Terms of Service for Account Holders

These are the terms for your own Alethris account, whoever you are here to be. Most of what happens to you happens at an academy, and your arrangement with that academy is separate from this one.

1. Who this agreement is between

These Terms are an agreement between iSoterik Limited (iSoterik, we, us), a company registered in Nigeria with number RC 9910229, which operates the Alethris platform, and you, the person holding an Alethris account.

You accept them by ticking the box when you create your account or, if an academy accepted you before you had one and Alethris made your account for you, when you set that account up. We record which version you accepted and when, and nobody can sign in to an account until these Terms have been accepted for it. They apply to everyone who holds an account, whether you are here to learn, to teach or to run an academy. An organisation that runs an academy has its own agreement with us, the Terms of Service for Academies, which is separate from this one. If you are on an academy's staff, what you do in its workspace you do for that academy, and its agreement with us covers that work. What we do with your personal data is described in the Privacy Notice for Account Holders.

Your academy is not us. Alethris is software that academies use to run their programmes. The academy decides what it teaches, who it admits, what it charges, how it assesses you and whether you have passed. Your arrangement about the course itself is with that academy, not with us. We do not accredit academies, we do not endorse their programmes, and a credential issued through Alethris is the academy's statement about you, not ours.

2. Who can hold an account

You must be 18 or older to hold an account.

An account belongs to one person. Use your own name — it is the name academies see when you apply, and the name printed on any credential you are issued — and an email address that you control and will keep.

3. Your account and signing in

Your account is yours, not your academy's. You keep it when you leave an academy, and you may belong to several academies at once, with different roles in each. If you leave an academy, any place you have not finished there and any application still waiting end with your membership, and a fee you paid is not refunded automatically: ask the academy. Your credentials stay valid.

Before you can sign in for the first time, you must confirm the email address on your account by opening the link we send you. The link lasts twenty-four hours, and you can ask for another. We do this so that nobody can create an account in your name, and so that credentials cannot be attached to an address that is not yours.

If you applied to an academy without an account and it accepted you, it may have had Alethris make your account from the name and email address you applied with. We then email you a link to set it up: there you choose your password, confirm your name and accept these Terms, and opening the link confirms your address. That link lasts seven days, and choosing to reset your password on the sign-in page sends you a new one. If the academy asked you to create your account yourself, sign up with the address you applied with and confirm it as above.

Your password must be at least twelve characters. Keep it to yourself, do not share your account, and tell us straight away if you think someone else has reached it. Allowing a support session, as clause 13 describes, is not sharing your account: Support never learns your password, and the session ends when it does. To change your password, ask for a reset link from Account and security or from the sign-in page; the link lasts thirty minutes, and setting a new password signs you out everywhere. The email address on your account cannot be changed from your account; if it must change, write to Support.

You sign in at Alethris Hub. An academy's own address signs you in by passing your session across from the Hub, so while you are signed in there, signing in at an academy's address completes without asking for your password again. A session at Alethris Hub lasts seven days, or thirty if you choose to stay signed in on that device; one at an academy's address lasts seven days. You can see every session and end any or all of them from Account and security, and signing out of one address does not sign you out of the others.

An invitation from an academy is issued to one email address and can be accepted only by the person signed in as that address. An invitation to join an academy lasts seven days; an invitation to enrol in one of its programmes lasts fourteen.

4. Applying and enrolling

You apply to an academy using the form it published. Your answers go to that academy, which decides whether to offer you a place. We do not make that decision and cannot overturn it. Where the academy allows it, you may apply without an account, giving your name and an email address that you confirm with a code we send to it; you hold an account before any offer is made to you.

You may hold one open application for each cohort, or for each self-paced programme. If you are offered a place, you must take it up — and pay for it, if there is a fee — within the time the offer shows: seven days from the offer. A place you take for yourself, without an offer, must be paid for within seven days and before the cohort's enrolment closes. Otherwise the offer lapses and the place may go to someone else; a payment you made before the deadline still counts if Paystack confirms it later. If a cohort is cancelled or finishes while your application is still open, the application is closed without a decision: nobody rejected you, and you are free to apply elsewhere. An offer you have not answered, or a place you have not paid for, is withdrawn the same way, and we tell you.

An academy may offer a discount, either automatically or through a code you enter on the application form. The academy sets the rules for each discount, including how many places it covers, and a discount can run out between your application and your offer.

