Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 24, 2026
1. Who we are
Socratly (socratly.ai and each book's site at bookCode.socratly.ai) is run by PaceWorks LLC, a limited liability company of the State of California. PaceWorks LLC decides how your personal data is used: in privacy law, it is the "data controller".
Contact: contact@paceworks.com
2. Whom this policy covers
- Readers: anyone who browses Socratly or opens an account to ask questions about a book.
- BookAdmins and Experts: authors, educators and other experts who run a book's question-and-answer portal, upload material they declare they own or may use, and answer readers.
- Sponsoring organizations: organizations that pay for their members' questions.
You must be at least 18 to open an account. By opening an account, you confirm that you are.
3. What we collect
| What | Examples | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Name, email address, password (stored only in scrambled form, never readable) | You, when you sign up |
| Questions and answers | Your questions, follow-ups, the answers, translations you ask for | You, our AI services, the book's BookAdmin or an Expert |
| Private questions | The same, stored encrypted | You, with Privacy mode on |
| Ratings | Thumbs up or down and any comment you add | You |
| Points and purchases | Points balance, purchase history, Fan Club memberships | You and our payment provider. Your card details go to Square and never reach us |
| Proof of purchase | A screenshot of a book order you upload, showing your name, the order date, the amount paid and the order number | You, when you claim a book's purchase reward |
| BookAdmin, Expert and organization details | Profile, photo, application details, books managed, earnings records, organization contact details | You, when you apply or set up your account |
| Shares | Questions you choose to share on the Shared Questions Board or by link | You |
| Technical data | IP address and browser details in our hosting providers' logs; the anti-bot check at sign-in; counts of page views, recording plays and share-button clicks on public pages, which carry no identifier and no cookie | Your browser |
| Preferences | Answer language, Privacy mode, display choices | Stored in your own browser, not sent to us |
We do not collect payment card numbers, and we do not buy data about you from anyone.
4. How we use your data
For readers in the European Union, the United Kingdom and similar places, each use rests on a legal basis under the GDPR, shown in the right-hand column.
| Use | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Running your account and answering your questions | Contract: providing the service you signed up for (Art. 6.1.b) |
| Selling points, Fan Club memberships and BookAdmin plans; paying BookAdmins and Experts their share | Contract (Art. 6.1.b); legal duties such as tax records (Art. 6.1.c) |
| Checking a proof of purchase and granting the reward | Contract (Art. 6.1.b) |
| Emails about your questions, answers and account | Contract (Art. 6.1.b) |
| Showing a stored answer to another reader who asks the same or a very similar question (see below) | Legitimate interest: faster, cheaper answers for all readers (Art. 6.1.f) |
| Blocking bots, fake accounts and abuse | Legitimate interest: keeping the service safe (Art. 6.1.f) |
| Counting page views, recording plays and shares, without cookies or a profile of you | Legitimate interest: knowing which pages are used (Art. 6.1.f) |
| Improving Socratly's answers (see below) | Legitimate interest (Art. 6.1.f) |
We never sell or rent your data and never use it for advertising.
AI answers
Most answers are written by AI from the book's own material, then sometimes reviewed by the book's BookAdmin or an Expert. To do this, the text of your question is sent to Google: to the Gemini API, and to the book's Gemini Notebook through an automated browser we run on Fly.io. Your name and email address are not sent with it. Answers may also be read aloud by Google's text-to-speech service when you ask for it.
Answers reused for other readers
When another reader asks the same or a very similar question about the same book, Socratly may show them a stored answer instead of asking the AI again. Only the answer and the question's wording are reused, never who asked. Answers to private questions are never reused.
Improving Socratly
We may use questions, answers and ratings to evaluate and improve the quality of Socratly's answers. Private questions, their answers and ratings, and deleted questions are never used for this.
5. Who sees your data
People on Socratly
- The book's BookAdmin (usually its author) sees the questions asked about that book, with the asker's name, and their ratings. They also see any proof-of-purchase screenshot you upload for that book.
