PhysicsUK Terms of Service & Privacy Notice
Terms of Service
1. Who these terms are with and when they apply
PhysicsUK is operated by PhysicsUK, trading as PhysicsUK (we, us or PhysicsUK). These Terms apply to pupils, parents or guardians, teachers, schools and other users of PhysicsUK, including paid membership features.
By selecting the agreement box and creating an account, starting a paid checkout, or selecting the agreement box and logging in, you agree to these Terms. We record the account, date/time and version of the Terms accepted. The Privacy Notice below explains our processing of personal data; acknowledging it does not ask for consent where another lawful basis applies. If you do not agree, do not create an account, log in or use paid features.
If you accept for a school or organisation, you confirm that you have authority to do so. A school agreement or data-processing agreement may add to these Terms and takes priority where it expressly says so.
2. Accounts, schools and parents
- Keep account details accurate, use a unique account and keep credentials private. Tell us promptly if you suspect unauthorised access.
- School-managed accounts: may be created, managed or viewed by authorised school staff for teaching, assessment and progress monitoring. The school controls access within its organisation.
- Individual pupil accounts: are separate from school-managed access unless a permitted account-linking process is used.
- Parent or guardian billing accounts: may manage billing and, while the pupil has an active membership and has enabled sharing, see a limited summary of activity, study time, question counts, graded accuracy, learning focus areas, recent tool use and safety-event counts. A billing relationship does not automatically give unrestricted access or enable progress sharing. Parent access does not include answer text, handwriting, uploaded images, AI conversations, detailed feedback, school assessments, assignments or private school records.
- Do not link or manage another person's account unless you have authority to do so. People under 18 should obtain any parent or guardian permission needed for a paid subscription.
3. Educational and AI features
- PhysicsUK provides learning materials, practice, marking, feedback and planning tools. They are not teaching, professional, medical, legal, financial or safeguarding advice, and are not official examination results or an awarding-body decision.
- Some features use artificial intelligence or other automated tools. Outputs may be incomplete, inaccurate, biased, unsuitable for a particular learner or inconsistent with a specification. You are responsible for checking an output before relying on, sharing or acting on it.
- Do not submit unnecessary sensitive personal information, passwords, payment information, health information, precise location, personal contact details about another person, or confidential school material in a prompt, answer, chat or upload.
- We may change, pause or remove an automated feature where needed for safety, quality, security, legal compliance or service operation. We do not use automated tools to make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects on a person.
4. Acceptable use and content
You must not share accounts; access another person's data without permission; bypass security or access controls; scrape protected content; upload unlawful, infringing, abusive, harmful or malicious material; introduce malware; or use PhysicsUK in a way that harms another person or the service.
You retain ownership of content you submit. You give us a limited licence to host, copy, process and display it only as needed to provide, secure, support and improve the service, meet legal duties and resolve disputes. You confirm that you have the rights and permissions needed to submit it. We may remove or restrict content or accounts where reasonably necessary to protect users, investigate misuse or comply with law.
5. Membership, payment and cancellation
- Membership prices, billing frequency, tax treatment and the total due are shown before payment. Subscriptions renew monthly until cancelled unless Stripe Checkout states otherwise.
- Stripe processes payments. PhysicsUK does not store complete payment-card details. You can cancel through the Stripe Billing Portal; cancellation stops the next renewal and access normally continues until the end of the paid period.
- If payment fails, we may provide a short grace period and ask the payer to update the payment method. Access may end when the grace period ends.
- Any founding price applies only on the terms shown at checkout. Refund requests are handled through support. Nothing in these Terms limits statutory consumer rights.
6. Availability and changes
We aim to keep PhysicsUK available, secure and useful, but do not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or available at every time. We may update features, content and these Terms. We will give reasonable notice of material changes where required by law. A change will not remove a consumer's statutory rights or alter a price that the law requires us to honour without the necessary notice or agreement.
7. Liability
To the extent permitted by law, we are not responsible for a loss caused by relying on an AI or other automated output without appropriate independent checking, or by a user's failure to follow these Terms. We do not guarantee that educational feedback is correct, complete or suitable for a particular examination, learning need or purpose.
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot legally be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or a consumer's mandatory rights in relation to digital content or services. For consumers, any limitation applies only to the extent it is fair and lawful. For business users, neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, revenue, goodwill or anticipated savings, except where the law does not allow that limitation.
These limits apply to the service and AI outputs, not to remove rights under data-protection law or any obligation to handle a personal-data incident as the law requires.
