Privacy Policy

ATKuniverse is the website at atkuniverse.com and the ATKuniverse app for iPhone, iPad and Android. Both are run by Asante Theophilus Koranteng, trading as ATKuniverse, based in Ghana (“we,” “us”). We are responsible for the personal information described here.

This policy applies to the website and the app alike: they share one account and one set of data. The short version: we collect what we need to run your account, your communities, your courses and your messages. We don’t sell your data, we don’t show ads, and we don’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

Account details. Your name, email address and, if you set one, a password. The password is stored only as a one-way hash, so we can’t read it. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your name, email and (from Google) profile photo. With Apple you can choose to hide your email, and we then receive a private relay address instead.

Profile. Your username, profile photo and anything else you add to your profile, plus your settings: who can message you, notification choices and your theme.

Date of birth and phone number. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up, to make sure you’re 13 or older, and to wish you a happy birthday (a notification and, if you’ve added your phone, a text). Once saved, your date of birth can only be changed by our support team. Your phone number is optional: we’ll use it to text you important updates and, when we add it, to let you sign in with a code and keep your account secure. Neither is ever shown to other members; you can change your phone in Settings → Profile.

What you create. Posts, comments, reactions, community chat messages, private messages, voice messages, stickers, statuses (and their likes and reshares), and the photos, videos, files and links you attach or share, with when you sent them. We also keep who has seen a message or status, so we can show read receipts and “Viewed by” (with who liked it).

Voice and video calls. When you call someone, we keep a record of the call — who was on it (including anyone added, or who joined a community call), voice or video, when, and how long it lasted — and add a line about it to your chat. The call itself goes directly between your two devices, encrypted; we don’t record or store what’s said or shown.

Purchases and learning. What you bought or enrolled in, the price, date and status, any payment plan or membership (parts paid, the date access runs to), your cohort, and your course progress (lessons completed, quiz answers, the lesson you were last on and when). Card and mobile-money details are entered with our payment providers. We never receive or store your full card number.

Certificates and rewards. Certificates you earn (your name, what for, when, and a certificate code), the XP and coins you earn for taking part, with what each was for, and the rewards you spend coins on (including any discount code made for you).

Reviews. Reviews you write of things you own: your star rating and words, shown publicly on that product’s page with your name and photo. You can edit or delete yours at any time.

Error reports. When something breaks on the website or a crash happens in the app, we record what went wrong, where (the page or screen), the app version and the time, to fix it. These don’t include your messages or payment details.

Safety records. People you block, reports you make, and reports made about your content. When something is reported, we keep a copy of the reported content so it can be reviewed even if it’s deleted.

Messages to us. Anything you send through the contact form, an enquiry form or the newsletter sign-up. When you sign up on one of our offer pages (for a free guide, a webinar or similar), your name, email, phone if you give it, which page and ad brought you, and the emails we send you and whether you open them.

Device and technical data. If you allow notifications, a push token for each device or browser. The app also sends the device’s platform and app version with that token. Our hosting and security services log standard request data (IP address, browser or app version, pages requested, time) to keep the service secure, stop abuse and fix errors.

App usage. When the app opens, it sends a random install ID it creates for itself, the platform, app and system version, phone model and your country (from your IP address), plus your account if you’re signed in. We use this only to count installs and active users and to see which app versions are in use.

How you found us. If you arrive through a campaign link (one with “utm” tags) or from another site, we note the campaign or the site’s name. If you sign up within 30 days, that is saved with your account. We also count visits to the app download page and app downloads, by campaign, device type and country only.

We don’t collect your precise location, contacts, browsing history from other apps, or advertising identifiers.

The app asks your permission first, and only uses each one when you choose to:

• Camera: to take a photo or video for a post, chat, status or your profile photo, and to show you on a video call (only while the call is on; you can turn it off during the call).
• Microphone: to talk on voice and video calls, record a voice message, and the sound for videos you record.
• Photos: to pick photos and videos to share, and to save an image you choose to download.
• Notifications: to tell you about messages, replies and community activity. Chat notifications carry a key that lets you reply from the notification; it only works for that chat, for 3 days, and stops working if you change your password or sign out everywhere.
• Face ID, Touch ID or fingerprint: if you turn on app lock. This check happens entirely on your phone. We never receive your face or fingerprint data.

Nothing is uploaded unless you send or post it. You can change any of these in the app (Settings → Permissions) or in your phone’s settings at any time.

To open quickly, the app keeps a copy of the screens you last saw on your phone, and keeps your sign-in in the phone’s secure storage (Keychain or Keystore). Both are removed when you sign out.

• To create your account, sign you in on the website and the app, and keep you signed in.
• To run communities, chat, private messages, statuses and courses, and to show your content to the people it’s meant for.
• To process purchases, give you access to what you bought, and support you.
• To send notifications you’ve allowed, and emails about your account and orders (for example password resets and receipts). Newsletters only go out if you subscribed.
• To send course emails: a welcome when you enrol, new lessons as they open, a reminder if you stop partway, a nudge about a checkout you didn’t finish, and suggestions after you finish a course. Turn these off with the link in any of them or in Settings → Preferences. Emails about payments you owe on a plan always go.
• To keep people safe: reviewing reports, removing content and accounts that break our Terms or Community Guidelines, rate-limiting and preventing fraud and abuse.
• To understand which features are used, so we can fix and improve them.
• To meet our legal obligations, such as keeping accounting records.

Where data-protection law asks for a legal basis, we rely on: running the service you asked for (our contract with you); your consent (notifications, newsletters, phone permissions, which you can withdraw any time); our legitimate interest in keeping the service safe and working; and legal obligations.

