Privacy Policy

It matters which one you are in, because it changes who decides what happens to the data.

• Visitors and coaches. When you browse ownlyos.in or hold an OwnlyOS account, we decide how your data is used, and this policy governs that directly.
• Students and guardians. Learner records are created either by a coach or academy in the coach workspace, or by a learner or their guardian applying through an academy website built on OwnlyOS. A website application becomes a learner record only when the coach approves the payment. The coach or academy decides what to record and for how long, and we process that data on their instructions in order to run the service. If you are a parent or student wanting a record corrected or removed, your coach or academy is the right first contact; we will support them, and you can also reach us at the address above. In the language of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, your coach or academy is the Data Fiduciary for those learner records and OwnlyOS is their Data Processor, acting under a written agreement with them. If a request reaches us directly, we tell your coach or academy within three working days and act once they decide, unless the law requires otherwise. For your own OwnlyOS account and billing, and for this marketing site, OwnlyOS is the Data Fiduciary and answers you directly.

On this marketing site. Nothing is loaded for analytics until you accept it in the cookie banner. If you accept, a third-party website analytics script (served from wsimg.com) records page views and basic device and referrer information. Your choice is stored locally in your browser and you can withdraw it at any time from the same banner. Declining leaves the site fully functional.

On an academy website, when you apply for coaching. Before any coach has reviewed it, we collect what you enter in the enrolment form:

• About the learner — first and last name, an optional preferred name, time zone, and email address and/or phone number. When applying for yourself, give at least one of email or phone. An email address is needed later to sign in to the learner area.
• About the coaching — the programme you selected, the amount you agreed with the coach, and any notes you choose to add.
• About the payment — the name of the person who paid, the UPI transaction reference (UTR) and a screenshot of the payment confirmation, so the coach can check the payment against what was agreed.
• If the learner is under 18 — the parent’s or guardian’s name, relationship to the learner, and email and/or phone. For an application completed by a guardian, the guardian’s contact details are enough, and a separate learner email or phone is optional.
• Consents — whether you agreed to receive updates from the academy, which is optional and separate from enrolment.

We do not collect the learner’s date of birth, country, chess rating or level, bank account details or card details when you apply for coaching, and academy websites do not infer a learner’s chess level.

In the coach workspace. To run a coaching business the product holds:

• Account data — name, email address, password credentials, workspace role and time zone.
• Student records — the student’s name, level, status, school, coach notes, and guardian contact name, relationship, email and phone where these are recorded.
• Coaching activity — sessions, attendance, curriculum progress, assessments, homework and the moves a student plays when solving it.
• Billing records — fees charged and payments recorded by the coach.
• Connected accounts — where a coach links Lichess or Google Calendar, the tokens and identifiers needed to keep that link working.

A pending enrolment is a request, not an account. While it is pending, only the academy’s authorised approver can see it, and only to decide whether the payment is valid.

If the coach approves the payment, we create a learner profile, enable the learner’s OwnlyOS account where an eligible email exists, and send the approved details to the OwnlyOS coach workspace so the coach can schedule sessions. We link an approved enrolment to an existing learner profile only if you signed in to that profile while enrolling, or if an authorised member of the academy reviews and confirms the link. A matching email address on its own is never enough, and a parent’s or guardian’s email is never treated as the learner’s identity.

If the coach rejects the payment, no learner profile is created. You may submit new payment evidence, and the earlier submission is kept as part of the decision record for the period described under “How long we keep it”.

Payment screenshots. Uploaded screenshots are checked by size, file type and file signature, limited to JPEG, PNG and WebP, and decoded and re-encoded before they are stored, which removes embedded metadata. There is no malware scanner: re-encoding reduces risk, but it is not malware scanning. Screenshots are held in private storage and can be opened only by an authorised approver through a short-lived link, and each viewing is logged.

When a coach approves your payment, the academy website sends the approved enrolment to the OwnlyOS coach workspace, a separate OwnlyOS application the coach uses to run classes.

The coach workspace receives:

• the learner’s name, preferred name, email and/or phone, time zone and any notes you left;
• the guardian’s name, relationship and contact details, if the learner is under 18;
• the programme selected;
• the approved amount, currency, approval time and a reference to the approval decision;
• references to the consents you gave.