8. Suspension, ending and law
We may suspend or end access where reasonably necessary for security, non-payment, suspected misuse, safeguarding, legal compliance or protection of other users. You may stop using the service at any time; account deletion and data requests are explained below. These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, except where mandatory law in your usual country of residence provides otherwise.
Privacy Notice
This notice explains how we collect and use personal data. It applies when we act as controller. Where a school controls school-managed learning data, the school normally gives the primary privacy information for that processing and we act on its documented instructions as processor, except for our own security, legal, service-administration and other independent controller duties.
9. Controller and contact
Controller: PhysicsUK (trading as PhysicsUK). Privacy contact: contact@physicsuk.co.uk.
We have not appointed a data protection officer. You can use the privacy contact for privacy requests, a suspected data incident or questions about this notice.
10. Data we use, why and our Lawful bases
| Data category | Why we use it | Usual lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account and contact details; account-role and acceptance record | Create and secure accounts, provide support, communicate service changes and evidence the contract. | Contract; legitimate interests in security and administration; legal obligation where applicable. |
| Learning activity, answers, marks, feedback, preferences and progress | Provide learning features, personalise study, teacher/school reporting and service improvement. | Contract for individual accounts; school instructions for school-managed data; legitimate interests for limited improvement and reliability. |
| Prompts, chats, uploads, handwriting, images and exam material | Provide the feature requested, including marking, recognition, generation, moderation, safety review and support. | Contract or school instructions; legitimate interests in safety, abuse prevention and quality. |
| Technical, security and service activity data, including IP-derived hashes, browser/device data, login and access events | Authenticate users, prevent abuse, investigate incidents, operate the service and produce limited service reporting. | Legitimate interests in security, reliability and service administration; legal obligation where applicable. |
| Optional browser notification data, including encrypted push endpoints and keys, coarse platform information, preferences, timezone and delivery results | Send opted-in homework and activity reminders, respect quiet hours, maintain browser subscriptions and investigate delivery problems. | Consent for optional notifications; school instructions where applicable; legitimate interests in secure delivery and audit. |
| Teacher email address and teacher-email consent, unsubscribe and export-access records | Send the teacher resources and PhysicsUK teacher updates that the person explicitly requested; maintain an unsubscribe/suppression record; and protect access to manual mailing-list exports. | Consent for teacher marketing emails; legitimate interests and legal obligations in maintaining a minimal suppression and access record. |
| Parent/pupil relationship and billing data | Administer subscriptions, payments, tax, fraud prevention, invoices and parent-controlled access. | Contract; legitimate interests in fraud prevention; legal obligation. |
| Support, safeguarding or moderation reports | Respond to requests, protect users, investigate concerns and meet legal duties. | Legitimate interests in safety and defending claims; legal obligation; vital interests where strictly necessary. |
We do not sell personal data. Optional Google Analytics is off by default and loads only after an active user choice. Optional Reddit Ads conversion tracking has a separate advertising choice and can be used for advertising attribution, campaign measurement and advertising audiences. We do not send account IDs, email addresses, answers, prompts, marks or learning content to GA4 or Reddit. Teacher-email updates do not use open or click tracking pixels. We do not knowingly ask users to provide special-category data. If you choose to put sensitive information into user content, it may be processed to provide the feature, to protect users or to meet legal obligations; please avoid doing so unless it is genuinely necessary.
11. Who receives data
We share data only when necessary with authorised school staff (for school-managed accounts), a linked parent or guardian within the access they are allowed, payment providers, hosting and database providers, email providers, browser push services, anti-abuse and real-time classroom providers, automated-tool providers, and optional analytics or advertising-measurement providers when the relevant browser choice allows them. Current service categories can include MongoDB Atlas, Heroku, Mailgun, Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft 365 when manually sending teacher updates, Stripe, Pusher, hCaptcha, browser vendors' push services, Google Analytics, Reddit, OpenRouter and the model providers selected through OpenRouter. A provider may process data as our processor or under its own terms where it provides a separate service. We require appropriate contractual and security protections where we appoint a processor.
We may also disclose information where reasonably necessary to protect someone, prevent fraud or abuse, establish or defend legal claims, or comply with a lawful request. We do not disclose a pupil's detailed learning record to a payer merely because they pay for membership. Parent summary access is recorded in our access audit and can be stopped by the pupil without changing billing.
