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Draft notice. This document is a working draft prepared by the CertCoach team and has not yet been reviewed by legal counsel. It will be replaced before public launch. Do not rely on it as legal advice.

Privacy Notice

Last updated: April 16, 2026

About this notice

This notice describes how ThoughtExhaust LLC ("we", "us", "CertCoach™") handles personal information collected through the CertCoach certification exam preparation platform. It applies to your use of our website, application, and related services (collectively, the "Service").

1. Information we collect

We collect the following categories of information:

  • Account information. Your email address, display name, and authentication identifiers provided by Firebase Auth when you sign up or log in.
  • Practice activity. The exams you enroll in, practice sessions you take, questions you answer, your responses, correctness, time spent, and aggregate statistics derived from this activity.
  • AI conversations. The full text of follow-up questions you ask the AI tutor and the responses generated for you. We retain these conversations to improve question quality, detect platform issues, and provide history of past exchanges.
  • Exam attempts you record. Target dates, pass/fail outcomes, scores, and notes you enter for scheduled or completed certification exams.
  • Technical metadata. Standard logs of API requests (timestamps, endpoints, response codes) and AI model usage (provider, model, token counts, latency) used for operations and cost analysis.

We do not knowingly collect government IDs, payment card numbers (those go directly to our payment processor when billing launches), or other sensitive personal data outside the categories above.

2. How we use your information

We use your information to:

  • Operate and personalize the Service for your account.
  • Generate AI-powered study recommendations, follow-up answers, readiness scores, and other features that depend on your practice history.
  • Improve the Service — for example, identify confusing questions by analyzing aggregate follow-up patterns, or measure the quality of different AI providers.
  • Detect and prevent abuse, fraud, and security issues.
  • Communicate with you about your account, important Service changes, and (where you've opted in) product updates.

3. AI features

Several Service features use large language models (currently Anthropic Claude). When you ask a follow-up question, request a study plan, or interact with the AI in other ways, the question content and necessary context (such as the exam question being discussed and your relevant practice statistics) are sent to the AI provider for processing.

Your AI conversations are stored in our database so we can show them to you, improve question quality, and analyze platform usage. We do not use your conversations to train AI models, and we do not authorize our AI providers to do so. Anthropic processes API requests subject to their own privacy and data-handling terms.

AI responses can be inaccurate or incomplete. Treat them as study aids, not authoritative exam answers.

4. Sharing with third parties

We share information with service providers who help us operate the Service, only to the extent necessary for them to do so:

  • Firebase (Google) — authentication and user identity management.
  • Anthropic — large language model inference for AI features.
  • Cloud hosting providers — application hosting, database, and content delivery.
  • Payment processor (planned: Stripe) — when billing is enabled, to process subscription payments.

We do not sell your personal information. We may disclose information when required by law, to enforce our terms, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of any person.

5. Data retention

Our default retention periods are:

  • Account information — retained for the lifetime of your account. Deleted within 30 days of account deletion.
  • Practice activity and statistics — retained for the lifetime of your account, deleted on account deletion.
  • AI conversations — retained for 24 months from the date of the conversation, then deleted from our active systems. Older conversations may persist in aggregated, anonymized form for analytics.
  • Technical logs — retained for up to 24 months for security, billing reconciliation, and operations purposes.

6. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights under applicable law (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) to:

  • Access the personal information we hold about you.
  • Correct inaccurate information.
  • Delete your account and the associated data.
  • Export a copy of your data in a machine-readable format.
  • Object to or restrict certain types of processing.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at the address below. We will respond within 30 days.

7. Cookies and tracking

We use only the cookies necessary to keep you logged in and to remember basic preferences. We do not use third-party advertising cookies or cross-site tracking.

8. Children

CertCoach is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If you believe we have done so, please contact us and we will delete it.

9. International users

CertCoach is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the U.S., your information may be transferred to, stored in, and processed in the U.S. and other countries where our service providers operate.

10. Changes to this notice

We may update this notice from time to time. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent changes. Material changes will be communicated through the Service or by email when feasible.

11. Contact

ThoughtExhaust LLC
Email: [email protected]

HumanMachine