Privacy policy

Reading without an account

You can read the lessons, samples and cue cards, and use the band calculator, without an account. We do not set tracking or advertising cookies. When you use the writing checker or speaking practice without an account, your text is assessed and discarded; the only thing kept is a temporary counter of requests from your network address, used to prevent abuse, which expires within an hour.

What we store when you create an account

• Account details: your name, email address and password (stored only as a secure bcrypt hash; nobody can read it).
• Study settings: target band, daily study time, study days, exam day and time zone.
• Learning records: lessons completed, quiz and practice scores, study time, streaks, XP, badges and flashcard review history.
• Your answers: mock exam answers, your Writing texts, and transcripts of your Speaking answers, with the band estimates for them.
• Speaking recordings from mock exams: encrypted with AES-256-GCM on our server before they are stored, so only Abroadway can play them, for reviewing your score.

Why we use it

To run your study plan, mark your work, show your progress and predicted band, and let an administrator review or correct a score. We do not use your data for advertising, and we never sell or rent it.

Where it is stored

• The website runs on Vercel. Account and learning data are stored in a MongoDB Atlas cloud database.
• Course audio and encrypted Speaking recordings are stored in a GitHub repository; the course audio is delivered through the jsDelivr network.
• Speech recognition happens in your browser. In Chrome and Edge, the browser's built-in recognition may send your audio to the browser maker's speech service (for example Google) to turn it into text. In other browsers, a speech model is downloaded and runs entirely on your device.
• If AI-assisted marking is switched on, the text of a Writing or Speaking answer is sent to Anthropic's API to be scored. It is not used to train AI models.

Cookies and local storage

We use one secure, http-only cookie to keep you signed in and one small cookie that tells our pages you are signed in (it contains no personal information). Your browser's local storage keeps writing drafts, exam display settings and a copy of in-progress exam answers so nothing is lost if your connection drops.

How long we keep it

For as long as your account exists. If you ask us to delete your account, we delete it together with your learning records, answers and recordings.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, for corrections, or for your account and everything linked to it to be deleted. Contact the Abroadway team from the email address on your account.

Children

Abroadway is meant for learners preparing for university study abroad. If you are under 13, please use it with a parent or guardian.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update this page and the date at the top.