We don’t use your content to train AI models, and we don’t make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

• Your name, username and photo are visible to other members, for example on your posts, in chats and on your profile card.
• Your email address is never shown to other members.
• Posts, comments and community chat are seen by the people who can see that community. Some communities are public, others members-only. Community owners and moderators can manage content in their community.
• Public videos. When a video is made public (by you, or by a community’s moderators), anyone can watch it, including people who aren’t members or signed in, in For You and through its link.
• Private messages are seen by the people in the conversation. Our team only looks at a private message when it has been reported to us, or when the law or someone’s safety requires it.
• Statuses are seen by people who share a community with you or have chatted with you, never by people you’ve blocked, and disappear after 24 hours. People who can see a status can like it (you see who) and reshare it to their own status with your name on it; their contacts then see it too, except anyone blocked either way with you. Deleting your status deletes its reshares.
• Certificates can be checked by anyone with their link or QR code, which shows your name, what it’s for and when it was issued. You choose which ones show on your profile.
• Leaderboards show your name, photo, level and XP to other members. You can leave them in Rewards (“Show me on the leaderboards”).
• Reports are confidential. The person you report isn’t told who reported them.

We don’t sell or rent your personal information. We use these service providers to run ATKuniverse. They process data on our behalf and only for that purpose:

• Vercel: hosts the website and our servers.
• Neon: our database.
• Bunny.net: stores and delivers photos, videos, files and course videos.
• Ably: delivers chat and private messages in real time, and connects voice and video calls.
• Call relay: when two devices can’t connect directly (some mobile networks), a relay service (Cloudflare or similar) passes the call’s encrypted audio and video between them. It can’t listen to it.
• Our email provider (one of Resend, SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, Brevo or Amazon SES): sends our emails.
• Upstash: rate limiting to protect sign-in and other forms (processes IP addresses).
• Expo, Apple Push Notification service and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging: deliver push notifications to your phone. Notifications contain a short preview, such as the sender’s name and photo and the start of the message.
• Google and Apple: only if you choose to sign in with them.
• Paystack, Korapay and Moolre: process payments made on the website.
• Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google and TikTok: when we run ads, measure what they lead to on the website (see “Cookies and tracking”). For a purchase or sign-up we may also send Meta your email address and phone number in a scrambled (hashed) form, so it can match it to an ad without seeing them. Never inside the app.
• Navii: draws a default avatar if you haven’t set a photo, from your account ID only (not your name or email).

Some lessons and posts embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo. When you play one, that service receives your request under its own privacy policy.

We may also share information if the law requires it, to respond to valid legal requests, to protect someone’s safety (including reporting child sexual abuse material to the authorities; see our Child Safety Standards), or as part of a sale or reorganisation of ATKuniverse, in which case this policy continues to apply.

Essential cookies keep you signed in and protect sign-in and checkout. One remembers, for 30 days, which campaign link or site brought you here (see “How you found us”), and on our offer pages (/f/…) one remembers which page you saw, so a later purchase is credited to it. Your theme choice is saved in your browser.

Advertising measurement. When we run ads, the website (not the app) loads Meta Pixel, Google Analytics / Google Ads and TikTok Pixel. They set their own cookies and tell those companies when you view a page, sign up on an offer page, start a checkout or buy, so we can see which ads work and show ads to people likely to be interested. You can block these with your browser’s tracking protection or an ad blocker; the site works the same. In the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland these only load if you choose “Allow”, and nothing is sent to them from our servers about you unless you do. Anyone can change their choice at any time: Cookie settings. The app doesn’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

Email. Our newsletters, course emails and email series contain a tiny image and tracked links that tell us if an email was opened or a link clicked, so we know what’s useful. Every one has an unsubscribe link; emails about your account and purchases always reach you.

Notifications are off until you allow them on a device. You choose which kinds you get (messages, replies, mentions, new posts and more) in Settings → Notifications, on the website or in the app. You can mute a single community, or turn notifications off on any device. Turning them off removes that device’s push token.

• Your account and content are kept while your account is open. Content you delete is removed straight away.
• Statuses are deleted automatically after 24 hours, along with their files.
• Reports and moderation records are kept as long as needed to keep the community safe and handle appeals. Content reported by several people is hidden automatically until our team reviews it.
• Order and payment records are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Server logs are kept for a short time for security, then deleted.
• Deleted data leaves our backups as they roll over, within 30 days.

You can delete your account yourself at any time: in the app under Settings → Security → Delete account, or on the website under Settings → Security. See how to delete your account for the steps.

• If you’ve never bought anything, your account is deleted along with everything you posted and sent.
• If you have orders, we must keep those records, so we remove your name, email, photo, username, password, sign-in links, devices, memberships and statuses. The account becomes an anonymous “Deleted user” that can’t be signed into. Anything you posted stays, shown under that name.

Wherever you live, you can:

• See and correct your profile at any time in Settings → Profile.
• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct, delete or stop using your information, or object to how we use it.
• Withdraw consent for notifications, newsletters or phone permissions at any time.
• Complain to a data-protection authority. In Ghana that is the Data Protection Commission; elsewhere, your local authority.

To make a request, contact us from the email on your account. We’ll answer within 30 days, and may need to confirm it’s you first.

Our providers store and process data in several countries, including the United States and the European Union. Wherever it’s processed, we require it to be protected as this policy describes and as the law requires.

ATKuniverse isn’t for children under 13, and you must be 13 or older to create an account. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you need a parent’s or guardian’s permission. If you think a child under 13 has given us personal information, tell us and we’ll delete it.

Passwords are hashed. Connections to the website and app are encrypted (HTTPS). Sign-in tokens on your phone sit in its secure storage. Course videos are served through signed, expiring links, and access to production data is limited to the people who need it. No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that affects you, we’ll tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we’ll also let you know on the website, in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Questions or requests about your privacy? Contact us. We usually reply within 24 to 48 hours.