Privacy Policy.

This policy explains what information we collect when you use Beka, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have. We’ve written it to be readable. Where the law uses a specific term, we use that term and explain it.

Beka is available in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and South Africa. It is not offered in the European Union or the United Kingdom, and this policy does not provide EU/UK data-protection rights.

1. Who we are

Beka is operated by Willem Bekker trading as Beka (ABN 20 917 156 101), based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (“we,” “us,” “our”).

You can reach us about privacy at hello@beka-app.com.

2. The short version

• Beka is a tool for parents. Parents sign up and use the app. Children do not log in, do not have accounts, and do not use Beka.
• You forward school emails to a Beka address, or record a quick voice note, and we turn them into events and to-dos in your family feed.
• We don’t sell your information, we don’t share it for advertising, and we don’t track you across other apps or websites. There is no advertising in Beka.
• We use a small set of trusted service providers to run the app (listed in Section 6). Two of them — the providers that read your forwarded emails and transcribe your voice notes — are AI providers in the United States. They are contractually barred from training their models on your data.
• You can ask us to delete your account and everything in it at any time.

3. Information we collect, and from whom

We collect:

• Account information you give us: your name and email address, and the credentials you use to sign in.
• Content you send us: the school emails you forward to your Beka inbound address (including any images attached to them), and the voice notes you record. This content is provided by you — it is not collected from anyone else, and never from a child.
• The information we extract from that content: events, dates, action items, and the details needed to show them in your feed. This may include the names of your children and other people mentioned in a school email (for example, a class teacher or another child named in a group message).
• Subscription and payment status, if and when paid plans are introduced. (We do not currently process payments. Card details, when applicable, would be handled by our payment provider, not stored by us.)
• Basic technical and diagnostic information needed to keep the service running (for example, error logs).

We do not collect location data, advertising identifiers, or biometric identifiers, and we do not build advertising or tracking profiles.

4. How and why we use information

We use your information only to provide and operate Beka:

• to create and manage your account and let you sign in;
• to read the emails you forward and transcribe the voice notes you record, so we can extract events and to-dos;
• to show those items in your family feed;
• to respond to you, provide support, and keep the service secure and working;
• to comply with our legal obligations.

We do not use your information for advertising, for cross-context behavioural advertising, or to train any AI model of our own, and our AI providers are contractually barred from training their models on it.

5. Children’s information

This is the part of Beka that matters most, so we want to be clear about it.

• Parents are our users. Children are not. Children do not log in to Beka, do not have accounts, and do not use the app.
• Information about a child reaches us only because a parent provides it — by forwarding a school email or recording a voice note. The parent is the child’s parent or guardian and is the adult who decides to share that information with us. We rely on the parent’s authority (and, where the law requires it, the parent’s consent as the child’s “competent person” or guardian) to handle that information.
• What we process about a child is typically a name, school events and schedules, and occasionally a photo contained in a forwarded email. We use it only to produce the family feed for that parent.
• Images and voice notes are processed but not stored by us. When you attach an image to a forwarded email, or record a voice note, that content is sent to our AI provider for the moment it takes to read or transcribe it, and is not kept on our systems afterwards.
• We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from a child, and Beka is not directed to or designed for children.
• You can have a child’s information removed by removing that child from your family, or by deleting your account (Section 10). Deleting your account removes the children’s information in it.

6. Who we share information with

We don’t sell your information and we don’t share it for advertising. We use the following service providers (“processors”) to run Beka. Each is bound by a data-processing agreement and may use your information only to provide its service to us:

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the safety of people or the security of the service, or as part of a business transfer (in which case we’ll tell you).

7. International data transfers

Beka is operated from Australia. Your information is stored with our database provider in Singapore, and is processed by our other providers in the United States (Anthropic and OpenAI for extraction and transcription, Postmark for inbound email, and Vercel for hosting and compute). Where we transfer your information across borders, we do so under contractual protections with each provider. Country-specific detail is in Section 11.

8. How long we keep information

• Account information is kept while your account is active.
• Extracted feed items are kept while your account is active.
• When you delete your account, we purge your account information and feed items within 30 days (this window covers ordinary processing time and the rotation of routine backups).
• Images and voice notes are not retained — they are processed transiently for extraction or transcription and not stored on our systems.
• Operational logs are kept for about 30 days and then deleted, unless we’re required to keep them longer.
• Our providers apply their own retention windows to the content they process for us, as noted in Section 6.

9. How we protect information

We take concrete steps to protect your information:

• Information is encrypted in transit using TLS.
• Information stored in our database is encrypted at rest by our database provider.
• Access to production systems is restricted to us.
• Row-level security in our database enforces strict separation between families, so one family’s information cannot be accessed by another.

No system is perfectly secure, and we don’t claim certifications we don’t hold. If a data breach affects you, we will notify you and the relevant regulator where the law requires.

