Privacy Policy

GROOWING CO., LTD operates GrooEdu and decides how the data described here is used. Write to support@grooedu.com about anything on this page — including the requests in clause 8.

Everything below exists because a feature needs it. Nothing is collected just in case.

• Your account — email address and display name. The display name is the only thing a teacher sees about you, which is why you can change it at any time on the account page.
• Your goal — target band and exam date, if you set them. Neither is required, and both are used only to show you your own progress.
• Your work — the essays you write and the audio of the answers you speak.
• The marking — estimated band, per-criterion scores, feedback, a transcript of what you said, and what each marking cost.
• Practice history — which tasks you did, when, how many minutes you studied, how many pieces were marked.
• Classes — which classes you joined, and what you handed in for a teacher's assignment.
• Credits — how many were granted or bought, what they were spent on and when.
• Invoice details, only if you ask for an invoice — the name, address, phone number and email to print on it, plus the tax code of the company or the ID number of the individual it is issued to. Vietnamese law requires these on a valid invoice. If you do not tick that box, we never ask.

We do not ask for your date of birth, and we never ask for a card — you pay by bank transfer, so no card details exist. We do not collect data about you from anywhere except you and our payment partner.

• No advertising, and we do not sell or share your data with advertisers or data brokers. That is true today, and it is not a policy we intend to change quietly — if it ever changed, it would need your agreement first.
• Measurement only with your permission. We use Google Analytics to count which pages get used, and it does not load at all until you agree at the cookie banner — refuse, or send the Global Privacy Control signal, and that code is never called. You can change your mind at any time under Cookies. No Meta pixel, no session replay, no heatmaps.
• No advertising cookies, and no third-party cookie you have not agreed to. See Cookies.
• No profiling to decide anything about you, beyond showing you your own results and suggesting what to practise next.

The account page shows the country a request came from, and a first visit from Vietnam opens the site in Vietnamese. Both read a header our infrastructure provider adds from the IP address at that moment. For these two things the IP is not stored, is not attached to your account, and changes if you travel or use a VPN.

The one exception is the contact form. Because it sends mail without a sign-in, it could be used to relay mail through us if nothing stopped it, so we count how many messages come from one sender in an hour. What is stored for that is a salted one-way hash of the address, never the address — it cannot be turned back into an IP, is not joined to any account, and is deleted after a day.

Some cookies are the ones without which the site cannot work, so they are not something you are asked about. All of them are this site's own — the sign-in ones are set by our account provider on our behalf, the rest by the site itself.

Everything else is optional and off by default. There is currently one thing: measurement — counting which pages get used and roughly which countries visits come from. We use Google Analytics for it. It is never joined to your work, your bands or your name, and it is not used for advertising.

No optional cookie is set, and no request goes to the provider, before you allow it. That code is not sitting on the page — refusing is not switching off a tag that already ran, because there was never a tag to switch off. A browser sending Global Privacy Control is treated as having refused and is not asked.

If we ever add something to the optional group, you will be asked before it is set, and this policy will say what it is. We do not use advertising or profiling cookies.

Your browser can also block or delete all of this. Blocking the sign-in cookies means you cannot stay signed in, so anything needing an account will not work; blocking the language cookie means the site has to guess your language again on every visit. Beyond cookies, we keep nothing in your browser.

Your choice, and how to change it

Whatever you chose can be chosen again at any time: the Cookies link at the foot of every page reopens the banner. Switching measurement off reloads the page, because once a tag has run the only honest way to stop it is to stop the page.

This is the part most people actually want to know, so it is written precisely.

• Work you practise on your own is yours alone. Nobody else can read it — not other learners, not teachers, not even the teacher of a class you are in.
• A teacher sees only what you hand in for an assignment they set, along with your display name. This is enforced in the database rather than only in the interface: your own practice, your bands and your history are simply unreadable to them. Leave the class or delete your account and they lose access.
• Our own staff can reach stored data where genuinely needed to run the service — investigating a fault you reported, or a suspected abuse of the platform.

We do not run our own servers and we do not run the marking models ourselves. These are the providers involved, what each is used for, and what reaches them. They act on our instructions and may not use your data for their own purposes.

About the browser preview: while you record, your browser may listen and show what you said so you can see it immediately without spending credits. That part is done by the browser, not by us: Chrome sends the audio to Google, Safari to Apple, and it never passes through our servers. Firefox has no such feature, and there the transcript simply does not appear. This preview is for you to look at; it is not used for marking.

About the AI providers: your essay or recording is sent to them to be marked, and the published terms of the enterprise interfaces we use state that content sent that way is not used to train their models. We rely on that commitment; we cannot verify it on your behalf.

These providers are outside Vietnam, so running GrooEdu involves transferring your data abroad. Using the service requires that transfer for all but one of them — an essay that is not sent cannot be marked. Google Analytics is the exception: it is not needed to run anything, and that is exactly why it is the only one you are asked about.

• See it, and take a copy — most of it is already on your screen. For the whole lot, the account page has a Download your data button: it packs a zip of your work, feedback, bands, study history, credits and your Speaking recordings as audio files. You do not need to ask us.
• Correct it — name, target band and exam date can be edited on the account page.
• Delete it — there is a Delete account button on the account page, just under the download. It removes the account, your work, your recordings, your marking history and any credits left. It takes effect immediately, cannot be undone, and afterwards we cannot send your data back to you — so download first if you want a copy.
• Object, or withdraw consent — you can stop using the service and delete your account at any time. Some processing cannot be switched off while you use the feature that needs it: marking a piece of work means sending it to be marked.
• Complain — please come to us first, at support@grooedu.com. You may also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

We answer as soon as we can and within whatever deadline the law where you live sets.

• Your account and everything in it — until you delete the account. We do not currently delete inactive accounts on a schedule; if that changes, it will be written here and announced first.
• Recordings — the same: they go with the account, and deleting it removes them from storage.
• Credits — signup credits expire after 30 days; plan credits expire when the plan ends, unless a renewal carries them forward. The record of them stays in your billing history.
• Payment and invoice records — kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires, which is longer than the life of your account. That is why invoice details remain after you delete it.
• A hashed record that credits were granted — when you sign up we store a one-way hash of your email address, and nothing else, so that free credits are granted once per address rather than once per account. It survives account deletion, because otherwise deleting and signing up again would grant them over and over. It cannot be turned back into your address, cannot be looked up by guessing addresses, and is not joined to your account, your work or anything else about you.

Accounts are protected by Google sign-in — there is no password to leak or reuse. Data is encrypted in transit. Recordings are stored privately and are reachable only through short-lived links issued to you. Access rules are enforced in the database rather than in the interface, and that is why clause 6 can be as definite as it is.

No service can promise it will never be breached. If an incident affects your data, we will tell you and the relevant authority as required.

If you are under 16, a parent or guardian must agree to your using GrooEdu and should set the account up with you. Under Vietnamese law a person under 16 is a child, and we rely on that consent as the basis for processing their data.

We do not currently ask for a date of birth or check age at signup, so this rule depends on you and your family keeping it. We are building the asking part properly. In the meantime, if you believe a child is using GrooEdu without their parents knowing, write to us — we will lock the account and delete the data.

We will update this page as the product changes, and the date at the top changes with it. For a change that materially reduces the protection you have, we will email account holders before it takes effect.