Privacy Policy & Cookie Policy

LAST  UPDATED: 12th June 2025.  v-1.1

What’s New: We’ve added a new section explaining our use of privacy-safe device fingerprinting to help prevent fraud. This change only applies to new users who sign up on or after 12th June 2025.

Previous Versions:
Privacy Policy v1.0 — Effective 28th September 2024 to 11th June 2025

Privacy policy

This is the Privacy Policy for ESL Teacher Tools (ESL Teacher Tools / we / us), accessible from www.esltools.app. Our Privacy Policy describes how and why we collect, store and use (process) your information when you use the ESL Teacher Tools web application (Application / Service). Reading this privacy policy will help you understand your privacy rights and choices.

What information we collect

• We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you create an account to use the Service and also when you contact us. The personal information we collect and process is your name / username and your email address.
• We do not collect sensitive information when you use the ESL Teacher Tools web application.
• We do not collect information from third parties or other outside sources.

Information collected automatically

• We automatically collect certain information when you use the Service. This information does not contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII) but includes device information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system and information about which pages you visit. This information is used to maintain the security and operation of the Application, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes to help improve the Service.
• Certain tools in the Application require user input, which may produce an error on our servers. Anonymous information related to user input may also be logged if an error is produced to help us understand the error and improve the quality of the Service. The information logged in this case is related to the input and does not contain PII or device information.

How we process your information

We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with the Service. These reasons are:

• To facilitate the creation of your account and also when you log into your account (account authentication).
• To respond to your inquiries if you contact us via email or through our contact forms.
• To send you an email with a Password Reset Link if you request to reset your password.
• To notify you by email if there are updates to our Terms and Conditions.
• To request feedback and contact you about your use of the Service.

We only process your personal information when we believe it is necessary and we have a valid legal reason (i.e. legal basis) to do so under applicable law, like with your consent, to comply with laws, to provide you with services, to enter into or fulfill our contractual obligations, to protect your rights, or to fulfill our legitimate business interests.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR require us to explain the valid legal bases we rely on in order to process your personal information. As such, we may rely on the following legal bases to process your personal information:

• Consent. We may process your information if you have given us permission (i.e. consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
• Performance of a contract. We may process your personal information when we believe it is necessary to fulfill our contractual obligations to you, including providing our Service or at your request prior to entering into a contract with you.
• Legitimate interests. We may process your information when we believe it is reasonably necessary to achieve our legitimate business interests and those interests do not outweigh your interests and fundamental rights and freedoms. For example, we may process your information in order to:
• Analyse how our services are used so we can improve them.
• Diagnose problems and/or prevent fraudulent activities.
• Legal obligations. We may process your information where we believe it is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations, such as to cooperate with a law enforcement body or regulatory agency, exercise or defend our legal rights, or disclose your information as evidence in litigation in which we are involved.
• Vital interests. We may process your information where we believe it is necessary to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of a third party, such as situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person.

In legal terms we are the “data controller”, under European data protection laws, of the personal information described in this Privacy Policy, since we determine the means and/or purposes of the data processing we perform.

Device fingerprinting

When you create an account, we collect a hashed version of your device fingerprint. This fingerprint is:

• Anonymised using salted hashing — meaning it cannot be reverse-engineered or identify your exact device or personal information.
• Used solely to detect multiple account sign-ups from the same device.
• Not used for tracking, advertising, or profiling purposes.
• Processed on our servers and not shared with third parties.

We store this anonymised fingerprint in a secure database, along with references to any accounts created from the same device. This helps us detect abuse and maintain the integrity of our service. If an account is deleted, we remove any personally identifying references to it within the fingerprint record. The fingerprint hash is retained in its anonymised form to help detect suspicious activity or repeated abuse from the same device. Fingerprints associated with only one account are automatically deleted after one year, in line with our data minimisation practices.

