Privacy policy

Research2Easy, operating from Nigeria at research2easy.com, decides how and why your personal data is used, and is the data controller for it. Data protection questions and requests go to hello@research2easy.com.

• Your email address. It is how you sign in and how we reach you. There is no password, so we never store one.
• Your project details. The title, brief, type of work, page and diagram counts, and the price and dates calculated from them.
• Files and messages you send. Drafts and source material you upload, and the comments you write during the review rounds.
• Payment records. The amount, a Paystack reference and whether it succeeded. We never see or store your card number. Paystack handles the card details directly.
• Referral records. If you signed up through someone's referral link, we record who introduced you and when. They see that an account was introduced and what commission it earned — never your email address, your name or anything about your project — and they see the value of a project only as the amount their commission was calculated from.
• Bank details, only if you add them to receive referral earnings: the bank, the account number, and the account name the bank returns when we confirm it. We keep no card details, ever.
• Technical records. A session cookie once you sign in, a cookie recording a referral link you clicked, a cookie remembering your answer to the cookie banner, and ordinary server logs kept for security and debugging.
• Analytics, only if you agree to it. If you accept on the cookie banner we use Google Analytics to count which pages are used, on what kind of device, and roughly where from. If you decline, or simply never answer, none of it loads at all.

We do not run advertising trackers, we do not sell or rent your data, and we do not use analytics to build a profile of you.

• To do the work you asked for and to take payment for it — this is what performing our contract with you requires.
• To send you service messages: your sign-in link, your receipt, a draft being ready, a reply to a comment and a reminder when a review round is waiting on you.
• To work out and pay referral commission, if you take part — this is what performing our contract with you requires.
• To keep the service secure and to prevent misuse, including checking that referrals are genuine — our legitimate interest in running it safely.
• To meet our legal and accounting obligations for records of payments made to us and by us.
• To count how the site is used, so we can improve it — only where you have consented, and only for as long as that consent lasts.

These are all service messages tied to work you commissioned. We do not send marketing email.

We use a small number of providers to run the service. Each only receives what it needs, and none of them may use your data for their own purposes.

• Paystack — payments in and payouts out. Receives your payment details directly from you, and, if you have added a bank account for referral earnings, receives those details so it can confirm the account with the bank and send the transfer.
• MongoDB Atlas — database hosting for accounts, projects and comments.
• Cloudinary — storage for documents, held privately with no public link.
• Resend — sending the emails described above.
• Vercel — hosting the site itself.
• Google Analytics — counting page views, and only if you accepted on the cookie banner. It never receives your email address, and the addresses of your own pages are stripped of anything identifying before they are sent: a project page is reported as /projects/[id] rather than with your project's id in it.

Some of these operate servers outside Nigeria, so your data may be processed abroad under the safeguards those providers offer. We will also disclose data where the law requires it.

• Documents — removed about 48 hours after your first download, and in any case 14 days after upload. Drafts shared during review are removed when the project finishes. Keep your own copy.
• Projects, comments and payment records — kept while your account is open, and afterwards only as long as our accounting and legal obligations require.
• Bank details, referral records and payouts — kept while your account is open, and afterwards as long as our accounting obligations require, because a payout is a payment we made and has to be accounted for. Removing your bank account from your profile stops it being used for any future payout.
• Sign-in links — single use, and expire within 24 hours. The cookie recording a referral link lasts 30 days, or until you sign up; your answer to the cookie banner lasts six months.
• Analytics — retained by Google for 14 months, and only ever collected while you have consented.

Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or send it to another provider. You can also withdraw consent where we relied on it.

Write to hello@research2easy.com and we will respond within 30 days. Some data has to be kept even after a deletion request — payment records, for instance, where the law requires us to hold them. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.

Traffic is encrypted in transit. Documents are stored privately and reached only through short-lived signed links, never a public URL, and they are deleted on the schedule above rather than archived. Sign-in uses a single-use link rather than a password, so there is no password to leak.

Our staff can read the projects and comments belonging to work you have commissioned, because that is how the work gets done.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your data we will tell you and the Commission as the law requires.

Three of ours, and one more only if you allow it.

• Signing you in. Necessary for the service to work at all — without it there is no way to know a page belongs to you. Clearing it signs you out.
• Your referral link. Set if you arrive through someone's link, so we know who introduced you when you create your account. It holds the referral code and nothing else, lasts 30 days, and is not used to follow you around the web.
• Your answer to the cookie banner. So we do not ask again every visit. It records only “accepted” or “declined”, and lasts six months — after which we ask once more.
• Google Analytics, only with your consent. Set by Google to count visits and repeat visits. It is not set until you accept, because the analytics code itself is not sent to your browser until then.

Declining costs you nothing. Every part of the service works the same either way, and we will not ask again for six months. To change your mind sooner, clear this site's cookies in your browser and the banner will appear again.

None of these are used for advertising, and we do not embed anyone else's tracking pixels.

The service is for students in higher education and is not directed at children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to us and we will remove it.

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it last changed, and we will tell you by email if a change materially affects how your data is used.

Reach us at hello@research2easy.com. The commercial side of the relationship is covered by our terms of service.