Keeping students safe

Nearly everyone who uses this site is a teenager, and it is built that way on purpose. This page says plainly what that means: what we do to keep it safe, what we will not do with your work, and what to do if something here upsets you or gets something badly wrong.

You have to be 13

Help in Study is for ages 13 and over. You tell us your age when you set up your profile, and it cannot be set below 13. If you are younger than that, please use the site with a parent or guardian. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without a parent's consent, which is what COPPA in the United States requires, and we never show personalised adverts to anyone we know to be under 13.

Your age is not just paperwork: it changes the answers. It is part of the instructions sent to the AI, so explanations are written for someone your age and in your exam board's style.

Every question and every answer is checked

Before a question reaches the tutor, and again before an answer reaches you, both go through a safety check. Sexual content, instructions for hurting people, and threats are stopped. This runs on the tools as well as on chat, not only in the chat box.

Being straight with you about the edges of that: what you type is always checked, going in and coming out. A photo is checked too, as long as the checker we use that day can read pictures. The text inside a PDF is not checked before the tutor sees it — only whatever you typed alongside it — so the answer is checked on the way back instead. We would rather tell you that than let you believe in a check that is not there.

One thing works the other way round on purpose. If what you write suggests you might not be safe — you are being hurt, or bullied badly, or thinking about hurting yourself — you are never blocked or refused. You get an answer, written kindly, along with a free confidential helpline for your own country. A site that shut the door on that message would be doing the single worst thing it could do.

You are talking to an AI

Every tool here is an AI, not a teacher and not a person. It is right most of the time and confidently wrong some of the time. The chat page says so at the top of every session, and every explanation carries the same reminder.

Using an AI tutor sensibly

• Check anything that matters. Dates, formulas and mark-scheme wording are worth a second look in your textbook or with your teacher — especially the night before an exam.
• Never share private things. Your full name, address, school, phone number, passwords, or anyone else's details do not belong in a question. What you type is sent to the company that writes the answer, and that is true of every AI site, not just this one.
• Copying an answer is not studying. Use it to understand the step you were stuck on, then do the question yourself. Handing in AI work as your own is cheating in most schools, and you learn nothing.
• Talk to a real person about real problems. An AI cannot look after you. If something is going on at home or at school, tell an adult you trust — a parent, a teacher, a school counsellor.

Tell us when something is wrong

If an answer was upsetting, unsafe, or badly incorrect, please tell us on the contact page. Say which tool it was and roughly what you asked, and it gets looked at. Reports about safety are read first. If a safeguard turns out to be broken, the fix comes before anything else on the list.

What we never do

• We never sell your data, and nothing you type or upload is ever handed to an advertising company. The site shows no adverts today; if that ever changes, the privacy page will name the company before it does.
• We do not save your chats on our servers — signed in or not.
• We do not build a profile of you to sell. The profile we keep exists to make answers fit your syllabus, it stays in your own browser, and you can wipe it whenever you like in Settings.

Which companies see what you type, what each of them is allowed to do with it, and how long they keep it is listed in full — and kept honest by the code itself — on the privacy page.

If you need help right now

Help in Study is not a crisis service. If you are in danger, contact your local emergency number. For free confidential support in your own country, findahelpline.com lists helplines worldwide, and the site will show you your country's when it matters.