Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Bilimlink is made and run by one person, Murod Normuminov. It is not a big company. On this page “we” means Bilimlink.

This autumn we are running a pilot with teachers at private universities in Uzbekistan. During the pilot Bilimlink is free: we take no payments and keep no card details.

For anything about your data, write on Telegram to @bilimlinkbot.

2. What we keep about teachers

• Your name and, if you add them, your university or school, region, interface language and a profile picture.
• If you choose to give them when you first sign in: your birth year, faculty, the subjects you teach and your teaching load (how many groups, and how big). We use them only for statistics about who uses Bilimlink, and they aren’t shown to anyone.
• How you sign in. Username and password: the password is kept only as a secure hash, never as text. Telegram: your Telegram ID (a number) and your Telegram username. Google: your Google account ID and that account’s email address, kept only to show which Google account is connected. We don’t send you emails.
• When you accepted the Terms of Use and this policy, and which version you accepted.
• What you make in Bilimlink: worksheets, courses, groups, and the files you keep in a course (a syllabus, a week’s slides or readings).
• For every AI request: what it was for, which model answered, the number of tokens and an estimated cost. We use this to keep the free pilot within its limits, including the daily limits.

When you sign in with Telegram, the bot names the device that asked (for example, “iPhone · Safari”), so a sign-in that isn’t yours stands out. That short record is deleted about a day after it expires.

Our server also keeps ordinary technical logs, such as errors, to run and protect the service. Sign-up and sign-in attempts are counted by IP address in the server’s memory to slow down abuse; those counts are not saved.

3. What we keep about students

Students don’t need an account.

• Online: the name the student types, their answers, their mark, when they started and finished, and how long it took.
• On paper: the student (or the teacher) scans the QR code on the answer sheet and photographs the sheet. The name and group written on the sheet are read by the AI and checked, and corrected if needed, before the result is saved. We keep the name, the group, the answers as they were read, the mark, the answers the reader wasn’t sure of, and a smaller copy of the photo so the teacher can check. A photo that can't be read is kept for 7 days, not linked to the student's name, so we can see what went wrong and improve the reader; then it is deleted.
• Through the Telegram bot: a student who joins a teacher’s group with the invite link is stored with their Telegram first name (no surname), Telegram username and Telegram ID. That puts them on the group list, and the bot sends them the link when the teacher gives the group a worksheet.

In Bilimlink, results are shown to the teacher who owns the worksheet or the group: names, marks, answers and photos. The teacher can download them as a CSV or PDF file. The Bilimlink administrator can also open results, to help teachers and to check that marking works correctly.

After a paper sheet is checked, the student gets a link to their result and can save it as a picture. Anyone with that link can see that one result: the name, the group, the marks and, for a practice worksheet, the answers. The link is long and random, so it can’t be guessed.

The page that a printed sheet’s QR code opens shows the names in that group, so a student can tap theirs. Anyone who has that sheet’s QR code can see this list.

As the people running the service, we can technically see stored data. We look at it only when it is needed to run Bilimlink, fix a problem, or answer a request from you.

4. Your materials and the AI (Google Gemini)

Bilimlink uses Google’s Gemini API to:

• write a worksheet from your request and files, and change it when you ask in words;
• read a syllabus and turn it into a week-by-week plan;
• read the handwriting in the answer boxes of a photographed answer sheet, and the name and group written on it.

What is sent. The text of your request. Your files: pictures and PDFs, and only the text of Word and PowerPoint files. For a course: the syllabus, and the files you add to a week when its worksheet is made. For a paper answer sheet: one image of the answer boxes that have writing in them and one of the name and group lines, not the whole photo. Online answers, and the marks for paper answers, are checked by our own code, not by AI.

Google’s free tier. During the pilot, Bilimlink sends requests for worksheets and syllabi to Google’s free (unpaid) Gemini service first. Under Google’s terms for unpaid services, Google may use what is sent, and the replies, to improve its products and technology, and human reviewers at Google may read it. They go through our paid Gemini account instead when the free service is busy. Paper answer sheets, which carry the student’s name, go through the paid account first, and through the free service only if the paid one is busy. For paid use, Google says it does not use the content to improve its products and keeps it for a limited time to detect abuse.

So please:

• don’t upload confidential or unpublished material you are not ready to share;
• don’t leave students’ personal data in the files you upload: names, grades, phone numbers, passport or ID numbers;
• remove such details from a document before you upload it.

