Privacy Policy

Smash English is operated by Debra-Jayne Kimlin T/AS SmashEnglish.com, PO Box 299, Carlton North, Victoria 3054, Australia.

This policy explains what personal information we collect when you use smashenglish.com, why we collect it, and the choices you have. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles.

To ask a privacy question, request a copy of your information, or ask us to correct or delete it, use the Ground Control help button inside your dashboard, or the contact form on the site. We aim to respond within 30 days.

• Account details — your name or display name, username, email address, avatar choice and the learning level you select when you sign up.
• Quiz activity — the quizzes you attempt, your answers, scores, times, streaks, coins, hints used and badges earned.
• Report recipients — if you choose to send a 7-day progress report, the name, email address and relationship (for example parent or teacher) you enter for up to three people.
• Payment records — your subscription status, plan and billing history. Card numbers are entered directly with our payment processor, Stripe, and are never stored on our servers.
• Messages you send us — waitlist and contact form submissions, and Ground Control help chats and problem reports.
• Technical information — basic request and error logs. Where we need to limit abuse, your IP address is stored only as a one-way hashed value, not as a readable address.

• To create and run your account and keep you signed in.
• To show your progress, points, streaks, badges and leaderboards.
• To send the 7-day progress report to the people you nominate.
• To process subscriptions, coupons and billing enquiries.
• To answer your questions and fix problems you report in a quiz.
• To keep the site fair and secure — preventing automated submissions, repeated abuse and misuse of free limits.
• To send service emails about your account. We do not send marketing email to students.

Many of our users are school students. If you are under 16, please create your account with a parent, guardian or teacher, and ask them before entering an email address or making a payment.

Progress reports are only ever emailed to recipients that the member (or their parent, guardian or teacher) has entered into the account. We do not share student results with anyone else, we do not use student information for advertising, and we do not sell personal information.

A parent, guardian or school can ask us to access, correct or delete a student's information at any time using the contact methods above. We may ask for reasonable proof of the relationship before acting.

We share information only with the service providers we need to run the site, and only as far as they need it:

• Our hosting and database provider, which stores site data.
• Stripe, which processes subscription payments.
• Our email delivery provider, which sends account and report emails.
• The AI provider that powers the Ground Control help assistant. Your help messages are sent to it to generate a reply. Please don't include sensitive personal details in help chats.

We may also disclose information if required by law. We do not sell personal information and we do not use advertising networks.

Some of these providers may store or process data outside Australia.

Cookies and similar browser storage keep the site working and remember your preferences. We group them into two kinds:

You can change your mind at any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer, or by clearing your browser storage for this site.

Information is stored in our hosted database, protected by access rules so that members can only reach their own records. Access to administration tools is restricted to the site owner. Passwords are stored by our authentication provider as salted hashes, never in plain text.

No online service can promise perfect security, but we take reasonable steps to protect your information from loss, misuse and unauthorised access.

We keep account and progress information while your account is active. If you close your account we delete or de-identify your personal information, apart from records we must keep for tax and payment purposes.

You can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• correct anything that is wrong or out of date;
• delete your account and the information attached to it;
• stop sending you a particular type of email.

You can update most details yourself in Edit Profile. If you are unhappy with how we've handled your privacy, contact us first — and if you're still not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

We may update this policy as the site changes. The date at the top shows when it was last revised, and significant changes will be highlighted on the site.