5. Paying for a place

You pay the price the academy published, less any discount it gives you, in full and in one payment. There is no instalment or part-payment facility. Prices are in naira.

Payment is collected through Paystack: by card on Paystack's own page or, where it is offered, by bank transfer to a temporary account issued for that one payment and that exact amount, which lasts about twenty minutes. An academy may instead record a payment you made to it directly, record that a sponsor is paying for your place, or give you a place free of charge. Where online payment is not yet available, the checkout says so: you pay the academy directly, and your place is set up once the academy records your payment.

We never hold your money. Paystack settles your payment to the academy. We take our fee from the academy's share; it is never added to the price you pay. We do not operate a wallet, we hold no balance for you, and we have no way to pay you out. Whatever the academy owes you, it owes you directly. We never receive your full card number; Paystack handles it.

You can read a receipt for any payment you made through Alethris, and download it as a PDF. Once a refund is paid back to you, the receipt shows it, and the refund has a receipt of its own; both give the academy's reason for it.

If your payment arrives after your place has lapsed or been withdrawn, after the cohort has ended, or while the academy is read-only, closing or suspended, the place is not set up and the payment is returned to you in full.

An academy's standing with us can affect what you can do there. If its subscription lapses, for example, it cannot take new payments through Alethris until it is settled, although the access you already have is not affected. If we suspend an academy, nothing there opens until it is restored; your credentials stay verifiable throughout.

Whether you can have your money back, and by when, is set by the refund policy the academy published on the programme: a window of days after payment, and whether it may refund part of a fee within it. That policy is recorded at the moment you pay, so a later change does not apply to you. Ask the academy for a refund; the academy decides, and it may refund outside its own window where it thinks that right, and records its reason. A refund goes back the way you paid, and a refund through Paystack takes some days to arrive. A refund ends your place only if the academy decides that it should. Nothing in these Terms limits any right you have under the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018.

6. Learning at an academy

Lessons open as the academy set them up: some when you enrol, some when your cohort starts, and some only once you have finished the lessons before them. Where a self-paced programme gives you access for a set period, we warn you seven days before it ends.

Work you hand in is stored as a version and is never overwritten. You can hand work in again only when a reviewer asks for changes, and only as many times as the assignment allows. On a group assignment, any member may hand in the group's work, it counts as yours, and the limit counts the group's versions. Handing in needs a connection, because work is judged on time when it arrives; drafts you are writing are kept on your device if your connection drops, and saved when it returns.

Your work is approved or rejected by a person at the academy who holds assessor authority, and their name is recorded and shown to you. Nobody can assess their own work. If a decision is changed later, the record keeps the earlier decision, who changed it and why — nothing is quietly rewritten. The same is true of your attendance record.

Whether you complete a programme follows the rules the academy published on it — how much of it you must finish, attend and pass, and, for a cohort, that the cohort has ended — and nobody can override those rules by hand. If an attendance correction or a changed assessment means you no longer meet them, your completion is withdrawn, and so is any credential issued on it. Both are recorded as changes, not erased.

Academies keep notes about their learners that you will not see, including flags raised when their rules suggest you may be falling behind. Clause 5 of the Privacy Notice for Account Holders explains what they are and why.

7. Credentials

A credential is issued by the academy, not by us: its owner or an administrator decides to issue it once you have completed the programme, and it is never issued automatically. It names you, the academy and the programme, and says what it certifies: skills that were assessed, or completion only. Anyone holding its code can verify it. For an assessed credential they see each competency, who assessed it, how and when, and who else checked the evidence. If the academy has given us its registration and we have verified it, they also see that. Some credentials expire on a date the academy sets.

An academy can revoke a credential it issued, and a credential is withdrawn automatically if the completion behind it is withdrawn. Either way, verification then says so; the record is not deleted, because someone who relied on the credential is entitled to know that it existed and that it was withdrawn.

Your credentials stay valid if you leave the academy, and they stay verifiable if the academy closes or you close your account.

A credential carries your name as the academy confirmed it against its own records when it issued the credential, and you cannot change what it says. If your name changes, or you think a credential is wrong, ask the academy that issued it; it can replace the credential with a new one.

You can see how often each of your credentials has been looked up, and when last. Who looked is never recorded, for you or for the academy.

