Privacy Policy

What we collect

Account details. Your email address, the display name you choose, and your study track (student, mechanic, or IA candidate). Your password is stored only as an encrypted hash by our authentication provider — we never see it.

Your study activity. Practice-quiz answers and scores, mock-oral transcripts and debriefs, and which study units you have opened. This is what powers your progress dashboard and weak-area targeting.

Payment details. Handled entirely by Stripe. We never see or store your card number. We keep only Stripe's customer and subscription identifiers so we know your plan is active.

Technical information. Standard server logs from our hosting provider, including IP address, browser type, and pages requested.

Information stored in your own browser. Flashcard progress and flags, your examiner-voice preference, and the guest-preview timer are kept in your browser's local storage, not on our servers.

Microphone and voice mode

The microphone is used only while you have voice mode switched on in the mock oral exam, and only after your browser asks your permission. You can answer by typing instead at any time.

Where your speech goes. Speech-to-text is performed by your web browser, not by us. In most browsers — including Google Chrome — the browser sends your recorded audio to its own servers (for Chrome, Google's) to convert it to text. That transcription happens under your browser vendor's privacy policy, not ours. We receive only the resulting text, which is saved as part of your mock-oral transcript so you can review it and get a debrief. We do not record, store, or transmit raw audio ourselves.

The examiner's voice. To speak a question aloud, we send the examiner's question text — not your voice, and not your personal details — to OpenAI, which returns the spoken audio.

How AI is used

The mock oral examiner, the reference tutor, and on-demand answer explanations are generated by AI models from Anthropic. To produce a response, the text of your question or answer and the relevant conversation is sent to Anthropic's API. Text for the spoken voice is sent to OpenAI as described above.

Under these providers' standard API terms, content sent through their APIs is not used to train their models. We do not send them your name, email address, or payment details.

AI-generated content can contain errors. ChatDME is a supplementary self-study tool — not FAA-approved training, and not a substitute for a Part 147 program or a Designated Mechanic Examiner. Always verify anything important against official FAA publications.

Advertising and cookies

We advertise through Google Ads. Our site loads Google's advertising tag, which sets cookies in your browser so Google can tell whether a visit came from one of our ads and whether it later led to a subscription. For that purpose we report the purchase amount and a payment reference to Google; we do not send Google your name or email address.

We do not build advertising profiles ourselves, and we do not share your study data with advertisers.

You can control this: opt out of personalised Google advertising at adssettings.google.com, or block these cookies using your browser settings or an ad blocker. Blocking them does not affect your ability to use ChatDME. We also use cookies that are strictly necessary to keep you signed in.

How we use your information

To provide the service — create your account, keep you signed in, track your progress, run your mock orals, and give you a debrief.

To take payment and manage your subscription.

To keep the service working and secure — diagnosing errors, preventing abuse, and controlling costs.

To communicate with you about your account, such as sign-in links and confirmations.

To measure whether our advertising works, as described above.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with the service providers that make ChatDME run:

Supabase — database and sign-in.

Vercel — website hosting.

Anthropic — AI examiner, tutor, and explanations.

OpenAI — the examiner's spoken voice.

Stripe — payment processing.

Google — advertising measurement.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect our rights or the safety of others.

How long we keep it

We keep your account and study history for as long as your account exists, so your progress is there when you come back. Ask us to delete your account and we will remove your personal information and study data, other than records we must keep for tax, accounting, or fraud-prevention purposes. Server logs are kept for a short period by our hosting provider.

Your choices and rights

You can view and correct your account details after signing in, and you can ask us to send you a copy of your data or to delete your account entirely — just email us.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights over your personal information, including access, correction, deletion, and the right not to be treated differently for exercising them. We honour these requests regardless of where you live.

You can cancel your subscription at any time from the manage-subscription link on the pricing page; you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for.

Security

Traffic to ChatDME is encrypted in transit. Your study data is protected by database rules that allow you to read only your own records, and payment card details never touch our servers. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your information.

Children

ChatDME is intended for adults preparing for FAA certification and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page. Significant changes will be highlighted on the site.

Contact us

Questions about this policy, or want your data exported or deleted? Email us at support@aporalexam.com and we will respond.