Privacy Policy
Midan Shady Sphere · www.midanshady.com · Effective date: October 2, 2026
Questions about this policy? Email midanshady@gmail.com.
Midan Shady Sphere is a members club from an Egyptian American founder for culture, learning, and play. This policy explains what we collect when you use the site, why, who helps us run it, and the choices you have. We try to collect only what the club needs, and we do not sell your personal information.
"We", "us", and "the club" mean Midan Shady Sphere, operated by Shady Elsayed. We don't list a mailing address; the best way to reach us is by email.
1. What we collect
When you create an account
- Display name, email address, and password. Passwords are stored only as a salted scrypt hash, never as plain text.
- Date of birth, if you choose to give it. It is used only to confirm you are 16 or older.
- Your confirmation that you are 16 or older.
- A referral code, if you use one, and the member it belongs to.
- Your membership details: plan, trial and subscription status, billing dates, included and purchased Tutor minutes, add-ons, and the Stripe customer and subscription IDs that link your account to billing.
When you pay Payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. Stripe tells us the plan you chose, whether a payment or trial started, renewed, or ended, and the email on the payment.
When you use Tutor
- Your messages, the coach replies, and the subject, coach, coach language, and (for Learn Arabic) the track, level or course unit, and transliteration style you picked, plus which course units you mark done.
- Prompts or drafts you paste, and the text we read out of a .txt, .md, or PDF file you upload. We keep the extracted text with the session; we do not keep the original file.
- To write a reply, your message and recent turns of the session are sent to OpenAI (see section 3).
When you post or play
- What you add to member rooms, such as Showcase posts and links, Journal entries, Member Exchange notices, Micro-gigs, Midan Fusion links and captions, Support Local suggestions, Challenge brackets, and similar room content. Some rooms show your posts and display name to other members; each room says so.
- Game and lesson progress, such as Habibi Dash levels, Studio and Money lesson progress, and scores. Passport Wheel online rooms are temporary and expire on their own.
- Label Check: your camera is used inside your browser only to read a barcode. No image is uploaded. The barcode number is looked up at Open Food Facts. Questions you type in Label Check "Ask" are sent to OpenAI for an answer.
If you join a waitlist Your email address, and a short confirmation email sent through Resend.
If you try the demo The demo account is shared and nothing you do there is saved. To keep the demo fair, we set a random visitor ID cookie (7 days) and count demo Tutor replies per visitor and per IP address. Demo Tutor sessions are deleted automatically after 48 hours, and the daily counters (including the IP address used as the counter key) expire after 24 hours.
Automatically Our host, Vercel, records standard request logs (such as IP address, browser type, page requested, and time) to keep the site running and secure. We use the Google tag (Google Ads) on our pages to measure whether our ads lead to free-trial signups; Google may set advertising cookies (such as _gcl_au) and receive your IP address, browser details, and the pages you visit here. You can turn off personalized ads at adssettings.google.com or block these cookies in your browser.
2. How we use it
- To run your account, sign you in, and keep you signed in.
- To start and manage your trial, membership, and add-ons through Stripe.
- To give you Tutor replies and keep your session history so you can pick up where you left off.
- To read coach replies aloud with Listen. Your browser's own voice is used when it has a fitting one; otherwise (and always for Arabic) the coach's reply text is turned into audio by OpenAI.
- To show your posts and progress in the rooms you use.
- To confirm age (16+), prevent abuse, cap demo usage, and keep the site secure.
- To send account and waitlist emails. We don't have a marketing newsletter right now. If we start one, we'll update this policy first and ask before adding you.
- To answer you when you write to us.
We do not sell your personal information. The only advertising tool on the site is the Google Ads tag described in section 1.
3. Who helps us run the club
We share only what each service needs to do its job:
| Service | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Hosts the website | Requests and logs |
| Upstash (Redis) | Our database | Account, membership, Tutor sessions, posts, progress |
| Stripe | Payments, trials, subscriptions, invoices | Email, plan, payment details you enter on Stripe |
| OpenAI | Writes Tutor and Label Check "Ask" replies, and reads coach replies aloud in the coach's voice (Listen) | Your messages and recent session turns; for Listen, only the coach's reply text and the coach and language |
| Resend | Sends email | Your email address and the message |
| Open Food Facts | Barcode lookups in Label Check | The barcode number only |
| Google (Google Ads) | Measures ad clicks and trial signups | Cookies, IP address, browser details, and pages visited on our site |
| Spotify and YouTube (Google) | Optional players on the Midan VR radio's artist stations, loaded only when you tap one | When you tap: your IP address, browser details, and their own cookies, under Spotify's and Google's policies |
Market and news data (Finnhub, NewsData) come to us; we do not send them personal information.
