Privacy Policy for Dagu
Last Updated & Effective Date: October 6, 2026 · Governing Dagu Mobile App, Web Portal & APIs
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1. Introduction & Overview
Dagu Technologies is committed to protecting the privacy, security, and digital safety of our students, educators, and guardians. Dagu is an educational mobile platform designed to empower students across Ethiopia and Africa with intelligent AI tutoring, curriculum-aligned educational resources, interactive quizzes, study planning, and offline knowledge vector packs.
This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and safeguard your information when you access or use the Dagu mobile application (the "App"), our website at the official Dagu platform (dagutech.et), and our associated backend services and APIs (collectively, the "Services").
By downloading, accessing, or using Dagu, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to the terms described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services.
2. Information We Collect
We collect information to provide, maintain, optimize, and personalize educational services for students. The types of data collected depend on how you interact with Dagu:
A. Information You Provide to Us
1. Account Registration Data:
- Full Name: First name and last name to personalize the learning experience and identity certificates.
- Contact Information: Email address and/or mobile phone number (used for authentication, account recovery, and critical notices).
- Credentials: Password (securely salted and hashed; never stored or readable in plain text).
- Educational Profile: Grade level (e.g., Grade 7–12, preparatory, undergraduate, graduate), educational stream, and school/institution name.
- Date of Birth: To verify age and present age-appropriate curricula and safety guidelines.
- Guardian Email (Optional): Provided by or for younger students to ensure parental oversight where applicable.
- Referral Code (Optional): Used to credit referral rewards and study tokens.
2. Student Profile & Preferences:
- Profile Picture / Avatar: A photo or chosen avatar displayed on your profile.
- Bio & Academic Interests: Subjects of interest (e.g., Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History) and learning goals.
- Privacy Preferences: Student-configurable visibility controls (whether to display real name, avatar, grade level, school, or study stats to peers).
3. Academic & Learning Activity Data:
- AI Interactions & Queries: Questions asked to the AI tutor, homework assistance prompts, study plan generation inputs, and responses.
- Assessments & Quiz Submissions: Quiz responses, assessment results, scores, completion timestamps, and mastery levels.
- Study Materials & User Content: Educational notes created or edited, bookmarked materials, likes, and documents or resources shared by the student.
- Study Progress & Gamification Data: Experience points (XP), learning streaks, achievement badges earned, and leaderboard participation.
4. Payment & Billing Information:
- Subscription Data: Selected tier (Free, Basic, Premium) and purchased AI token packs.
- Transaction Records: Transaction identifiers, order reference numbers, amounts, settlement timestamps, and payment method categories (e.g., Telebirr, CBE Birr, Awash Birr, or Debit Card).
- Note on Payment Security: Dagu does NOT process, collect, or store raw credit/debit card numbers, bank PINs, or mobile money credentials. All payment processing is securely handled by authorized Ethiopian payment gateways (ArifPay) via encrypted hosted sessions.
B. Information Collected Automatically
- Device & Technical Information: Device manufacturer, model, operating system version, screen resolution, and system language. Unique device identifiers, anonymous Firebase instance IDs, and network connectivity state (online/offline).
- Push Notification Tokens: Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) registration tokens, required to deliver study reminders, homework alerts, exam countdowns, and subscription notifications.
- Usage & Analytics Data: App interactions, features accessed, time spent on study modules, and crash logs collected via Firebase Analytics to improve stability and user experience.
- Log Data: IP address, API request timestamps, error codes, and HTTP headers when communicating with our backend cloud services.
C. Information Collected via Specific Device Features (Permissions)
Dagu requests only device permissions strictly necessary for its educational capabilities:
Required to communicate with Dagu cloud APIs, synchronize study data, process AI requests, and download educational resources.
Required on Android 13+ to send study reminders, exam preparation notifications, streak alerts, and system notices. You can revoke this permission at any time in device settings.
Required to maintain reliable, background-resilient downloads of large educational materials, textbook PDFs, and offline vector databases over slow or intermittent network connections.
Dagu allows students to snap a photo of a textbook question or select an image from their gallery for optical character recognition (OCR) and homework tutoring, or to set a profile picture.
On-Device Processing: Optical character recognition is processed on-device using Google ML Kit. We do not use your camera or photo gallery for continuous surveillance, facial recognition, or advertising.
Used for interactive quiz timers and to keep the screen on during reading sessions or exam simulations when enabled by the user.
3. How We Use Your Information
We use the collected data strictly for educational, operational, and service enhancement purposes:
Providing customized AI tutoring, homework guidance, curriculum-aligned study plans, and tracking XP points, streaks, and quiz performance.
Authenticating user logins via email/phone, Google Sign-In, or Firebase Auth, managing sessions, and refreshing tokens securely.
Customizing study suggestions by grade level, curriculum, and preferred language (English, Amharic, Afaan Oromoo, Tigrinya, Somali, and Afar).