Sharing your information

• ESL Teacher Tools does not pass on to third parties any information about our users for Advertising, Marketing or Analytics purposes.
• ESL Teacher Tools uses an outside data storage service provider to store and manage user data in a secure, cloud-based database, located on servers in the EU. The data storage provider is an industry leading company which uses robust technical and organisational measures to protect personal data. We have a written Data Processing Agreement with the provider in place to protect personal data and comply with GDPR regulations.
• ESL Teacher Tools may also need to share your information in the case of any merger or accquisition of all or a part of our business to another company.

How long we keep your information

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required by law. We keep your information during the time you have an account with us, and we will generally retain this information for a period up to 60 days following the closure of your account or 90 days if your subscription expires and your account is idle. This retention period is to facilitate the recovery of a user's account if requested. When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will delete it. If this is not possible (for example if your information has been stored in backup archives), we will isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

How we keep your information safe

Transmission of information via the internet cannot be guaranteed to be 100% secure. However we are commited to protecting your personal information and use a combination of security measures to safeguard your data:

• Data minimisation and retention: The information we collect is kept to a minimum of essential information required to be able to provide our Service and is retained only as long as necessary for the purpose it is collected or as required by law.
• Data encryption: Your personal data is encrypted during transit using industry-standard SSL/TLS encryption protocols. All user passwords are securely encrypted using industry-standard hashing algorithms before they are stored in our systems. This ensures that in the event of a data breach your passwords remain protected.
• Access control: Email addresses are stored in our database in a readable format to support essential functionality such as account management, authentication, and password recovery. Access to personal data is restricted using role-based access controls to prevent unauthorised access.
• Breach notification: In the event of a data breach, we will notify affected users promptly and provide advice on steps to follow to protect their information.

Privacy policies of other websites

The ESL Teacher Tools web application contains links to other websites. This Privacy Policy applies only to our site. If you visit a linked site, you should read their Privacy Policy to find out information about how they collect and process personal information.

Your privacy rights

In some regions (like the EEA, UK and Canada) you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These include the right:

• to request access and obtain a copy of your personal information
• to request rectification of information you believe is inaccurate
• to request erasure of your personal data under certain conditions
• to restrict the processing of your personal information under certain conditions
• to object to the processing of your personal information under certain conditions
• to request the transfer of data we have collected to another organisation, or directly to you, in a structured, commonly used, machine readable format under certain conditions

You can make such requests by contacting us via our email at support@esltools.app. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. In the case of a request from you, we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity. This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

If you are located in the EEA or UK and you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. You can find their contact details here: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en.

If you are located in Switzerland, the contact details for the data protection authorities are available here: https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb/en/home.html.

Withdrawing your consent

If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, which may be express or implied consent depending on applicable law, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent by contacting us at support@esltools.app. Please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal, nor where applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

Updates to this Privacy Policy

ESL Teacher Tools may update this Privacy Policy as necessary to stay compliant with relevant laws. The updated version will be indicated by the Last Updated date and version number at the top of this Privacy Policy. The updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy we may notify you by prominently posting a notice of such changes on the Application home page and/or by directly sending you a notification.

Cookie policy

This is the Cookie Policy for ESL Teacher Tools (ESL Teacher Tools / we / us), accessible from www.esltools.app.

What are cookies

Cookies are small pieces of text which are downloaded to your computer when you visit a website to identify you. They are typically used to remember login credentials, remember preferences (like choice of language or page configuration), collect analytics data, select advertising and personalise content shown to users, amongst other things.

How ESL Teacher Tools uses cookies

ESL Teacher Tools uses only one cookie for login purposes. This cookie remembers the fact that you are logged in so you are able to access the various tools contained within the application. Access to the tools requires being logged in, so without this cookie it wouldn't be possible to use the service. This cookie is automatically cleared when you log out of the application. It has a life span of 14 days, after which time you will need to login again to be able to access the service.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding our Privacy or Cookie Policies, please contact us via email us at support@esltools.app or by using the contact form found at www.esltools.app/contact.