Privacy

The study guides on papers.wicker.life · last updated 14 October 2026

These guides are a personal project by David Wicker (wicker.life) to help classmates prepare for exams. You can use every guide without an account; an account only saves your progress across devices and gives a larger daily allowance for the AI tutor.

Without an account

• Your progress, answers and settings stay in your own browser (local storage). Your progress itself is not sent to the server; only the learning activity described under "Community and learning statistics" is.
• If you use AI features, a random anonymous identifier cookie and a one-way hash of your IP address are used only to count the daily free allowance.
• Anonymous page analytics (PostHog, EU) record which pages are visited and which features are used, without your name or email.

With an account

• Sign-in uses Google or a one-time code sent to your email. We store your name, email address and profile picture (if you sign in with Google) to identify your account.
• Your study progress, checkpoint results and tutor conversations are stored so they follow you across devices.
• If you add your own Anthropic or OpenAI API key, it is stored encrypted and used only to answer your own requests.

Community and learning statistics

• Learning activity. While you study, the guides send short activity records to the server: which question you answered (score and whether it was your first try, time taken), when you reveal an answer, read a lesson step, finish a checkpoint or an exam simulation, and when you use the tutor, grading or "Listen". We also count, per day, which study tools you open (for example the tutor, a checkpoint, the exam simulation or Play), with no content, only the tool, the course and the day, so we can see which tools help. Each record carries your account (if signed in) or the random anonymous identifier cookie, the course and the step. They are used for leaderboards and to show which questions students find hard ("41% get this right first time"). Once per course, the same kind of records is also created from the study history this browser already kept (attempts, read lessons, checkpoint and exam results from the last 120 days) and, if you are signed in, from your synced progress, with their original dates, so earlier work counts too. Statistics shown to others are aggregates. Anonymous visitors are never named: on leaderboards they appear under a random nickname (see below). Raw activity records are kept for 13 months, then deleted.
• Live presence. While a guide is open and visible, your browser tells the server every minute which course, block and step you are on, so the guides can show how many students are studying right now. Only the latest position is kept; it is deleted after one day.
• Leaderboards, "studying now" avatars and the activity feed. If you are signed in, you appear there under a public display name (by default your first name and last initial, e.g. "David W.") and your profile picture, never your email address. In Settings → Community ("What others see") you can change the name and separately choose whether you appear on leaderboards, in live presence and in the activity feed; changes take effect immediately. If you hide yourself from leaderboards you still see your own rank, but nobody else does. If you hide yourself from presence you are still counted in the anonymous "studying now" numbers, like visitors without an account.
• Leaderboards without an account. If you study without signing in and earn points, you appear on leaderboards under a random nickname such as "Quiet Otter", with a generated pattern as your picture. The nickname is made from the random anonymous identifier cookie with a secret key that stays on our server, so it is not linked to who you are and nobody else can work out which browser it belongs to. You can hide yourself at any time ("Hide me from the leaderboard" next to your own row, or Settings → Community); we then store only that choice against the same anonymous identifier, and you still see your own rank privately. Anonymous visitors never appear in "studying now" avatars or the activity feed. If you sign in, your activity moves to your account and you appear under your chosen display name instead of the nickname (and stay hidden if you had hidden yourself).
• What you see. Separate settings ("What I see", including Focus mode) hide presence, the activity feed, difficulty hints, rank nudges or discussion links from your own screen. They are stored in your browser and, when signed in, with your profile.
• Forum. Discussions and replies you post are public and always show your display name and picture, even if you hide yourself from leaderboards. You can edit a post for 24 hours and delete it at any time. Reports of a post and new discussions are emailed to the site owner for moderation; we also store your votes ("Helpful") and which discussions you have read (for unread badges).

AI features

• When you use the tutor, AI grading or "Listen", the relevant lesson content and your question or answer are sent to Anthropic (Claude) and, for audio and live voice, OpenAI, to generate the response. Live voice streams your microphone audio to OpenAI only while a session is active.
• Generated lesson audio is cached and shared, since it contains only course content.
• Screenshots, images and PDFs you attach to a tutor question or a written answer are stored (Vercel Blob, at an unguessable address) to answer or grade it and are deleted after 30 days.
• If you connect your own Claude Code or Codex (Settings → Local Claude Code or Codex), your questions go to the bridge on your computer and are answered there under your own Claude or ChatGPT account. In Chrome, Edge or Firefox on that computer they go to it directly. In relay mode (Safari, phones and other devices) your tutor messages and the answers pass through this site's server briefly: they are stored only until they are delivered and deleted right after (at most 10 minutes), and their content is never logged. The pairing is kept, as a random identifier tied to your account or anonymous cookie, until you unpair, run the bridge with --forget, delete your data, or the bridge has not been online for 7 days; stopping the bridge only marks it offline. The bridge keeps its own random key and hashed copies of the tokens it handed out in a file on your computer (~/.papers-bridge.json, readable only by you), so it reconnects after a restart. If you run it in the background (--install), it also keeps a short status log on your computer (~/.papers-bridge/bridge.log, at most about 1 MB, never the content of your messages), which --uninstall removes.

Where data is stored

Accounts and progress are stored in a Neon Postgres database in Frankfurt (EU); the site and cached audio are hosted on Vercel. Data is never sold or used for advertising.

Your choices

• You can sign out at any time; your local progress stays in your browser.
• "Delete my data" in the account settings permanently deletes your account, progress, conversations, stored keys, learning activity records, live presence, community profile, votes, reports and forum posts. Discussions you started are deleted too; if other students replied, the discussion stays for them with your text replaced by "[deleted]" and no author.
• Without an account, "Hide me from the leaderboard" (next to your own row on the leaderboard, or in Settings → Community) removes your nickname from every leaderboard at once; switch it back the same way.
• Settings → Community lets you change your display name, choose separately whether you appear on leaderboards, in live presence and in the activity feed, and choose what community information you see yourself.
• Questions or requests: davidwickerhf@gmail.com.