Sending revision reminders, assignment deadlines, system updates, and security alerts to students and guardians.
Processing subscription upgrades and AI token pack balances through secure ArifPay integration.
Protecting against malicious access, abuse of AI resources, unauthorized account access, and service disruptions.
Fulfilling statutory tax, accounting, and regulatory record-keeping requirements under applicable law.
4. How We Share or Disclose Information
We do NOT sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties or data brokers.
We only share information with trusted third-party service providers who assist us in operating our platform, subject to strict confidentiality and security agreements:
| Service / Provider | Purpose | Data Processed | Privacy Policy / Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Firebase (Auth, FCM, Analytics) | User authentication, push notifications, and app performance analytics | Email, UID, FCM device tokens, anonymized usage telemetry | Google Privacy Policy |
| Google Sign-In | Federated single sign-on authentication | Name, email address, profile picture | Google Privacy Policy |
| Google Generative AI (Gemini) | Advanced AI tutoring and homework problem solving via secure backend gateway | Academic queries and prompts sent via secure backend gateway | Google API Privacy Terms |
| Google ML Kit | On-device text recognition (OCR) for homework problems and questions | Camera/image inputs processed locally on device | ML Kit Privacy Terms |
| ArifPay (Ethiopia) | Hosted payment checkout (Telebirr, CBE Birr, Awash Birr, cards) | Transaction amount, order ID, phone/email for receipts (No raw PINs or card details stored by Dagu) | ArifPay Legal Terms |
| MinIO Cloud Storage | Secure cloud storage for student avatars and educational PDFs | Uploaded user files and educational documents hosted in dedicated secure infrastructure | Dedicated Secure Cloud |
We may also disclose your information if required to do so by applicable Ethiopian law, court orders, or governmental requests, or to protect the safety, rights, and property of Dagu, our users, or the general public.
5. Offline Data & On-Device Storage
Dagu is engineered specifically for regions with intermittent or costly internet connectivity:
- Offline Knowledge Packs: Pre-compiled SQLite databases (
.db.gz) containing curriculum textbook chunks and past national exams (EUEE, Grade 8 Ministry) are downloaded to your device's isolated application storage. - On-Device AI Engine: On supported devices, an on-device Small Language Model (SLM) executes locally using MediaPipe runtime without transmitting your queries to external servers.
- Local Data Clearing: When you log out of the application, all locally cached notes, chat logs, session tokens, and personal history are immediately purged from device storage.
6. Data Retention Policy
Retained for as long as your account remains active or until you request its deletion.
Retained during the life of the active account so students can review previous study notes. Students may individually delete specific AI interaction history items at any time.
Transaction receipts, invoice references, and financial ledgers are retained for a minimum of five (5) years to comply with statutory accounting, tax, and audit regulations under Ethiopian law.
Anonymized logs and aggregated crash metrics are retained for up to 90 days before automatic deletion.
7. Account Deletion & User Rights
In compliance with global data protection standards, every Dagu user has the right to delete their account and associated personal data at any time.
How You Can Delete Your Account:
Open Dagu and navigate to Profile > Settings > Privacy & Account. Tap Delete Account and confirm the prompt.
Visit the official Dagu Account Deletion Portal. Enter your registered email address or phone number and submit the request.
Email us at support@dagutech.et with the subject line "Account Deletion Request", or reach our support team on Telegram at @dagu_support.
8. Children’s and Student Privacy (COPPA & Student Safeguards)
Dagu provides educational resources for primary, secondary, and higher-education students:
- We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 without consent from a parent, legal guardian, or participating educational institution.
- Where a student is under the legal age of consent, registration may include a parent or guardian's email address to ensure oversight.
- Zero Behavioral Ads: Dagu is strictly an educational tool: we never serve third-party behavioral advertisements, nor do we build advertising profiles based on student activity.
- If we become aware that personal information of a child has been collected without verified parental or educational consent, we will take immediate steps to delete that information from our servers.
9. Security of Your Information
We implement robust administrative, technical, and physical security measures to safeguard your data:
All communications between the mobile application and Dagu backend servers are encrypted using modern Transport Layer Security (TLS/HTTPS).
Sensitive tokens and preferences on your device are protected using secure system keystores via flutter_secure_storage.
Backend administrative access is strictly partitioned according to least-privilege principles.
User passwords are encrypted using high-cost cryptographic hashing algorithms (bcrypt) and are never stored in plain text.
10. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may periodically update this Privacy Policy to reflect enhancements in our application, changes in legal obligations, or new features. When changes are made, we will update the "Last Updated" date at the top of this document. For material updates, we will notify you through an in-app notice, push notification, or email before the changes take effect.
11. Contact Information
If you have any questions, concerns, feedback, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal information, please contact our Data Protection and Support Team:
Support & Privacy Email: support@dagutech.et / privacy@dagutech.et