Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Welcome to Strategic CSS ("we," "us," "our," or "the Site"). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, process, store, and protect information when you use our website and related services, including our essay checker, answer checker, and other study/exam-preparation tools (collectively, the "Services").

By accessing or using the Services, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with any part of this policy, please discontinue use of the Services.

2. Scope

This Privacy Policy applies to all visitors, registered users, and anyone who submits content (including text, essays, answers, or files such as PDFs and images) through Strategic CSS. It covers data collected directly through the Site and data processed on our behalf by third-party service providers, including Google Gemini API, Firebase, and Cloudinary.

This policy does not apply to third-party websites or services that may be linked from our Site; those services have their own privacy policies.

3. Definitions

• "Personal Data" — any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual (e.g., name, email address, IP address).
• "User Content" — any essay, answer, document, PDF, image, or other file you submit to the Services for checking, grading, or evaluation.
• "Processing" — any operation performed on data, including collection, storage, use, transmission, and deletion.
• "Third-Party Service Provider" — an external company (e.g., Google, Cloudinary) that processes data on our behalf to help operate the Services.
• "Cookies" — small text files stored on your device to remember preferences or track usage.

4. Information We Collect

We collect information in three general ways: information you provide directly, information collected automatically, and information generated when your content is processed by AI tools.

5. Information Automatically Collected

When you visit Strategic CSS, certain information may be collected automatically, including:

• IP address and approximate geographic location
• Browser type, version, and device/operating system information
• Pages visited, time spent on pages, and referral/exit URLs
• Date and time of access
• Basic usage patterns (e.g., which tools you use, how often)
• How you interact with a page — mouse movement, taps, clicks, and scrolling — which may be recorded and replayed as a session recording (see Analytics)

This information helps us understand how the Site is used, diagnose issues, and improve performance.

6. Information You Provide

You may voluntarily provide information such as:

• Your name and email address (e.g., if you contact us or create an account)
• Essays, answers, PDFs, images, or other documents submitted for checking/evaluation
• Any feedback, support requests, or correspondence you send us

Important: Please do not submit sensitive personal information (such as ID numbers, medical, or financial data) within essays, answers, or uploaded files, as these are processed by third-party AI and storage providers described below.

7. Who Can See Your Information

Strategic CSS is operated by one person, and some work — marking mock exams, keeping the forum civil — may be carried out by people appointed to help. Each of them is given access to only what that job requires, enforced by our database rules rather than by instruction alone. There are three levels:

• The site operator (administrator). Can see your email address, whether it is verified, when you registered and when you last signed in, everything you have submitted (essays, answers, uploaded answer sheets, payment receipts), your quiz and mock scores, your progress, and your forum posts.
• Evaluators. Appointed to mark mock exams. An evaluator can see the email address of every student who submits a paper, open the answer sheets you upload, and record your score. They cannot see payment receipts, account deletion or data-export requests, or the site's usage statistics, and they cannot delete anything.
• Moderators. Appointed to moderate the community forum. A moderator can see forum posts and the email address attached to them, remove posts, and block accounts from the forum. They cannot see your essays, mock papers, scores, progress or payment information.

Only the site owner can appoint or remove an evaluator or a moderator. An administrator cannot. Evaluators and moderators are not employees of a company and are appointed individually; we do not publish their identities, and you may contact us if you have a concern about how your work was handled.

Payment receipts are treated differently from other uploads because they carry your name, phone number and bank details. They are stored privately, are never given a public link, and are visible only to the site operator — not to evaluators or moderators.

8. Usage Reporting

The site operator has access to an internal reporting screen. It shows:

• Aggregate figures — how many accounts exist, how many were created on each of the last fourteen days, how many people signed in today, and total counts of essays graded, quiz attempts, mock attempts, uploaded answer sheets and forum posts. These are counts only and identify nobody.
• Recent individual activity — a short list of the most recent sign-ups, mock attempts and answer-sheet uploads, each shown with the email address of the account concerned, so that the service can be run and supported.

