Privacy Policy
Ivy Assist helps parents stay on top of school emails. Because that means handling your
family's information — including information about your children — this page explains plainly
what we collect, why, and the control you have. The short version: your data is used
only to run the service for you, is never sold or used for advertising, and you can delete
everything yourself, instantly, by sending /delete_account to the bot.
Who is responsible
The data controller is Ben Davies, trading as Ivy Assist (United Kingdom).
Contact: ivy@ivyassist.co.uk.
ICO registration number: ZC189280 (registered 4 July 2026 —
verify on the ICO register).
What we collect and why
| Data | Why we have it | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Your name and email address (from Google sign-in — we request identity only, never access to your mailbox) | Creating and securing your account | Contract |
| Your Telegram chat ID and the messages you send the bot | Running the assistant; recent messages (up to 7 days) are kept so Ivy can follow the conversation | Contract |
| School emails you choose to forward — these typically include your children's names, school activities, dates and payment requests | The core service: extracting tasks and answering your questions. Forwarding is entirely under your control via your own Gmail filter | Contract |
| Tasks and reminders created from those emails or by you | Your family's shared task list | Contract |
| Waitlist email address (if you signed up on the site) | Telling you when Ivy is available | Consent — unsubscribe any time |
Children's information
Ivy Assist is a service for parents; children cannot hold accounts. Information about your children reaches us only inside the school emails you forward, and is used solely to provide the service to your household. We treat it with corresponding care.
How the AI works
Forwarded emails and your questions are processed by Google's Gemini models to extract tasks and generate answers. Under Google's API terms, data submitted this way is not used to train Google's models. We store emails and search-index data in our own database in London; Gemini processing may take place on Google infrastructure outside the UK under Google's data-processing terms and the applicable UK transfer safeguards.
Who else touches the data (subprocessors)
| Provider | Role |
|---|---|
| Google Cloud | Hosting and database (London, europe-west2); Gemini AI processing; Google sign-in |
| Twilio SendGrid | Receives emails sent to your personal @in.ivyassist.co.uk forwarding address and passes them to us |
| Telegram | The chat channel — messages you exchange with the bot also exist in your Telegram account, governed by Telegram's own policy |
| Stripe (once paid subscriptions launch) | Payments — we never see your card details |
We do not sell personal data, share it with advertisers, or use it for any purpose other than running Ivy Assist.
Family sharing — worth knowing
Ivy is built for households: everyone in your family group sees the same task list and can ask questions answered from the same school emails. Only invite people you're happy to share that with.
How long we keep things
Everything is kept only while your account is active. Chat history is pruned after 7 days automatically. When you delete your account, your data is removed from the live database immediately and leaves encrypted database backups within about 7 days. Operational logs (which don't contain email contents) clear within about 30 days.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of your data, have it corrected, restricted, ported, or object to
processing — email us and we'll respond within a month. You can erase everything
yourself by sending /delete_account to @IvyAssistBot. If you're unhappy
with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office
at ico.org.uk.
Changes
If this policy changes materially, we'll tell you via the bot before the change takes effect.