Privacy Policy

This policy explains what we know about you, why we need it, who else can see it and what you can tell us to do with it. We have written it to be read, not to be skimmed past.

MAC Academy is an online learning platform run as a sole proprietorship registered in India as a small business (Udyam). Throughout these documents, "MAC Academy", "we", "us" and "our" mean that business, and "you" means the person using the platform.

• We do not sell your personal data, and we never have.
• We do not rent or share your contact details with advertisers or data brokers.
• We do not use your assignments, questions or tutor chats to train any AI model, ours or anyone else's.
• We do not read your private data out of curiosity: staff access to learner records is limited by role and is recorded in an audit log.

Everything below is the detail behind those four promises.

• Things you give us
• *Account details* — your name, email address and password (stored only as a cryptographic hash, never as readable text). Needed to give you an account and to let you back into it.
• *Profile details* — photo, bio, headline, language and the optional details you choose to add. Needed to show you to instructors and, for teachers, to learners.
• *Purchase details* — what you bought, when, at what price, with which coupon, and the invoice we must issue. Needed to give you access and to meet tax and accounting rules.
• *What you submit* — assignments, project files, quiz and test answers, doubts, reviews and support messages. Needed to teach and grade you, and to answer you.
• *What you ask the AI tutor* — covered separately in section 7.

• Things the platform records as you use it
• *Learning activity* — courses viewed, lessons completed, video positions, time spent, quiz scores, streaks and certificates. Needed to show your progress, resume where you left off, and issue certificates.
• *Technical records* — IP address, browser and device type, operating system, language, referring page and timestamps. Needed for security, fraud prevention, and diagnosing faults.
• *Playback quality records* — buffering, errors and resolution. Needed to find out why video is poor for some learners.

• Things we never collect
• We do not store your full card number, CVV or UPI PIN. Those go straight to our payment partner, and we only ever see the last digits, the method and whether the payment worked.
• We do not track your location beyond the city-level estimate that comes with an IP address.

For most of it, because we cannot run the platform otherwise: without your email you cannot log in, and without your purchase record you cannot get what you paid for. We also keep some records because the law requires it, such as invoices and tax records. Where something is genuinely optional — analytics cookies, marketing email, your profile photo — we ask, and you can say no without losing access to your course.

• Our own staff and administrators, limited by role, and only for a reason. Access to learner records is recorded in an audit log, including who looked and when.
• Course instructors (your progress and submissions on their course, and your AI tutor chats about it, as described in "AI Tutor Chats")
• Service providers who run parts of the platform for us — hosting, database, video delivery, email, payments, error monitoring and product analytics. They act on our instructions, may only use the data to provide their service, and are bound to keep it confidential.
• Authorities, when we are legally required to disclose something, or to protect someone's safety. If we receive such a demand we comply with it narrowly, and we will tell you unless we are forbidden from doing so.
• Nobody else. In particular, no advertisers, no data brokers, no sale of your data.

Some of our service providers process data outside India. When that happens we only use providers that commit contractually to protecting it, and your rights under this policy follow your data wherever it is processed.

• *Your account and profile* — while your account is open, and then as described in our Account Deletion Policy.
• *Learning records, progress and certificates* — while your account is open, because they are the proof of what you completed.
• *Orders, invoices and tax records* — kept for the period Indian tax and accounting law requires, even after your account closes. These are the one category we cannot delete on request.
• *Technical and security logs* — about a year, then deleted.
• *AI tutor chats* — 90 days, then deleted automatically. See section 7.
• *Support and enquiry messages* — kept so we have the history of your dealings with us, then cleared on our normal schedule.

Retention periods are configured in the platform rather than buried in code, and an automatic job deletes expired records. It is not left to someone remembering.

Passwords are hashed. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Access to production data is limited by role and recorded. Payment details go to our payment partner rather than our database. Session tokens can be revoked, and you can see and end your active sessions.

No platform is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach ever affects your personal data, we will tell you and the relevant authority promptly, explain what happened, and say what you should do.

If you find a security hole, please report it to us at macacademy.admin@gmail.com rather than making it public. We will not threaten or pursue anyone who reports a genuine vulnerability responsibly and does not exploit it.

When you ask the AI tutor a question, your messages and its answers are stored for 90 days and then deleted automatically. During that time the instructor of the course you asked about, and platform administrators, can read them so they can see where students need help and check the tutor is answering correctly. Every time one of your chats is opened this way, we record who opened it and when. We do not show you your own earlier chats: each visit to the tutor starts a fresh conversation.

• Two things we want to be explicit about, because people reasonably worry:
• Your questions are not used to train any AI model, ours or the model provider's.
• The tutor answers from your course material. It is a study aid and it can still be wrong, so check anything important against the lesson itself.

Covered in full in our Cookie Policy. In short: the cookies that keep you logged in are essential and always on; analytics and preference cookies only run if you agree, and you can change your mind at any time.

• *Service email* — receipts, password resets, enrolment and certificate notices, replies to your questions, and important changes to these documents. You cannot unsubscribe from these while you have an account, because they are part of the service.
• *Learning reminders and marketing* — optional. Every such email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing never affects your course access.

• You can ask us to:
• show you the personal data we hold about you;
• correct anything that is wrong — most of it you can edit yourself in your profile;
• export your data in a portable file;
• delete your account and data, as described in our Account Deletion Policy;
• stop sending you marketing;
• withdraw a consent you gave earlier, such as analytics cookies.

Write to us through the Contact Us page or at macacademy.admin@gmail.com. We will confirm we received the request, may need to verify who you are, and will complete it within 30 days. If we cannot do part of it — a tax invoice we must legally keep, for instance — we will tell you exactly which part and why, rather than refusing the whole request.

There is no charge for this, and asking will never count against you.

The platform is built for learners of school age upwards. If you are under 18, you may use it with your parent's or guardian's consent, and they can exercise all of the rights in section 10 on your behalf. We do not knowingly collect data from a child under 13 without verified guardian consent; if you believe we have, tell us and we will delete it.

We do not make decisions about you purely by machine where it would materially affect you. Progress tracking, recommendations, similarity checks and AI-likelihood scores all produce information for a person to act on. A human decides on academic penalties, refunds and account suspensions.

You can use MAC Academy from outside India, and these documents still apply to you with Indian law governing them. Wherever you are, you may ask us to show you the personal data we hold about you, correct it, export it, or delete your account and data, on the same terms described in our Privacy Policy and Account Deletion Policy. If the law where you live gives you a right we have not listed, write to us and we will honour it as far as we are able rather than hide behind the wording here.

Every version of this policy is kept, dated and numbered. For material changes we notify you in the app or by email before they take effect.

Please talk to us first. Almost everything — a payment that did not go through, a course you cannot open, a refund, a certificate, a correction to your data — is sorted out fastest by simply telling us. Write to us through the Contact Us page or at macacademy.admin@gmail.com and a real person will read it. We aim to reply within 2 working days, and we will tell you honestly if something will take longer or if we cannot do what you have asked.

If you are not satisfied with our reply, you can escalate it to our Grievance Officer using the same contact details, and after that to the consumer forum or court nearest to you. Indian law applies to these documents and to your use of the platform. We would much rather fix the problem than argue about it.

Grievance Officer: reachable via the Contact Us page or at macacademy.admin@gmail.com. Complaints about the platform, its content or your data can be raised there, as provided by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

Version: 1 · Last updated: 10/19/2026