What we keep. Files you attach when making a worksheet are sent to Google and not kept on our server. If a question uses a diagram from your picture, that cut-out is stored with the worksheet. Course files (the syllabus and a week’s materials) are stored on our server, because the week’s worksheet is made from them later.

Google processes this data on its own servers, which may be outside Uzbekistan and outside the EU.

5. Pictures (Pexels)

A worksheet gets a cover photo from Pexels, a free photo library. The AI suggests a few search words from the topic, or you type your own, and our server searches Pexels with them. Only those words go to Pexels, and because our server makes the search, Pexels doesn’t learn who you are.

The photo you keep is saved on our server and printed with the photographer’s name. You can upload your own picture instead, or have none.

6. Other services we use

• Telegram: signing in with Telegram, group invites, and messages from @bilimlinkbot (for example, the link to a new worksheet). Telegram handles these under its own privacy policy.
• Google sign-in: only if you choose it, to confirm who you are. We receive your Google account ID, name and email address, and nothing else from your Google account.
• Hetzner: the hosting company whose servers in Germany run Bilimlink.

We don’t use advertising or analytics trackers. We don’t sell personal data, don’t use it for advertising, and don’t follow anyone to other websites.

Older parts of Bilimlink that are not shown now (the lesson builder and the English coursebooks) also used OpenAI for speech and ElevenLabs for voices. Worksheets and courses don’t use them.

7. Where data is stored and how it is protected

Our server and database are at Hetzner in Germany (European Union). Stored files (course files, answer sheet photos, pictures) are on the same server.

• The site works only over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
• Passwords are kept only as a secure hash.
• The database can’t be reached from the internet, only by the app on the same server.
• The sign-in cookie can’t be read by scripts on the page.
• A backup of the database and files is made every night and kept for 14 days.

Stored files have long random addresses that can’t be guessed. Anyone who has the exact address of a file can open it, so don’t pass these addresses on.

Bilimlink collects no biometric data: no face recognition, fingerprints or voice samples. A photo of an answer sheet is a photo of paper; students should photograph only the sheet, not a face.

If your university’s rules require data to stay in Uzbekistan, tell us before you use Bilimlink with students.

8. Cookies and browser storage

• bilimlink-token: keeps a signed-in teacher signed in, for 7 days.
• bilimlink-lang: remembers the language you chose, for a year. The browser’s local storage keeps it too.
• During Google sign-in, two short-lived cookies (up to 30 minutes) check that the answer really comes from Google.
• A student answering online: the browser remembers their attempt for that link, so a reloaded page continues where they were.

That is all: no advertising or analytics cookies.

9. How long we keep data, and deleting it

We keep data while you use Bilimlink. Nothing is deleted on a timer, except the short sign-in records and backups older than 14 days.

What you can delete yourself:

• A group: the group, the worksheets given to it and the students’ answers to them are deleted. The worksheets themselves stay. Students who joined through Telegram leave the group.
• A course: the course and its weekly plan are deleted. The worksheets made from it stay in your list.
• A week of a course, or a file added to a week.

A worksheet can’t be deleted from its page yet. Write to us and we will delete it, with its answers.

Deleting removes things from your account at once. The files they used (photos, uploaded files) are not yet removed from the server automatically; tell us if you want them removed and we will do it. In the nightly backups they are gone after 14 days.

Your whole account: write to @bilimlinkbot and we will delete it and everything in it within 30 days. You can also ask for a copy of your data, or ask us to correct it.

Students who want their answers, their photo or their Telegram record removed can ask their teacher, or write to @bilimlinkbot.

10. Students and age

Bilimlink is made for universities, and students are expected to be adults. If a student is under 18, the teacher and the university are responsible for any permission their rules or the law require.

At sign-up, a teacher confirms they are responsible for their students’ data on Bilimlink. Please tell students how their answers and photos are used; you can simply show them this page.

We ask students for as little as possible: a name and their answers. We don’t build profiles of students or show them advertising.

11. Demo requests

When a university or another organisation asks for a demo through a form on our website, we store the name, the organisation, the phone number or Telegram username, and anything else typed in the form. We use it only to reply, and it reaches us through our own Telegram bot. Ask us and we will delete it.

12. Changes to this policy

When Bilimlink changes, this page changes too. The date at the top shows the last update. If a change affects how your data is used, we will also tell teachers about it.