Privacy policy

Who we are

Immanuel Virtual World, part of the Immanuel Suite, is run by Ruth Benjamin Marvin and Jonathan Marvin, trading as TeachingComputing.com. Ruth Benjamin Marvin is the controller of the personal information described here, under the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the EU General Data Protection Regulation and related laws. In this policy “we” and “us” means her and anyone who helps her run the world.

• Email: info@immanuelvirtualworld.com

Children can read our shorter Children’s privacy page. How we meet UK and EU data protection law, including the rules for under 16s, is set out in our GDPR policy.

What we collect

• Your account: first name, last name, username, email address, password (stored scrambled, never in plain text) and date of birth.
• Parent or guardian: for anyone under the age at which a parent must agree in their country (16, or 18 in India), a parent or guardian’s name and email, and when they confirmed the account. From 16 October 2026 a new account stays closed until that confirmation.
• Your country: asked when you sign up, so we know the age at which a parent or guardian must agree for you and when chat can be switched on.
• The agreement: which policies were accepted, the date, whether the person agreed or a parent agreed for a child, and the date the parent confirmed by email.
• Your profile: school or organisation, your role (for example student or teacher) and the avatar you design.
• Your learning: learning ticks, the questions you answer and whether they were right, coins, and quiz game results.
• Lessons and learning with friends (only while those switches are on): how far you got in a lesson (the best percent, the step, time, checks and asks), shared-world invites, group scores and badges, chat with friends kept for 30 days, and whiteboard pictures kept for 7 days. A parent can turn invites, chat with friends and the whiteboard off. These rows are deleted with the account. Quiz mastery is a separate record and a lesson does not change it.
• Your activity: when you sign in (with your internet address and the town it is in), how long you spend in the world, the quests you finish and their scores, the quests you make, the films and lessons you watch and the writing that is marked. You can see all of it under Activity on your account page, and our admins can see it to look after the world and help you. It is kept for 12 months and deleted with your account.
• Visits without an account (the Free demo, or an open quiz game someone shared with you): the username you type, kept with a random visit number in one cookie (ivwg) for 4 hours, and the username and the avatar you choose in the server's memory only while you are in the world. The world itself does not save scores, coins or chat for that visit (visitors cannot chat). In the shared world, visitors only meet other visitors. In an open quiz game the host sees your username and your score in their game results. The site visit log below is separate and does apply to these visits.
• Site visits: the pages opened, including the home page, the links and buttons used, how long a page stayed open, how far it was scrolled, the internet address, the town and country that address is in, and the browser and device. This is so our admins can see how the site is used. It is not used for advertising and it is not stored in a cookie. Bots are marked and left out of the usual figures. An admin can leave an address out of the figures or erase that address. Rows are kept for about 400 days. Passwords and anything typed into a form are not kept in this log. The town lookup sends the internet address once to ipwho.is, the same service named below, and keeps the answer for 30 days.
• Quests and classes: your quest results (score, right and wrong answers, exam marks and time). For teachers: the students in your class, the quests you set them with any message and due date, and the quests you make with the quest creator (the topic, any notes or document you give it, what you would like to happen in the story, the world and enemy you choose, the lessons written, every saved version, and when and by whom each version was saved). For our admins: the enemy templates they make and who made each one. Notifications sent to you inside the world.
• Friends and safety: your friend code, friendships and requests, blocks, reports and parent approvals.
• Messages to us: enquiries and anything you send us by email, with the details you give such as your organisation and number of users.
• Technical information: when you signed in, and your internet address in server records, used for security and to stop misuse.

Chat messages are passed to people nearby and are not kept as a history. If someone reports a message, we keep the report.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

We do not use personal information for advertising, we do not build advertising profiles and we do not make decisions about you by computer alone that have legal or similar effects.

Who can see it

• Other people in the world see your username and avatar. Friends also see your school or community and whether you are online.
• Parents and guardians receive the emails described in our Safeguarding policy.
• Teachers and hosts see the results of the quiz games and lessons they run, and the progress of pupils in their classes.
• Our service providers who help us run the world: our hosting provider (Krystal, in the UK), which also sends our emails, Stripe (which takes card payments for paid plans; the card number is typed on Stripe’s own page and we never see or keep it), jsDelivr (which delivers some of the code the world runs on and sees your internet address), Groq (an AI service that checks words people write for their own worlds, helps our team write questions, and writes the lessons for the quest creator from the topic and notes a teacher gives it, without names, emails or dates of birth) YouTube (only when you press Play on a film from YouTube) and ipwho.is (we send it only the internet address you sign in from, to find the town it is in; the answer is kept for 30 days).
• Authorities such as the police or children’s services, only where the law requires it or a child is at risk.

We never sell personal information.

International transfers

Some providers, such as Groq, Stripe and jsDelivr, 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.

How long we keep it

• Account and learning information is kept while your account is open.
• A quest made with the quest creator is kept until the teacher who made it deletes it; deleting it removes the quest, its lessons and every saved version at once. Only the last 30 saved versions of any quest are kept. When a teacher's account is deleted, every quest they made is deleted with it. When an admin's account is deleted, their name is taken off the enemy templates they made.
• When you ask us to delete your account, we delete it within 30 days. Copies in our nightly backups are overwritten within 14 days after that.
• If an account is not used for two years, we will 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.

Your rights

You have the right to:

• see the personal information we hold about you and get a copy;
• have it corrected if it is wrong;
• have it deleted;
• limit or object to how we use it;
• receive it in a format you can take elsewhere;
• withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent.

Parents and guardians can use these rights for their children. To use any of them, write to info@immanuelvirtualworld.com. We reply within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we use your information, please tell us. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk) in the UK, or to the data protection authority in your country in the European Union.

If you live outside the UK

The rights above apply wherever you live. Some countries add their own rules, and we follow them:

• European Union: you can complain to the data protection authority where you live. Our representative in the EU is named under Who we are.
• United States: for a child under 13 we ask a parent first, as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires, and in fact we ask a parent for everyone under 16. If you live in a state with its own privacy law, such as California, you can ask to know, correct or delete what we hold. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of.
• India: under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 a parent or guardian must agree for anyone under 18, so we ask a parent until 18 for accounts in India. Our grievance officer is named under Who we are.
• Australia and New Zealand: you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au) or the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz).

The age at which a parent must agree is set for each country and is never below 16 on this site. Chat and voice stay off for anyone under 13.

Keeping it safe

Passwords are stored scrambled, sign-in uses a secure cookie, the connection is encrypted on the live site, and only our team can reach the admin tools. Sign-in attempts are limited to stop guessing.

Cookies

We use one essential cookie to keep you signed in and a few settings stored in your browser. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, and we do not use Google sign-in. See our Cookies page and our GDPR policy.

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.