Privacy Policy

Effective date: 2026-06-06

1. Overview

IELTS AI Examiner (“we”, “us”, “the app”) is an AI-assisted IELTS Speaking and Writing practice tool for candidates preparing for the International English Language Testing System. This policy describes what we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the controls you have over your data.

IELTS AI Examiner is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia, Cambridge Assessment English, or any other official IELTS body. The IELTS name and rubric are referenced for educational comparison only. Bands produced by the app are an AI-generated estimate intended to support practice; they are not official IELTS scores. See our Terms of Service for the full disclaimer.

Operator: IELTS AI Examiner. Contact: [email protected].

2. What data we collect

2.1 Account data

  • Sign-in identity. When you sign in with Apple, Google, or Microsoft via OAuth, we receive your name, email address, and OAuth provider user id. We do not request access to your Gmail, Drive, Calendar, contacts, or any other Google scope beyond openid email profile. The same minimal scope principle applies to the Apple and Microsoft providers.
  • Email/password sign-up. If you sign up directly we store your email and a hashed password (Better Auth, scrypt).
  • Email verification token. A short-lived token to confirm you own the email address.

2.2 Profile preferences

  • Target IELTS band (e.g. 6.5, 7.0, 7.5, 8.0)
  • Native language (used to tailor pronunciation feedback for CJK learners)
  • Target exam date and practice cadence
  • Examiner persona preference (Emily / James / Sarah)
  • Reminder time and notification preferences
  • Optional display name and avatar choice

2.3 Practice data

  • Stereo audio recordings of your Speaking sessions. One channel captures your voice from the device microphone; the second channel captures the AI examiner's spoken questions. We store the combined stereo file so you can replay the session inside the Score Report screen.
  • Writing submissions. The text you submit for Writing practice tasks (Task 1 + Task 2) is stored against your account so the scoring pipeline can analyse it and so you can review past submissions.
  • Transcripts generated from your Speaking recordings by an automated speech-to-text service.
  • Scores from automated assessment (the four IELTS Speaking criteria — Fluency & Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range & Accuracy, Pronunciation — and an overall band 0–9) and per-task feedback.
  • Pronunciation reports including per-word pronunciation scores and speech-rate metrics.

2.4 Subscription & in-app purchase data

  • Apple In-App Purchase receipts for your iOS subscription, including product id, transaction id, and renewal/expiry timestamps. We do not receive your Apple ID payment information.
  • Stripe / PingPong transaction metadata for web subscriptions (plan, amount, currency, timestamps). Payment-card details are processed by Stripe or PingPong directly; we never see card data.
  • Current tier, usage credits, and renewal status to enforce subscription gating.

2.5 Crash diagnostics

  • Crash diagnostics. Approximate device type, app version, and OS, plus crash stack traces when the app unexpectedly quits. Crash payloads are inspected only for bug triage and contain no practice content (audio, transcripts, or scores).
  • Web analytics on ieltsaiexaminer.com (Cloudflare Web Analytics) — applies only to visits to the marketing website, not to the iOS app.

2.6 Technical data

  • Authenticated session cookies and tokens
  • Server access logs (IP address, timestamp, request URL) retained for 30 days

We do not collect: precise GPS location, browsing history, contacts, photos (other than the profile picture you explicitly choose), or social-graph data.

3. How we use the data

  • Run the practice service: generate AI examiner questions, score Speaking and Writing answers, surface feedback, recommend the next focus area.
  • Send transactional emails (sign-in verification, password reset, support replies). We do not send marketing emails without an explicit opt-in.
  • Compute your personal “weak area” profile (lowest scoring criteria) so the recommender can surface targeted drills.
  • Debug crashes and operational issues. Server logs are scoped to minimum-needed fields.
  • Aggregate, fully de-identified usage counts (e.g. “how many sessions did users complete this week”) to help us improve the product.

We do not: sell your data, share it with advertising networks, or use OAuth-provided Google, Apple, or Microsoft profile data for any purpose beyond authenticating you into the app.

