Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

ABCD IELTS (“we”, “us”) operates abcdielts.com. This Privacy Policy describes what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the rights you have over your data. It is effective from the “Last updated” date above and applies to all users of the Service.

2. Information We Collect

We collect five categories of information about you:

• Account data — name, email address, target IELTS band, planned exam date, and country of residence, provided when you create an account.
• Practice data — your question attempts, answers, time spent on each question, paragraph flags, bookmarks, and other interactions with the Service, generated as you use it.
• Speaking audio recordings — the audio you record when you answer a Speaking task. It is uploaded to a private server-side store so it can be scored by our AI marking provider and so you can listen back to it in your Speaking report. We keep it for 30 days, then delete it automatically.
• Signup source data — the plan you chose, any campaign parameters in the link you arrived through (UTM values), and the page that referred you, recorded when you create your account so we can understand where our students come from.
• Technical data — IP address, user-agent string, HTTP referrer, and similar metadata captured by our hosting and analytics infrastructure.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to deliver practice content tailored to your target band, to generate band-score estimates and personalised Smart Review Queue suggestions, to process payments and manage your subscription, and to send transactional communications (e.g. password resets, billing receipts). With your explicit consent, we may also send marketing emails covering new content drops, product updates, and study-tip series.

4. Olly — Your AI Study Assistant

Olly is our AI study assistant. When you use it, it assembles a study dossier from your own attempt history — your scores, accuracy by question type, and trends — to answer questions about your performance. It reads only your own data, never another student’s, and it never invents band scores.

• What we store. Your Olly chat conversations and messages, and your one-tap “did this help?” feedback. We also keep an aggregate usage record (token counts and an estimated cost per call) for billing and cost control — it contains no conversation content.
• How long. Olly conversations, messages, and feedback are kept on a 30-day rolling window and pruned after that — chat history is transient tutoring context, not a permanent record.
• If you cancel. Your Olly conversation data is deleted within 30 days of your subscription period ending. The aggregate usage record (tokens and cost, no conversation content) is retained as our billing record.

5. The Weekly Olly Digest

If you expressly opt in, we may send weekly study and product emails. These emails may summarise your practice and describe features available on a paid plan. You can withdraw consent at any time using the unsubscribe link in an email. Withdrawing consent stops future optional emails on that list and does not affect service messages needed to operate your account. The digest names the analysis you could unlock; it never contains the locked explanations, answer keys, or other premium content itself.

6. Legal Basis for Processing

We rely on contract performance to deliver the Service you signed up for, legitimate interests for product analytics and security monitoring, your consent for marketing communications (revocable at any time), and legal obligation for tax records and regulatory reporting.

7. Data Processors and Sub-processors

We share your data only with service providers acting on our instructions to operate the Service, in these categories: database and authentication infrastructure, application hosting, payment processing (PCI-DSS certified), transactional and lifecycle email delivery, error monitoring, product analytics, and the AI providers that score Writing and Speaking responses. Each provider processes your data under a data-processing agreement and only to deliver its service to us; none may use your data for its own purposes. A current list of our providers is available on request from privacy@abcdielts.com.

8. Children’s Data

The Service is not directed at children under 13. Users aged 13 through 17 require verifiable parental or legal-guardian consent to create an account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal data, contact us at privacy@abcdielts.com and we will delete it promptly.

9. Your Rights

You have the right to access your personal data, to request rectification of inaccurate data, to request erasure (subject to our retention obligations), to receive a portable copy of your data, to object to certain processing, and to withdraw consent for marketing communications at any time. Submit requests to privacy@abcdielts.com; we respond within 30 days.

You do not have to wait for us to erase your account: sign in and go to Account → Delete account. Deletion is immediate and permanent — your profile, practice history, essays, Speaking transcripts, bands, stored audio and profile picture are removed, and an active subscription is cancelled at the same time (cancelling is not a refund). Payment records are retained as described in §10. The email route above remains available, and staff accounts (teacher, admin, parent) are deleted by us on request rather than self-service.

10. Data Retention and Security

Account data is retained while your account is active. When you delete your account yourself (§9) the deletion is immediate and there is no recovery window — we do not keep a 90-day copy you could ask us to restore. Payment records are retained as required by applicable tax and accounting law, including after your account is deleted; our payment processor holds its own records under its own obligations. We use technical and organisational safeguards appropriate to the nature and risk of the data, including encryption in transit and access controls. We maintain audit logs and incident-response procedures. We assess and notify personal-data breaches in accordance with applicable law, including notifying regulators and affected people where the relevant legal threshold is met.

Analytics events do not contain essays, transcripts, recordings or answer text. They may include a pseudonymous account identifier, route or feature labels, scores and usage measurements.

Cookies and similar technologies

We use browser storage for two purposes only: the strictly necessary storage that signs you in and keeps your session and preferences working, and first-party statistical analytics that tell us which pages and features are used. We do not use advertising, profiling or cross-site tracking technologies, and we do not share this information with third parties for their own purposes. Because our analytics are first-party and used only to produce aggregate usage statistics for our own service, we rely on the statistical-analytics exception rather than asking for consent, which is why you are not shown a cookie banner. You can still opt out: we honour a browser Do Not Track signal, and you can clear or block storage for this site in your browser settings at any time.

Two further retention details: your Writing essays and Speaking transcripts are kept as your study history while your account is active and are never used to train third-party models; and deleting a single essay or recording without deleting your whole account is not self-service yet — email privacy@abcdielts.com and we will remove specific items for you.

Contact. Privacy questions and rights requests can be sent to privacy@abcdielts.com.