Privacy policy

This part is written for students as well as parents. If anything here is unclear, ask a parent or carer, or email us at privacy@tutorviq.com.

Who Tutorviq is for

Tutorviq is for secondary school students in the UK and Nigeria, mostly aged 11 to 18, and for their parents and tutors. A parent can create an account for their child. We email the child a link to choose their own password, and the parent never sees it. A parent can also ask to link to a student’s existing account, and the link only happens if the student says yes.

Every student gives their date of birth once. A student under 13, or under 18 in Nigeria, needs a parent or carer to say yes before they use Tutorviq: we email the parent, who reads what we collect and agrees, and we keep a record of when they agreed and to which wording.

Once an account is linked, the parent can see their child’s lessons, homework, messages with tutors and mock exam results. They can read every conversation their child has with Ene, including what was said in Ene Live voice calls, and they can see what Ene remembers about their child. Students are told this in the Ene chat and on the page that shows what Ene remembers.

What we collect about children, and why

• Account details: name, email, school year, date of birth (to check whether a parent needs to agree) and, if they choose to add them, the subjects they are interested in, when they like to study, their learning goals and a profile photo. We use these to run the account and suggest the right tutors and work.
• Lessons and homework: lessons booked, who joined and for how long, homework and files handed in, and messages with tutors. We need these to teach, to pay tutors fairly and to look into problems.
• Study with Ene: conversations and whiteboards, photos of work sent to Ene, mock exam and daily challenge answers, Ene Coach tasks and answers, and a study plan if they set one. These are kept so they can go back to them and so Ene can pick up where they left off.
• What Ene remembers: short study notes, such as topics that need work, mistakes that keep coming up, exam dates and goals. Ene is built to keep study notes only. It will not store notes about home life, health, feelings or personal details, even if someone types them in.

Ene is an AI

Ene is a computer program, not a person. The top of every Ene conversation says so. Ene’s built-in safety rules, which no one at Tutorviq can switch off, tell it never to claim to be human and to say it is an AI if anyone asks. It can get things wrong, so check anything important with a teacher or tutor.

Which AI companies process this

To answer, Ene sends the conversation (and any photo of work) to an AI company, which sends a reply back. We use:

• Anthropic (Claude) for Ene’s answers, lessons, marking and study notes. This is the default for every written job.
• OpenAI for Ene Live voice calls, and as the backup if Anthropic is not available.

Our settings let us choose a different AI company for a single job. Google Gemini is not used by default. We do not send children’s data to services hosted in China, and the system refuses them.

We use these companies through their business services (their APIs). Under their terms for those services, they do not use the data we send to train their AI models. Each keeps what we send for a limited time to check for misuse: Anthropic deletes it within 30 days, and OpenAI keeps its misuse-checking records for up to 30 days. Either may keep something longer if the law requires it or if it breaks their rules.

Photos of work

When a student uses “Mark my work”, the photo is kept in our own database. It is only ever shown through a check on who is asking: the student, their linked parents, and Tutorviq staff who are allowed to look after accounts. Before a photo leaves the device, we shrink it, which also removes hidden details such as where it was taken.

Other files, such as homework handed in to a tutor or a photo added to an Ene lesson or an Ene Coach answer, are stored privately with Cloudinary. They are shown through the same check: the student, their linked parents, the tutor who set the work, and staff who are allowed to look after accounts.

Ene Live voice calls

In an Ene Live call, the student’s voice goes straight to OpenAI so Ene can hear and answer. We do not record or store the audio. We do keep a written copy of what was said, in the same place as other Ene conversations, so the student and their parents can read it. If the camera or screen is shared, we never store the pictures; Ene keeps a short written note of what it saw.

If a student uses the microphone button to type by speaking on the whiteboard, their web browser turns the speech into text. In some browsers, such as Chrome, the browser maker does this on its own servers, not us.