4. Third-party services

To run the service we send certain data to the following processors:

  • Google Vertex AI (Gemini Live + LLM). Receives your practice audio (for real-time Speaking interaction and transcription) and your Writing text (for scoring). Calls are made under Google's Vertex AI enterprise terms; your inputs are not used to train Google's general-purpose models.
  • Microsoft Azure Speech. Receives a compressed copy of your Speaking audio for syllable- level pronunciation scoring. Calls are made under Azure's no-retention configuration; audio is not used for model training.
  • Cloudflare R2 (EU region). Stores your encrypted audio files and writing submissions so you can replay or review them in your Score Report.
  • Cloudflare — CDN, DNS, and edge protection for our public web and API endpoints.
  • Transactional email service (our self-hosted mail server). Sends verification, password reset, and support emails.
  • Authentication service (Better Auth, self-hosted). Handles authentication tokens, sessions, and password hashing on the same infrastructure as the rest of the service.
  • Apple, Google, Microsoft (OAuth providers). Receive an authorisation request when you tap “Sign in with Apple/Google/Microsoft”; return your email + basic profile so we can recognise you on return visits. We pass the minimum OAuth scopes required (openid email profile) and request no additional permissions.
  • Apple In-App Purchase. Apple processes iOS subscription and one-time purchase payments and sends us signed transaction events. Apple does not share your payment details with us. If you request a refund for a purchase through Apple, Apple may ask us to share information about your use of the purchased content (for example, how many minutes of a practice-minute pack you have used) to help Apple review your refund request. By making a purchase you consent to IELTS AI Examiner sharing this consumption information with Apple for that purpose. You can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing [email protected]; if you withdraw, we will stop sharing this information, which may affect Apple's review of your refund.
  • Stripe and PingPong — payment processors for web subscriptions. Stripe handles international cards; PingPong handles mainland-China payments (Alipay, WeChat Pay). Both receive your card or wallet data directly; we never see it.

We do not use Facebook Pixel, advertising SDKs, ad-attribution SDKs, fingerprinting tools, or any analytics service on the iOS app beyond crash diagnostics.

5. Data retention

  • Account profile: retained while your account is active.
  • Practice recordings, transcripts, score reports, writing submissions: retained while your account is active so you can replay sessions and track progress.
  • Server access logs: 30 days, then auto-rotated.
  • Account deletion (in-app): when you delete your account from Settings → Account → Delete account, your data enters a 7-day grace period during which you can cancel by signing back in. After 7 days the account, practice audio, transcripts, score reports, writing submissions, and subscription history are permanently and irrecoverably purged.
  • Apple sign-in revocation. If you signed in with Apple, we additionally call Apple's /auth/revoke endpoint on your behalf when you delete your account, per Apple's App Store Review Guideline 5.1.1(v).
  • Full erasure on request: email [email protected] with subject “Erasure request” and we will hard-delete all practice content within 30 days.
  • Billing & fraud-prevention records required by law may be retained even after deletion.

6. Your rights and controls

  • Delete. Settings → Account → Delete account. The account enters the 7-day grace period described in Section 5 and is then permanently purged.
  • Email verification + password reset are available from the sign-in screen.
  • Linked accounts. Settings → Account → Linked accounts lets you connect or disconnect Apple, Google, and Microsoft sign-in independently at any time.
  • EU / UK / CA users. You also have the GDPR / UK-GDPR / PIPEDA rights to access, rectify, port, restrict, object, and complain to a supervisory authority. Email [email protected] with “Privacy request” in the subject line.
  • Mainland China (PIPL). You have parallel rights of access, correction, deletion, and withdrawal of consent. The same email address handles PIPL requests.

7. Children

IELTS AI Examiner is intended for users aged 16 and over preparing for the IELTS test. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe a minor has signed up, email us and we will erase the account.

8. Security

  • TLS 1.3 in transit; server-managed encryption at rest.
  • Audio is stored in Cloudflare R2 with server-side AES-256 encryption.
  • Passwords are hashed with scrypt; we cannot see them in plaintext.
  • OAuth tokens are stored in iOS Secure Enclave (Keychain) on your device.
  • Access to production systems is restricted to operators with hardware security keys.

No system is perfectly secure. If you discover a vulnerability please email [email protected].

9. International transfers

Our infrastructure is hosted primarily in the European Union (Hetzner, Germany). Some processors operate in the United States and other regions (notably Google Vertex AI and Microsoft Azure). Where required by law, transfers are covered by the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent safeguards. China-region data residency is on our roadmap; we will update this policy when the China region launches.

10. Changes to this policy

We'll post the updated text here and update the effective date. Material changes (new categories of data collected, new processors, new purposes) will be announced by in-app notification and, where required, by email.

11. Contact

Questions, complaints, or data subject requests: [email protected]. We respond within one business day.