Privacy Policy

The short version

You can use SkillSpark without an account. Without one, your progress stays on your phone and we hold no personal information about you.
If you sign in with Apple to save your progress, we hold an email address from Apple, a display name, your lesson progress, and whether you own the one-time unlock.
Photos you take for a lesson challenge stay on your phone. They are never uploaded and we never see them.
The app includes product analytics, which is switched off. We do not run ads, we do not track you across other apps or websites, and we do not sell or rent your information to anyone.
You can have your account and everything attached to it deleted at any time.

1. Who we are

SkillSpark is made by Player Piano AI, a division of Ayres Capital Enterprises LTD., a Canadian company based in Toronto, Ontario. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean Ayres Capital Enterprises LTD., and "the app" means the SkillSpark application for iPhone.

This policy covers the app and the skillspark.ca website. We are the organization responsible for the personal information described here, and we handle it in line with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

2. What we collect

Using SkillSpark without an account

An account is optional. The app offers Continue without an account at the start, and you can browse all 50 skills and do the free lessons. Your progress and streaks are kept only on your phone. Your phone asks our servers for the lesson content and its images, the same way any website serves a page. If the product analytics described in section 4 is turned on, it also records that lessons were opened. Nothing identifies you, because without an account there is no identity to attach anything to.

Your account, if you make one

To save your progress to an account, you sign in with Sign in with Apple. Apple authenticates you and hands us an identity token. From that token our authentication service records an account identifier and an email address.

If you choose Apple's Hide My Email option, the address in that token is an Apple private relay address, and we never see your real one. We never see your Apple ID password either.

Alongside that we store a display name. If Apple passes your name along at sign-up we use it, and if it does not, the app calls you "Learner". You can also record which skill categories interest you, which is used to order the catalogue.

Your learning progress

When you are signed in, the app syncs your lesson progress so it follows you to a new phone: which lessons you completed, XP earned per lesson, how many cards you got right, and how long a lesson took.

Your streaks, badges, and daily activity totals stay on your device. They are not uploaded.

Your purchase state

SkillSpark is free to download with one optional in-app purchase, Unlock Everything, at $19.99. When you buy it, Apple's StoreKit completes the transaction and the app sends four things to our server so the purchase can be verified with Apple and restored later: your account identifier, the Apple transaction identifier, the product identifier, and whether the purchase was made in Apple's production or sandbox environment.

No payment details ever reach us. Apple processes the payment. We never see your card number, billing address, or any financial information, and we never receive an Apple receipt.

Photos you take for a lesson challenge

Some lessons end with a photo challenge. If you take part, the app asks permission to use your camera or photo library.

The photo is saved to the app's own folder on your phone and is never uploaded. The app keeps a count of how many photo challenges you have completed, which is used for a badge, and that count is stored on your device.

Deleting the app removes those photos along with everything else the app stored locally. If you skip the photo challenges, nothing is captured and no permission is requested.

Notifications

Daily practice reminders are off until you turn them on. If you turn them on while signed in, iOS issues a device token for push notifications and we store it against your account so the reminder can be delivered. It identifies the app on your device, not you, and it is used for nothing but reminders. Turning reminders off, or turning off notifications for SkillSpark in iOS Settings, stops them.

Crash and performance reports

SkillSpark contains no crash-reporting or diagnostics service of its own. It relies on Apple's built-in crash reporting, which you control in iOS under Settings, Privacy & Security, Analytics & Improvements. Those reports go to Apple, and any share of them we can see is not linked to your identity.

3. What we do not collect

The app does not collect:

No location. The app never requests precise or coarse location, and carries no location permission at all.
No contacts, calendar, microphone, or health data.
No advertising identifier. There is no IDFA use, no App Tracking Transparency prompt, and no advertising SDK in the app.
No browsing or search history from outside the app.
No cross-app or cross-site tracking of any kind, and no sharing with data brokers.
No financial information. Apple handles payment end to end.

4. Analytics

The app includes Mixpanel product analytics. It is switched off in the current version, so no usage event is sent. Before we turn it on, we will update this policy and the App Store privacy label.

When it is on, it measures how the product performs: that the app was opened, that a lesson was started or completed, whether a card was answered correctly and how long it took, that a skill page was viewed, that a badge or streak milestone was reached, that the purchase screen was shown. Events are keyed to your account identifier when you are signed in. No lesson content you write, and no photo you take for a challenge, is ever included in an analytics event. A completed photo challenge sends the lesson and card identifiers and nothing more.

When analytics is on:

It is never used to track you across other apps or websites, and there is no advertising identifier, no App Tracking Transparency prompt, and no ad SDK in the app.
Analytics data is never sold, rented, or shared with advertisers or data brokers.

