Walter Method Learning Begin Diagnostic

LIRA Privacy Policy

Effective Date: 26 September 2026

Last Updated: 26 September 2026

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains how Walter Method Learning, operating through T.R.E. Solutions (Pty) Ltd, collects, uses, stores, protects and deletes personal information when you use LIRA.

LIRA is an AI-powered academic research and writing platform designed to support learners, researchers, educators and professionals in reading, analysing, organising and developing scholarly work.

LIRA is available through web, desktop and mobile applications and associated cloud services.

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, “LIRA”, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to the LIRA service operated by Walter Method Learning / T.R.E. Solutions (Pty) Ltd.

This Privacy Policy should be read together with our Terms of Service and Refund & Cancellation Policy.

2. Our Approach to Privacy

LIRA is designed around an important principle:

Your academic work belongs to you.

When you upload documents, research materials, notes or other academic content to LIRA, we do not acquire ownership of that content.

Our use of your content is limited to what is reasonably necessary to provide, maintain, secure and improve the LIRA service, subject to this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service.

Our Terms of Service expressly provide that users retain ownership of their academic work and that LIRA receives a limited licence to process, analyse, store, display and transmit uploaded content for purposes connected with providing the Service.

3. Information We Collect

The information LIRA processes depends on how you use the Service.

3.1 Account and identification information

LIRA uses Supabase as its authentication provider. When you create a LIRA account, Supabase collects and manages:

  • your email address;
  • your password (Supabase stores and verifies this — LIRA’s own servers never see or store your password);
  • your name, if you provide one at sign-up;
  • session and authentication tokens used to keep you signed in.

LIRA currently supports email-and-password sign-in only (no “Sign in with Google” or “Sign in with Apple” at this time).

Separately, LIRA’s own backend keeps a minimal internal record associated with your account, limited to:

  • your account identifier and email address (read from your verified sign-in, not stored as a separate password);
  • account creation date;
  • subscription status;
  • trial status;
  • account preferences;
  • information necessary to provide customer support.

We use this information to create and maintain your account, authenticate you, provide access to LIRA and communicate with you about your account and the Service.

4. Academic and User Content

LIRA allows users to upload and create academic and research materials.

Depending on the features you use, this may include:

  • PDF documents;
  • academic articles;
  • books and book extracts;
  • research papers;
  • notes;
  • annotations;
  • research questions;
  • literature reviews;
  • essays;
  • research proposals;
  • thesis or dissertation materials;
  • presentations;
  • datasets that you have the right to upload;
  • other scholarly or research materials;
  • information and instructions supplied by you when using LIRA’s analysis features.

This information may be processed by LIRA’s document-analysis and artificial-intelligence systems to provide requested functionality.

For example, LIRA may process uploaded material to provide:

  • document analysis;
  • summaries and explanations;
  • methodological analysis;
  • research organisation;
  • knowledge structures;
  • academic memory features;
  • research anchors;
  • writing assistance;
  • comparisons between documents;
  • other analysis and research-support functions available within your subscription.

You retain ownership of your uploaded academic work. LIRA does not claim ownership of your academic work.

Where your documents are stored depends on how you access LIRA:

  • On the Windows and Android apps, your PDF files and the full extracted text of your documents stay on your device. LIRA’s servers never receive or store the file itself — only the specific question you ask and the relevant extracted text needed to answer it, one request at a time, plus LIRA’s answer.
  • On the web application, because a browser has no persistent local device storage of its own, your original PDF and its extracted text are stored server-side in encrypted object storage, with your consent, so that your library is available whenever you sign in.

5. How We Use Your Information

We use information collected through LIRA for purposes including:

Providing the Service. To:

  • authenticate you;
  • provide access to your account;
  • process and analyse documents;
  • provide AI-assisted functionality;
  • store your research workspace;
  • maintain your research history and associated features;
  • provide subscription entitlements;
  • provide customer support.

Security. To:

  • protect accounts;
  • detect unauthorised access;
  • prevent abuse;
  • investigate security incidents;
  • protect the integrity of the Service.

Billing and subscriptions. To:

  • establish your subscription status;
  • provide the features associated with your subscription;
  • process payments through the applicable payment provider;
  • manage subscription renewals and cancellations;
  • reconcile payment events with your LIRA account.

Service operation and improvement. To:

  • maintain LIRA;
  • troubleshoot technical problems;
  • monitor service reliability;
  • improve functionality;
  • investigate errors;
  • develop new features;
  • protect the Service from misuse.

We do not use your academic work to claim ownership of your intellectual property.

6. Artificial Intelligence and Automated Processing

LIRA uses artificial intelligence and automated processing to provide features such as document analysis, research assistance, summarisation, explanation, organisation and other scholarly support.

When you request an AI-powered feature, relevant information — which may include the text of your uploaded document and the question or instruction you provide — is transmitted to the AI infrastructure and service provider used to operate that feature (see section 7).

