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Privacy Policy

We keep as little about you as we can, we never sell it, and we don’t use advertising or tracking cookies. This page explains what we keep, why, who else handles it, and how you stay in control.

Last updated October 23, 2026

1. Who we are

Living as IF is Quin’s business, based in the United Kingdom. We decide how your information is used (we’re its “controller” under UK data protection law). For anything about your information, write to hello@living-as-if.com.

2. What we keep, and why

Your account: your email address, your name as you choose to show it, a password (stored only in scrambled form, which nobody can read back), and, if you add them, a photo and a few words about yourself. We need these to give you what you’ve bought and to let you log in.

Your purchases: what you bought, when, the price and currency, and the reference from Stripe or PayPal. We need these to give you access, to handle refunds, and because the law requires us to keep sales records.

What you do on the site, so it works the way you expect:

  • Your reading place, highlights and notes in the books (private to you unless you choose to share one with the club).
  • Your progress in courses, your quiz answers, the work you hand in and the feedback on it, and any certificate you earn.
  • What you post, reply, react to and message in the club, your questions for Quin, and the reviews you write.

Emails: a record of the emails we’ve sent you (which kind and when), so we don’t send the same one twice.

Our newsletter: if you sign up, your email address and a record of your consent (the words you agreed to, the time, and the connection you signed up from). Nobody receives the newsletter until they confirm by email.

Messages to us: what you write through the Contact page or by email, so we can answer.

3. Counting visits, without cookies

To see which pages people read, we count visits ourselves, without cookies and without any outside analytics service. For each page view we keep the page’s address, the website that sent you (if any), and whether you’re on a phone, tablet or computer.

To count visitors rather than views, we make a code from your connection and browser that changes every day and can’t be turned back into who you are. We never store your internet address for this. Our team’s own working pages and visits from automated tools aren’t counted.

4. Keeping the site safe

To protect accounts and the site, we look at a few things about each connection:

  • How many times someone tries to log in or send a form in a short time, kept only in the server’s memory for minutes.
  • When a connection asks for addresses that automated attack tools look for, we note the internet address, the address it asked for and its browser, and may pause that connection for up to 24 hours. We keep these notes for 90 days.
  • If a page fails, the server tells our team which page failed and when, without anything about you.

Our administrators log in with a second step (a code from an app).

5. Our legal reasons

  • To provide what you’ve asked for: your account, your purchases, the 5D Pass, courses, the reader and the club (“contract”).
  • To keep sales records and meet our legal duties (“legal obligation”).
  • To keep the site safe, prevent abuse, count visits, and improve the site (“legitimate interests”); we’ve weighed these against your privacy and kept them small.
  • To send our newsletter, only with your consent, which you can take back at any time with the link in every email (“consent”).

6. Who else handles your information

We run the site, its database and our email on a server in Canada that we rent and manage ourselves, so your account, reading and club activity stay with us. A few services handle parts of it:

  • Stripe and PayPal take payments. They receive your payment details and the email you pay with, under their own privacy policies; we never see your card number.
  • YouTube and Vimeo play course videos. A video’s player loads from them only when you open a lesson with a video; we use their privacy-enhanced players (YouTube’s no-cookie player, Vimeo with tracking turned off).
  • Our hosting provider looks after the server’s hardware; it doesn’t use your information for anything else.

We don’t sell your information, share it for advertising, or let anyone else use it for their own purposes. We may share it if the law requires us to.

7. Information sent abroad

The server that holds the site, its database and our email is in Canada, which UK law recognizes as protecting personal information to the UK’s standard (an “adequacy” decision), so nothing more is needed for it.

Stripe, PayPal, YouTube and Vimeo are international companies and may handle information in the United States and elsewhere. They do so under safeguards recognized by UK law, such as the UK–US data bridge or standard data protection contracts.

8. What other people can see

  • In the club, other members see your name, photo and the few words about yourself, and what you post in the spaces they can see. Private messages are seen only by the people in the conversation. If someone reports a message to us, our moderators see a copy of that one message.
  • Your highlights and notes stay private unless you choose to share one with the club.
  • Your questions for Quin stay between you and our team, unless you agree to have one shared, without your name, with other members.
  • Reviews you write are shown on the course’s page with your name once our team approves them.
  • A certificate’s check page shows the name on the certificate, the course and the date, to anyone with its link.

9. How long we keep it

  • Your account and what you’ve done on the site: for as long as you have an account. When you close it, we delete it within 30 days, apart from the records below.
  • Sales records: six years after the sale, as UK tax law requires.
  • Visit counts: up to 13 months.
  • Notes about connections that probed the site: 90 days.
  • Newsletter sign-ups: until you unsubscribe, after which we keep only the record that you once agreed and then left.
  • Messages to us: as long as we need them to help you, and no more than two years.

10. Your rights

You can ask us to:

  • give you a copy of the information we hold about you;
  • correct anything that’s wrong (you can change your name, photo and email address yourself in your cabin);
  • delete your information, or close your account;
  • stop or limit how we use it, or object to a use based on our legitimate interests;
  • give you your information in a form you can take elsewhere.

Write to hello@living-as-if.com and we’ll answer within a month. If you’re not happy with our answer, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk.

11. Keeping it secure

Everything you send to the site travels encrypted. Passwords are never stored in a readable form. Paid books, recordings and the work you hand in are kept private and opened only through links that expire after a few minutes. Only the team members who need to can see account details, and our administrators log in with a second step.

12. Children

The site is for adults. We don’t knowingly keep information about anyone under 18; if you think a child has an account, please tell us and we’ll remove it.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change how we use your information, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If the change is important, we’ll also tell you by email before it applies.