Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Will Salisbury, carrying on business as Learning Laboratories, trading as IELTS Laboratory
Last updated: 2 September 2026
1. Who we are
Will Salisbury, a sole proprietor in British Columbia, Canada, carrying on business as Learning Laboratories and trading as IELTS Laboratory ("we", "us", "our").
Contact and privacy enquiries: will@ielts-laboratory.co
Address: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
We are the organisation responsible for the personal information described here. Will Salisbury is the person accountable for it.
2. What this policy covers
This policy covers the website at ielts-laboratory.co, the learning platform at courses.ielts-laboratory.co, the diagnostic pipeline, the online modules, the discussion board, our live sessions, and our emails.
It does not cover any store where you buy the book. Those stores hold their own information about you under their own policies, and we do not see your payment details there.
3. What we collect
What you give us
Your name and email address.
Your country, nationality or first language, where the intake form asks for it.
The band you are aiming for, where you tell us.
A teacher code, if you enter one.
The writing you submit. This is the substance of what we hold about you. Essay and report text is personal information, and where you write about your own life, work, family, health or circumstances, that content is personal information too.
Anything you post on the discussion board.
Anything you write to us, and any reflection or feedback form you complete.
If you register as a teacher: your name, email, professional profile and the information we use to verify that you teach.
What we create about you
Your diagnostic reports, including band estimates, coded issues, coded strengths and written commentary.
The comparison between your drafts across a cycle, and across your history with us.
Your submission history, timestamps, and which modules you were routed to.
Attendance at live sessions, where you attend them.
What is collected automatically
IP address, browser and device information, pages viewed, and how you arrived at the site.
Cookies and similar technologies, described in section 4.
What we do not collect
We do not collect or store your full payment card details. Payments are handled by our payment provider, which holds those details, not us.
4. Cookies and tracking
We and our providers use:
Advertising cookies, which record when a visit that came from one of our ads leads to a trial or a purchase, and share that information with the advertising platform we use.
Analytics cookies, which tell us how the site is used.
Cookieless page counting on the marketing site, which records page views without identifying you.
Strictly necessary cookies set by the site and the learning platform so that you can log in and stay logged in.
You can refuse or delete cookies through your browser. Refusing strictly necessary cookies will stop the platform working. Refusing the others does not affect your access to anything.
Where the law of the place you live requires your consent before we set analytics or advertising cookies, we ask for it before we set them.
5. Why we use your information
We use it to:
give you access to what you bought, and run the free trial
analyse your writing and return your diagnostic reports
route you to the modules your report identifies
compare your drafts and your cycles over time, which is the point of the method
apply a teacher code and show that teacher your reports, as described in section 8
take payment and process refunds
run the live sessions and record attendance
answer you when you write to us
send you the emails described in section 10
measure our advertising and understand how the site is used
evaluate and improve the diagnostic method, as described in section 7
meet our legal and tax obligations
We rely on your consent, and on the reasonable purposes permitted by Canadian privacy law, to do these things. You can withdraw your consent at any time, as described in section 13.
6. Your writing and the automated diagnosis
Your writing is analysed by an automated system. We send the text of your writing to a third party artificial intelligence provider, which processes it and returns the analysis your report is built from. No person reads your writing as part of producing your report.
That provider processes the text on our instructions, for the purpose of producing your report, and not for its own purposes.
Because this is an automated analysis, it can be wrong. Your report is our system's estimate and not an official assessment. If you think a report has got something badly wrong, write to us and a person will look at it.
7. Research and improvement
We use information about coded issues, coded strengths and band movement, in aggregate and without identifying you, to evaluate and improve the diagnostic method and the modules. Work of that kind does not name you and does not reproduce your writing.
We do not publish any learner's writing, in any public, shared or teaching material, without that learner's recorded consent. Consent is asked for separately, it is recorded against your submission, and it is never a condition of using the service. If you decline, everything still works exactly the same.
Where we ask, we tell you at that moment which of our two consent tiers you are agreeing to and what each one permits. You can withdraw that consent at any time, and we will stop using your writing that way. Material already published before you withdraw may not be recoverable, and we will tell you honestly if that is the case.
