Privacy notice

1. Who we are

Degree Margins is an online study notebook for students at UK universities. It is provided by ProtocolDock, which is the controller of your personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. In this notice, "we", "us" and "our" mean ProtocolDock as the provider of Degree Margins.

For anything about your data, including the rights described below, contact us at hello@degreemargins.com.

2. The short version

• We collect what we need to run your account and your notebooks, and nothing for advertising.
• Your notes and imported books are private to your account. We do not read them except where you ask us to help, or where we must to keep the service secure or meet a legal duty. Assignment inputs submitted to the interpreter may also be reviewed privately to improve that feature, as described below.
• We never sell your data, and there are no advertising or tracking cookies.
• Card payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your card number.
• You can export your notebooks at any time, and ask us to delete your account.

3. What we collect

Category	What it includes
Account details	Your email address (or a username), the name you choose to display, a one-way hash of your password (never the password itself), whether your account is active, and when it was created and last used.
Notebook content	Everything you add to a subject notebook: modules, lecture notes, concept and study pages, flashcards and revision history, assignments, marks and feedback, calendar entries, reference lists, uploaded files, and EPUB or PDF books you import.
Subscription records	Which subjects you have trialled or subscribed to, the plan, its status and dates, and the reference numbers Stripe gives us for your customer record and subscription.
Referrals	Your personal referral code; if you joined through someone's link or code, which account referred you (so they can be rewarded); and, when you invite a friend by email, a one-way hash of their address and the time sent, used only to limit how often invitations are sent. We never keep a friend's address unless they sign up themselves.
Shared notes	If you share a note: the read-only copy, when it was shared or updated, how many times it has been viewed and saved, and which accounts saved a copy. Readers see your first name.
Security records	Sign-in attempts with the IP address and time (kept for 30 days to prevent password guessing), password reset requests (kept for 30 days), and a session cookie that keeps you signed in.
Friends	Who you have added as a friend, friend requests you have sent or received (and whether they were accepted or declined), and anyone you have blocked.
Messages between friends	Messages you send and receive in chats with friends, files you attach to them, and notes you share in them. Only you and the friend you are talking to can see these. We do not read them, except a message someone reports to us (see below) or where the law requires it.
Note threads	When you tag a friend on part of your notes: a read-only copy of that one part (a slide's notes, the general notes, or a paragraph), who is in the thread, and the messages in it. Only you and the friends you tag can see it, and the rest of your notes are never shared. If you stop sharing, the copy of your text is erased and the thread becomes read-only. We do not read threads, except a message someone reports to us.
Help and support	Your support conversations with us, including files you attach, the topic you chose, and when messages were sent and read. If you report a friend's message, the report contains that message, the name of the person who sent it and your reason.
Emails	Emails you send us and our replies.
Feature use	Daily totals of how many times each part of the app was opened (for example "Flashcards: 120 times today"). These are counts only: they are not linked to your account, your name or your device.
Technical logs	Error messages generated by the server, which may include the page requested and an account number. These are kept in a small log file that overwrites older entries as it fills.

We do not ask for special category data (such as health information). Please do not put other people's personal data in your notebooks beyond what you need for your studies. If you are on a placement, follow your course's confidentiality rules and never record identifiable details of patients, service users or clients.

4. Why we use it, and our lawful basis

Purpose	Lawful basis
Creating your account, storing and showing your notebooks, running free trials and subscriptions	Contract: we need it to provide the service you signed up for.
Taking payment and keeping payment and tax records	Contract, and legal obligation (we must keep financial records, usually for six years).
Sending service emails, such as password reset links and important changes to the service or these terms	Contract and legitimate interests in running a reliable service.
Protecting accounts and the service, investigating misuse, keeping backups	Legitimate interests in keeping the service and your data secure.
Running the referral programme: linking referred accounts, applying rewards, sending invitation emails you ask us to send, and preventing abuse	Contract (for you as a referrer or referred friend) and legitimate interests in running a fair programme.
Answering your questions and requests, including support conversations	Legitimate interests, or legal obligation where you exercise a data protection right.
Friends, chats and sharing: delivering your messages, files and shared notes to the friends you choose	Contract (it is a feature of the service you choose to use).
Looking into reports of misuse between students	Legitimate interests in keeping students safe and the service free of abuse.
Counting how often each feature is used, to decide what to improve or simplify	Legitimate interests in improving the service. The counts are anonymous.