AI-generated outputs may be inaccurate, incomplete or unsuitable for a particular academic purpose. You remain responsible for evaluating and verifying AI-generated material. LIRA is intended to support human academic judgement, not replace it.

7. AI Service Providers

LIRA currently uses Anthropic (the maker of the Claude family of AI models) to power its AI features, including:

  • document analysis and question-answering;
  • summaries and explanations;
  • research synthesis and cohort/comparative analysis;
  • examiner-style feedback and writing-assistance dialogue;
  • proposal and outline intelligence;
  • grounding verification (checking that an AI answer is actually supported by your document).

When you use these features, the relevant document text and/or your typed question or instruction is transmitted to Anthropic to generate the response. Anthropic processes this information under its own applicable data-processing and security terms.

LIRA also uses the Semantic Scholar academic database to support literature-search features. Only your search terms — not your uploaded documents — are sent to Semantic Scholar for this purpose. Semantic Scholar is a literature database, not an AI processor of your content.

We do not authorise third-party AI providers to use your private LIRA materials for unrelated commercial purposes merely because those materials are processed through LIRA.

The specific technical providers used by LIRA may change as the Service develops. Where they do, we will update this Privacy Policy.

8. Payment Information

LIRA may use different payment systems depending on how you purchase the Service.

8.1 Web and desktop purchases

Subscriptions purchased through the LIRA web or desktop environment may be processed through Paystack.

Payment-card and other payment credentials are processed by the applicable payment provider rather than stored by LIRA as ordinary application data.

LIRA receives information necessary to establish and maintain your subscription, such as transaction references, subscription information, payment status and associated account information.

8.2 Android purchases

Subscriptions purchased through the LIRA Android application may be processed through Google Play Billing.

Google manages the payment transaction through Google Play. Google states that payment information used through Google Play is stored in the user’s Google Account and is not shared with the app developer.

LIRA may receive information necessary to verify the purchase and associate the resulting subscription entitlement with your LIRA account.

9. Information We Share

We do not sell your personal information.

We may share or disclose information where reasonably necessary to operate LIRA, including with service providers that provide:

  • authentication services (Supabase);
  • AI processing (Anthropic);
  • cloud hosting and database infrastructure (Hetzner);
  • payment processing (Paystack, Google Play Billing);
  • literature-search infrastructure (Semantic Scholar);
  • subscription management;
  • email or communications infrastructure;
  • security and technical monitoring;
  • other infrastructure necessary to operate the Service.

We may also disclose information:

  • where required by law;
  • where necessary to respond to a valid legal process;
  • to protect the rights, safety or security of users, LIRA or others;
  • to investigate fraud, abuse or security incidents;
  • where necessary in connection with a corporate transaction, restructuring or transfer of the Service.

Where third parties process personal information on our behalf, we seek to require appropriate confidentiality and security protections.

10. Research and Academic Confidentiality

LIRA is designed for academic and research work.

We recognise that documents uploaded to LIRA may contain unpublished research, intellectual property, research participants’ information or other confidential material.

Users should not upload information that they do not have the legal or ethical authority to process.

Where research materials contain personal information relating to research participants, users remain responsible for ensuring that their use of those materials complies with applicable research ethics requirements, institutional requirements and applicable law.

LIRA does not take ownership of research materials uploaded by users.

11. Information We Do Not Intentionally Collect Through LIRA

LIRA is not designed to collect:

  • precise device location;
  • contacts;
  • SMS or call logs;
  • health or fitness information;
  • biometric information;
  • microphone recordings;
  • camera recordings;

unless a future feature expressly requires such information and the relevant collection is clearly disclosed before it occurs.

The LIRA Android application, for example, requests only the internet-access permission required to communicate with our servers — it does not request camera, location, contacts, microphone, SMS or biometric permissions.

If LIRA introduces functionality that materially changes the categories of personal information collected, this Privacy Policy and, where appropriate, the relevant in-app disclosures will be updated.

12. Cookies and Technical Information

When you use LIRA through a website or application, technical information may be processed as necessary to operate and secure the Service.

This may include:

  • IP address;
  • browser or application information;
  • operating system;
  • device information;
  • technical logs;
  • timestamps;
  • authentication and security events;
  • error and diagnostic information.

This information may be used for security, authentication, troubleshooting, service operation and performance monitoring.

13. Data Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures designed to protect personal information against:

  • unauthorised access;
  • unauthorised disclosure;
  • alteration;
  • loss;
  • destruction;
  • misuse.

Data transmitted between your device and LIRA services is protected using appropriate transport security measures.

Access to backend systems and databases is restricted according to operational requirements.

No internet-based system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. We therefore cannot guarantee absolute security, but we take reasonable measures appropriate to the nature of the information processed.

