Privacy Policy

CtrlAltRevise ("we", "us", "our") provides an online Computer Science revision and learning platform (the "Platform"). For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation ("UK GDPR") and the Data Protection Act 2018, and — where it applies to learners in the EU/EEA — the EU GDPR, we are the data controller for the personal data processed through the Platform.

• Controller: CtrlAltRevise, operated by an individual (sole trader) based in the United Kingdom.
• Privacy contact: ctrlaltrevise@gmail.com — the quickest way to reach us about your data or this Policy.
• EU representative (Article 27): not appointed. We are established in the UK and do not target the service at learners in the EU/EEA; if that changes we will appoint one.

We have not appointed a statutory Data Protection Officer; we do not believe one is mandatory for our processing. We keep this under review given that we process children's data.

Account and identity data

• The email address you register with (required) and a display name (optional).
• If you sign in with Google or with Apple, the name, email address and profile picture that the provider shares with us.
• Your password is never stored in readable form — we store only a securely hashed version (bcrypt).

Education profile (all optional)

• Qualification preferences, a target exam session, and an exam date, if you choose to enter them. You do not have to provide these to use the Platform.

Learning activity data

• Lessons completed and progress through topics.
• Quiz attempts and the answers you select, scores and timestamps.
• Pseudocode and code you write and save, practice submissions, hint requests, XP, and your mastery / spaced-repetition review data.
• Mock examination attempts, including the free-text answers you type and timing data.

Free-text answers and code (please note)

• When you type answers into practice or mock questions, or write code, that text is personal data because it is linked to your account. Some free-text answers are sent to our AI marking provider for marking — see Section 6.

Parent connections

• A parent may create an invite for a specific student email address. We store the connection status, the invited email, expiry and consent timestamps, and the linked account identities. The plaintext invite token is not stored in our database. The receiving student's browser may keep it temporarily in same-tab session storage while they sign in, then removes it after the connection is accepted.
• The signed-in student sees the requesting parent's name and email before deciding. Nothing is shared until the student accepts. An accepted parent can see the student's name, email, qualification, completed-lesson count, XP/streak, recent activity dates, recent quiz accuracy and marked mock-paper summaries. Private notes, annotations, passwords, messages, saved code and full answers are not shown.
• Either the student or parent can revoke the connection. Revocation ends access immediately.

Collaboration data

• If you use the real-time collaboration feature: your display name and an assigned colour, the shared code/document content, cursor/presence information, and chat or "run" events created in the session. Guests can join a session with a display name and a link without creating an account — see Section 7.

Payment and subscription data

• We use Stripe to take payments. We do not store your card number or full card details on our servers. We store a Stripe customer identifier, subscription identifier, plan/price, status, and renewal date so we can manage your subscription.

Technical data

• Your IP address is used transiently as a key for rate-limiting (abuse protection) via our rate-limit provider; we do not store it against your account.
• Authentication cookies and small browser local-storage values that keep you signed in and remember your theme/accent preference (see our separate Cookie Notice).

We collect your date of birth at sign-up to enforce our minimum age and to identify users under 18. See Section 10 for how we treat younger users.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interests against your rights and freedoms and recorded that assessment. For younger users we take particular care that any such processing is in their interests.

Providing an email address is necessary to hold an account; without it we cannot create or secure your account. The education-profile fields are optional and the Platform works without them.

We do not sell your personal data and we do not use it for targeted advertising. We share data with the following service providers, only as needed to run the Platform. Each acts on our instructions under a data processing agreement.

If a student explicitly accepts a parent invite, the linked parent is also a recipient of the limited progress information listed under "Parent connections" in Section 2. This sharing is controlled by the student and either side can revoke it.

• Stripe, Inc. — payments and subscription management. Receives your email/name at checkout; we store only Stripe identifiers and status. (Stripe Privacy Policy.)
• Google LLC — optional "Sign in with Google". Shares your name, email and profile picture with us if you choose it. (Google Privacy Policy.)
• Apple Inc. — optional "Sign in with Apple". Shares the identity details you approve. (Apple Privacy Policy.)
• Our AI provider — powers assisted marking, the lesson tutor, and hints. Depending on our current configuration this is either Google LLC (USA), via the Google Gemini API, or DeepSeek (operated from China). Some free-text answers (the answer text, question text, and mark scheme) and lesson-tutor questions (your question and the lesson text) are sent to this provider to produce a suggested mark, feedback, or a tutor reply; hint requests send only the question identifier and difficulty level and do not include your personal data (see Section 6). (Google Privacy Policy · DeepSeek Privacy Policy.)
• Our transactional email provider — sends account emails (verification, password reset). Receives the recipient email address and the contents of those emails.
• Our database hosting provider — hosts the database that stores the data described above.
• Vercel Inc. (USA) — hosts and serves the application.
• Upstash, Inc. (USA) — distributed rate-limiting; processes your IP address transiently as an abuse-prevention key.

We keep this list current. We may also disclose data where required by law, to establish or defend legal claims, or to a successor in a business transfer.

Some of the providers above process data outside the UK and EEA, primarily in the United States (this includes Stripe and our hosting/database/rate-limiting providers where they operate US infrastructure, and Google where it is our configured AI provider). Where DeepSeek is our configured AI provider, the free-text and tutor data described in Section 6 is transferred to and processed in China. Where we make such a transfer we put a lawful safeguard in place for each one:

• Reliance on the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, where the specific provider entity is certified under it; or
• The UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, supported by a Transfer Risk Assessment, where it is not.