12. Automated tools and LLM providers; international transfers
When an automated feature is used, the minimum input needed for that feature may be sent to OpenRouter and a selected model provider. OpenRouter routes requests to selected model providers for the feature. This can include a prompt, answer, image, handwriting, uploaded exam material, limited account/school context and a pseudonymous internal account identifier. Provider retention and training practices vary by provider and endpoint. We do not represent that every endpoint is zero-retention or that no provider can use inputs for its own purposes. Do not submit unnecessary personal or sensitive information.
Our providers may process data outside the UK. Where this is a restricted transfer, we use a lawful transfer mechanism and carry out the required assessment before the transfer, such as an adequacy decision, the UK IDTA or UK Addendum, and any required data-protection test. You may ask the privacy contact for further information about the relevant safeguards.
13. Retention
| Record | Retention approach |
|---|---|
| Guest-session records | Automatically deleted after 7 days. |
| Login, page-visit and activity records | Automatically deleted after 14 days, subject to any separately retained incident record. |
| Browser push subscriptions and delivery jobs | Subscriptions remain until disabled, revoked, invalidated or detached on logout for the bound session. Delivery audit jobs are automatically deleted after 90 days. |
| Teacher email subscriptions | Kept while the person remains subscribed. When they unsubscribe, we remove the exportable email address and keep only the minimum suppression and consent record needed to honour that choice and demonstrate compliance, subject to periodic review. |
| Individual account and learning records | Kept while the account is active and then reviewed for deletion or anonymisation, unless needed for an unresolved request, dispute, security investigation or legal obligation. |
| School-managed records | Kept and returned, deleted or anonymised in line with the school's written instructions, contract and applicable law. |
| Payment and tax records | Kept for the period required by payment, tax, accounting, fraud-prevention and legal obligations. |
| Support, safeguarding and security records | Kept only for as long as needed to resolve the matter, protect users, meet a legal duty or establish, exercise or defend a claim. |
Deletion may be delayed where a legal obligation or legitimate need applies. We may keep genuinely anonymised or aggregated statistics that no longer identify a person.
14. Security and personal-data incidents
We use measures designed to protect data, including access controls, HTTPS/TLS in transit, managed storage security controls, credential protection and restricted administrative access. No system can be guaranteed completely secure. If you suspect unauthorised access, contact contact@physicsuk.co.uk promptly and do not include a password or payment-card number in the report.
We assess, contain, investigate and document suspected personal-data incidents. Where we process school data as processor, we notify the school without undue delay under the applicable agreement. Where we are controller, we notify the ICO and affected people when the UK GDPR requires it. This notice does not reduce anyone's rights if an incident occurs.
15. Children, parents and schools
PhysicsUK is likely to be accessed by people under 18. We use high-privacy defaults, keep optional analytics and advertising measurement off until an active choice, keep the service available when optional tracking is declined, collect only data needed for learning and service operation, and consider the child's best interests when deciding access and disclosure. A parent is not automatically entitled to all account information merely because a pupil is under 18. The right of access belongs to the child. We consider the pupil's competence and views, the requesting adult's identity and parental responsibility, confidentiality, relevant court orders, safeguarding and whether disclosure is in the child's best interests.
When parent progress reporting is active, an obvious notice is shown in the pupil account. The Membership page explains what is visible and lets the pupil stop routine sharing without changing billing. Homework notifications require a deliberate choice; non-essential inactivity reminders are separately off by default. Lock-screen wording is generic, but a shared device may still reveal that PhysicsUK sent a reminder. Notifications can be disabled in PhysicsUK and browser settings. Schools are responsible for their own lawful basis, privacy information and instructions for school-managed data.
16. Your data-protection rights
Depending on the circumstances, you can ask for access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability or to object to processing based on legitimate interests. You can withdraw teacher-email consent at any time through the unsubscribe link in the email; we will stop those emails promptly. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office. For school-managed learning data, contact the school first. For individual accounts, billing data or our independent processing, email contact@physicsuk.co.uk. You do not need special wording or a particular form. We may need to verify identity and authority before acting on a request.
A request about a child's information is handled as an exercise of the child's rights, not as automatic parent dashboard access. A competent pupil may act themselves or authorise an adult. Where a pupil is not competent to exercise the right, a person with parental responsibility may usually act if doing so is appropriate and in the child's best interests. See the parent linking and information-request guide.
17. Cookies and similar browser storage; notice changes
Our Cookie Notice explains essential cookies, browser storage, the optional GA4 choice and the separate Reddit advertising choice. We will obtain consent before loading non-essential cookies or similar tracking where the law requires it. We may update this notice when our processing changes; we will publish the new version and draw material changes to users' attention before a new use starts where required.