14. Data Retention

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary to:

  • provide the Service;
  • maintain your account;
  • provide your research workspace;
  • fulfil contractual obligations;
  • maintain appropriate security records;
  • comply with legal obligations;
  • resolve disputes;
  • enforce our agreements;
  • prevent fraud or abuse.

Your academic and research materials are retained while they remain part of your LIRA account or workspace, subject to the features and storage arrangements associated with your subscription.

When an account is deleted, we will delete or anonymise associated personal information and user content within a reasonable period, except where retention is required or permitted by law, necessary for legitimate security purposes, or otherwise reasonably necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

Where information must be retained for such purposes, it will be retained only for the period reasonably necessary for that purpose.

15. Account Deletion

You may request deletion of your LIRA account and associated personal information.

LIRA provides a mechanism for initiating account deletion from within the Service (via account settings) and through a web-based deletion request process at:

https://waltermethodlearning.com/lira-account-deletion/

You may also request deletion by contacting us directly:

privacy@waltermethodlearning.com

Subject: LIRA Account Deletion Request

Your request should include the email address associated with your LIRA account.

After verifying the request, we will process deletion of the account and associated data in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law. This includes your account record, uploaded documents (including, for web-application users, the copies of your files and extracted text held in our object storage), research workspaces, research memory and knowledge structures, writing and analysis history, and related database records, subject to the limited retention exceptions described in section 14.

Important — please read: Deleting your LIRA account removes your data from LIRA’s own servers, but it does not automatically delete your underlying Supabase sign-in identity (the email/password credential used to sign in). If you would also like that sign-in identity removed, please say so in your deletion request and we will action it as part of the same process.

Google Play requires apps that allow account creation to provide both an in-app method and a web resource through which users can request account deletion, and requires associated user data to be deleted when an account deletion request is fulfilled, subject to legitimate retention exceptions. LIRA’s deletion process is designed to meet this requirement.

16. Subscription Cancellation

Deleting your LIRA account and cancelling a subscription are related but separate processes.

For subscriptions purchased through Google Play, users can manage or cancel their subscription through Google Play’s subscription management facilities. Google also requires apps offering subscriptions to provide an accessible way for users to manage or cancel them.

For subscriptions purchased through LIRA’s web or desktop payment system, cancellation is handled according to the applicable LIRA subscription and Refund & Cancellation Policy.

Cancelling a subscription does not necessarily result in immediate deletion of your LIRA account.

17. Your Privacy Rights

Subject to applicable law, you may have rights concerning your personal information, including rights to:

  • request access to personal information we hold about you;
  • request correction of inaccurate information;
  • request deletion of personal information;
  • object to or request restriction of certain processing;
  • withdraw consent where processing is based on consent;
  • request information about how your personal information is processed;
  • lodge a complaint concerning the handling of your personal information.

South Africa’s Information Regulator is the statutory regulator established under POPIA and has responsibility for protecting personal information and overseeing compliance with applicable information-protection law.

18. Children’s Privacy

LIRA is an academic research and writing platform and is not designed specifically for children.

LIRA does not intentionally target children as its primary audience.

We do not knowingly collect children’s personal information for purposes unrelated to providing the Service.

If a parent, guardian or other authorised person believes that a child has provided personal information to LIRA in circumstances where this was not appropriate, they may contact us using the details below.

19. Third-Party Services

LIRA relies on selected third-party infrastructure and service providers, currently including:

  • Supabase — authentication;
  • Anthropic — AI processing (Claude models);
  • Hetzner — cloud hosting and object storage;
  • Paystack — web/desktop payment processing;
  • Google Play Billing — Android payment processing;
  • Semantic Scholar — literature-search database.

These providers may process information on our behalf where necessary to provide LIRA. Third-party services operate under their own terms and privacy policies where applicable.

This list reflects LIRA’s providers as of the “Last Updated” date above and may change as the Service develops. Where appropriate, links to relevant third-party privacy information may be provided within LIRA or on our website.

20. Changes to This Privacy Policy

LIRA is an actively developed platform.

We may update this Privacy Policy when:

  • the Service changes;
  • our data practices change;
  • new functionality is introduced;
  • legal or regulatory requirements change;
  • security or privacy practices are improved.

The updated policy will be published on this page with a revised Last Updated date.

Where a material change significantly affects how personal information is processed, we will take reasonable steps to communicate the change where appropriate.

21. Contact Us

For questions concerning privacy, personal information, account deletion or data protection, contact:

Walter Method Learning

T.R.E. Solutions (Pty) Ltd

South Africa

Privacy contact: privacy@waltermethodlearning.com

Website: Walter Method Learning

For account deletion requests, please use the subject line: LIRA Account Deletion Request

22. Governing Privacy Framework

This Privacy Policy is intended to operate in conjunction with applicable privacy and data-protection legislation, including the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) in South Africa, where applicable, together with other applicable data-protection requirements in jurisdictions in which LIRA is made available.

Last Updated: 26 September 2026