Which country applies depends on our configured AI provider (see Section 6): data goes to the United States when we use Google Gemini, or to China when we use DeepSeek. We use only one of these providers at a time.

We use an AI service — either the Google Gemini API or DeepSeek, depending on our current configuration — in three ways:

• Assisted marking. When some free-text or mock answers are marked, the text of your answer, together with the question and mark scheme, is sent to the AI provider to produce a suggested mark and feedback. Where a question is configured for manual or hybrid review, a person can review the result, and a manual review queue is available.
• Lesson tutor. When you ask the tutor a question about a lesson, your question and the text of that lesson are sent to the AI provider to produce a reply. Your question is free text, so please do not include personal details in it.
• Hints. When you ask for a hint, we send only the question identifier and the hint level. We do not send your personal data, your answer, or your code for hints.

This marking helps you practise; it is not an official examination result and it does not by itself make a decision with legal or similarly significant effect about you. Because meaningful human review is available, the right in Article 22 (a decision based solely on automated processing) is not engaged — but we disclose this processing so you understand it. If you want a person to review an AI-assisted mark, contact us.

The lawful basis for this processing is contract (Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR) — delivering the marking feature you requested as part of the Platform service (see Section 3).

The AI provider's retention of your data: The API terms of our configured AI provider (Google or DeepSeek) govern how long it retains inputs sent to its API and whether those inputs may be used to improve its models. For the current position, see that provider's privacy policy and API terms.

The AI may occasionally be wrong or incomplete. Always check important results against the official syllabus and mark scheme.

The collaboration feature lets you (and people you invite) work together in real time on shared code and documents, with a chat/run activity stream. If you start or join a session:

• Your display name and an assigned colour are visible to other people in that session. We use your chosen display name; we do not show your email address to other participants.
• Guests can join with a link and a display name without an account. A guest's display name is visible to others in the session.
• The shared content and session events are stored so the session works and can be resumed.

For younger users, collaboration and social features (such as friend requests and profile visibility) should default to high-privacy/private. If you see content that is harmful, illegal, or breaches our Terms, please report it (see the Terms of Service for how to report and our takedown process).

• Account and learning data — kept while your account is active, and deleted when you delete your account or ask us to erase it.
• Financial and billing records — kept for up to seven years to meet legal record-keeping obligations, then deleted.
• Rate-limiting data (IP) — held only transiently for abuse protection and expires automatically; it is not stored against your account.
• After deletion — we may keep learning data only in anonymised or aggregated form (not linked to you) to improve the Platform.

For younger users we apply data minimisation: we collect and keep only what is needed for the part of the service the user is actively using.

Under UK GDPR (and EU GDPR where it applies) you can ask us to:

• Access your data — get a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectify data that is wrong or incomplete.
• Erase your data — you can delete your account yourself in your account settings, which removes your data and cancels any active subscription.
• Restrict how we process your data in certain cases.
• Port your data — receive the data you gave us in a structured, commonly-used, machine-readable format.
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to object to direct marketing at any time.
• Withdraw consent for anything we do on the basis of consent, at any time.

You can delete your account at any time from your account settings. To request a copy of your data, or to exercise any other right, contact us at ctrlaltrevise@gmail.com and we will help. We aim to respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk. If you are in the EEA you may also complain to your local supervisory authority.

Many of our users are school students, and some may be under 18 or under 13. The ICO's Age Appropriate Design Code (the Children's Code) applies to us, so we design with the best interests of younger users in mind.

In plain terms: we ask for as little information as we can. We do not show your email to other users except a parent you explicitly choose to connect. We do not sell your data or use it for adverts. You can delete your account whenever you want. If something online worries you, tell a parent, carer or teacher, and you can contact us.

The minimum age to hold an account is 13. If you are under 18, we ask you to confirm that your parent or guardian agrees to your use of the Platform. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13.

How we handle age: we do not collect date of birth. Account holders confirm their eligibility and any required parent or guardian agreement by accepting our Terms at sign-up. We apply the Children's Code high-privacy defaults to all users (collaboration and social features private by default, and no behavioural profiling), rather than creating date-of-birth profiles.

Where we rely on consent (for example optional marketing), a user under 13 needs a parent or guardian to give that consent, and we must make reasonable efforts to verify it. If the EU GDPR applies, the digital-consent age varies by country (13–16), so parental-consent thresholds differ.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child under 13 has given us data, contact us at ctrlaltrevise@gmail.com and we will delete it promptly.

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures, including: HTTPS/TLS encryption in transit; password hashing (bcrypt); access controls; and rate-limiting on sensitive actions. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data.

Data breaches. If a breach occurs that is likely to risk your rights and freedoms, we will notify the ICO without undue delay and, where feasible, within 72 hours of becoming aware of it. Where a breach is likely to result in a high risk to you, we will also tell you without undue delay. We keep an internal record of breaches.

We use a small number of essential cookies and some functional browser storage. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Full details are in our Cookie Notice.

CtrlAltRevise is an independent learning platform. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Cambridge University Press & Assessment or Cambridge Assessment International Education. "Cambridge", "IGCSE" and "A Level" are trademarks of Cambridge Assessment International Education.

We may update this Policy. We will post material changes on the Platform and, where appropriate, email you. The date at the top shows when it was last updated.

Contact us: CtrlAltRevise — ctrlaltrevise@gmail.com (United Kingdom). For our terms, see the Terms of Service.