We do not send marketing emails unless you have opted in, and you can opt out at any time. We do not use your notebook content to train artificial intelligence models, and we do not make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

5. Optional features that contact other services

• Assignment interpreter. When you press Interpret or ask for an assignment breakdown, the input you provide is sent to our configured AI provider to extract the stated requirements. The application then builds the breakdown. We retain the original input, extracted requirements, model, usage and validation failures privately so administrators can review errors and improve the feature. Inputs are not shared between students or used as other students' content. These records are deleted when the associated account or notebook is deleted. You can contact us to request their deletion. A local reading remains available if the AI service is unavailable.
• AI study assistant. Off by default. If you switch it on in a notebook's settings and enter your own API key, the notes you choose to send with each request go directly from our server to the AI provider you picked (for example Anthropic), under that provider's own terms and privacy policy. You are the one who chooses the provider and what to send.
• DOI look-up. When you ask the app to fill in a reference from a DOI, the DOI (and nothing about you) is sent to Crossref to fetch the publication details.
• ProtocolDock Write. Our writing templates are files you download. If you choose to open them in ProtocolDock Write, that service's own terms and privacy notice apply.

6. Who we share it with

We share personal data only with organisations that help us run the service, under contracts that require them to protect it and use it only on our instructions:

• Our web hosting provider, which runs the servers, database and email system that store Degree Margins and send its emails.
• Stripe (Stripe Payments UK, Ltd. and its affiliates), which process card payments and manage subscriptions for ProtocolDock. Stripe is also a controller of some payment data under its own privacy policy.

We may also disclose data where the law requires it, to protect people from harm, or to establish or defend legal claims. If ProtocolDock or Degree Margins is ever reorganised or sold, your data would transfer to the new provider under the same protections, and we would tell you first.

7. International transfers

Our providers may store or process data outside the UK. Where they do, we rely on the protections UK law requires, such as UK adequacy regulations or the International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

8. How long we keep it

• Your account and notebooks: for as long as your account is open. If a trial or subscription ends, we keep your notebooks so you can pick up where you left off or export them; you can ask us to delete them at any time.
• After you ask us to delete your account: we delete it from the live service within 30 days. Automatic notebook backups are overwritten within 14 days after that.
• Accounts left unused: if an account has had no sign-in and no active subscription for three years, we may delete it after emailing you (where we have an email address) at least 30 days beforehand.
• Payment records: six years after the end of the financial year they relate to, as tax law requires.
• Sign-in attempts and password reset requests: 30 days.
• Note threads: for as long as the account that owns the notes exists. If you stop sharing a note, the shared text is erased straight away and the messages stay, read-only, for the people in the thread. When the owner's account is deleted the whole thread is deleted. When another person's account is deleted, their messages are deleted from every thread.
• Chats with friends, and their files: for as long as both accounts exist. When either account is deleted, the whole conversation and its files are deleted with it. Removing or blocking a friend stops new messages but keeps the conversation so either of you can report something later; delete your account, or ask us, to remove it.
• Support conversations and their files: while the conversation is open, and for two years after it is closed, after which it is deleted automatically. They are also deleted if you delete your account.
• Feature use counts: kept as anonymous totals.

9. How we protect it

All connections use HTTPS. Passwords are stored as slow one-way hashes. Each notebook is separated from every other account's data in the database, uploaded files (including files sent in chats and to support) are stored outside the public web folder and can only be opened by the people they were sent to, and administrative access is limited to the people who run the service. No online service can promise perfect security; if a breach affecting your data were likely to put you at risk, we would tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office as the law requires.

10. Your rights

You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you (you can also export your notebooks yourself from Settings in each subject);
• ask us to correct data that is wrong;
• ask us to delete your data;
• ask us to restrict how we use your data, or object to uses based on legitimate interests;
• receive your data in a portable format (Markdown and JSON exports are available in every notebook).

To use any of these rights, email hello@degreemargins.com from the address on your account. We will reply within one month. There is normally no charge.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

To download your chats with friends, your note threads and your support conversations, use Download my messages on your account page. Each notebook's own export covers its notes.

11. Age

Degree Margins is for university students. You must be at least 16 to create an account.

12. Cookies

We use one essential cookie to keep you signed in, and your browser stores some pages and preferences so the app works quickly and offline. There are no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies. See cookies and local storage for details.

13. Changes to this notice

We will update this notice when the service or the law changes, and show the date of the latest version below. If a change significantly affects how we use your data, we will tell you by email or when you next sign in.

Last updated 19 October 2026.