Privacy policy

synprep.com is run by Synapse Academic Press, which is the data controller for everything described here. For anything in this policy — including access, correction or deletion — write to info@synapseacademicpress.com.

It depends entirely on what you do. There are four cases.

Sitting the free Paper 1. No account, no card and no email address. We set one first-party cookie, lnat_anon, holding a random identifier so the server can tell your attempt from someone else’s and show you your own results. It lasts a year and is not readable by JavaScript. Against that identifier we store your answers, timings, score and, if you write one, your Section B essay. It is not linked to a name, an email address or an advertising profile, and we cannot tell who you are from it.

Signing in. You sign in with Google, Microsoft or a link we email you. We receive and store your email address, the account identifier Google or Microsoft give us, and which method you used. We do not receive or store your name, your profile picture, or your password. We never see the credentials you type into Google or Microsoft.

Buying the papers. Payment is taken by Stripe on Stripe’s own pages. Card numbers never reach this site and we never store them. We keep a record that you paid, and Stripe’s reference for the payment, so we can unlock your papers and honour refunds.

Asking for your results by email. If you type an email address on the results page, we store it against that attempt and send you one email: your score, your error profile and a private link to that results page. Nothing else is sent unless you also tick the box asking for occasional study tips and news of new papers, in which case we keep that choice; you can withdraw it by replying to any email. The address is not linked to a sign-in account unless you later create one with it.

If you use the report button on an explanation, we store what you sent along with the question it referred to.

To deliver what you asked for — running the timed paper, marking it, showing your results, producing feedback on your essay, and unlocking papers you have bought. Lawful basis: performance of a contract, and for the free paper, our legitimate interest in providing the service you have just asked us to run.

To keep the questions honest — reading problem reports and correcting items. Lawful basis: legitimate interests, namely not shipping broken questions.

To email you what you asked for — your results, and, only if you ticked the box, occasional study tips and news of new papers. Lawful basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by replying “stop”.

To measure advertising. Lawful basis: your consent, and nothing is set until you give it. See cookies below.

To meet our tax obligations — keeping records of payments. Lawful basis: legal obligation.

Three things are set whatever you choose, because without them the site cannot do what you asked: lnat_anon, described above; lnat_claim, set when you start a payment and lasting a year, holding a random identifier that is how the papers you bought are recognised as yours before you have an account; and — only if you sign in — the session cookies that keep you signed in. None is readable by JavaScript. These are strictly necessary and do not require consent.

Nothing identifying is set unless you press Accept on the banner. If you do, Google Ads sets cookies so we can tell which adverts led to someone sitting a paper or buying the papers. If you press Reject, advertising storage stays switched off; we use Google Consent Mode, so the denial is passed on rather than quietly ignored. Your choice is remembered in your browser’s local storage under synprep_consent_v1. Two other local-storage entries exist: lnat_src_v1, which records where your first visit came from (for example “google-ads” or “direct”) so we can tell which channels bring students to a paper, and — only if you press Accept — lnat_vid, a random browser identifier. We also keep a record of the steps taken on this site (opening the three-question sample, viewing results, starting a payment) against thelnat_anon identifier or that browser identifier, with no name or email, to see where students stop.

You can change your mind at any time: change your cookie settings

These are all of them. We do not sell data, and there is no advertising profile built from what you answer.

• Supabase — the database and the sign-in system. Holds everything described above.
• Stripe — payments. Receives your email address and takes your card details directly.
• Resend — sends our emails: the confirmation after a purchase, and your results if you ask for them.
• OpenAI or Anthropic — the written essay feedback. The text of your Section B essay and its title are sent to the provider’s API to produce the feedback, with no name, email or identifier attached. Under both providers’ API terms the text is not used to train their models.
• Vercel — hosting. Serves the site and keeps short-lived server logs.
• Google Ads — advertising measurement, and only after you accept.

There is no third-party analytics, session recording or error-tracking service on this site, and the fonts are served from our own domain rather than Google’s.

Our database is hosted in the United States (AWS us-west-1, N. California), so your data is transferred outside the United Kingdom. Those transfers rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, which our processors enter into. Stripe and Google likewise operate internationally on the same basis.

Attempts, scores, error profiles and Section B essays: 3 years from the date you sit the paper. Records of payment: 6 years from the end of the tax year in which you paid, as UK tax law requires. An email address given on the results page: as long as the attempt it belongs to, or until you ask. Problem reports are kept while the question they concern is still in use. If you ask us to delete your account we do so within 30 days, apart from payment records we are required to keep.

Under UK GDPR you may ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict what we do with it, ask for it in a portable form, object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests, and withdraw consent to advertising cookies at any time without it affecting anything before.

Write to info@synapseacademicpress.com. We will answer within one month. There is no charge. For the free paper we may be unable to identify your data without the cookie from the browser you sat it in — if you have cleared it, there is nothing we can link to you.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled it you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would rather you told us first.

This site is aimed at university applicants, typically aged 17 or 18. It is not intended for children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal data, tell us and we will delete it.

If we change this policy we will change the date at the top. If a change materially affects what we do with data we already hold, we will tell account holders by email.