The coach workspace does not receive the payment screenshot, the UTR, or the payer’s bank details. The purpose of the transfer is to create the learner’s coaching record, invite the learner, and let the coach assign classes and manage fees.

A learner who comes through an academy website chooses their own password after the coach enables their access. The coach never sets or sees it.

Connecting Google Calendar is optional, per coach, and can be undone at any time. Nothing below happens unless a coach chooses to connect their own Google account.

What we request. Three scopes: openid and email, so the workspace can show which Google account is connected, and https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events, so it can put coaching sessions on that calendar.

What we actually do with it. When a coach schedules, reschedules or cancels a one-to-one session, OwnlyOS creates, updates or deletes the matching event on that coach’s calendar and asks Google to send the invitation or cancellation to the student and guardian email addresses the coach has recorded. We use it for nothing else. We do not read, index or analyse the coach’s existing calendar entries, and we do not create events on anyone else’s calendar. Google’s permission screen describes the calendar scope more broadly than the use we make of it; the description here is what the software does.

What we store. The long-lived refresh token that keeps the connection alive is held encrypted in a dedicated secrets store, separate from ordinary application tables and unreadable by the application’s normal database role. Alongside it we keep the connected Google account’s email address, which calendar is in use, connection timestamps, and — on each synced session — the identifier and link of the event we created, so a later change updates that event instead of creating a duplicate.

What we share. The student and guardian email addresses for a session are sent to Google as event guests, because that is how Google issues the invitation. Google user data is not sold, not used for advertising, not used to build profiles, and not used to train generative artificial-intelligence models.

Limited Use. OwnlyOS’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

How to disconnect. Use Disconnect on the Google Calendar card in the Schedule tab. That revokes our access at Google and deletes the stored token. You can also revoke it yourself at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Calendar events already created stay on your calendar, and you can delete them there.

We process account and coaching data to perform the service a coach or academy has signed up for. Analytics on this site runs only on your consent. Some records — billing history in particular — are kept to meet legal and accounting obligations. Where our basis is consent you may withdraw it at any time, without affecting what was done beforehand. OwnlyOS is operated from India, and we handle personal data under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

Many chess students are minors. A child’s record reaches OwnlyOS in one of two ways: a coach or academy creates it in the coach workspace, or a parent or guardian applies on the child’s behalf through an academy website. We ask coaches and academies to collect a guardian’s consent before recording a child’s details, and to record no more than coaching genuinely requires.

Applications through an academy website. The enrolment form asks whether the learner is under 18. If the answer is yes, a parent or guardian must complete the application, provide their own name, relationship and contact details, and give consent on the learner’s behalf. We record that consent together with the policy version shown at the time, the time of consent and a hashed network address. Whether the learner is under 18 is taken from that declaration; we do not ask for the learner’s date of birth.

A guardian may ask, through the coach or directly at the contact address above, to see, correct or delete the records held about their child. We do not use a child’s data for advertising, and we do not track children across other websites.

We do not sell personal data. We rely on these providers to run the service.

For the coach workspace:

• Supabase — database, authentication and encrypted secret storage.
• Vercel — application hosting and delivery.
• Google — calendar events and invitation email, only for coaches who connect Google Calendar.
• Lichess — chess study and puzzle content, only where a coach links it.

For academy websites:

• Vercel — hosting, server functions and edge processing.
• Neon — the database holding enrolments, learner profiles, consents and audit records.
• Cloudflare R2 — storage for academy media, and a separate private store for payment screenshots.
• Resend — enrolment confirmations, approver notifications, status updates and sign-in email.
• No error-monitoring, log-aggregation, rate-limiting or bot-protection service receives academy website data. None is enabled.

For this marketing site: the analytics provider named above, only with your consent.

Where the coach workspace data sits. Coach workspace data stays in India. The database holding accounts, student records, coaching history and the encrypted secrets store runs in Mumbai, and the workspace’s server-side processing is pinned to Mumbai as well, so that data is both stored and processed in the same jurisdiction. Pages and static files are delivered through a global content network, which carries no personal data of its own.

