Privacy policy
What we collect, why, who else sees it, and how you delete it — in plain words. No adverts, no tracking, no selling.
Last updated: 10 Oct 2026
Who we are
Admission Puzzle is run by Zinc Dynamics (Aitezaz Ahsan, sole trader), Cyprus. He is the data controller for the personal data described on this page. Privacy questions and requests: support@admissionpuzzle.com.
What we collect
- Your account. Your email address. Your password is stored only as a scrambled code that cannot be turned back into the password. If you use "Continue with Google", we receive your Google account's ID number and your email address — nothing else from Google. If you use "Sign in with Apple", we receive your Apple account's ID number and the email address you chose to share — which can be Apple's private relay address instead of your real one — and nothing else: we do not ask Apple for your name. Apple also gives us a sign-in token, which we keep for one purpose: telling Apple to disconnect the app when you delete your account. When you create your account we also note which of our links you came through, as one short word such as "instagram" — from the label on the link, or from the app whose own browser you were in. It says nothing else about you and is deleted with your account.
- Your answers about yourself. Name, nationality, date of birth, where you live, the countries and level you want to study, your qualifications, grades, language tests and budget — and a phone number only if you type one.
- The documents you upload (transcripts, degrees, test results, letters, your CV and similar), and the details read from them. A detail only becomes part of your file after you check it and confirm it.
- What you write in the app. Your questions to Zinc and the answers; interview-practice answers and practice interviews; motivation-letter drafts; what you add to your CV (email, city, languages, experience, skills); screenshots you give the form helper and the answers it produces; your own marks on checklists; and your answer to "can you show the visa money?" (yes, not yet, or not sure). We do not ask for bank statements.
- Your plan. Whether the full package is active and until when, and when your 3 free days started and end (counted from when you confirmed your first document). If you pay by card on the website, also the number Stripe gives your customer record and your plan, and whether you ticked the renewal box. No card number ever enters this app.
- Notifications, only if you allow them in the phone app. The address Apple (iPhone) or Google (Android) gives your phone for notifications, and which of the two it is. We use it for three things only: your documents are read, a deadline on your shortlist is close, your plan is on. A notification never says your name, a university or anything from your documents, because it shows on your lock screen and passes through Apple's or Google's servers. Logging out stops them and deletes the address; you can also turn them off in your phone's settings.
- Technical information. One login cookie (see Cookies). Your IP address is used for a short time, in the server's memory, to slow down password guessing and mass sign-ups; it is not saved in our database. Our hosting company keeps short-lived technical logs (such as IP address and the page requested) to run and protect the service.
What we do not collect: no advertising ID, no location, no contacts, no analytics or tracking tools from other companies. Many phones write the place a photo was taken inside the file. We remove that before a file is stored: from photos (JPG, PNG, WEBP) and from pictures kept uncompressed inside a PDF. The rest of what the camera wrote, such as the date and which way up the photo is, stays in the file. Files uploaded before 23 September 2026 are stored as they were sent; we do not read or use a location in them.
Your passport
Your passport is read on your own phone and never reaches us. On the step for your nationality and date of birth, you choose your passport file or take a photo of it, and your browser reads the two lines of letters and numbers at the bottom of the photo page, on your device. Only your nationality and date of birth are sent to us. The picture, your passport number, your name as printed and the expiry date are not sent to our server or to any AI company. You can also type those two details yourself.
Passport boxes on application forms are filled in on your phone too. When a form you give the form helper asks for your passport number, its expiry date or your names as the passport prints them, we do not answer those boxes. You can choose your passport file on that page: your browser reads it on your device and fills those boxes in on your screen. Nothing from it is sent to us or kept — when you leave the page, it is gone.
A passport is taken out of every upload. Before a file is sent, your browser checks it on your device and takes a passport off the list. If a passport still gets through — a blurry photo, for example, or a file the check could not look inside — it reaches our server. If you allowed AI reading, it is sent for its first reading to one of the AI companies listed below (to the next one only if that one does not answer); when that reading shows a passport, the reading stops there and the file is deleted at once. Nothing from it is kept, only a note with the file's name. If you did not allow AI reading, nothing reads the file: please delete it yourself on your Documents page.