- Experts chosen by the BookAdmin see the questions sent to them for review, including private questions sent for expert review.
- A sponsoring organization sees your name and email address, how many questions you ask and how many points you use, never the questions themselves.
- Socratly's administrators at PaceWorks LLC can see account data to run and support the service.
What becomes public
- Shared questions: when you share a question on the Shared Questions Board or by link, its text and answer become public, without your name. They stay public even if you later delete the question.
- Published questions and answers: a BookAdmin may publish some of the book's sample questions, with answers they have approved, as public pages that search engines and AI chatbots can read. Sample questions are sometimes worded from questions readers asked. A published page never names a reader.
Service providers
These companies process data for us, only to provide their service:
| Provider | What it does for Socratly |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Anti-bot check (Turnstile) at sign-up and sign-in |
| Fly.io | Runs the automated browser that asks the book's Gemini Notebook |
| Gemini AI answers and checks, Gemini Notebook, text-to-speech, our email (Google Workspace) | |
| HeyGen | Makes the video clips a BookAdmin orders for a published question: receives the clip's script or audio, never readers' data |
| Resend | Sends Socratly's emails |
| Square | Card payments for points and plans |
| Supabase | Database, sign-in and file storage |
| Vercel | Hosts the website; counts page views without cookies |
We may also disclose data when the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of users and of PaceWorks LLC.
6. How long we keep it
| Data | Kept until |
|---|---|
| Account | You close it in My Profile (Danger Zone), confirming by a link we email you, or you write to contact@paceworks.com. Closing erases your questions and the rest of your data as described here, except your name and email, which we keep as a record that the account was closed and to stop the same email from opening a new account. Payment records and copies you shared publicly also stay, as stated above |
| A question and its answer | You delete it. Deleting a question erases its text, its answer, its translations and everything worked out from it; only an empty record remains for our accounts |
| Shared copies of a question | They stay public after you delete the question, as the share dialog warns |
| The book's Gemini Notebook chat | Cleared automatically after every 10 answers. Google may keep its own copies for a time under its policies |
| Proof-of-purchase screenshots | Your account is closed |
| Payment and earnings records | As long as tax and accounting law requires |
| Hosting logs | As set by each hosting provider, usually days to weeks |
7. Where your data goes
PaceWorks LLC and most of its providers are in the United States, so your data is stored and processed there. If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, your data is transferred to the United States.
8. How we protect it
- Connections to Socratly are encrypted (HTTPS).
- Passwords are stored only in scrambled form.
- Private questions are encrypted in our database, and only you and the people you send them to can read them.
- Access to the database is limited to the services that need it.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you as the law requires.
9. Your rights
You can ask us to:
- show you the personal data we hold about you, and give you a copy in a common format;
- correct it;
- delete it, or close your account;
- stop or limit a use of it, including the improvement of Socratly's answers.
You can delete your own questions, or close your account, at any time in the app. For anything else, write to contact@paceworks.com. We answer within one month. If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you may also complain to your data-protection authority.
10. Cookies and browser storage
Socratly uses no advertising or tracking cookies. It sets only the cookies it needs to work:
| Cookie | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Sign-in cookies (Supabase) | Keep you signed in |
| book_unlock_… | Remember that you entered a private book's access code |
| impersonating | Lets a Socratly administrator see the site as a BookAdmin sees it, for support; set only in administrators' browsers |
Your preferences, such as answer language and Privacy mode, are kept in your own browser's storage and are not sent to us. Page views are counted by Vercel without cookies. The anti-bot check from Cloudflare runs at sign-up and sign-in. The share buttons on public pages are plain links: nothing is loaded from a social network until you click one, and that network's own privacy policy then applies.
11. Children
Socratly is for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has an account, write to us and we will delete it.
12. Changes to this policy
We will post any change on this page with a new date. If a change matters to how we use your data, we will also tell account holders by email before it takes effect.
Contact us
PaceWorks LLC, 3130 Balfour Rd, Suite D-408, Brentwood, CA 94513, United States — contact@paceworks.com