This screen is available to the site operator only; evaluators and moderators cannot open it. These figures are used to operate and improve Strategic CSS. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share these reports with advertisers or any third party.

Sessions created automatically for signed-out visitors who use the AI tools are counted separately and hold no email address or personal detail.

9. AI Answer Evaluation

Our essay checker and answer checker tools work by sending the text or file you submit (including PDFs) to an external Artificial Intelligence provider — currently Google's Gemini API — for automated analysis, scoring, or feedback generation. The evaluation result is then returned to you through our Site.

We do not manually review your submissions ourselves; evaluation is performed automatically by the AI model. Please note the following important points regarding AI-generated feedback:

• Educational purposes only: All AI-generated feedback, scores, and suggestions are provided strictly for educational and self-practice purposes.
• Not official marking: AI feedback does not represent official FPSC (Federal Public Service Commission) marking, evaluation criteria, or results, and should not be treated as an authoritative or guaranteed indicator of actual exam performance.
• No sensitive information: Users should not upload or submit sensitive personal information (such as CNIC/ID numbers, financial details, medical information, or other confidential data) within essays, answers, or uploaded files.
• No liability for reliance on AI feedback: Strategic CSS is not responsible for any decisions, academic or otherwise, made by users solely based on AI-generated feedback, scores, or suggestions.

We are not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or appropriateness of AI-generated feedback, as explained further in our Disclaimer of Liability section.

10. Gemini AI Processing (Google)

11. Firebase Services

Strategic CSS is hosted using Firebase Hosting, a service provided by Google. We may also use other Firebase products (such as Firebase Authentication, Firestore/Realtime Database, or Firebase Analytics) to operate the Site, manage user accounts, or store limited application data.

Firebase may collect technical information such as device identifiers, IP address, crash logs, and usage statistics in accordance with Google's Privacy Policy and Firebase's terms of service. Data processed through Firebase is subject to Google's data-processing and security practices, including Google's global infrastructure and standard contractual safeguards for international transfers.

12. Cloudinary File Uploads

For features involving file or image uploads — including "mock" submissions — Strategic CSS uses Cloudinary, a third-party media management service, to store and deliver uploaded files (such as images and PDFs).

• When you upload a file, it is transmitted to and stored on Cloudinary's infrastructure (which may be hosted on servers located outside your home country).
• Cloudinary may automatically log technical information related to uploads, such as IP address, file metadata, and access/activity logs, as described in Cloudinary's own Privacy Policy.
• We do not control Cloudinary's internal data practices; our use of Cloudinary is governed by Cloudinary's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, available at cloudinary.com.

Please avoid uploading files containing sensitive personal, financial, or confidential information.

13. Cookies

Strategic CSS may use cookies and similar tracking technologies (such as local storage) to:

• Remember your preferences and settings
• Keep you logged in, where applicable
• Understand aggregate usage patterns
• Support analytics and (in the future) advertising

You can control or disable cookies through your browser settings. Disabling cookies may affect the functionality of certain features on the Site.

14. Analytics

We may use analytics tools (such as Google Analytics or Firebase Analytics) to understand how visitors use Strategic CSS. These tools may collect information such as pages visited, session duration, device type, and general location, typically through cookies or similar identifiers. This data is used in aggregate form to improve the Site and is generally not used to personally identify you.

We also use Microsoft Clarity, which works differently from the tools above and so is described separately. Clarity records individual browsing sessions — including mouse movement, taps, clicks, scrolling, and which pages you view — and lets us replay them to find parts of the Site that are confusing or broken. A Clarity recording is a replay of your own visit, not an aggregate statistic. This information is processed by Microsoft under its own privacy terms.

Text is masked. We have enabled Clarity's text masking, so the words on your screen are replaced with placeholder characters before a recording leaves your browser. This matters most for our AI tools: the essay or answer you submit, the feedback and score you receive, and anything you type into a form are not captured in the recording. What we see is the shape of the page and how you moved through it — where you clicked, where you hesitated, where you gave up — not what you wrote.

