1. Introduction

At AskYourClass ("we", "us", or "our"), we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other applicable data protection laws.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your personal data when you use our platform (website, mobile app, or related services) for sharing and discovering course reviews and, where the feature is available, for finding and offering peer tutoring.

By using the Platform, you consent to the practices described in this policy. Please read it carefully.

2. Data Controller

The data controller responsible for your personal data is AskYourClass.

You can contact us regarding privacy matters via our contact page.

3. Personal Data We Collect

We collect the following categories of personal data:

• Account Information: Name, email address, username, password (hashed).
• Content You Provide: Course reviews, ratings, comments, user activity, and any other user-generated content you interact with.
• Direct Messages and Presence Data: Message content/metadata (sender, recipient, timestamps), online presence signals (heartbeat/last active), and notification state (read/unread).
• Tutor Profile Data: if you offer tutoring, the display name, profile photo, headline, biography, university, study programme, degree level, semester, languages, and teaching experience you publish, together with each offer you create (course, session format, indicative hourly rate, description, self-reported grade, teaching-assistant experience, and any files you attach).
• Tutoring Requests and Reviews: the message you send a tutor, your preferred session format, the contact method and handle you choose to share, the status and timing of the request, and any rating and review left afterwards.
• Reports and Moderation Records: reports you submit about a profile, an offer, or other content, and the decisions and notes we record when we review them.
• Derived Activity Data: figures we calculate from your use of the Platform, such as your typical response time, how often your profile has been viewed, and how many sessions you have completed.
• Usage and Technical Data: IP address, browser type, device information, operating system, pages visited, time spent, and interaction data.
• Cookies and Tracking: Data collected via cookies, pixels, or similar technologies (see our Cookie section below).
• Other: Any additional information you voluntarily provide (e.g., via contact forms or support requests).

4. How We Collect Your Data

We collect data directly from you (when you create an account, post a review, visit courses, or contact us), automatically through your use of the Platform (via cookies and analytics tools), and occasionally from third-party services (e.g., authentication providers or analytics).

5. Purposes and Legal Basis for Processing

We process your personal data for the following purposes and on these legal bases:

• Providing and operating the Platform (e.g., account management, displaying your reviews) Contract performance (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• Improving our services, analytics, and user experience Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• Communicating with you (e.g., account notifications, support) Contract performance or Legitimate interests.
• Sending email notifications you configure (e.g., DM alerts and account notifications) Consent and Contract performance. You can manage these in your notification preferences.
• Operating the tutoring features (publishing your profile and offers, listing them in the directory, passing a request to the tutor you contact, and displaying reviews) Contract performance (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Publishing a profile is voluntary and you can withdraw it at any time.
• Sharing the contact details you add to a tutoring request Consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). This is optional, and nothing is passed on unless you enter it yourself.
• Service emails about the tutoring features (a reminder about a request you have not answered, a nudge if you leave a profile unfinished, an occasional summary of your profile activity, and one invitation to review a tutor after a session) Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) in a marketplace where requests actually get answered, or Consent where required. You can switch these off in your notification preferences.
• Moderating profiles, offers, reviews, and reports, and keeping users safe Legitimate interests or Legal obligation.
• Ensuring security, preventing fraud, and enforcing our Terms Legitimate interests or Legal obligation.
• Marketing (if you opt in) — Consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). You can withdraw consent at any time.

6. Sharing and Disclosure of Data

We do not sell your personal data. We may share it with:

• Service providers and processors (e.g., hosting, analytics, email services, cloud storage) who act on our behalf and are bound by data processing agreements.
• Resend (our transactional email provider) for sending notification and account emails.
• Legal authorities, if required by law or to protect our rights.
• Other users, when you contact them. When you send a tutoring request, the tutor receives your display name, your message, your preferred session format, and the contact method and handle if you chose to give one. Contact details are optional and nothing is passed on unless you enter it. From that point the two of you can continue in direct messages. The other person decides what they do with what you gave them, as an independent controller, and this policy does not govern their use of it.

7. Public Information and Search Engines

Parts of the Platform are public. What is published there can be seen by anyone on the internet, including people without an account, and can be found and copied by search engines and other automated services.

This applies in particular to:

• Course reviews, ratings, and comments, together with the identity you post them under
• A published tutor profile: display name, profile photo, headline, biography, university, study programme, degree level, semester, and languages
• Each offer on that profile: the course, session format, indicative hourly rate, description, and any grade or teaching-assistant experience you chose to state
• Reviews other students leave about a tutor, and the average rating calculated from them
• Figures we calculate from your activity and show on your profile, such as how quickly you typically respond, how often your profile has been viewed, and how many sessions have been completed

Published tutor profiles are included in the sitemap we submit to search engines, so they are meant to be found in search results. Publishing a profile is voluntary and happens only when you submit one; the legal basis is performance of the contract you enter into by using the tutoring features (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Please treat everything on a public profile as public. Do not put a home address, a phone number, or anything else you would not want indexed into a biography, an offer description, or a message.

When you unpublish a profile or delete an offer, we remove it from the Platform and from the sitemap, and search engines drop it over time. We cannot delete copies already made by search engines, archives, or other third parties. If a cached copy persists, you can ask the operator of that service to remove it, and we will help where we reasonably can.

8. International Data Transfers

Data is purely stored in the European Economic Area (EEA). Interractions with third-party providers only occure if they are GDPR-compliant and do not forward any data outside of the EEA.

9. Data Retention

We retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined above or as required by law. Account data and reviews are generally kept while your account is active. You can request deletion of your account and associated data (subject to legal obligations). Direct messages, presence records, and email-preference settings are retained only as long as needed to operate messaging/notifications, enforce safety, and satisfy legal obligations.

Tutoring data follows the same principle. A withdrawn profile or a deleted offer is hidden from the Platform and kept for a limited period so that we can deal with reports, disputes, and legal claims, and so that a removed profile cannot simply be recreated to escape a moderation decision. A tutoring request, and the conversation it opened, are kept for as long as that conversation exists between the two users. Reviews stay visible so that a tutor rating continues to reflect the experiences it was built from. You can ask us to remove a review you wrote, and you can ask us to delete your account and the data associated with it, subject to our legal obligations.

10. Your Data Protection Rights

Under GDPR, you have the following rights:

• Right to access your personal data
• Right to rectification (correct inaccurate data)
• Right to erasure ("right to be forgotten")
• Right to restrict processing
• Right to data portability
• Right to object to processing (including for legitimate interests or direct marketing)
• Right to withdraw consent at any time (where processing is based on consent)

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us via our contact page. We will respond within one month (extendable in complex cases).

11. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to enhance your experience, analyze usage, and provide personalized features. You can manage your cookie preferences through your browser settings or our cookie consent banner (if implemented).

For more details, please refer to our Cookie Policy (if you have one; otherwise expand this section).

12. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorized access, loss, or disclosure. However, no system is completely secure.

13. Children's Privacy

Our Platform is not intended for children under 18 years old. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If we become aware that we have collected such data, we will take steps to delete it.

14. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by posting the new policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. Continued use of the Platform after changes means you accept the updated policy.

15. Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us.