Privacy notice
MiniSage Tech Ltd (company 17229324, registered office 18 Crowthorp Road, Northampton, NN3 5DU; registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, reference C1941625) is the controller of personal data for the SERU practice course. Contact: support@seru-course.co.uk.
1. What we collect, why, and how long we keep it
| Data | Why | Lawful basis | Kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email address, language, access dates | Create your account, send sign-in links and receipts, run the course | Contract | 12 months after your access ends, then deleted |
| Telegram ID (only if you link Telegram) | Send daily questions and let you message the course assistant | Contract / your request | Until you unlink, or 12 months after access ends |
| What you type in the chat window on this site (Chat by Minisage). Email addresses, phone and card numbers are masked before the text is stored; the replies are not stored | Answer you, and see which questions the chat could not answer so we can improve it | Legitimate interests | 90 days |
| If you ask the chat to talk to a person: that conversation and the email address you give | Reply to you | Legitimate interests / your request | 90 days |
| Messages to the course assistant in Telegram | Answer you, using your progress and purchases. The assistant keeps the conversation only while it is answering and does not save it; your answers to daily questions are saved with your progress | Contract | Not stored (daily-question answers: as exam answers above) |
| Licence Companion progress and reminders; Topographical Trainer answers and route attempts (only if you buy them) | Show your progress, send the reminders you set up | Contract | 12 months after access ends |
| English Speaking Coach (only if you buy it): your spoken answer. It is recorded in your browser, sent once to our AI provider to write it down and score it, and then deleted. We do not keep the recording or the written transcript | Give you feedback on your answer | Contract | Not stored |
| English Speaking Coach scores (which question, practice scores, number of words) | Show your progress | Contract | 12 months after access ends |
| Exam attempts, answers, results, which explanations you open, questions you report | Show your progress, schedule repeats, improve questions | Contract; legitimate interests (improving the course) | 12 months after access ends |
| Purchase and payment records (amount, date, Stripe reference) | Accounting and tax | Legal obligation | 6 years (HMRC) |
| One in-course survey answer (what was hardest), your chosen language, and a single follow-up email answer (whether you sat the exam, whether you passed, number of sittings). Hashed session identifiers are kept 30 days to spot account sharing | Understand what candidates struggle with | Legitimate interests | 12 months after access ends |
| IP address, as a one-way hash | Rate limiting and abuse prevention only | Legitimate interests | 30 days |
| Free practice exam attempts without an account (not linked to a person) | Enforce the daily limit, improve questions | Legitimate interests | 30 days |
| Support emails | Answer you | Legitimate interests | Up to 24 months |
We do not store your card number. Stripe handles it. We do not sell your data and we do not use it to profile you for advertising.
2. The follow-up survey
About 12 weeks after purchase we may send one message asking if you took the SERU and what was hardest. We rely on legitimate interests for this. We tell you at purchase, we send it once, and every message has an unsubscribe link. Answering is optional.
3. Advertising and cookies
We use Google Ads to reach people searching for SERU practice. Advertising and conversion cookies are only set if you accept them in our cookie banner. See the cookie notice.
4. Who processes data for us
| Provider | For |
|---|---|
| Stripe | Payments (Stripe is also an independent controller for fraud and regulatory duties) |
| Resend | Sending sign-in and service emails |
| Vercel | Hosting and serverless functions |
| Neon | Database |
| OpenRouter (and the AI model providers it routes to) | Machine translation of explanations, and scoring of English Speaking Coach answers. We send the explanation text and the target language, or your spoken answer with the question and your chosen language. We do not send your email or name. The course assistant does not use it. |
| Chat by Minisage (our own chat service, hosted on Vercel and Neon) | Runs the chat window on this site and stores chat text as described above (90 days) |
| Telegram | Delivering daily questions and assistant messages, only if you link Telegram |
| Advertising measurement, only if you accept advertising cookies |
Our database (Neon) is hosted in London. Hosting (Vercel), email (Resend), AI processing (OpenRouter and its model providers), Stripe and Google may process data in the United States. These transfers are covered by the UK-US data bridge where the provider is certified, or by the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses in each provider's data processing terms.
5. Your rights
You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to our use of it, or move it. To delete your account, email support@seru-course.co.uk from the address you signed up with. We will delete learner data within 30 days, except records we must keep by law (purchase records, 6 years). You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, though we hope you will talk to us first.
6. Changes
We will update this notice if what we do changes, and tell account holders by email if the change matters.