About OpenAI: we use OpenAI's API. Under OpenAI's API data policy, data sent through the API is not used to train OpenAI's models unless a customer opts in (we have not), and it may be kept by OpenAI for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring. This is why the Tutor says "Chats are not used to train models." Please don't put sensitive personal information (health details, ID numbers, passwords) in Tutor chats.
We may also share information if the law requires it, to protect members or the club from harm, or as part of a sale or transfer of the club (you would be told).
4. Cookies and local storage
We use a small set of cookies that the site needs to work, plus the Google Ads cookies described in section 1.
| Name | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
leh_session | Keeps you signed in | 14 days |
leh_ref, leh_ref_welcome | Remembers a referral link | 30 days / 1 year |
leh_tutor_coach, selearnhub.tutor-language | Remembers your coach and coach language | 1 year |
leh_desk_access | Remembers your Desk Access (accessibility) choices | 1 year |
midan_demo_visitor | Demo visitor ID for the reply cap | 7 days |
midan_demo_locked | Shows the "this is the demo" message | 2 minutes |
pw_guest | Lets a guest rejoin a Passport Wheel room | 6 hours |
Third-party players (Midan VR radio). The artist stations on the Midan VR radio tell short stories in our own words. If you want to hear the artist, you can tap "Play here" to open an official Spotify or YouTube player inside the radio (YouTube players use the privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com address), or follow a link to Spotify or YouTube. Nothing from Spotify or YouTube loads until you tap. Once you do, that service may set its own cookies or similar storage, receive your IP address and browser details, and record what you play, under its own privacy policy. Midan does not host these recordings and does not receive your Spotify or YouTube account information.
Your browser's local storage also keeps small preferences on your device, such as whether you have seen the welcome card, music and speech-speed settings, your Support Local home city, and some game and lesson progress.
5. How long we keep it
- Account and membership data: while your account is open. You can delete your account yourself any time from Billing → Delete my account; it and its content are removed from our database right away. If you ask us by email instead, we do it within 30 days of your request.
- Tutor sessions (members): while your account is open, or until you ask us to delete them.
- Demo Tutor sessions: 48 hours. Demo and daily-limit counters: 24 hours.
- Listen audio: made when you press Listen, kept briefly in server memory and in your browser so a replay doesn't regenerate it, and never saved to your account.
- Passport Wheel online rooms: until the room expires.
- Payment records: Stripe and we keep billing records as long as tax and accounting law requires, even after an account is deleted.
- Server logs: as long as Vercel's log retention for our plan.
6. Your choices and rights
You can ask us to:
- See the personal information we hold about you, or get a copy of it.
- Correct something that is wrong.
- Delete your account and its content.
- Stop any email that isn't essential to your account.
Email midanshady@gmail.com from the address on your account, so we can confirm it's you. We aim to reply within 30 days. You can cancel your membership any time from Billing; cancelling does not delete your account. To delete your account yourself, use Delete my account at the bottom of Billing (any paid membership is cancelled with it).
Depending on where you live (for example California or the EU/UK), you may have more rights under local law. We will honor them, and you won't be treated differently for using them.
7. Age requirement
The club is for people 16 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16, and never from children under 13. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 16, we will delete it. If you think that has happened, please email us.
8. Security
Passwords are hashed, the site runs over HTTPS, sign-in uses secure, HTTP-only cookies, and admin access is limited to the founder. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong password you don't use elsewhere, and tell us right away if you think your account has been misused.
9. Where your data is processed
The club is run from the United States. The app runs on Vercel in its U.S. East region (Washington, D.C.), delivered through Vercel's global network, and our database is hosted by Upstash in the United States. Stripe and OpenAI process data in the United States and under their own privacy policies. If you use the club from outside the U.S., your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S.
10. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we'll update the date above and let members know on the site or by email before the change takes effect.
11. Contact
Midan Shady Sphere, operated by Shady Elsayed Email: midanshady@gmail.com