Where academy website data sits. Academy websites are not hosted in India, and not all of their data is in one country. Their server-side processing and their database both run in Singapore, and edge processing happens at the content network location nearest the visitor. Email, including enrolment confirmations and sign-in messages, is sent through Resend from Tokyo, Japan. Academy media and payment screenshots are held in Cloudflare R2 in its Asia-Pacific location, which is a regional setting rather than a named country, so we cannot promise you a specific country for those files. When a coach approves an enrolment, the approved details are sent from the academy website to the coach workspace in India, as described above. The screenshot itself never leaves the academy website’s private store.

Two exceptions, both only where you have opted into them: Google operates its own global infrastructure, so a coach who connects Google Calendar has that calendar data handled under Google’s terms; and the analytics provider on this marketing site processes page views on its own infrastructure, only after you accept the cookie banner. Both rely on the contractual and technical safeguards those providers offer.

Coach workspace. Workspace data persists while the account is active, because a coaching history is the point of the product. When an account closes or you ask us to erase your data, we respond with the status of your request within 30 days. That is also the period within which we aim to complete an approved erasure of a learner who has coaching history: their identity is removed, their login and photo are deleted, and only facts we must keep, such as amounts paid, remain, with no name or contact details attached. Archiving a record is not erasure, and we will not describe it as erasure. Records we must keep for legal or accounting reasons are kept for as long as Indian tax and accounting law requires. A revoked Google Calendar connection has its stored token destroyed immediately.

Academy websites.

• Enrolment started but no payment evidence sent — deleted 30 days after the last activity.
• Payment evidence sent but no decision made — held until a decision. If there is still no decision after 90 days, the enrolment is treated as abandoned: you are told, your personal data and the screenshot are deleted, and a record containing no personal data is kept.
• Rejected enrolment — personal data kept for 90 days after the final rejection so you can resubmit, then anonymised.
• Payment screenshot, payer name and UTR — permanently deleted 90 days after the final approval or rejection, whatever the outcome. Only a one-way fingerprint of the UTR, the amount and the currency remain in the decision record. A legal hold can extend this only with a recorded reason, owner and expiry date.
• Approval and rejection decisions — who decided, when, the amount, currency and UTR fingerprint, with no screenshot, raw UTR or payer name — kept for as long as Indian tax and accounting law requires records of payments received.
• Approved enrolment — becomes the learner profile, kept while the learner has a relationship with any academy on OwnlyOS.
• Guardian details — follow the enrolment and then the learner profile they belong to.
• Records linking a website enrolment to the coach workspace — kept while the learner record exists; after an erasure request, kept only until the coach workspace confirms its outcome, then reduced to reference numbers containing no personal data.
• Delivery logs between an academy website and the coach workspace, and logs of who viewed a payment screenshot — 2 years. Delivery logs contain no personal data.
• Consent records — the fact that consent was given, the policy version and the time, kept while we rely on that consent and afterwards for as long as we may need to show it was given, then deleted. Erasing a learner does not by itself delete the record that consent was once given, because that record is how we can show the data was handled lawfully.

Data is encrypted in transit. Access-controlled database policies scope every record to the workspace that owns it, so one coach or academy cannot read another’s. Third-party tokens live in a separate encrypted store rather than in ordinary tables. No system is perfectly secure, but if a breach affects your data we will tell you and the relevant authority as the law requires.

You may ask to access, correct, or delete your personal data, to withdraw consent, to receive a copy in a portable form, or to complain about how we have handled it. Write to the address at the top of this policy. We respond to a rights request within 30 days. This is a commitment to respond and tell you the status; where a request needs action in more than one system, we tell you the outcome in each.

If you applied through an academy website, you can also ask through your OwnlyOS account or the academy’s grievance officer. The website acts on its own records. Where your data has also been sent to the coach workspace, we pass the request on by a private channel using reference numbers only, and report back the actual outcome: corrected, deleted, partially retained with the reason, or not possible.

Grievance Officer. Complaints about how OwnlyOS handles personal data go to Ishwar Gavit at privacy@ownlyos.in. We acknowledge a complaint within 7 days and answer within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

If this policy changes we will publish a new version with a new version identifier and date, and tell account holders directly when the change is significant. Consents given on an academy website stay linked to the version you were shown.