HybridE Privacy Policy

HybridE is a textbook sales and reading app. This page explains what information we collect and how it's used.

Last updated 29 October 2026.

What we collect

• Account information: your email address and a hashed password, used to sign you in, and, if you give them, your name and contact number. Your name and number (or your email address, if you haven't given them) are printed faintly on the pages you read, to discourage copying.
• Purchases and orders: which textbooks you have bought or claimed, and, for printed copies, the delivery name, address and phone number you enter.
• Device identifier: a per-installation id used only to enforce single-device login (signing in on a new device signs you out of the old one).
• Location: with your permission, your device's GPS location is captured once each time you log in, so we can see the general regions our readers are in. You can decline the location permission prompt and continue using the app normally; declining only skips this data point.
• Your study: the page you are on in each book, your highlights and notes, and your answers to exam-prep questions and mock exams, so the app can take you back to where you were and show you how ready you are.
• Reading activity: for each book and day, how many pages you turned and an estimate of the time you spent reading (the time between page turns). This is used to show colleges how their students use the books they supplied (see below).
• Digital Workplace Logbook (only if your college uses it): your workplace, your mentor's name and email address, the work you record, and the photos and files you attach. When your mentor signs an entry, we record the name they sign with, the date, and the internet address they signed from, as a record that the signature is genuine.

What your college sees

If your books came from your college, the college's staff can see:

• Class results and usage, as totals only. Exam-prep results and a monthly usage report (how many students read, hours and pages read, papers completed, logbook entries signed). These are combined across the class and only shown when at least five students contribute, so they never reveal what one student did.
• Your logbook, only if you choose to share it. When you set up the digital logbook you decide whether your lecturers can follow your progress; if you do, they see your logbook with your name.
• Your assignment results, only if you choose to share them. Your lecturers can set assignments (a chapter to read and practise by a date). If you tick "Let my lecturers see my name and my results on assignments", they see, for each assignment, whether you have done it and your best score on it. If you don't, they only see how many students share their results. You can change this at any time on the Exam prep page.

Your college does not see your highlights, notes, reading activity or exam answers as an individual.

Who else handles your information

We don't sell your personal information or share it for advertising. We use these services to run HybridE, and give each only what its job needs:

• PayFast and Ozow process payments; we never see or store your card details.
• The Courier Guy delivers printed orders, using the delivery details you entered.
• Xero holds our invoices and accounting records.
• Your workplace mentor receives an email with a link to sign your logbook entries.
• If your college has switched on translation or read-aloud, the passage of the book you chose is sent to Anthropic (translation) or Microsoft Azure (read-aloud). Only the book's text is sent, not your details.
• If your college has switched on Ask the book, your question and the pages of the book that relate to it are sent to Anthropic to write the answer. Your name and email address are not sent, and we don't keep your questions or the answers; we only count how many questions you ask each day, for the daily limit.

Purchased books are streamed page-by-page for reading in the app and are not shared with anyone else.

Your rights

You can ask to see the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or delete your account at any time from the Account tab (how deletion works). These rights are set out in South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).

Contact

Questions about this policy, or requests about your information, can be sent to mark@hybride.co.za.