What we hold about you, and why it is so little

What we actually hold

Three small piles. Order details: first and last name, email address, phone number, town, postcode, country, and whatever you typed into the notes box on the order form. Account details: the email you log in with, which lessons you have opened, and the date your access runs out. Technical bits: your IP address in the server log, and, only if you agreed to measurement cookies, which pages you looked at and how far down a lesson you scrolled.

What we deliberately do not hold

• No card numbers. Bank transfers never touch this site, and card payments are taken over the phone through our bank's terminal, where the number is keyed straight in and never written down here.
• No date of birth, no National Insurance number, no salary figure, no account balances, no idea who you bank with. We do not ask, we do not need it, and please do not email it to us.
• No profile built from anything you do off this website.

Why we are allowed to hold it

Order and account details are held to perform the contract you entered when you bought a course. Invoices are held because tax law says we must keep them. Measurement and advertising cookies run on your consent, given through the banner and withdrawable at any point. Replying to an email you sent us runs on the fairly obvious legitimate interest of answering the person who wrote in.

Who else sees any of it

The order form is handled by an outside form service that passes the message into our inbox. Email sits with a mail provider. The site is served by a hosting company, and the typeface and icon files load from two content delivery networks, which means those networks see your IP address as part of serving the request. Our accountant sees invoices because that is what accountants are for. That is the complete list. Nobody buys this data, nobody rents it, and there is no partner list.

How long it stays

• Invoices and payment records: for as long as tax rules require them to be kept.
• Course accounts: through the twelve months of access, then a further twelve in case you come back, then removed.
• Email threads: two years, then deleted in a batch.
• Measurement data: thirteen months, and it is aggregated well before that.

What you can ask us for

A copy of everything we hold. A correction if something is wrong. Deletion, which we will do unless a tax rule forces us to keep an invoice. Restriction, portability, an objection to any processing, and withdrawal of cookie consent whenever you like. Ask at [email protected] and we usually come back the same week; the outside limit is one month. If we handle any of it badly, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, and you do not need our permission to do so.

Security, without the theatre

This is a small operation and we will not pretend otherwise. The site runs over HTTPS, every course account has its own login, admin access sits with two people, and the laptops involved are encrypted. We are not going to claim a breach is impossible. If one happens, you will hear it from us and so will the ICO.

Under eighteens

Courses are sold to adults. Nothing here is aimed at children and we do not knowingly hold data about anyone under eighteen. If you think we have some, tell us and it goes.

If this changes

When the way we handle data changes, we rewrite this page properly rather than bolting a note onto the bottom that nobody reads. If a change affects anyone who has already bought a course, we email them about it instead of relying on you to check.