Legal
Privacy Policy
How The Phronara Institute LLC handles information on phronara.org and in VOICE Practice.
About this policy
This policy covers the website phronara.org and VOICE Practice, the training app at practice.phronara.org. Both are operated by The Phronara Institute LLC, a California limited liability company. It explains what information we collect, how we use it, who can see it, and the choices you have. "We" and "us" mean The Phronara Institute LLC.
VOICE Practice is for practicing communication skills with fictional scenarios. Please don't enter real names, case details, health information, or other sensitive information about real people in your practice conversations.
Information we collect
In the VOICE Practice app
- Account information: your name, email address, and password. Passwords are stored in encrypted (hashed) form, and we can't see them.
- Group membership: the groups you join with a code, and whether you joined as a trainee or an instructor.
- Practice sessions: the scenario, settings, and mode you chose; what you typed or said and the role-player's replies; the resistance scores during the session; which strategies your words matched; the outcome; and the feedback generated at the end.
- Usage records: the date and time of each practice request, used to apply monthly practice limits.
- Information stored in your browser: your sign-in session and preferences (such as your last setting, mode, and group) are kept in your browser's local storage so you stay signed in. You can clear them by signing out or clearing your browser data.
- Technical information: like most websites, our hosting provider automatically records basic request information such as IP address, browser type, and time of access, for security and troubleshooting.
Speaking your responses: the Speak button uses your browser's built-in speech recognition. Depending on your browser, your audio may be processed by the browser's maker (for example, Google for Chrome). We receive only the resulting text, never the audio.
On our website (phronara.org)
- Contact form: your first and last name, email address, organization (optional), area of interest, and message. We use these only to reply to you and follow up on your inquiry.
- Emails you send us at hello@phronara.org, and our replies.
- Cookies and analytics: our website host, Squarespace, sets cookies needed for the site to work and for basic visitor statistics (such as pages viewed and how visitors arrived). We don't use advertising cookies. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings.
- Spam protection: the contact form uses Google reCAPTCHA, which collects technical and browser information to tell people from bots. Google's Privacy Policy and Terms apply to it.
- Embedded video: the VOICE Brief page plays a YouTube video. YouTube (Google) may set cookies and receive technical information when the video loads or plays.
How we use your information
- To run the practice sessions: your words are sent to our AI provider to generate the role-player's replies and your feedback.
- To save your progress and show it to you on the My progress page.
- To show your results to the instructors of groups you join (see the next section).
- To reply to messages you send through the website contact form or by email.
- To keep the website and app secure, prevent spam and misuse, and apply usage limits.
- To improve the website and VOICE Practice, for example by reviewing visitor statistics and how scenarios and feedback perform.
- To send account emails you request, such as password-reset links.
- For research, only in de-identified form, only with the approval of an ethics review board where required, and only with your consent where required.
What we don't do: we don't sell your information or share it for targeted advertising (as those terms are used in California law), we don't use it for advertising, and we don't share it with data brokers. Our AI provider doesn't use your practice conversations to train its models.
Who can see your information
| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| You | Your account and all of your practice sessions, transcripts, and feedback. |
| Instructors of a group you joined | Your name, the sessions you completed while practicing in that group, including transcripts, scores, and feedback. They can't see your email address or sessions from other groups. |
| Phronara administrators | All accounts and sessions, to run and support the service. |
| Researchers (de-identified exports only) | Session data labeled with a random research ID instead of your name or email. Practice text is included as written, which is another reason not to type real names or case details. |
Sessions you complete "on my own," without choosing a group, aren't visible to any instructor.
We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect the safety of any person, or as part of a sale or reorganization of our business, in which case this policy would continue to apply.
Service providers
We use a few trusted companies to run phronara.org and VOICE Practice. They process information only to provide their service to us. Our providers store data mainly in the United States.
| Provider | What it does for us | Information involved |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Accounts, sign-in, and database | Account information, groups, practice sessions, usage records |
| Vercel | App hosting | Technical request information; practice text passes through on its way to the AI provider |
| Anthropic | AI that plays the role-player and writes feedback | The scenario and conversation text for each request. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, it doesn't train its models on this content and generally deletes it within 30 days, or longer if flagged for a safety review. |
| Resend | Sending account emails | Your email address and the email content, such as a reset link |
| Google Fonts | Loading the app's typefaces | Basic technical request information, such as IP address |
| Squarespace | Hosting phronara.org, its contact form, and visitor statistics | Contact form entries, cookies, and technical request information |
| Google reCAPTCHA | Spam protection on the website contact form | Technical and browser information |
| YouTube (Google) | Playing the embedded VOICE Brief video | Cookies and technical information when the video loads or plays |
How long we keep it, and your choices
We keep your account and practice sessions while your account is active, so you can track your progress. If an account is inactive for 2 years, we may delete it. De-identified research records may be kept longer. Contact form messages and emails are kept as long as needed to respond and follow up, and no longer than 2 years after our last exchange unless we're working together.
You can ask us to:
- send you a copy of your information,
- correct your name or other account details,
- delete your account and practice sessions, or your contact form messages,
- remove you from a group (you can also ask your instructor).
Email us at the address below. We'll respond within 30 days and may need to confirm your identity first. Deleting your account removes it from our active systems; backups are overwritten on our providers' regular schedules. Records already included in a de-identified research dataset can't be traced back to you, so they can't be removed.
If your organization gave you access, it may have its own rules about training records. Deleting your account here doesn't change records your organization keeps.
Security
We use encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed passwords, and database rules that limit each person to the information their role allows. No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach affecting your information, we'll notify you as required by law.
Age limit
VOICE Practice is for adults 18 and older. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created an account, contact us and we'll delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we make significant changes, we'll update the effective date on this page and tell app users in the app or by email before the changes take effect.
Contact us
The Phronara Institute LLC
2425 Golden Hill Road, Ste 106-500
Paso Robles, CA 93446
Email: hello@phronara.org
See also our Terms of Use.