You can prevent both kinds of analytics from loading by disabling cookies or using your browser's tracking protection, as described in the Cookies section above.

15. Advertising (Future — Google AdSense)

Strategic CSS may, in the future, display advertisements through Google AdSense. If and when this feature is enabled:

• Google and its partners may use cookies (including the DoubleClick cookie) to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.
• Google may collect data such as your IP address, device identifiers, and browsing activity to personalize ads and measure ad performance.
• You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings (adssettings.google.com) or through industry opt-out tools such as the Digital Advertising Alliance.

This section will apply automatically once AdSense (or a similar advertising network) is integrated into the Site, without requiring a separate policy update, though we may update this section for accuracy as needed.

16. Data Storage

Data collected through Strategic CSS is stored using a combination of:

• Firebase (Google Cloud infrastructure) — for hosting, authentication, and application data
• Cloudinary — for uploaded files and media
• Google Gemini API servers — for temporary processing of AI evaluation requests

These providers maintain their own industry-standard security certifications (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC 2), and we rely on their infrastructure and safeguards as part of our own security posture.

17. Data Retention

We retain personal data and user-submitted content only for as long as necessary to provide the Services, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Please note:

• Content processed via the Gemini API free tier may be retained by Google under Google's own retention schedules, independent of our control.
• Files stored via Cloudinary remain until deleted by us or automatically purged per our account settings/retention rules.
• You may request deletion of your account data by contacting us (see Contact Information).

18. International Data Transfers

Because we use global service providers (Google Firebase, Google Gemini API, Cloudinary, Microsoft Clarity), your data — including submitted essays, answers, files, and session recordings — may be transferred to, stored on, and processed in servers located in countries other than your own, including the United States and other jurisdictions where these providers operate. These providers implement standard contractual clauses and other legal safeguards for cross-border data transfers. By using the Services, you consent to such international transfer and processing.

19. User Rights

Depending on your location, you may have rights regarding your personal data, including the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Request correction or deletion of your data
• Object to or restrict certain processing
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
• Request a copy of your data in a portable format

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in the Contact Information section. Please note that some data (e.g., already processed by Google's Gemini free tier) may not be fully recoverable or deletable on our end, as it falls under Google's own data controls.

Availability of Data Copies: Where you request a copy of your data, we will provide it only to the extent that such information is actually accessible to us at the time of the request. Since much of the data associated with your use of the Services is held or processed by third-party providers (such as Google Gemini API, Firebase, and Cloudinary), we may not always have direct access to, visibility into, or control over that data. Depending on technical feasibility, third-party platform limitations, retention periods already elapsed, or other reasonable constraints, we may be unable to retrieve, reconstruct, or provide certain data. We will make reasonable efforts to fulfill valid requests but do not guarantee that a complete copy of all data can be provided in every case.

Account Deletion

Users may request deletion of their Strategic CSS account and associated personal information by contacting us at support.strategiccss@gmail.com. We will process verified deletion requests within a reasonable period, unless we are required to retain certain information for legal, security, or fraud-prevention purposes.

20. Security Measures

We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including relying on the security infrastructure of Firebase, Cloudinary, and Google Cloud. However, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security of any data transmitted to or through the Services, and any transmission is at your own risk.

21. Children's Privacy

Strategic CSS is intended for students and general users and is not specifically directed at children under 13 (or the relevant minimum age in your jurisdiction). We do not knowingly collect personal data from young children without appropriate parental/guardian consent. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data without consent, please contact us so we can take appropriate action, including deletion of such data.

22. Third-Party Links

Our Site may contain links to third-party websites or services not operated by us. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these third-party sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any external site you visit.

23. Disclaimer of Liability

24. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal requirements, or the third-party services we use (for example, when Google AdSense is activated, or if we switch from the Gemini free tier to a paid tier). The "Last updated" date at the top of this page will reflect the most recent revision. Continued use of the Services after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

25. Contact Information

© 2026 Strategic CSS. All rights reserved. This Privacy Policy is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.