10. Your choices and how to contact us

You can review and update your account information in the app at any time, and remove a child from your family. You can delete your account and all associated data from within the app at Settings → Account. For any other privacy request — access, correction, or deletion by email — contact hello@beka-app.com. Jurisdiction-specific rights are in Section 11.

11. Jurisdiction-specific rights and disclosures

11.1 Australia and New Zealand

Australia. We are not currently an “APP entity” under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (we are a small business below the relevant turnover threshold). As a matter of practice, we handle your information consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). You may ask us for access to the personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct it, by contacting hello@beka-app.com. If you have a privacy concern, you can contact us first; you may also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).

New Zealand. We are subject to the Privacy Act 2020, and we handle personal information in accordance with the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs). This includes IPP 3A, which concerns telling people when we collect their information indirectly (from someone other than themselves).

Because Beka receives information about children from their parents — not from the children — we collect children’s information indirectly. We do not give separate notice to each child, because doing so is not reasonably practicable: children do not use Beka, we have no way to contact them, and the parent providing the information is the child’s parent or guardian. This is the parent’s information to share on the child’s behalf.

You may ask us for access to your personal information and ask us to correct it. You can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz).

11.2 United States

Beka is a parent utility, not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Information about children is provided by their parents.

Children’s privacy (COPPA). The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) applies to online services directed to children, and to general-audience services that knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Beka is not subject to COPPA because it is not directed to children and does not knowingly collect personal information from children online. Children do not use Beka; parents provide any information about their children.

Your California privacy rights. If you are a California resident, you have the rights below. (We honour these regardless of whether we currently meet the thresholds that make a business formally subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act, because they reflect how we operate anyway.)

• Right to know what personal information we collect, why, and who we share it with — this policy is that disclosure.
• Right to delete the personal information we hold about you.
• Right to correct inaccurate personal information.
• Right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of your personal information. Under California law, “sell” means disclosing personal information for money or other value, and “share” means disclosing it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not sell or share your personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of.
• Right to non-discrimination — we will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights.

To exercise any of these rights, contact hello@beka-app.com. We will verify your request before acting on it.

Notice at collection. We collect the following categories of personal information, in each case only to provide and operate Beka, and we retain it as described in Section 8:

• Identifiers (name, email, account ID) — to create and run your account.
• Customer records / contact information (name, email) — to communicate with you and provide support.
• Commercial information (subscription status, when applicable) — to manage paid plans.
• The contents of communications you forward to us, and voice notes you record, and any images in them — to extract events and to-dos. Some of this may include what California law calls “sensitive personal information” (for example, the contents of a communication where we are not the intended recipient). We use such information only to provide the service — not to infer characteristics about you — so the right to limit its use is not engaged, and we do not sell or share it.
• Internet and electronic activity, and diagnostic information — to keep the service secure and working.

We do not sell or share any of these categories, and we do not use personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising.

11.3 South Africa

This section uses the terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (“POPIA”). Under POPIA, we are the “responsible party” (the party that decides why and how your personal information is processed), the people whose information we process are “data subjects,” and the providers in Section 6 that process information on our behalf are “operators.”

Responsible party. Willem Bekker trading as Beka (ABN 20 917 156 101), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Contact: hello@beka-app.com.

Children’s information. POPIA generally prohibits processing a child’s personal information. We rely on the exception in section 35(1)(a): we process a child’s personal information with the prior consent of a competent person — the child’s parent or guardian, who is our user and who provides the information.

What we tell you when we collect information (section 18).

• Purpose: we collect your information to provide Beka — to extract events and to-dos from the emails you forward and the voice notes you record, and to show them in your family feed.
• Recipients: we share information with the operators listed in Section 6 (Anthropic, OpenAI, Supabase, Postmark, Vercel).
• Voluntary: providing your information is voluntary, but without it we cannot provide the service.
• Your rights and complaints: you may access and correct your information (below), and you may lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa): POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za (POPIA complaints), with formal complaints lodged via the eService portal at https://inforegulator.org.za.

Cross-border transfer (section 72). Our operators are all located outside South Africa: your information is stored in Singapore (Supabase) and processed in the United States (Anthropic and OpenAI to extract and transcribe the content you send us, Postmark to receive your forwarded email, and Vercel to host and run the service). We make these transfers on the basis that each of these operators is bound by contractual terms that provide a level of protection substantially similar to POPIA’s conditions for lawful processing, including substantially similar restrictions on any further transfer of the information to others.

Your rights (sections 23–25). You may:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• request correction of information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading, or unlawfully obtained;
• request deletion of your information.

To exercise these rights, contact hello@beka-app.com.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Beka changes or as the law changes. If we make a material change, we’ll update the “Last updated” date above and tell you in the app or by email before the change takes effect for you.

13. Contact

Questions or requests: hello@beka-app.com

Willem Bekker trading as Beka (ABN 20 917 156 101), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.