Privacy Policy

FolioTutors ("we", "us", "our") is an online tutoring marketplace operated from the United Kingdom. We are the data controller for personal information collected through this website (foliotutors.co.uk).

Contact us at: privacy@foliotutors.co.uk

We collect personal data in the following categories:

• Account data — name, email address, password (hashed), and role (student or tutor).
• Profile data — location, biography, subjects taught or studied, profile photo, hourly rate.
• Verification data (tutors only) — phone number, qualifications, and uploaded certificates. These are only revealed to logged-in users once verification is approved.
• Payment data — when you purchase a verification or a highlighted listing, your payment is processed by Stripe. We do not store card numbers. Stripe's privacy policy applies to payment processing.
• Messages — conversations between tutors and students sent through the platform.
• Usage data — IP address, browser type, pages visited, and other technical log data collected automatically.
• Reviews — ratings and written feedback you leave for tutors.

We use your data to:

• Provide and operate the FolioTutors platform.
• Verify tutor identities and display verification badges.
• Process payments and manage subscriptions via Stripe.
• Enable messaging between students and tutors.
• Send transactional emails (account confirmation, password reset, payment receipts).
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, or policy violations.
• Comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell your data to third parties or use it for advertising.

We process personal data on the following grounds:

• Contract performance — to deliver the services you have signed up for.
• Legitimate interests — to operate the platform securely, prevent fraud, and improve our services.
• Legal obligation — where required by applicable law.
• Consent — for any optional marketing communications (you can withdraw at any time).

• Account data — retained for as long as your account is active, and deleted within 90 days of account closure.
• Payment records — retained for 7 years as required by UK financial regulations.
• Messages — retained for 2 years from the date of the last message in a conversation.
• Verification documents — deleted within 30 days of verification approval or rejection.

We share data only with the following third parties, all of whom are bound by data processing agreements:

• Supabase — database and authentication infrastructure (EU data centre).
• Stripe — payment processing.
• Vercel — hosting and content delivery.
• PostHog — product analytics (EU data centre). PostHog collects anonymised usage data such as page views and click events. No personal identifiers are sent unless you are logged in, in which case a pseudonymous user ID may be associated with events. See PostHog's privacy policy.
• Google Tag Manager — tag management. Google Tag Manager (GTM) is used to deploy and manage analytics and marketing tags. GTM itself does not collect personal data but may trigger tags (such as Google Analytics) that do. See Google's privacy policy.
• Reddit — advertising. We use the Reddit Pixel to measure and improve the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns on Reddit. The Reddit Pixel sets cookies and collects information about your interactions with our website (such as page visits) so that Reddit can show you more relevant ads and help us understand ad performance. See Reddit's privacy policy.

Notice on additional third-party providers: From time to time we may add, remove, or change third-party service providers used to operate and improve FolioTutors. This privacy policy may not reflect such changes immediately — updates may be delayed by up to 24 hours after a new provider is integrated. By continuing to use the site, you acknowledge that the list of providers above may not be exhaustive at any given moment and that we will update it as soon as reasonably practicable, and in any event within 24 hours of a change taking effect.

We may also disclose data to law enforcement or regulatory authorities if legally required.

We use the following cookies:

• Authentication cookies — strictly necessary to keep you logged in. These cannot be disabled while using the platform.
• Analytics cookies — we use PostHog to understand how pages are used (page views, clicks, session duration). PostHog operates from an EU data centre. A pseudonymous device ID is stored in a first-party cookie; no personal identifiers are included for logged-out visitors.
• Tag management cookies — Google Tag Manager may set cookies (such as _ga and related identifiers) to support analytics and measurement tags deployed through GTM. These cookies are governed by Google's privacy policy.
• Advertising cookies — the Reddit Pixel sets cookies to track page visits and conversions for our advertising campaigns on Reddit. These cookies are governed by Reddit's privacy policy.

You have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — ask us to correct inaccurate data.
• Erasure — request deletion of your data ("right to be forgotten"), subject to legal retention requirements.
• Restriction — ask us to restrict processing in certain circumstances.
• Portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format.
• Object — object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent, withdraw it at any time.

To exercise any right, email us at privacy@foliotutors.co.uk. We will respond within 30 days. If you are unhappy with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

We use industry-standard security measures including TLS encryption in transit, encrypted storage, and access controls. No system is completely secure; if you believe your account has been compromised, contact us immediately.

Our infrastructure providers may process data outside the UK. Where this occurs, we rely on standard contractual clauses or adequacy decisions to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place.

We may update this policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email or by a prominent notice on the site. Continued use of FolioTutors after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.