Showing your work. On a credential's page you may choose up to five pieces of the assessed work it was earned on to show to anyone who verifies it. They see each piece exactly as you handed it in: they can read your text, open your links and download your files. A link shows where it points today, which may have changed since your work was assessed. Nothing is shown until you choose, and you can change your choice at any time. Group work cannot be shown, because it is not yours alone. A credential that is revoked, withdrawn or replaced shows none, and everything you chose to show is removed if you close your account. Only show work you have the right to show.

8. Your Skills Passport

Your Skills Passport is yours. It is private until you publish it, and for each item on it you choose whether it is public, reachable only through a link you share, or private. You can change that at any time. A link you share lasts thirty days unless you choose another period or no expiry at all, it works even while your Passport is unpublished, and you can revoke it. Search engines do not list your Passport unless you allow them to.

Your academy sees no more of your Passport than you make public or share, and it cannot put an item on it or take one off. An item shows the current state of the credential behind it, so if a credential is revoked, withdrawn or expires, the item says so. Such an item stays, marked, until you hide it: you can show it less widely but not more, and once hidden it cannot be shown again.

Once you have published a Passport, its handle is reserved to you and cannot be changed.

We may suspend a Passport's public page and share links where it is used to misrepresent a credential or breaks clause 10. That decision is made by a named member of our staff with a recorded reason, and it does not change the credentials underneath.

9. Assistants

An academy's assistant. Where your academy has turned it on, you can ask the academy's assistant, under the name the academy gives it, about your own programmes at that academy: what is due, your progress and attendance, the feedback on work that has been assessed, what an open assignment asks of you, and the lessons open to you. It reads only your own records at that academy.

Alethris Help. Anyone signed in can ask Alethris Help how Alethris works. It answers from the Alethris Guides, not from your records, and we operate it.

Answers are written by an AI model. They can be wrong, and an assistant does not assess you or decide anything. Every assessment and every credential is the decision of a person.

Your conversations are yours; academy staff cannot read them. The academy decides how long conversations with its assistant are kept — from not at all up to 365 days after your last message, thirty days unless it chooses otherwise — and conversations with Alethris Help are kept for seventy-two hours after your last message. You can delete a conversation yourself. An academy may limit how many questions you can ask each day, and we set limits of our own to keep the service available.

An academy sets how its assistant behaves on a programme, including how much help it may give on an assignment. On work that is formally assessed, it only clarifies the task, whatever the academy has set. Using it against the academy's stated rules is an academic matter for the academy.

10. Using Alethris properly

Do not use Alethris to break the law, to infringe someone else's rights, to impersonate a person or an institution, to hand in work that is not your own where the academy requires it to be, to sell or transfer a credential, to upload malware, to get at records that are not yours, to share your account (a support session you allow is not sharing it), or to probe, overload or attack the service.

Selling or transferring a credential is a serious breach. Every credential on the platform is worth something only because the others are honest.

11. Your work, and what we may do with it

You own the work you submit. You give your academy whatever rights it needs to assess, store and — where you allow it — display that work, and you give us a licence to host, process and transmit it strictly so that the service works for you and your academy, and to show the work you choose to show on a credential to anyone who verifies it, for as long as you show it. When an assistant is used, the material it needs to answer is sent to the AI provider that generates the answer, as the Privacy Notice for Account Holders describes.

We do not sell your work, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not use it or your conversations with an assistant to train AI models.

Alethris itself — its software, its design, the Alethris Guides and its documentation — belongs to us, and these Terms give you no rights in it beyond using the service. If you send us suggestions, we may use them without owing you anything.

12. Messages from us

We send you messages by email and in Alethris Hub about your account, your applications, your learning and your payments and, if you work at an academy, about work it needs from you. They are part of the service and cannot be switched off while you hold an account, with two exceptions: the weekly summary staff may choose to receive, and an academy's announcements by email, which you can stop for that academy from the link in any of them or from its page in Alethris Hub. Its announcements still reach you in Alethris. We send no marketing email. An academy's messages to you are sent in its name through Alethris.

13. Support, availability and changes

You can raise a support case with us from Alethris Hub, or email support@alethris.com if you cannot sign in. A case you raise with us is not visible to your academy — not to its owner, its administrators or its finance staff. If we cannot resolve it without involving the academy, we will ask you first.

