Privacy policy

This policy explains how Ask Ewan collects and uses personal data when you use our website, 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 the operator of Ask Ewan (contact via the contact form). Update this section with your registered legal entity name and address before launch if required.

2. What we collect

• 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 and identifiers needed to fulfil your order, not your full card number.
• 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 paid reports and related emails.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): operating the site, security, fraud prevention, product improvement, and (where proportionate) analytics that do not rely on invasive 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.

4. Retention

We keep data only as long as needed for the purposes above, including any statutory retention for tax and accounting. Support tickets are retained to handle follow-up and disputes; you may request deletion subject to overriding legal retention.

5. Sharing

We use processors such as hosting, email delivery, and payment providers. They process data on our instructions under contract. We do not sell personal data. We do not accept payment from universities or employers to influence core comparison content.

6. International transfers

If any processor stores data outside the UK/EEA, we rely on appropriate safeguards (e.g. UK IDTA / EU SCCs) 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. 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.

9. Cookies

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

10. Contact

For privacy requests, use the contact form with subject "Privacy request".