Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Virtus Academy (“we”, “us”, “our”) handles information when you use this website. We are committed to protecting your privacy and complying with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018, and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

Who we are

Virtus Academy is a free GCSE revision resources website. You can browse and download free PDF worksheets and mark schemes without creating an account or logging in — we don’t ask for any personal details to access the resources.

For any privacy question, or to exercise your rights, email us at hello@virtusacademy.co.uk or use our contact page.

What data we collect, and why

We deliberately collect as little as possible. Because there are no accounts or sign-up forms, we don’t ask you for, or store, personal details ourselves. The limited data involved is:

• Advertising data (only with your consent): if you accept advertising, Google AdSense may set cookies or read similar identifiers on your device to show and measure ads. This is described in the Cookie Policy.
• Technical data needed to deliver the site: like any website, our hosting and content-delivery providers automatically process basic technical information (such as your IP address, browser type and the pages or files requested) to serve pages, deliver PDF downloads and protect the site against abuse. We don’t use this to identify you personally.
• Anything you send us: if you email us, we receive your email address and the contents of your message so we can reply.

We do not run any analytics on this site at the moment. If we add privacy-respecting analytics in future, it will only run with your consent, and we’ll update this policy first.

Advertising, Google AdSense and Consent Mode

We show ads through Google AdSense to keep these resources free. Advertising is off by default: we use Google Consent Mode v2, which sets all ad and analytics storage to “denied” until you actively consent.

Consent is collected through Google’s own certified consent message (a Consent Management Platform), not a custom banner. Only after you accept does Google AdSense set advertising cookies or use your data to serve ads. If you don’t consent, no advertising cookies are used. You can change your choice at any time using the “Cookie settings” link in the site footer, which reopens Google’s consent message.

Lawful bases for processing

• Consent — for advertising cookies (and any future analytics). You can withdraw consent at any time via “Cookie settings”.
• Legitimate interests — for operating and securing the website (including the technical logs our hosting and CDN providers keep) and for responding to emails you send us.

Third parties we use

We rely on a small number of trusted providers, each with their own privacy terms:

• Google (AdSense & its consent message) — serves ads and manages advertising consent. With your consent, Google may set cookies and process data as an independent controller. See Google’s Privacy Policy and how Google uses data from sites that use its services.
• Cloudflare — provides our DNS and content-delivery network and hosts the downloadable PDF files (served from files.virtusacademy.co.uk). It processes technical data such as IP addresses to deliver files and protect against abuse. See Cloudflare’s Privacy Policy.
• Vercel — hosts the website and processes technical request data and logs to serve pages. See Vercel’s Privacy Policy.

How long we keep data

• We keep no central database of users — there are no accounts, so there’s nothing for us to store about you long-term.
• Emails you send us are kept only as long as needed to deal with your query, then deleted.
• Technical logs held by Vercel and Cloudflare are retained for short operational periods (typically days to a few weeks) under their own policies.
• Advertising cookies have their own lifetimes set by Google; you can clear them in your browser at any time, or withdraw consent to stop them being used.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you;
• have inaccurate data corrected;
• have your data erased;
• restrict or object to processing;
• data portability; and
• withdraw consent at any time (without affecting prior processing).

To exercise any of these, email hello@virtusacademy.co.uk. You also have the right to complain to the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk.

Children’s privacy

Our resources are aimed at GCSE students, some of whom are under 18. You do not need an account, and we do not ask for any personal details to access or download resources. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children beyond the limited, consent-based cookie data described above — and that only occurs if advertising consent is given.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child has provided us with personal data (for example, by emailing us), please contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our site or providers change. The “last updated” date at the top shows the current version. Please also read our Cookie Policy, which forms part of this notice.