still describes what they do.
Who can read what
The Uriversity team can see your account, your application, your progress, your hand-ins and your feedback, and can read your conversations with the AI TA, directly or with the help of AI tools, to improve the course. The AI TA is given your own conversation and, in an exercise, your own hand-in, never anyone else's. Other students see only questions that have been reworded with anything identifying removed: never your words, your name, your notebook or your marks. Nobody else, unless the law requires it.
Your browser
We set no cookies. Your browser keeps your sign-in for thirty days, what you opened or typed before signing in (handed to your account the first time you sign in from that browser), and small conveniences such as which panel you left open. Signing out removes the sign-in.
How long we keep it
For as long as your account exists. We do not delete your work on a schedule, because the record of how people learn with Uriversity is what we improve it with; you can end that at any time by asking us to delete your account, below. The counts that are about no one are kept indefinitely. The team keeps verified backup copies of the database, and each copy is retired within ninety days.
Your choices
- Email privacy@uriversity.com from your account's address to receive a copy of everything we keep about you, or to have your account and everything linked to it deleted. We complete a deletion within ninety days of your request; backup copies made before it are retired within a further ninety days.
- You can read the free chapters without an account. With an account, reading is recorded as your progress (the sections you open and the lessons you mark as read), so you can pick up where you left off. Reading never needs the consent the AI TA asks for before your first question: that consent covers your conversations and what is sent to the model provider, and the AI TA is the only part that asks.
- You can sign out of any browser at any time.
Changes
This page carries the date it last changed. A change that touches what the consent box covers asks you to agree again before your next question.
Our service providers today
Hyperfoo, Inc. · legal@hyperfoo.com · privacy@uriversity.com