Ascend ("Ascend", "we", "us", "our") is a study and grade-tracking app for students, published by an independent developer. This Privacy Policy explains, in detail, what information the app collects, why, how it's used, who it's shared with, how long it's kept, and the choices you have. If anything here is unclear, email us — contact info is at the bottom.
Ascend lets a student connect their school's Home Access Center (HAC) — or, for some districts, other student information systems such as Skyward or Infinite Campus — to view grades, assignments, and attendance inside one app. Ascend also offers an optional AI Study Tool that can read a photo of a homework problem and generate an explanation, and a gamified progress system (XP, streaks, levels) to encourage consistent studying. Some features require a paid subscription (Ascend Plus or Ascend Pro), purchased through Apple's In-App Purchase system.
When you connect your school portal account, you provide your portal username and password directly to Ascend. This is sent, over an encrypted connection, through our server to your school district's own portal (HAC, Skyward, Infinite Campus, or another system your district uses) so that grades, assignments, schedule, and attendance data can be retrieved on your behalf. We do not independently verify or control what data your district's portal makes available — that is determined entirely by your school district's own systems and policies.
Once authenticated, we retrieve and temporarily hold the academic data your portal returns — course names, grades, assignment scores, GPA-related figures, and attendance — so it can be displayed in the app and used for features like the GPA Prediction Calculator.
If you use the camera-based AI Study Tool, the photo you capture (or select) is transmitted to our server and then to a third-party AI provider (see Section 5) to generate a written explanation. We do not use these photos to train our own models, and we do not attach your name or account identity to the photo content itself when it is sent to the AI provider.
We store data needed to make your progress persist across sessions and devices: your subscription tier, XP totals, streak counts, levels, in-app currency/rewards, and similar gamification state.
Subscriptions are sold and processed entirely through Apple's In-App Purchase (StoreKit) system. We receive confirmation of your subscription status (so the app can unlock the correct tier) but we never receive, see, or store your payment card details, billing address, or other financial information — that is handled exclusively by Apple.
Like most apps, some basic technical information (such as error logs, app version, and general device type) may be generated automatically to help us debug problems. We do not use this information to build an advertising profile of you.
We do not use your academic data, photos, or portal credentials for advertising, and we do not sell this information to data brokers or marketers.
We share only what is necessary to provide the service, with the following categories of recipients:
We do not sell personal information. We do not share your data with advertising networks or data brokers.
Ascend is an independent app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to Home Access Center, Skyward, Infinite Campus, or any school district. Each of those systems has its own privacy practices governing the data your school chooses to make available through them, which we do not control. We encourage you to review your school district's own privacy notices if you have questions about what data they collect on their platforms directly.
Portal passwords are used only to establish your session with your school's portal and are not stored in plaintext on our servers beyond what is needed to complete that session. Academic data retrieved from your portal is cached briefly to make the app responsive, and refreshed on your next login. AI Study Tool answers may be cached (keyed to the normalized question text, not to your identity) so that a repeated question doesn't require a new AI request — this cache is not linked back to any individual user. Account/progress data (XP, streaks, tier) is retained for as long as your account is active, and deleted upon a verified deletion request (see Section 9).
Data in transit between the app and our server, and between our server and your school's portal, is encrypted (HTTPS/TLS). Access to production systems is limited to the app's developer. As with any online service, we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we do not take shortcuts that put your credentials or academic data at unnecessary risk.
Ascend is used by students, a portion of whom are under the age of 13. We are mindful of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and comparable student-privacy expectations under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which governs education records held by schools:
If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with information beyond what's described here, or you have any concern about how your child's data is handled, please contact us and we will address it directly.
To exercise any of these rights, email us at the address in Section 13.
Ascend does not display third-party advertising and does not use third-party ad-tracking SDKs. We do not use cookies in the traditional web sense, as Ascend is a native mobile app rather than a website.
Our server infrastructure and the third-party AI providers we use may process data in the United States or other countries where those providers operate. By using Ascend, you understand that your information may be processed outside of the country in which you reside.
We may update this Privacy Policy as the app evolves — for example, if we add a new AI provider or a new integration. We will update the "Last updated" date above when we do. Continued use of the app after a change means you accept the updated policy. If a change is significant, we will make reasonable efforts to bring it to your attention within the app.
Questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or your data: pappusrikara@gmail.com