Privacy Policy

Paced is an academic study planner built for university students. We are based in the United Kingdom and operate the service at pacedplanner.com. When this policy refers to “we”, “us”, or “our”, it means the team behind Paced.

For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, we are the data controller for the personal data we process through the service.

We collect only what is necessary to provide the service. Here is exactly what we store and why:

Account information

• Name and email address — from your Google account when you sign in. Used to identify your account and send important notifications (deadline reminders, subscription changes).
• Profile photo URL — from your Google account. Displayed in the app for personalisation. We do not download or store the image itself.

Academic data

• Course names and codes — entered manually or imported from your university’s iCal feed. Used to organise your assessments and study schedule.
• Assessment details — titles, types, due dates, weightings, and status. Imported from iCal feeds, manually entered, or extracted from uploaded documents.
• Study tasks — daily tasks generated by the scheduling engine or created by you. Includes titles, dates, completion status, and session notes.
• Uploaded files — course handbooks, assignment briefs, or study materials you upload for use with Pro features. Stored securely and accessible only to you.

Google Calendar data

• Calendar events — if you choose to connect Google Calendar, we read your events for the current and upcoming two weeks. We use this solely to schedule study sessions around your existing commitments (lectures, seminars, personal events). We store event titles, start/end times, and locations temporarily to perform scheduling. We do not modify, create, or delete any events in your Google Calendar.
• OAuth tokens — we store an encrypted refresh token to maintain the calendar connection. You can disconnect Google Calendar at any time from Settings, which immediately deletes the stored token and all calendar data.

Chat and AI interactions

• Chat messages — conversations with the AI study coach are stored to maintain conversation context and improve suggestions. You can delete your chat history from Settings.

Usage and preferences

• Study preferences — your preferred session length, wake time, no-study days, and similar settings.
• Progress data — task completion history, streaks, and study patterns. Used to power the scheduling engine and personalise your experience.

Payment information

• Subscription status — we store whether you are on the free or Pro tier, and your Stripe customer ID. We do not store your card number, expiry date, or CVV. All payment processing is handled by Stripe, who acts as an independent data controller for payment data.

We process your personal data on the following lawful bases under UK GDPR:

• Contract performance (Article 6(1)(b)) — to provide the Paced service as described in our Terms of Service. This includes scheduling, task generation, progress tracking, and AI-powered study planning.
• Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) — to improve the service, fix bugs, and understand usage patterns in aggregate. We do not use your data for advertising, profiling for third parties, or any purpose unrelated to helping you study.
• Consent (Article 6(1)(a)) — for optional integrations you choose to enable, such as Google Calendar access. You can withdraw consent at any time by disconnecting the integration.

We share data only with the service providers necessary to operate Paced:

• Supabase (database and authentication) — stores your account data and application data. Hosted in the EU. Supabase Privacy Policy
• Google (authentication and calendar) — handles sign-in via OAuth and provides calendar data when you opt in. Google Privacy Policy
• Google Gemini (AI features) — receives contextual academic data (course names, deadlines, study tasks) to generate study plans and coaching responses. We do not send your email, password, or payment information to the AI. Google AI Terms
• Stripe (payments) — processes Pro subscription payments. Stripe Privacy Policy
• Vercel (hosting) — serves the application. Vercel Privacy Policy

We do not sell your data. We do not share your data with advertisers. We do not use your data for purposes unrelated to providing and improving Paced.

Paced’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Specifically:

• We only request the Google Calendar scopes necessary to read your calendar events for study scheduling.
• We do not use Google user data for advertising, and we do not sell or transfer it to third parties for advertising purposes.
• We do not use Google user data to determine creditworthiness or for lending purposes.
• We limit our use of Google user data to providing and improving the calendar-aware scheduling feature within Paced.
• Human access to Google user data is limited to what is necessary for debugging, security, legal compliance, or at a user’s direct request.

We retain your data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we permanently delete all associated personal data, study tasks, chat history, uploaded files, and connected service tokens within 30 days.

Anonymised, aggregate usage statistics (such as total number of tasks completed across all users) may be retained indefinitely, as they cannot be linked back to any individual.

Under UK GDPR, you have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Access — you can request a copy of all personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — you can correct inaccurate data through the app or by contacting us.
• Erasure — you can delete your account and all associated data from the Settings page, or by contacting us.
• Data portability — you can request your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Restriction and objection — you can ask us to restrict processing or object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Withdraw consent — for optional integrations, you can withdraw consent at any time by disconnecting the service from Settings.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at team@pacedplanner.com. We will respond within 30 days.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk if you believe your data protection rights have not been respected.

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your data:

• All data is transmitted over HTTPS (TLS 1.2+).
• Database access is restricted by row-level security policies — users can only access their own data.
• OAuth tokens are stored encrypted.
• We do not store passwords — authentication is handled entirely through Google OAuth.
• Access to production systems is limited to authorised personnel.

No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a data breach that affects your personal data, we will notify you and the ICO within 72 hours as required by UK GDPR.

Paced uses strictly necessary cookies and local storage for authentication and session management. We do not use tracking cookies, advertising pixels, or analytics cookies that collect personal data.

We use Vercel Analytics for anonymous, aggregate page-view metrics. This does not use cookies and does not collect personally identifiable information.

Your data is primarily stored in the EU (Supabase). Some processing may occur in the United States through Vercel (hosting), Stripe (payments), and Google (AI features). These transfers are protected by Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent safeguards as required by UK GDPR.

Paced is designed for university students and is not intended for children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If we learn that we have collected data from a child under 16, we will delete it promptly.

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you through the app or by email before the changes take effect. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your data:

Email: team@pacedplanner.com
Web: pacedplanner.com