GDPR policy

Who this is for

This page explains how Immanuel Virtual World meets data protection law in the United Kingdom and in the European Union. It applies to pupils, parents, teachers, schools and anyone else who uses the world.

The Privacy policy lists the information we keep. Children’s privacy says the same things in shorter words. Cookies lists every cookie and browser setting. This page is the set of rules those pages follow.

The laws we follow

• UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, for people in the United Kingdom.
• EU GDPR, where we offer the world to people in the European Economic Area.
• PECR (the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) for cookies in the UK and the ePrivacy rules where they apply in the EU.
• The Age Appropriate Design Code (the Children’s Code) for anyone under 18 in the UK. We use the same high privacy settings for under-18s wherever they live.

Article 8 of the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR says a child cannot, on their own, consent to an online service below a set age. The UK age is 13. In the EU it is 13, 14, 15 or 16, depending on the country. We use 16 everywhere, so one rule covers the UK and every EU country. A person of 16 or over can agree for themselves. Under 16, a parent or guardian agrees.

Where another country’s law sets a higher age, we use that age instead. In India the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 asks a parent to agree for anyone under 18, so a parent agrees until 18 there. The sign-up form asks for the country so the right age is used. The age is never below 16 on this site, and chat and voice stay off for anyone under 13 wherever they live.

Who is in charge of the information

Immanuel Virtual World, part of the Immanuel Suite, is run by Ruth Benjamin Marvin, trading as TeachingComputing.com (sole trader). TeachingComputing.com is a trading name, not a limited company. For accounts people create on the sign-up page, Ruth Benjamin Marvin is the controller. Email: info@immanuelvirtualworld.com.

When a school, teacher or parent creates accounts from their own signed-in account, they decide to add those children and we keep the accounts so they can teach. They must have the right to add each child and must tell the family. Chat on those accounts still stays off until a parent or guardian email is confirmed.

Write to the email address above to reach the person who looks after data protection. If we appoint a data protection officer, we will publish their name and address on this page.

Children

Children’s information is not a special category of data by itself, but the law gives it extra care. We build for that from the start.

• Under 16 (under 18 in India). A parent or guardian fills in the sign-up, ticks the boxes and confirms from their own email. The account stays closed until that email is confirmed. We do not treat a child’s tick as the agreement.
• 16 and over. The person agrees for themselves. The Terms are a contract with them.
• Under 18. Privacy stays high by default. There is no advertising, no profile built for ads, no nudge to turn safety off, and no search by real name. Friends join only by a private code. Adults, including teachers, cannot be friends with anyone under 18. We do not ask for a photograph of a face or for a precise location.

We ask for a date of birth so we can apply these rules. We do not use it for anything else.

Agreeing to our Christian ethos is a community rule. We do not keep a record of anyone’s religion, health, ethnicity or politics.

How a child under 16 joins

• The form. The parent or guardian enters the child’s name, username, email, password, school, country and date of birth, and their own name and email. The parent’s email must be different from the child’s.
• The boxes. The parent ticks that they are the parent or guardian, that they have read the policies, and that they agree to the terms on the child’s behalf.
• The parent’s email. We send a link that lasts 7 days. The account cannot be used until they open it. If they do nothing, the account stays closed.
• The child’s email. We send a separate link to confirm that their own email is real. That link does not open the account.
• Signing in. After the parent confirms, the child can log in with their email or username and password, or with a one-time link sent to their own email. We tell the parent when a sign-in link is requested.

An email check shows that someone can read that inbox. It is not a proof of identity. It is the right level of check for this service, which does not take payment from children on the sign-up form and does not show adverts. If you think a confirmation was not from a real parent, write to us and we will close the account.

Accounts opened before 16 October 2026 stay open. From that date, every new account for someone under 16 follows the steps above. Chat for anyone under 16 stays off until the parent or guardian has confirmed their email.

What we do not do

• We do not sell personal information.
• We do not use it for advertising, and we do not build advertising profiles.
• We do not use Google, Facebook or any other social sign-in. Those companies would receive a name and an email and would set their own cookies. We will not do that for a child, and we do not do it for anyone. Sign-in stays on this site: a password, or a link we email.
• We do not follow anyone in the real world. The place a person walks inside the game is part of the game. It is not GPS.
• We do not make a decision by computer alone that has a legal or similar effect. A filter can stop an unkind message. A person on our team reads every report.

Why we are allowed to use the information

We do not rely on a child’s consent for any of this. Where we do rely on a parent’s agreement, they can withdraw it by writing to us. We will then close the child’s account. Closing the account does not undo a record we must keep by law, such as an invoice, or a safeguarding report we still need.

Schools and families

A teacher, a school or a parent who is signed in can create accounts for children in their care. That creation is their instruction to us. They are responsible for having a lawful reason to add each child, and for telling parents what the world is. We do not open those accounts through the public sign-up form, so the 7-day parent email is not the step that creates them.

On every under-16 account, chat stays off until a parent or guardian email is saved and confirmed. Friends from another school still need a parent’s approval by email, as described in Safeguarding.

Cookies

We use one essential cookie, ivw, to keep a person signed in. A visit with no account uses ivwg for a few hours. ivw_next remembers a game code for a moment so we can take the person there after they sign in. A few settings, including a note that the cookie notice has been seen, stay in the browser and are not cookies.

These are strictly necessary for the world to work. The law does not ask us to block the site behind an “accept” button, and a button that pretended to offer a choice would not be honest. The notice explains them and links here. If we ever want a cookie that is not essential, such as analytics, we will ask first, before any such cookie is set, and the answer will be no unless the person says yes. We will not ask a child under 16. A parent would have to agree.

The full list is on the Cookies page.

Your rights

You, or a parent or guardian for a child, can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the personal information we hold;
• correct it if it is wrong;
• delete it;
• limit how we use it, or object to a use based on legitimate interests;
• provide it in a format you can take elsewhere, where the law gives that right;
• withdraw a parent’s agreement, which closes the child’s account.

Write to info@immanuelvirtualworld.com. We reply within one month. We may ask for enough detail to be sure we are writing to the right person, or to their parent. There is no fee unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

A child can ask as well. If we are not sure the request is in the child’s interests, we will involve a parent or guardian.

How long we keep it

Account and learning information is kept while the account is open. When you ask us to delete an account, we delete it within 30 days. Copies in nightly backups are overwritten within 14 days after that. If an account is not used for two years, we email to ask whether to keep it and then delete it.

Reports are kept as long as needed to keep people safe. Enquiries are kept for two years. Invoices are kept for as long as tax law requires. The Privacy policy has the full list.

We keep the sign-up record itself: which policies were agreed, the date, whether the person agreed or a parent agreed and the date a parent confirmed by email. We need that record to show that the agreement happened.

Other countries

Some providers may process information outside the UK and the European Economic Area, for example in the United States. When that happens we rely on an adequacy decision, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension where the provider is certified, or standard contractual clauses approved for the UK and the EU.

The providers are named in the Privacy policy: hosting, email, jsDelivr (which delivers some of the code and sees an internet address), Groq (AI, without names, emails or dates of birth), YouTube only after a person presses Play and ipwho.is for the town of a sign-in address, kept for 30 days.

Complaints

Please tell us first, at info@immanuelvirtualworld.com. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK (ico.org.uk), or to the data protection authority in your country in the European Union. You can do that whether or not you have written to us.

Changes

We may update this policy as the world grows. If a change matters, we will tell you. The date at the top shows when it last changed. The sign-up form records the date of the policy that was in force when the account was agreed.