Privacy Policy
Intelliscan Verify is operated by the Intelliscan Standards Institute (“Intelliscan”, “we”, “us”). We know that you are trusting us with something important — your thesis, dissertation or project — as well as your personal details. This policy explains, in plain language, what we collect, why, how long we keep it, who can see it and what your rights are.
We process personal data in line with the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA) and, where they apply, the data-protection laws of the other African countries we serve.
1. Who is the data controller?
For individual students who submit work directly to us, Intelliscan Standards Institute is the data controller. Where your institution has deployed Intelliscan Verify for its students (for example under a bundle or a signed agreement), your institution is the controller and Intelliscan acts as its processor under that agreement. Contact details are in section 11.
2. What we collect
| Data | Why we need it |
|---|---|
| Full name, email address, password (stored only as a one-way hash) | To create and secure your account and send you your results. |
| Matriculation / registration number, department, faculty, institution | To identify your submission correctly, to check your institution's student list where your institution has one, and to print on your certificate. |
| The academic work you upload (title, abstract, full text or file), the type of work | To run the originality and AI-writing check and produce your report. |
| Payment reference, amount, payment method and status | To confirm your fee was paid and issue receipts. We never see or store your card, bank or USSD details — payment is handled entirely by Paystack. |
| Check results: similarity score, band, matched sources, AI-writing score, decision, certificate ID | To give you your report and, if approved, your Certificate of Originality. |
| Technical logs: time of sign-in, actions taken on your account, IP address in server logs | Security, fraud prevention and a tamper-evident audit trail of every check and decision. |
We do not collect data from your device beyond what your browser sends normally, and we do not use advertising trackers.
Usage analytics. We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the service is used (pages visited, where visitors come from, whether a payment completed) so we can improve it. IP addresses are anonymised, advertising features are switched off, and no advertising cookies are set. A notice on your first visit lets you opt out; you can also opt out at any time by clearing the site data in your browser and choosing “Opt out” when the notice reappears.
3. How we use your work
- Your document is compared against a reference corpus (published scholarship, books, prior submissions and the open web) to find matching or paraphrased passages and to estimate the likelihood of AI-generated writing.
- Short passages that look distinctive are searched on the open web through a search provider so we can find public sources. Only short excerpts needed for the search are sent — never your whole document — and they are not published.
- If you use the optional AI Rewrite Coach, the flagged passage you choose is sent to an AI provider (Anthropic) to suggest an original re-wording. This only happens when you click the button.
- Once your work is approved, its text is retained in your institution's private repository and in the national comparison corpus so that a later student cannot pass off your work as theirs. It is used only for comparison; it is not published, sold or shown to other students. See the Data Retention & Deletion page.
- Rejected or errored submissions are never used as a comparison source against anyone.
4. Legal basis
We rely on contract (providing the verification you asked and paid for), consent (which you give when creating an account and can withdraw by deleting your account or submission), legitimate interest (security, fraud prevention, maintaining the integrity of certificates) and, for institutional deployments, the instructions of your institution.
5. Who can see your data
- You — your dashboard shows only your own submissions.
- Your institution — if you submitted under an institutional deployment or bundle, the authorised reviewers your institution has named (for example the College or Department) see your submission, report and decision. If you provided a department or supervisor email, a copy of the report is sent there.
- Intelliscan reviewers and administrators — role-restricted staff who operate the service and, where the Institute is the reviewing body, make the approval decision.
- Certificate verifiers — anyone who scans the QR code or enters a certificate ID sees the certificate's public record: your name, matriculation number, institution, the title and type of work, and the result. This is what makes the certificate verifiable. The document itself is never shown.
- Service providers (processors) — Render (hosting, EU/Frankfurt region), Paystack (payments), our email delivery provider (result and receipt emails), a web-search provider (short excerpts only), Google (anonymised usage analytics) and Anthropic (only if you use the Rewrite Coach). Each is bound by its own data-processing terms and only receives what is needed for its task.
We do not sell personal data and we do not share it with advertisers.
6. Where your data is stored and international transfers
The service is hosted on Render's Frankfurt (EU) region, currently the closest region to our users, on encrypted persistent storage. This means your data leaves Nigeria for processing. We rely on Render's contractual data-protection commitments and technical safeguards for that transfer. We keep this arrangement under review and will move to in-country hosting as suitable capacity becomes available.
7. How long we keep it
In short: your account and submissions are kept while your account is active; you can delete a submission yourself at any time; approved works remain in the comparison corpus so certificates stay meaningful; audit and payment records are kept for the periods the law requires. Full details are on the Data Retention & Deletion page.
8. How we protect it
HTTPS everywhere, hashed passwords, signed session tokens, role-based access, rate limiting, a hash-chained audit trail and no storage of payment card details. Read the Security page for the full list.
9. Your rights
Under the NDPA you have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you — your dashboard shows it, and you can ask us for a copy.
- Correct inaccurate details — email us and we will fix them.
- Delete your submissions (from your dashboard) or your whole account (by emailing us) — subject to the limits explained on the retention page.
- Object to or restrict processing, and withdraw consent, where processing is based on consent.
- Data portability — receive your data in a machine-readable form on request.
- Complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) if you believe we have not handled your data properly. We would ask that you contact us first so we can put it right.
To exercise any right, email info@intelliscanstandardsinstitute.org from the address on your account. We respond within 30 days.
10. Children
The service is intended for tertiary-level students and staff. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
11. Contact
Intelliscan Standards Institute
Email: info@intelliscanstandardsinstitute.org · Phone: +234 916 102 7000
Nigeria: Plot 9 Pocket Layout, Km 3 Enugu–Onitsha Expressway, Trans-Ekulu, Enugu State · 11 Ugo Nnabuife Street, Ajao Estate, Isolo, Lagos
United States: 777 Preston St, Houston, Texas 77002
See also: Terms of Service · Data Retention & Deletion · Security · How the method works
12. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and, for significant changes, tell you by email or a notice in the app.