Privacy Policy
Last updated: April 20, 2026
Using Essay Climb through your school, language centre, or test-prep provider? Student accounts managed by an institution are covered by our Schools & Institutions Privacy Addendum, which explains what we collect about managed students, who can see their work, and how long it is kept.
1. Introduction
CanHorizon Inc. ("we", "us", "our") operates the Essay Climb writing tutor service at essayclimb.com. This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding your personal information.
2. Information We Collect
Account information
When you create an account, we collect your name, email address, and password (hashed). If you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email from Google — we do not receive your Google password.
Profile information
During onboarding, you provide your native language and writing goal (e.g., IELTS, TOEFL). This helps us tailor evaluations to your needs.
Writing submissions
When you submit an essay for evaluation, we store the text you wrote, the AI-generated feedback and scores, time spent writing, and your submission history.
Usage data
We track which study modules you read, practice exercise scores, and general progress metrics to provide your dashboard and progress tracking features. With your consent, we also collect aggregate analytics data via Google Analytics (see Section 4).
Payment information
If you subscribe to Premium, payment is processed by Stripe. We store your Stripe customer ID and subscription ID. We do not store your credit card number, CVV, or full billing details — Stripe handles this directly.
3. How We Use Your Information
- To provide the Service — evaluate your writing, track your progress, recommend study modules
- To process payments via Stripe for Premium subscriptions
- To send transactional emails (password resets, account notifications) via our email provider
- To improve the Service — aggregate, anonymized usage patterns help us improve content and features
We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your writing submissions to train our own AI models. Submissions processed by DeepSeek's API are subject to DeepSeek's privacy policy.
4. Third-Party Services
AI evaluation (DeepSeek)
Your essay text is sent to DeepSeek's API for AI-powered evaluation. DeepSeek processes the text to generate scores and feedback. We recommend not including personally identifiable information (names, addresses, phone numbers) in your essay submissions. Refer to DeepSeek's privacy policy for their data handling practices.
Authentication and database (Supabase)
Your account data and submissions are stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted by Supabase. Supabase provides authentication services (email/password and Google OAuth).
Payments (Stripe)
Premium subscription payments are processed by Stripe. Stripe collects and processes your payment information directly. See Stripe's Privacy Policy.
Analytics (Google Analytics)
With your consent, we use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use our site — including pages visited, session duration, and general device/browser information. Google Analytics may set cookies and collect your IP address, which Google may use in accordance with their own privacy policy.
Analytics are disabled by default. When you first visit the site, a cookie consent banner will ask for your permission. You may decline at any time without affecting your ability to use the Service. You can also opt out via Google's opt-out browser add-on.
Hosting (Vercel)
The application is hosted on Vercel. Vercel may collect standard server logs (IP addresses, request timestamps) as part of their hosting infrastructure.
Email (Resend)
Transactional emails (password resets, account notifications, and trial reports you ask us to email you) are sent via Resend from noreply@essayclimb.com.
5. Data Retention
Your account data and submission history are retained as long as your account is active. You may request deletion of your account and associated data by contacting support@essayclimb.com.
Upon account deletion, we will delete your personal information, submissions, and progress data within 30 days. Some data may be retained in encrypted backups for up to 90 days.
Free trial evaluations (/try). If you use the free evaluation without creating an account, we store the writing you submit, the resulting report, and a one-way cryptographic hash of your IP address used only to limit abuse. We do not store your IP address itself. That record is deleted automatically 90 days after you submit it, unless you create an account and save the report to it — in which case it becomes part of your submission history and follows the retention rules above. The report is reachable only by the unique link you were given; anyone with that link can read it, so treat it as private.
Emailing yourself a trial report. If you ask us to email you a /try report, we pass your address to our email provider to send that one message and we do not store it. You are not added to any mailing list, and we will not email you again unless you contact us. We keep only a count of how many times a given report has been emailed, which exists to stop the feature being abused and does not identify who received it.
6. Data Security
We implement reasonable security measures to protect your data, including encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS), hashed passwords, and row-level security policies on our database. However, no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
7. Cookies and Local Storage
We use the following browser storage technologies:
- Authentication cookies — essential session cookies to keep you logged in. These are required for the Service to function and cannot be declined.
- Analytics cookies (Google Analytics) — only set if you grant consent via the cookie banner. You can accept or decline when prompted, and change your preference at any time by clearing your browser's local storage.
- Local storage — used to save your cookie consent preference and temporarily preserve writing drafts so you don't lose work if you close the browser.
We do not use advertising cookies or sell cookie data to third parties.
8. Your Rights
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you
- Correct inaccurate personal data
- Delete your account and personal data
- Export your submission data
- Object to certain processing of your data
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at support@essayclimb.com.
9. Children's Privacy
The Service is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.
10. Governing Law
This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein. If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the United Kingdom, you may have additional rights under GDPR or UK GDPR. Please contact us to exercise those rights.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated via email or a notice on the Service. The "Last updated" date at the top indicates when the policy was last revised.
12. Contact
CanHorizon Inc.
For privacy-related questions or requests, contact us at support@essayclimb.com.