Some other documents have a passport number printed on them, such as some letters and test results. We do not take that number out or keep it as a detail of your file, but it stays inside that document as you uploaded it.
Before this change the app took passports like any other document, and the AI companies listed below read them. Those passports have been deleted from our server (for the safety copies, see How long we keep it). If you had confirmed yours, its nationality and date of birth were first copied to your nationality and date of birth step, where you can change them; nothing else was kept from it.
We do not keep ID cards or bank statements. If one is uploaded, the reader recognises what it is, the app deletes the file, and no detail from it is saved — only a note that a file of that kind was removed.
AI reading
To read a document, write a draft or answer a question, the app sends what that feature needs — the uploaded file or screenshot, or the text you wrote together with the confirmed details of your file — to the companies below that do that job, and gets the result back. It never sends your password or your whole account.
- The document reader — an AI company that may process requests outside the European Union, including in the United States. It reads the documents you upload and the form screenshots you give the form helper, and sends back what they say.
- The writer — an AI company in the European Union. It writes the form helper answers, motivation-letter drafts and interview-practice feedback, and works out what a question to Zinc is about. For the form helper it also sees your form screenshots. When our plan with this company includes reading pages, it reads your documents and screenshots first, before the document reader.
- The backup — an AI company in the European Union. It is used only when another of these companies could not answer: it then reads the document or screenshot, or writes the answer, in its place.
We ask first. Before anything of yours is sent to these companies, the app asks for your permission once, naming them. You can take the permission back at any time on your Profile page; from then on nothing new is sent, and you can still fill in your details by hand.
You can also ask us for the names of these companies at any time: write to support@admissionpuzzle.com.
Whatever the AI reads is shown to you to check. Nothing it reads counts until you confirm it, and AI can be wrong. Zinc's answers are put together by our own code from your confirmed file and our checked sources; the writer only works out what your question is about.
Training. The document reader and the backup do not use what we send to train or improve their AI: their terms say so, and the document reader keeps requests for a limited time, only to detect abuse and for any disclosure the law requires. The writer may use what it receives to improve its AI unless that is switched off on our account. We are switching it off, and this page will say so on the day it is done.
Why we may use your data (GDPR legal bases)
- Contract: to give you the service you signed up for — reading your documents, matching programmes, working out your tests, visa steps and costs, and writing your drafts.
- Consent: sending your documents and texts to the AI companies above. You can withdraw it at any time on your Profile page.
- Legitimate interest: keeping the service secure — slowing down password guessing, stopping abuse, and keeping safety copies so a fault cannot destroy your file; and counting which of our links bring new students (the one word above), so we know where to post.
Where it is kept
Your account, your file and your uploaded documents are stored in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany), and a locked safety copy of the database in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, also in the European Union. AI reading happens at the companies described under AI reading; the document reader may process requests outside the European Union, including in the United States.
How long we keep it
We keep your data while your account exists. You can delete any single document on your Documents page, delete your whole file but keep your login, or delete your account completely — all from inside the app, at Profile → Delete, with no email and no waiting. If you cannot log in, use the delete-account page.
Deleting removes your data from the live app at once: your login, your answers, every uploaded file, the details read from them, your matches, drafts, practice answers, form-helper screenshots and chats. We keep safety copies of the database — one a day, and one each time the app restarts — for 7 days, so a deleted account disappears from those copies within 7 days. Any other backup copy, including the locked copy kept at Backblaze, is erased within 30 days.
Your rights
- See and take your data: Profile → "Download everything we hold" gives you one file with everything in your record.
- Correct it: edit your details in the app at any time; re-check any document.
- Delete it: see above.
- Withdraw your permission for AI reading: Profile → AI reading. It does not affect the rest of your account.
- Object, restrict or ask a question: write to support@admissionpuzzle.com. We answer within one month.
- Complain: you can complain to your data protection authority — in Cyprus, the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection (dataprotection.gov.cy).
Age
You must be at least 16 years old to use Admission Puzzle. If we learn that a younger child has an account, we delete it.
Changes to this page
When what the app does with your data changes, this page changes on the same day, and the date at the top changes with it.
Contact
Questions about your data: support@admissionpuzzle.com · Support · Terms of use