The skillspark.ca website uses Umami, a cookieless web analytics tool that we host ourselves. It records page views and clicks in aggregate, sets no cookies, collects no personal data, and runs on servers located outside Canada.

5. How we use your information

What	Why we hold it
Email address	To identify your account, restore your purchase, and reach you about your account if something goes wrong.
Display name	To greet you inside the app.
Interests	To put the skills you care about at the top of the catalogue.
Lesson progress	To sync your place across your devices.
Purchase record	To verify the purchase with Apple and unlock the content you paid for, on every device you sign in on.
Notification token	To deliver the daily reminder, if you turned reminders on.
Usage events	To see which lessons work and which ones lose people, so the content gets better. See section 4.

We do not use your information for advertising or for automated decisions that affect you. We do not send marketing email to app accounts. If you joined the launch waiting list on skillspark.ca, that is a separate, consent-based list you can leave at any time using the unsubscribe link in any message.

6. Where your information is stored

Account records, lesson progress, and purchase records are held in our Supabase backend, which provides the database and authentication. Access is restricted by row-level security rules, so an account can only read and write its own rows. Purchase verification runs through Apple's StoreKit and a small function on the same backend. Lesson artwork is served from that backend as ordinary public image files, the same as images on any website.

Cross-border storage. Supabase, Apple, Mixpanel, Railway and Amazon Web Services operate infrastructure outside Canada, including in the United States. Your information may therefore be stored or processed outside Canada and may be accessible to foreign courts, law enforcement, and national security authorities under the laws of those countries. Using the app means you understand this.

A good deal stays on your device and never moves: your sign-in session (held in the iOS Keychain), your streaks, badges and daily activity, your challenge photos, your notification preferences, and a cache of lesson content and images so the app works offline. Deleting the app removes all of it. There is also a Clear Cache control in the app under Profile, Offline Storage, which clears the downloaded lesson content.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. There are no advertisers, brokers, or data partners in this product.

We share information only with the service providers that make the app run, and only to the extent they need it:

Apple, for sign-in, payment processing, and app delivery, under Apple's own privacy policy.
Supabase, for database, authentication, and file storage.
Mixpanel, for the product analytics described in section 4, when it is turned on.
Maestro, our own email platform built by Player Piano AI and hosted on Railway, which holds the skillspark.ca launch waiting list, and Amazon SES, which delivers its emails.

We may also disclose information if we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to protect our rights, safety, or property. If the business is ever sold or reorganized, personal information may transfer as part of that transaction, and this policy would continue to apply until you are told otherwise.

8. Deleting your account

You can have your account and everything attached to it deleted at any time. That covers your account record, email address, display name, interests, lesson progress, purchase record, and notification token. Deleting the account removes every row linked to it.

To request deletion, email support@skillspark.ca from the address on your account with the subject "Delete my SkillSpark account". We action deletion requests within 30 days and confirm by email when it is done. Full instructions are on the support page.

Anything held only on your phone, including your challenge photos, streaks and badges, is removed by deleting the app. We cannot delete those for you because we never had them.

One thing deletion cannot undo. Your in-app purchase belongs to your Apple ID, not to us, so deleting your SkillSpark account does not refund it and does not remove it from Apple's records. If you later sign in again with the same Apple ID, you can restore the unlock. Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

We keep account information for as long as your account exists. Backups roll off on their own schedule and are fully purged within 90 days of a deletion.

9. Children

SkillSpark is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. The app is rated for older users on the App Store and is not offered under Apple's Kids Category. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email us and we will delete it and the information attached to it.

10. Your rights

Under PIPEDA and comparable provincial legislation you have the right to:

Ask what personal information we hold about you and get a copy of it.
Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
Withdraw your consent. For an account, that means deleting it, and the app keeps working without one.
Ask us to delete it, subject to any legal obligation we have to keep records.

Email support@skillspark.ca and we will respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with how we have handled a privacy matter, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

11. Security

Traffic between the app and our backend runs over TLS. Access to stored data is restricted by row-level rules so an account can only reach its own records, and administrative access is limited to the people who need it. No system is perfectly secure. We hold no payment data, no location and no advertising identifiers.

12. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information, we will post the revised policy here with a new date. Material changes will also be flagged in the app. Continuing to use SkillSpark after a change means you accept the revised policy.

13. Contact us

Privacy questions, access requests, and deletion requests all go to the same place.

Email: support@skillspark.ca
Post: Ayres Capital Enterprises LTD., 10 Sonora Terrace, Scarborough, Ontario M1N 1H8, Canada

Andrew Ayres is the privacy contact for Ayres Capital Enterprises LTD.