Privacy Policy

What we collect

Memory Lab stores only what is needed to run the service:

• Your email address — used for account authentication and admin notifications.
• Your exercise data — the cards you study, your review history and SRS scheduling state (interval, ease factor, due dates), and your game scores.
• Your settings — session length, cards per session, active languages, and kanji hint mode.
• Session logs — completed session records used to calculate streaks and display your 90-day history on the dashboard.
• If you use Writing Practice: the short stories you write, any AI feedback on them, and your per-language level setting. See “AI features and Writing Practice” below — this is the one place your own freeform writing, rather than exercise data, is stored and sent for AI review.

Nothing else is collected. There is no device fingerprinting, no IP logging beyond what AWS infrastructure records as a matter of course, and no collection of health or biometric information. This site is a training tool, not a cognitive assessment.

How your data is used

• Your email is used to log you in and to send account-status notifications (approval, denial). It is not used for marketing.
• Your exercise data drives the spaced-repetition algorithm (SM-2) that schedules your reviews. It is never used for any other purpose.
• Your game scores are stored so you can see your own history. They are visible only to you.

AI features and Writing Practice

If you enable AI features, exercises you answer send only card content to Anthropic's API for a brief explanation or memory hint — never your name, email, or account ID.

Writing Practice is different, and worth calling out specifically: it is the one feature where you write your own thoughts, not exercise content. If you use it, your story text is sent to Anthropic to generate feedback. As with every AI feature, your name, email, and account ID are never included in what is sent — but the story itself may contain real names, places, or personal details you chose to write about, and that text is processed by a third-party API. Stories are stored in your account, visible only to you, and you can delete any story at any time from the Writing Practice page. The page also shows a one-time consent notice before your first submission, and a persistent reminder on the draft screen, precisely because this is a different kind of data than the rest of the site collects. Don't write anything in a story you wouldn't want processed by a third-party API.

Writing Practice also offers an optional “Get a human read” step — a real step up from the AI path, not a formality. Requesting one means a specific person (currently the site administrator) reads that particular story. This is gated by its own consent prompt at the moment you request it, separate from the general AI consent above, and only that one story is shared. You can instead export the story yourself and get feedback from anyone you choose, without an admin ever seeing it, by pasting their feedback back in.

Who can see your data

Your exercise data and scores are visible only to you. The site administrator (Tracy Elsinger) can see your email address for account management purposes (approving or denying sign-up requests) and can delete your account and all associated data on request. No one else has access.

There is no advertising, no analytics service, no third-party tracking, and no sale or sharing of data with any third party.

Data retention

Your data is retained for as long as your account is active. Session history older than 90 days is excluded from dashboard statistics but the underlying records are not automatically purged — full deletion requires deleting your account. When your account is deleted, all associated data (exercise records, sessions, scores, settings, and your Cognito credentials) is permanently removed from all systems.

Your rights and how to delete your account

You have the right to access, correct, and delete your data. To delete your account and all associated data, email photographix4@gmail.com. Deletions are processed manually by the site administrator and completed within a reasonable time. You may also change your password at any time from the account menu.

Cookies and local storage

Amazon Cognito sets authentication cookies/tokens in your browser to keep you signed in. No advertising or analytics cookies are set. The one exception to “no personal data in browser local storage”: while you're actively writing on the Writing Practice page, your in-progress draft is kept in your browser's local storage so it isn't lost if you navigate away, and is cleared once the draft is saved to your account or discarded. It is never sent anywhere from local storage — only your account's stored copy is used for AI review.

Contact

Questions or requests: photographix4@gmail.com