Privacy policy

This policy explains how Ask Ewan (Ames AI Ltd) collects and uses personal data when you use our website, build a pathway, join the waitlist, contact support, or purchase a product. It is written to align with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. It is not legal advice; consider independent advice for your circumstances.

1. Data controller

The data controller is Ames AI Ltd, trading as Ask Ewan. Ames AI Ltd (company no. 17071760), registered in England and Wales. Registered office: 9 Middle Street, Shaldon, Teignmouth, England, TQ14 0DR.

For privacy requests, use the contact form and choose "Privacy / data rights".

2. What we collect

• Pathway questionnaire: name (optional), education stage, subjects, predicted grades, career interests, priorities, location preferences, and related answers you enter to generate your dashboard. Stored to save and regenerate your pathway.
• Account (optional): if you sign in, we receive your email and authentication identifiers from our auth provider (e.g. Google or Apple). We do not receive your social password.
• Waitlist: email, outward postcode (first part), child's school year band, referral metadata, confirmation tokens, and technical timestamps.
• Support: email, optional name, category, message content, and basic technical metadata needed to respond.
• Purchases: payment is processed by Stripe; we receive payment status, subscription status where applicable, and identifiers needed to fulfil your order — not your full card number.
• Document review: the text you submit for review, document type, and optional target sector.
• Website use: standard server and security logs (e.g. IP address, user agent) for a limited period where needed to run and protect the service.

3. Purposes and legal bases

• Contract (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)): delivering pathways, paid reports, subscriptions, document reviews, and related service emails.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): operating the site, security, fraud prevention, product improvement, and privacy-preserving analytics that do not rely on invasive cross-site tracking.
• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)): where we ask explicitly (e.g. marketing beyond transactional email). Waitlist confirmation uses a double opt-in link to verify your email.
• Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)): retaining records where the law requires (e.g. tax and accounting).

4. Processors and sharing

We use processors that handle data on our instructions under contract, including hosting (e.g. Vercel), database (Supabase), email delivery (Resend), payments (Stripe), and AI narrative generation (Anthropic) for certain paid outputs. Analytics, where enabled, uses privacy-preserving Plausible without third-party advertising cookies.

We do not sell personal data. We do not accept payment from universities or employers to influence core comparison content.

5. Retention

We keep data only as long as needed for the purposes above, including any statutory retention for tax and accounting. Pathway data is retained while you use the service and for a reasonable period afterwards so you can return via your link or account. Support tickets are retained to handle follow-up and disputes; you may request deletion subject to overriding legal retention.

6. International transfers

Some processors may store or process data outside the UK. Where that happens, we rely on appropriate safeguards (e.g. UK IDTA / EU SCCs, or UK adequacy decisions) as required.

7. Your rights

You may have rights to access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, and data portability, and to withdraw consent where processing is consent-based. Contact us via the contact form (category "Privacy / data rights"). We may need to verify your identity before responding.

You may lodge a complaint with the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) at ico.org.uk.

8. Children

Ask Ewan is aimed at parents and older students (16+). We do not target under-13s and do not knowingly collect their personal data. If you believe we have collected a child's data in error, contact us and we will delete it promptly.

9. Cookies

See our Cookie policy. We aim to use privacy-preserving analytics without third-party advertising cookies where possible.

10. Changes

We may update this policy. Material changes will be reflected by the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.