Privacy policy

We don’t have a data protection officer and aren’t required to appoint one. For anything about your data, email info@towertalk.co.uk.

UK data-protection law says we must have a lawful basis for each use of your data. This table sets out each purpose, what data it uses, the basis we rely on, and who else receives the data. We do not sell your data.

• When you speak a radio call, your browser records it and sends it to our server, which passes it to OpenAI to be transcribed. We do not store the audio: it is not written to our database or storage.
• The transcript, your scores and the feedback are stored in your training history until you delete them or your account.
• The transcript and the conversation with the AI controller are sent to OpenAI and Anthropic to write the controller’s replies and to mark your call, along with context such as your callsign, aircraft type and airfield. Anthropic reviews the controller’s draft reply before you see it, and answers instead if OpenAI is unavailable.
• Before what you type or say reaches the AI, it is checked automatically by OpenAI’s moderation service, to keep the conversation on flying and to stop harmful content. If something is flagged, it is not sent on. We keep only a count of how often this happens, by screen and type, never the text itself or who sent it.
• The controller’s spoken replies are produced by sending the controller’s text (not your voice) to OpenAI.
• If you use the help assistant, what you type is sent to OpenAI to write the answer.
• The one exception to “audio not kept”: verified examiners can use a practical-test recording tool. It stores the recording in private storage, where only that examiner can open it. The CAA requires examiners to keep test recordings (at least 45 days, and the examiner’s five most recent for at least five years), so the tool lets an examiner delete a recording only once that period has passed. Deleting an examiner account removes its recordings. No AI processes those recordings.
• Live lessons are not recorded by TowerTalk, and the lesson room is set so that recording is not available in it. We do not transcribe lessons. If an instructor records a lesson by other means and pastes a link into their lesson report, we hold that link only; we do not fetch or process the recording. Each person is told this before joining.

Our AI providers process this data for us under their own terms, including how long they keep it.

We use these companies to run TowerTalk. They act on our instructions and are bound by their terms with us. Here is what each receives:

• Supabase: our database, file storage and login. Holds the data described in this policy.
• OpenAI: audio of your calls (for transcription), transcripts and context for AI replies and marking, the controller’s text for speech, and help-assistant messages.
• Anthropic: transcripts and the controller conversation for AI replies and marking.
• Stripe: your name, email and payment details when you pay, and your subscription or pass status.
• Resend: your email address and the content of the emails we send you, and delivery events.
• Daily: the live video and audio of lesson and voice rooms you join.
• Cloudflare: signals from your browser and connection for the sign-up check.
• Google: your sign-in, if you choose Sign in with Google; analytics and advertising-measurement data only if you allow it (or, outside the UK and EEA, do not opt out).
• Vercel: our hosting provider, which handles requests to our site, including your IP address.

We may also disclose data to professional advisers, to authorities where the law requires, or to a buyer if the business is sold. We do not sell or rent your email address, share it with other advertisers, or use it to build advertising profiles on other platforms.

When you join a school or instructor on TowerTalk, they can see your training work so they can teach you: your practice sessions, scores and phraseology history. Radio debriefs stay private unless you share them individually. A school can also record your date of birth to complete the CAA’s SRG1171 form, file the completed form and other documents in your training record, and keep bookings, lesson reports and invoices. Those documents are visible only to you and your school.

Two limits worth knowing. If you book a tutor yourself through our public directory, they see only the work you do from the date you booked them onwards, not your whole history, unless you choose to share it. And a school may bring in a covering instructor to teach you; that instructor can see your training history for as long as they are teaching you, on the school's behalf.

When you join a school you choose whether it can see your training from before you joined; if you don't, it sees only your work from the date you joined. If you leave, or either of you ends the link, the school keeps a read-only view of your training up to the date the link ended, and nothing after it. Your school can make a PDF or spreadsheet of your training record for its own files, with the same limits. A school may also invite you using details from its own training-management system, and, if it connects that system to TowerTalk, receive the same record there, with the same limits and never your call transcripts or audio.

A school or instructor decides what they record about you and why, and under our terms they must have the authority and any consents needed to add you. You can see which schools or instructors you are linked to in your account, and ask us to remove a link at any time. To exercise your rights over what a school holds, ask the school; you can also contact us and we will pass your request on.

Where we have not set an automatic deletion date, we say so rather than give a period we do not apply.

