Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

We are the data controller for the personal data processed through the Bell.Study platform. You can contact us at hello@bell.study.

2. Data We Collect

Family accounts: Username, email address, hashed password, hashed PIN. For child profiles: first name, nickname, date of birth, year group, and year group.

Teacher accounts: Full legal name, email address, phone number, qualifications, DBS certificate number and date, current or most recent school, subject specialisms, ID document, profile video, and profile photo.

Usage data: Booking history, lesson attendance, help button usage during lessons, chat messages, homework submissions, and session ratings.

Payment data: Payment processing is handled by Stripe. We do not store credit card numbers. We store Stripe payment intent IDs for record-keeping.

3. How We Use Your Data

We use personal data to:

• Provide the platform – account management, bookings, live lessons, and replays
• Process payments and refunds via Stripe
• Send transactional emails – booking confirmations, lesson reminders, and cancellation notices
• Verify teacher identity and qualifications during the application process
• Improve the platform – analysing help button data and lesson engagement patterns

4. Legal Basis

Contract: Processing necessary to provide the service you signed up for (account management, bookings, payments).

Consent: Lesson recordings and replay access, child participation in live lessons. You can withdraw consent at any time by contacting us.

Legitimate interest: Platform improvement, fraud prevention, and safeguarding.

5. Children's Data

Bell.Study processes children's data with the consent of their parent or legal guardian, obtained during registration. We collect the minimum data necessary to provide the service. Children do not create their own accounts – all access is through the parent's family account.

Children's chat messages during lessons are anonymous (displayed with a username or avatar, not their real name). Help button usage is anonymous to other students.

6. Data Sharing

We share data with:

• Stripe – payment processing
• Resend – transactional email delivery
• LiveKit – live video streaming infrastructure
• Cloudflare – file storage (teacher uploads)
• Railway – application hosting and database

We do not sell personal data to third parties. We do not share individual student data with schools – only aggregated revenue figures.

7. Data Retention

Account data is retained for as long as your account is active. Lesson recordings are retained for 12 months. Teacher application documents (ID, DBS) are retained for the duration of their active status on the platform. You can request deletion of your account and associated data at any time.

8. Your Rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Rectify inaccurate data
• Erase your data (right to be forgotten)
• Restrict or object to processing
• Data portability
• Withdraw consent at any time

To exercise any of these rights, contact hello@bell.study. We will respond within 30 days.

9. Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your data, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed passwords and PINs (bcrypt), rate limiting on authentication endpoints, and role-based access controls. Teacher application documents are stored in encrypted cloud storage with access restricted to authorised personnel.

10. Cookies

Bell.Study uses essential cookies only – session authentication cookies required for the platform to function. We do not use analytics, advertising, or tracking cookies.

11. Changes

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated by email. The latest version is always available at bell.study/privacy.

12. Contact and Complaints

For privacy enquiries: hello@bell.study

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.