Privacy notice
This notice explains what personal information ExamDay collects when you use our websites, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and the rights you have over it. We have written it to be read by students as well as parents, guardians and teachers.
In short
- You can use ExamDay without an account. If you create one, we need only your email address.
- We use your information to run your account and save your revision, and to keep ExamDay secure. We do not sell it.
- Pages for browsing past papers show an ad from Google; pages where you work through questions never do. The ads are not personalised. We do not use analytics cookies, and we do not build marketing profiles of our users.
- ExamDay is for people aged 13 and over. We apply the ICO’s Children’s Code to everyone who uses it.
- You can download your information or delete your account at any time from your Account page.
1. Who we are
ExamDay (“ExamDay”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is an independent revision service. ExamDay provides free revision for GCSE, A level and university admissions tests through examday.co.uk and its subdomains (together, the “Service”).
For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018, we are the controller of the personal information described in this notice. You can contact us about anything in this notice at [email protected].
2. The information we collect
Information you give us
- Account details: your email address and, if you sign up with an email address, a password. We store only a secure, one-way hash of your password, never the password itself.
- Your exam choices: the exams and qualifications you tell us you are revising for.
- Your revision: the questions you attempt and your answers, papers and topics you mark as done, scores you record, bookmarks and notes you write.
- Reports and messages: the content of any report you make about a question and any message you send us.
We do not ask for your name, date of birth, school, address or phone number, and we ask you not to include personal details in notes or reports. We do not knowingly collect special category information (such as information about health or religion).
Information from Google
If you choose to sign in with Google, Google tells us your email address, that it has verified that address, and an identifier for your Google account. We do not receive your Google password or access to anything else in your Google account.
Information collected automatically
- Sign-in sessions: when you sign in we record when, which of our sites you signed in on and the browser and device type your browser reports (its “user agent”), so that you can see and end your sessions.
- Security and abuse prevention: your IP address and a random identifier stored in a cookie, used to limit repeated sign-in attempts and to stop automated copying of our past-paper libraries. This includes a short-lived record of which past papers have been opened.
- Server logs: like most websites, our servers record technical information about requests (such as IP address, the page requested, the time and the browser type) to keep the Service running and secure.
We do not use analytics services, tracking pixels or social media plugins, and we do not collect your precise location. The ads on pages for browsing past papers come from Google (see Cookies).
3. How we use it, and our lawful bases
Data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for each use of your personal information. These are ours:
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Create and run your account, sign you in, and send the emails needed to do so (sign-up and password reset codes, and important notices about your account) | Performance of our contract with you (the terms of use) |
| Save and show your revision, progress, bookmarks and notes, and show you the exams you have chosen | Performance of our contract with you |
| Keep the Service and your account secure, prevent fraud, abuse and automated copying, and enforce our terms | Our legitimate interests in protecting our users, our Service and the material we make available |
| Show an ad on pages for browsing past papers, which pays for the free Service | Our legitimate interests in keeping the Service free; your consent, where the law requires it for the cookies Google uses |
| Fix errors in questions you report, answer your messages and improve the Service using information about how it is used as a whole | Our legitimate interests in providing an accurate, working Service |
| Comply with the law, respond to lawful requests and establish, exercise or defend legal claims | Legal obligation, and our legitimate interests |
Where we rely on legitimate interests we have balanced them against your rights, taking particular account of the fact that many of our users are under 18. You can object to any use based on legitimate interests (see Your rights).
We do not send marketing emails. We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects. The only automated decisions we make are security measures, such as temporarily limiting access after too many sign-in attempts or after unusually rapid downloading; these are temporary, and you can contact us if you think one has been applied to you wrongly.
4. Children and young people
ExamDay is designed for students, many of whom are under 18. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If we learn that we hold the personal information of a child under 13 who has an account, we will delete it.
Because the Service is likely to be used by children, we follow the Information Commissioner’s Office Age Appropriate Design Code (the “Children’s Code”) for all users. In particular:
- we collect only the information we need to provide the features you use, and settings are private by default;
- the ads we show are not personalised and never appear while you work through questions; we do not profile users for marketing, and we do not sell or share personal information for those purposes;
- we do not collect precise location information;
- we do not use design techniques intended to encourage you to share more information or to weaken your privacy.
If you are a parent or guardian and have a question about a child’s information, or would like it deleted, please contact us at [email protected].
7. International transfers
Some of our service providers, including Google and Cloudflare, are based in, or process information in, the United States and other countries outside the UK. Where personal information is transferred outside the UK, we make sure it is protected by one of the safeguards UK law requires: a country the UK has found to provide adequate protection (including the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, for certified US organisations), or the International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum approved by the Information Commissioner. You can ask us for details of the safeguard that applies.
8. How long we keep information
We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes described in this notice:
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account, exam choices, revision, bookmarks and notes | Until you delete your account. If an account is not used for three years, we may delete it after emailing you first. |
| Sign-in sessions | Until you sign out or the session expires (after 60 days) |
| Sign-up and password reset codes | 15 minutes, or until used |
| Security records (IP addresses for rate limits, records of papers opened) | Up to 24 hours, unless needed to investigate abuse |
| Server logs | Up to 30 days |
| Question reports and messages to us | As long as needed to deal with them, and no longer than two years |
| Backups | Deleted information is removed from backups within 30 days |
We may keep information for longer where the law requires it, or where it is needed for a legal claim.
9. How we protect information
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information. These include encrypting information in transit (HTTPS), storing only hashed passwords and session tokens, limiting access to personal information to people who need it, and limiting repeated sign-in attempts. No service can be completely secure; if you think your account has been compromised, change your password and use “Sign out everywhere” on your Account page, and tell us.
If a personal data breach occurs that is likely to result in a risk to your rights, we will report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hours, and tell you without undue delay where the law requires it.
10. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- access the personal information we hold about you and receive a copy of it;
- rectification of information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
- erasure of your information (the “right to be forgotten”);
- restrict how we use your information;
- object to our use of your information where we rely on legitimate interests;
- data portability: to receive information you gave us in a structured, machine-readable format;
- withdraw any consent you have given, at any time, without affecting what was done before.
You can exercise several of these yourself on your Account page: download your information, change your exam choices, end your sign-in sessions and permanently delete your account. For anything else, email [email protected]. If you are under 18, you can exercise these rights yourself, and a parent or guardian may also act on your behalf.
We will respond within one month. We may need to confirm your identity first, usually by asking you to write from the email address on your account. We do not charge a fee unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.
11. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please contact us first at [email protected] and we will try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator for data protection: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or by telephone on 0303 123 1113.
12. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice from time to time, for example when we add features. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If we make significant changes, we will tell account holders by email or on the Service before they take effect.
13. Contact us
Email: [email protected]