Step-by-step instructions, and what is kept afterwards, are on our delete your account page. Deleting your account also cancels any subscription you hold, straight away.

We send two different kinds of email, and they follow different rules.

• Service (transactional) email: things you need in order to use what you’ve asked for, such as account confirmation and password resets, lesson bookings and changes, invitations you or your instructor triggered, receipts, and notice that paid access is about to end. You can’t unsubscribe from these while you hold an account, because without them the service doesn’t work.
• Marketing email: optional nudges, training tips, product news and offers. These are opt-in only. The box is never pre-ticked, and if you don’t tick it you will never receive one. Our sending code checks your consent on every marketing send, so withdrawing consent takes effect immediately.

Withdrawing consent. Every marketing email carries a one-click unsubscribe link that works without logging in. You can also turn marketing email off in your account settings, or email us. Unsubscribing adds your address to a suppression list and invalidates the link you used. Withdrawing consent doesn’t affect the lawfulness of anything we sent beforehand, and doesn’t stop service email.

To have an account you need an email address (or Google sign-in) and a password: without them we can’t create one. To buy a plan you have to give Stripe your payment details. The age check needs your date of birth, which stays in your browser. Everything else — your aircraft, home airfield, profile photo, voice recordings — is optional: you can type your radio calls instead of speaking them, and the service still works without the rest. None of this is required by law; it is what we need to provide the service you asked for.

Do Not Track. We don’t currently respond to “Do Not Track” browser signals. Analytics and advertising measurement run only if you accept them in the cookie banner, which you can change at any time on the cookie policy page.

Under UK GDPR you have the right to be told how your data is used (this policy), and to:

• access the data we hold about you;
• correct data that is wrong;
• delete your data;
• restrict how we use it;
• take it with you (data portability);
• object to uses based on our legitimate interests, and to direct marketing;
• withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on it; and
• ask that a person looks again at an automated decision about you.

Tools in your account. Under Account, in Data & privacy, you can:

• Export my data: downloads one file of the records we hold about you: your profile and settings, aircraft and airfields, saved routes, practice sessions, conversation logs, progress, voice assessments, subscriptions and the purchase consents you gave, messages you sent us, your notifications, usage records, and the school records kept about you as a student. Three kinds of record are not in it: records that also identify other people (such as a lesson shared with other students), our internal staff and audit logs, and lesson reports and invoices your school holds, which the school can give you. Email us if you want a copy of any of those.
• Delete training history: removes your conversation logs, voice assessments, phraseology history, practice sessions and progress, and keeps your login.
• Delete my account: described above.

For anything else, email info@towertalk.co.uk. We may ask you to confirm it is your account, and we reply within one month, which is the time UK law allows. There is no charge, except where a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.

• UK / EU / EEA: under UK & EU GDPR you can access, correct, delete, restrict, port or object to processing, and complain to your supervisory authority (in the UK, the ICO).
• California (US): under the CCPA/CPRA you can know, delete, correct and opt out of “sale”/“sharing” of personal information; we don’t sell your data.
• Other countries: you keep any data-protection rights granted by your local law, which we honour where they apply.

TowerTalk is for people aged 16 or over, and nobody under 13 may use it on their own. When you sign up we ask for your date of birth to check your age. We work out in your browser whether you are 16 or over; the date is never sent to us or kept. We keep only that you passed the check and when. If you are under 16 we don’t create an account and we keep nothing you entered. If you sign in with Google or an existing account and tell us you are under 16, we sign you out and keep a note on the account, with the time, that it can’t be used for TowerTalk. Accounts that already existed were asked once to confirm they are 16 or over, or joined through a school or instructor, and we keep that confirmation.

Under-16s may use TowerTalk only through a school or instructor, who enrols them by student number or by an email invitation. We don’t ask for a date of birth in that case, though a school may record one to complete the CAA’s SRG1171 form (see above). The school or instructor is responsible for any parental consent needed and for supervising that use; we don’t check consent ourselves. We don’t knowingly collect data from under-16s outside that arrangement. If you think a child has an account, contact us and we will remove it.

In the United States: nobody under 13 may create an account, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (COPPA). If we learn that we have, we delete it. Where a US school enrols a student under 13, the school provides the consent COPPA allows it to give for educational use, and we use that student’s data only for their training with that school.