Keeping children safe

• Every Ene conversation includes safety rules that we build in and that cannot be switched off. If a student says they are being hurt, are in danger or are thinking about hurting themselves, Ene stops the lesson, tells them to talk to a trusted adult today and gives them our safeguarding email. If they may be in danger right now, it tells them to call 999 in the UK or 112 in Nigeria, and in the UK it gives them Childline, 0800 1111.
• Ene never asks for a home address, phone number, school name, passwords, photos of the student or social media accounts, and never suggests meeting or talking to anyone outside Tutorviq.
• When a conversation looks like it may contain a safeguarding concern, nothing from it is added to what Ene remembers. If the words suggest a child may be at risk, our safeguarding lead is alerted. The alert carries a reference, not what was said. Only staff with safeguarding access can open the conversation, and each time they do it is recorded.
• A safeguarding concern raised in Help and support is sent straight to our Designated Safeguarding Lead and goes to the top of the queue. You can also email safeguarding@tutorviq.com. Our safeguarding policy explains what happens next.

No adverts, no selling data

There are no adverts on Tutorviq and no advertising trackers. We do not sell anyone’s personal data, and we do not share it with anyone for advertising.

Seeing, correcting and deleting a child’s data

• A linked parent can see their child’s lessons, homework, Ene conversations and what Ene remembers from their own account.
• A student can correct or delete any note Ene keeps, or choose “Forget everything” on the page that shows what Ene remembers. That deletes all of Ene’s notes about them straight away. A student can also delete an Ene conversation from their list of sessions.
• A linked parent can also delete any of Ene’s notes about their child, choose “Forget everything” for them, or delete one of their Ene conversations. The child is told each time, in plain words, and the record shows which parent did it.
• A parent can unlink a child’s account from theirs at any time.
• Under Profile, then Your data, a student or parent can download a copy of everything we hold, or delete the account. A linked parent can do both for their child, and the child is told by email. A deleted account closes straight away and its data is deleted 30 days later, unless it is kept before then.

Contact

Privacy questions: privacy@tutorviq.com. Safety worries: safeguarding@tutorviq.com. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk in the UK, or to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission at ndpc.gov.ng.

• Account data: name, email, role, country (UK/NG), and a password managed by Keycloak (we never see the plaintext).
• Tutoring data: lessons you book, who joined each lesson and for how long (from our video provider, so we can pay the tutor or refund you), notes you leave for your tutor, homework you submit, and messages between you and your tutor.
• Payment data: handled by Stripe (UK / GBP) and Paystack (NG / NGN). We see the last 4 of a card, the amount, and the status. We never see the full card number.
• AI conversations: your conversations and whiteboards with Ene, kept on your account so you can go back to them. A linked parent can read their child’s conversations.
• Operational data: log files, IP addresses, and error reports for security and debugging. Retained 30 days.

• Behavioural advertising trackers. There are none on this site.
• Anything from your email inbox, calendar, or contacts. We don’t ask, and we don’t have integrations that would.
• Lesson recordings. Lessons are not recorded. Video and sound pass through Daily in real time and are not stored by us or by Daily. A linked parent can join a lesson to watch it live.
• Biometric data of any kind.

• Active account data: as long as the account exists.
• Ene conversations and what Ene remembers: until the student deletes them or the account is deleted.
• Lesson attendance: kept with the lesson and its payment record, so a dispute can be checked later.
• Daily challenge answers from people who are not signed in: deleted after 30 days.
• Payment records: 7 years (UK tax law).
• Deleted accounts: we close the account straight away and, 30 days later, delete what we hold. We keep only the records the law makes us keep, such as payment records, with the name and contact details removed, and records of safeguarding concerns. An account cannot be deleted while a lesson payment is held or a withdrawal is on its way; we say so when you try.

You can download or delete everything we hold on you yourself, from Profile, then Your data. You can change your name, photo and preferences there too. To correct anything else, or if you cannot sign in, email privacy@tutorviq.com from the address on your account and we will do it within 30 days.

The third parties that touch your data on our behalf:

• Keycloak, for authentication
• Stripe, for UK payments
• Paystack, for Nigeria payments
• Cloudinary, for photos and files you upload, such as homework and tutor documents
• Daily.co, for live video lessons and lesson attendance
• Anthropic (Claude), for Ene’s answers, lessons, marking and study notes
• OpenAI, for Ene Live voice calls and as the backup for Ene’s answers
• Brevo, for transactional email

A current list is at /legal/cookies and we update it whenever we add or remove a sub-processor.

Some sub-processors are based outside the UK. We rely on the UK Information Commissioner’s Office adequacy decisions and standard contractual clauses where required. The full list is in the sub-processor table above.

Privacy enquiries: privacy@tutorviq.com. Complaints to the ICO: ico.org.uk. In Nigeria, you can also complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission: ndpc.gov.ng.