8. Teachers seeing your reports
If you enter a teacher's code to obtain the teacher-referred price, that teacher can see your diagnostic reports. You are told this at the point of entering the code, and entering it is how you agree to it.
The teacher may use your reports to teach you. Under our teacher terms they may not publish them, pass them to anyone else, or use them for anything other than teaching you, and they must stop using them if you ask.
If you do not want a teacher to see your reports, do not enter a code. You can ask us at any time to stop a teacher seeing your future reports.
Teachers can only see the reports of learners who used their own code.
9. Who we share your information with
We do not sell your personal information, and we never will.
We share it with the providers who make the service run, and only so far as each of them needs it to do its job. They act on our instructions and may not use your information for their own purposes. They fall into these categories:
the artificial intelligence provider that analyses your writing
the learning platform that runs your account, your access and the checkout
our payment processor
the services that store our records and host our infrastructure
the provider that hosts our website
the service that sends our email
the services that run our intake, reflection and registration forms
the service that books calls and sessions
the platform that runs our live sessions
our advertising and analytics providers
We also share information where the law requires it, and with our professional advisers where we need advice. If the business is ever sold or transferred, your information may transfer with it, and we will tell you before that happens.
If you want to know which specific providers we use and where they are, write to us and we will tell you.
10. Email
If you give us your email address to start the free trial, to buy, or to open the free speaking modules, we add you to our mailing list and send you both service messages about your account and messages about our products.
You can unsubscribe from the product messages at any time, using the link in any email or by writing to us, and we will stop. Service messages about something you have bought will still reach you while you have access.
11. Where your information goes
We are in Canada. Most of our providers are outside Canada, principally in the United States and the European Union. Your information, including the text of your writing, is stored and processed outside Canada.
While it is in another country it may be accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of that country under that country's law. We choose providers that commit to protecting it, but we cannot put it beyond the reach of a foreign legal order.
If you would rather your information were not handled this way, the service is not something you can use, because the diagnosis cannot run without it.
12. How long we keep it
We keep your writing and your reports indefinitely. We do this deliberately: the method compares your drafts and cycles against your own history, so a learner who returns after a year gets a better diagnosis because the earlier work is still there.
You can ask us to delete it at any time, and we will. Write to will@ielts-laboratory.co. Deletion is permanent, it removes the history the comparison depends on, and we cannot undo it.
We keep records we are required by law to keep, such as transaction and tax records, for as long as the law requires, and we may keep de-identified and aggregated data that no longer identifies you.
13. Your rights
You can:
ask what we hold about you, and get a copy
correct it if it is wrong or incomplete
withdraw your consent, including consent to research use or to a teacher seeing your reports, subject to what you have bought and what the law requires us to keep
ask us to delete your writing and your reports
ask us how we handle it, and who has had access
Write to will@ielts-laboratory.co. We will answer within thirty days. We do not charge for this. We may need to confirm who you are before we act, so that nobody else can reach your work.
If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information or your request, you can complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, or to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. You do not have to come to us first, though we would rather you did, because we would like the chance to fix it.
14. If you live in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area
If you live there, you also have rights to object to processing, to restrict it, and to receive your information in a portable form, and you can complain to your national data protection authority. Write to us and we will deal with your request under those rules.
15. Age
The service is for people aged sixteen and over. If you are under sixteen, a parent, guardian or teacher must sign up on your behalf and agrees to this policy with you.
If you believe a child has given us personal information without that agreement, write to us and we will delete it.
16. Security
Your information is held in access-controlled systems, and only people who need it to run the service can reach it. Your reports are visible to you, to us, and to your teacher if you used their code, and to nobody else.
No system is completely secure. If a breach happens that puts you at real risk of significant harm, we will tell you and we will report it, as Canadian law requires.
17. Changes to this policy
We may change this policy. The current version is the one published here, with the date at the top. Where we make a change that materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you before it takes effect.
18. Contact
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada