Privacy notice

1. Contact and controller details

Controller: Psych Schools Limited.

Privacy email: psychschools@gmail.com

Postal address: 167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London W1W 5PF

2. Data we collect

Account data

Your email address, first and last name, roles, what you have access to and a hashed password if you set one. If you choose Google sign-in, we receive your verified email address, profile name and an account identifier through Supabase Auth. We do not receive your Google password. If you give them, your professional title, GMC number and exam dates. We never store your password itself, and we do not ask for a phone number when you register.

Purchase data

If you buy access: your Stripe customer ID, what you bought and when, the amounts paid and refunded, and purchase references (including invoice numbers from older purchases). Stripe collects your billing address and phone number at checkout and stores them with your payment and customer details. Stripe takes your card details. We never see your full card number or security code.

Authentication and security data

Hashed session and recovery tokens, session dates, limited device or request information, security events, rate-limit records and audit logs. IP addresses may be hashed where used for abuse prevention.

Learning data

Practice sessions, answer selections, scores, flags, response times, study time, mock attempts, textbook engagement, CASC practice, private notes and self-ratings.

AI discussion data

When you send an AI message: the current question context, your submitted answer selection and chat messages for that question. We also record request metadata and daily usage counts to enforce limits and diagnose failures. See the AI discussion section below.

Content and support data

Questions, textbook material, citations, images and reports you submit; messages about content problems; and author attribution details such as a name or professional registration number where an author chooses public credit.

Technical data

Request identifiers, timestamps, error and diagnostic information, browser-supplied technical information, and essential cookie or local-storage preferences.

Copyright notice data

If you send us a copyright or DMCA notice or counter-notice: your name, organisation, email address, postal address, the notice itself and a hashed form of your IP address. We keep this while the notice is open and for a record period afterwards so we can show what was reported and how we responded, and we may pass a copy of a notice to the person whose material it concerns. See the Copyright and DMCA policy.

3. Why we use data and our lawful bases

• Contract: to create and secure an account, deliver learning features, including optional AI discussion when you send a message, save progress and respond to account requests.
• Legitimate interests: to prevent abuse, keep the Service secure, diagnose faults, understand aggregate educational performance and improve content and usability. We balance these interests against your rights.
• Legal obligation: to comply with applicable law, lawful requests and record-keeping duties.
• Consent: for optional Google Analytics cookies and visit measurement. You may withdraw consent at any time without affecting earlier lawful processing.

4. Patient and health information

MRC does not ask you to provide patient data or information about your own health. Clinical scenarios in the Service are educational. Do not enter identifiable patient information in notes, reports, questions, images, textbook content or AI chat messages.

If you accidentally submit confidential or identifiable clinical material, stop sharing it and contact us promptly so we can assess and remove it.

5. Who receives data

These processors handle data for us:

• Stripe: payments.
• Brevo: email.
• OpenAI: generates replies when you choose to send an AI discussion message. See the AI discussion details below.
• Google Ireland Limited: optional Google Analytics visit, learning journey and purchase measurement, only after you accept optional cookies. Purchase and refund amounts use a random reference. We do not send account identities, answers or card details. See the cookie notice for controls and cookie lifetimes.
• DigitalOcean: website and API hosting, and protected database backups.
• Supabase: hosting the application database and authenticating Google sign-in. Deleting your account also removes its linked Supabase sign-in identity.
• Google: optional Google sign-in, using your email address and basic profile. We do not request access to Gmail, Drive or your other Google content.
• Cloudflare: DNS, content delivery and file storage (R2).

We may also share data with professional advisers, or when the law requires it.

We do not sell personal data and do not share learning records with advertisers. We do not disclose identifiable results to employers, universities or the Royal College unless you ask us to or the law requires it.

6. Optional AI discussion

Only when you send an AI message do we send OpenAI the current question and its context, including answer options, the correct answer and explanations, your submitted answer selection, and the current question’s chat messages, including earlier replies. Opening the discussion or submitting a practice answer alone does not send this information to OpenAI.

AI discussion is optional revision guidance and may contain mistakes. The AI has no tools or browsing access. Do not include patient identifiers or other confidential clinical information in messages.

We disable response storage in our requests to OpenAI using the setting store: false. This is not a promise of zero retention by OpenAI: it may retain data for abuse monitoring or other purposes under its applicable policies. See OpenAI’s API data controls.

We do not store AI chat transcripts in our application database. We keep request metadata, such as request identifiers, dates and completion status, and daily usage counts for 90 days to manage usage limits and investigate failures. These AI records are removed when you delete your account.

7. International transfers

Some of these processors may handle data outside the UK. Where this happens, we will use an applicable adequacy regulation or contractual and organisational safeguards required by UK data-protection law. Contact us to ask about the safeguards used for a particular provider.

8. Retention

• Account and learning data are kept while the account is active so the Service can preserve progress and versioned attempts.
• AI request metadata and daily usage counts are kept for 90 days and removed on account deletion. AI chat transcripts are not stored in our application database. OpenAI’s retention is separate, as explained in the AI discussion section above.
• Expired sessions and single-use verification/reset tokens are invalidated according to their security lifetimes.
• When progress is deleted, the selected learning records are removed from the live service.
• When you delete your account, we sign you out everywhere and delete your password, email address, name, professional title, GMC number, exam dates and roles. Your purchase and practice records stay, linked to an account that no longer holds your name or email address.
• Limited audit, security, dispute or legal records may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary for those purposes.
• Deleted data may remain temporarily in protected backups until the backup retention cycle expires and will not be restored for ordinary use.

9. Cookies and device storage

Essential cookies protect sign-in and requests. Device storage also remembers accessibility preferences and your cookie choice. Optional cookies are disabled unless you accept them. Read the cookie notice or use “Cookie settings” in the footer to change your choice.

10. Security

Passwords are protected with Argon2id one-way hashing. Authentication tokens are stored as hashes server-side, production cookies use secure attributes, access is role-controlled, and production traffic is intended to use HTTPS. No service can guarantee absolute security.

11. Your rights

Depending on the circumstances, UK data-protection law gives you the right to request access, correction, deletion, restriction, objection and portability, and to withdraw consent. Some rights depend on the lawful basis and may have legal exceptions.

Your right to object: you may object to processing based on legitimate interests. Tell us what processing concerns you and why; we will stop unless we have a compelling lawful reason to continue.

You may delete learning progress or your account through account settings. While an account is paused or suspended under our terms, email admin@mrcpsychiatrist.com instead. Contact us for other requests. We may need to verify your identity before releasing or changing data.

You may complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. We would appreciate the chance to address the concern first.

12. Automated scoring

The Service automatically marks practice answers using predetermined answer keys and produces learning analytics. This is educational feedback, not a decision with legal or similarly significant effects, and it does not determine an official examination outcome.

13. Children

The Service is intended for adults aged 18 or over. Contact us if you believe a child has created an account so the situation can be investigated.

14. Changes to this notice

We will update the date and publish a revised notice when our data use changes. We will bring material new uses to registered users’ attention before they begin where required.