Privacy

Who is responsible

Maben Study and this website are made by Max Benschop in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. For anything about your data, email [email protected].

The app

What stays on your Mac

Everything you put into the app is stored only on your Mac, in ~/Library/Application Support/Maben Study/: the files you import and the text taken from them, your subjects, tests, plans, answers, grades, notes and settings. API keys are stored in the macOS Keychain. None of this is sent to me, and I can't see it.

What goes to your AI provider

When you use an AI feature, such as building a course map, an explanation, a quiz or grading an answer, the app sends the text that feature needs straight from your Mac to the AI provider you set up. That can include parts of your course material, key points, questions and your answers. It's sent with your own API key, or through the provider's own command-line tool if you use one.

That provider (for example Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek or TypeSafe AI) handles the data under its own terms and privacy policy, which you agreed to when you created your key or account. Please read those.

If you use a local model in Ollama or LM Studio, nothing leaves your Mac. You can also turn on local models only for material in Settings: then your course files are only ever processed by a local model, even if you have other providers set up.

Permissions the app asks for

• Microphone and speech recognition, only when you choose to explain something out loud or transcribe a recording. Speech is turned into text on your Mac when macOS supports that for the language. If it doesn't, macOS sends the audio to Apple's speech recognition service, under Apple's privacy policy.
• Calendar, only when you choose to add your plan to your calendar. The app writes study blocks to a calendar called Maben Study.
• Notifications, for the daily study reminder. It's created on your Mac.

Web pages you import

If you add a web page as material, the app downloads that page directly from the website it's on. That website sees the request like any other visit.

Files you export

Exports and backups are files on your Mac. Who you share them with is up to you. A subject shared with classmates leaves out your answers, notes and grades.

No tracking

The app contains no analytics, no crash reporting, no ads and no tracking of any kind.

This website

This website sets no cookies and uses no analytics, tracking or third-party embeds. The fonts are served from this site itself.

The site runs on a server I manage and is delivered through Cloudflare, which acts as its network provider. To deliver and protect the site, Cloudflare processes technical data about each request, such as your IP address and browser, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. My own web server doesn't keep access logs.

If you email me

If you email me, for support or with feedback, I use your email address and message only to reply. I don't share them and don't add you to any list. I delete them when you ask. Email is handled by Google (Gmail).

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask what personal data I hold about you, and ask me to correct or delete it, or to stop using it. Email [email protected]. The only personal data I could have is your email if you wrote to me; data in the app never reaches me. If you think your data is handled wrongly, you can complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority.

The legal basis is my legitimate interest in answering messages and keeping this website running safely.

Changes

If the app or this website starts handling data differently, for example when the app is released through an app store, this page will be updated and the date at the top will change.