To sort out a problem, Support may ask to see Alethris as you see it, in a support session. Nothing is shared unless you allow it: you can let Support look without asking on cases you raise, or allow each request as it comes, and you can withdraw either at any time. Inside an academy, its Owners must allow it too. A session can only view, unless you allow changes to the setup of an academy you help run: Support asks each time, for at most 24 hours, and both you and one of the academy's Owners must allow it. A change Support makes with your permission is made in your name, as if you had made it, and the academy's audit log shows it was made by Alethris Support as you. Whatever you allow, a session cannot send, pay, publish, decide or accept anything in your name, or change a price or a refund policy, and it lasts at most an hour. We tell you when one starts, you can end it or withdraw your permission at any time, and your account lists every session, what it opened and how many changes it made. The Privacy Notice for Account Holders says what a session can and cannot reach.

We provide the service with reasonable skill and care, but we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or free of errors, and we depend on providers who may themselves be unavailable.

We may change how Alethris works. Where a change materially affects your rights, we will tell you before it takes effect.

14. Suspension and closing your account

We may suspend your account where you are in material breach of clause 10, where the law requires it, or where your account presents a risk to other people on the platform. Suspension ends your sessions immediately, and it deletes nothing. We will tell you unless the reason we are acting makes that unwise, and we record that reason.

You may close your account yourself, from Account and security. We ask for your password, and closing signs you out everywhere at once. If you want a copy of your data, take one before you close the account: after the thirty days below, there is nothing left to copy.

Nothing is removed for thirty days. To stop the closing, sign in within those thirty days and choose to keep the account; signing in alone does not stop it. We hold it that way so that a closure made by mistake — or by somebody who reached your account — can still be undone. After the thirty days your name and email address are replaced with a marker that identifies nobody, your password is removed, your memberships of academies end, with any place you had not finished and any application still waiting, your Skills Passport is made private, what you wrote on it about yourself is cleared and every link you shared from it stops working, and the questions you asked assistants, the biography you gave any academy and what you wrote to Support are cleared. Your notifications leave your inbox, and our records of the emails we sent you keep no email address. That step cannot be reversed.

If we suspend an account while it is closing, the closing waits. When the suspension is lifted, the thirty days start again.

If you are the only owner of an academy that has not been closed, you must hand it over before you can close your account, or the academy would be left with nobody who can govern it.

Some things deliberately survive, and clause 11 of the Privacy Notice for Account Holders explains why: the credentials you earned stay valid and verifiable under your name, the academies you belonged to keep what they recorded about your learning under the marker that replaces your name, financial records are kept for as long as the law requires, and our own replies and notes on your support cases are kept until the case's content is cleared, three years after it closes.

15. Our liability to you

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law does not allow us to limit or exclude, and nothing in them takes away a right you have as a consumer.

Subject to that:

• We are not responsible for what an academy does or decides. Its teaching, its admissions, its assessments, the credentials it issues, the fees it charges and the refunds it gives are the academy's, and a claim about any of them lies against the academy.
• We are not liable for loss of profit, income, business or opportunity, or for any loss that was not reasonably foreseeable when you accepted these Terms.
• We are not liable for a failure or delay caused by something outside our reasonable control, including the failure of a payment, hosting, email, video or AI provider, or of the public internet.
• Our total liability to you arising out of or in connection with these Terms, in any period of twelve months, is limited to ₦100,000.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may change these Terms. We will publish each new version here with the date it takes effect and, where a change materially affects your rights, tell you at least thirty days before it does. If you go on using Alethris after that date, the new version applies to you. If you do not accept it, you can close your account.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

If something goes wrong, write to legal@alethris.com first. We will reply within fourteen days, and most disagreements end there. If one does not, either of us may take it to a court in Nigeria that has jurisdiction over it. Nothing in this clause stops you complaining to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission or the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.

18. General

These Terms, with the documents they refer to, are the whole agreement between you and us about your account. If a court finds part of them unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to a company that takes over Alethris, and we will tell you if we do; you may not transfer yours. We send notices to the email address on your account or through Alethris Hub.

19. Contact

iSoterik Limited, No 22 Benin Street, Malali, Kaduna.

• General and legal: legal@alethris.com
• Support: support@alethris.com
• Privacy: privacy@alethris.com