Privacy policy

Who we are

Inova (Intelligence Innovation) is an online academy and creative studio based in Nigeria, operating www.ighnova.com. We decide what data is collected and why, which makes us the data controller under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023.

What we collect

When you create an account

• Your first and last name, email address
• Your phone number, if you give one
• A profile photo, if you upload one
• If you sign in with Google: your name, email and profile picture from your Google account. We never receive your Google password.

When you enrol as a student

Onboarding asks for more, because we teach young people and sometimes need to reach someone responsible for them:

• Date of birth and gender
• Home address
• Education level and any previous experience
• Guardian name and phone number, and an emergency contact

If you are under 18, we ask for a parent or guardian’s consent before your account is used, and the guardian details above are held so we can contact them. A guardian may ask us at any time to show, correct or delete everything we hold about their child.

Your training agreement

When you sign the student or trainee agreement, we store the full name you typed as your signature, the date and time you signed, and a PDF copy of the signed document.

What you do on the platform

• Lessons completed, quiz attempts and scores, assignment submissions
• Questions you post under a lesson, and answers you write
• Certificates issued to you

If you join the trainee programme

The programme keeps a development record about you: session evaluations and their written feedback, attendance and punctuality, observed moments recorded by staff, skills and levels. Some of it is other people’s judgement of your work. You can ask to see all of it, and you will already see most of it on your own dashboard.

Payments

We store the amount, currency, a reference, what it was for, and whether it succeeded. We never see or store your card details. Those go directly to Paystack. If you turn on automatic renewal, Paystack keeps a token for your card and tells us only the brand and the last four digits, so you can recognise it.

Technical

Standard server logs, and — when something breaks — an error report containing the page, the time, and a stack trace. Those reports can include your user ID so we can work out who was affected.

Why we hold it

• To provide what you signed up for — your account, your courses, your progress, your certificate.
• Because we have to — payment and tax records.
• With your consent — study reminders and notification emails. You can turn these off in one click from any of them.
• To keep the service working and safe — error monitoring, fraud prevention, deciding who has reached the standard for paid client work.

Who else handles your data

We do not sell your data and we do not share it for advertising. We use these companies to run the service, and they only process data on our instructions:

• Supabase — accounts, database and file storage. Hosted in Ireland.
• Vercel — hosting and delivery of the website.
• Paystack — card payments and renewals. Nigerian, PCI DSS compliant.
• Resend — sending email. Receives your email address and the message.
• Sentry — error reports. Hosted in Germany.
• OpenAI — turning lesson text into audio. Receives lesson content, not your personal details.
• Anthropic — drafting lesson material and proposing feedback on assessed work, which a human then reviews and can overrule. No decision about you is ever made by software alone.

We may also disclose data if the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim.

Your data leaves Nigeria

Some of the providers above store data outside Nigeria — Supabase in Ireland, Sentry in Germany, and others in the United States or Europe. We use them because they are established providers with their own data protection commitments, and we rely on their contractual safeguards. If you are not comfortable with that, please do not create an account.

How long we keep it

• Your account and learning record — while your account is open, and for up to 12 months after you close it, so a certificate can still be verified.
• Signed agreements and payment records — 6 years, as financial and contractual records normally require.
• Error reports — 90 days.

What you can ask for

Under the NDPA you have the right to:

• See everything we hold about you
• Correct anything wrong
• Have your data deleted, where we are not required to keep it
• Object to how we are using it, or withdraw consent
• Receive a copy in a portable format

Email ighnovaacademy@gmail.com and we will respond within 30 days. There is no charge. If you are unhappy with our answer, you can complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.

Cookies

We use cookies only to keep you signed in and to remember your session. There is no advertising tracking and no third-party analytics on this site. Clearing them signs you out.

Security

Passwords are hashed by Supabase and never visible to us. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Access to student records is restricted by role: instructors see only their own students, and the trainee development record is visible to the trainee and to staff. No system is perfect, and if a breach affects you we will tell you and the Commission.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and tell you by email if the change is significant.