Compass

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 8 November 2026

Who we are

Compass is a free student site for London Business School students, built by LBS students and run by Saadhana Studios Limited, a company incorporated in Hong Kong. Saadhana Studios Limited is the data controller for the personal data described here. Compass is not part of, or endorsed by, London Business School. Contact: compass@saadhanastudios.com.

What we collect

  1. Your email address. You sign in with a university email ending in .edu. LBS emails (@london.edu) can use all of Compass; other .edu emails see Resources only.
  2. Your PIN, if you set one. It is stored by our sign-in provider as a scrambled (hashed) value. We can never see it.
  3. Your profile, if you fill it in: name, cohort, programme, a short bio, another email, phone number and links to LinkedIn, Instagram or X. You can leave all of it blank.
  4. Your plan and marks: resources you save, use or mark Not interested; electives you save, confirm or compare and the weekdays you are away; events and workshops you save, register for, watch or went to.
  5. EMS import. When you paste your EMS results, the text stays in your browser and is never saved or sent. Only the courses you choose to add are saved to your plan.
  6. Things you send us: feedback and resource suggestions (with the name and email you give), reports that an offer no longer works, answers to "Did this still work?", and tips. Approved tips are shown to other students with your first name and cohort.
  7. Surveys and workshop feedback. When you answer a survey we save your answers with your name and LBS email. The AI Club team (Compass admins) can see who gave which answers, so they can follow up. Everyone else, including other people who answered, only sees totals. Any group smaller than 13 people is hidden, and written answers are only shown as themes or as quotes an admin has approved. If you answered the same survey on Microsoft Forms, we imported those answers and match them to you by your LBS email, so you are not asked twice. Unfinished answers are saved as a draft so you can carry on later.
  8. Activity. While you are signed in, our own database records how you use Compass: the pages you open, what you search for, the slides, notes and prompts you open or copy, and when you play, pause or skip a workshop video and how far you watch. This is linked to your account, is seen only by Compass admins, and does not use cookies. If you also allow analytics cookies, PostHog records similar activity, including before you sign in. Activity and search terms are deleted with your account.
  9. How you found us. If you arrive from a link with tracking tags, for example from a WhatsApp post, we save the source, medium, campaign and the person who referred you, if any, to your account the first time you sign in. Some of our links are short links that open the real page; we count the clicks on each link, not who clicked.
  10. Waitlist. If you joined the waitlist before Compass opened, we keep that email until you create an account or for up to 12 months. We no longer email the waitlist.

What we do not collect

Events come from the LBS CampusGroups public calendar. We read it on our server and do not store it; we only store what you mark. Workshop videos play from YouTube in privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), and only signed-in LBS students can start them. We do not take payments. If you donated before October 2026, we keep the payment record Stripe sent us (your email, amount and date) for tax records.

Why we use it and on what basis

  1. To run your account, sign you in and show your plan: to provide the service you asked for (contract).
  2. To understand what is useful and improve Compass and the AI Club sessions, using activity and search data: our legitimate interest in running a useful service for a small student community. Analytics cookies and similar tools are used only with your consent.
  3. To follow up on survey answers and report results: our legitimate interest, and the AI Club's, in improving the workshops. You can ask us to remove your name from your answers.
  4. To keep Compass secure and stop misuse: legitimate interest.
  5. To send you sign-in codes. We do not send marketing email.

We never sell your data.

Who else handles your data

These services process data for us, under their own data protection terms:

  1. Supabase: database, sign-in and file storage, hosted in Ireland (EU, eu-west-1).
  2. Vercel: website hosting, with server code running in Dublin (EU), plus cookieless page analytics.
  3. PostHog: activity analytics, hosted in the EU. It runs only if you allow analytics cookies.
  4. Resend: sends the notice our team gets when someone sends feedback.
  5. YouTube (Google): plays workshop recordings, in privacy-enhanced mode.
  6. Google Analytics, if enabled. It runs only if you allow analytics cookies.

Some of these companies are based in the US and may access data from there. Where they do, they use the safeguards UK law requires, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

How long we keep it

  1. Account, profile, plan and marks: for as long as you have an account. Deleted within 30 days of you asking.
  2. Feedback, suggestions and reports: up to 24 months.
  3. Survey answers: names and emails are removed after the academic year of the survey.
  4. Activity, in our database and in PostHog: up to 12 months.
  5. Waitlist emails: deleted when you create an account, or after 12 months.
  6. Search terms are kept to improve search and deleted with your account.

Cookies and storage on your device

We use a small number of cookies and browser storage items:

  1. Needed to work: sign-in cookies from Supabase (sb-...-auth-token) and compass_section, which remembers the last section you used, for one year.
  2. Preferences, kept only in your browser: theme (light or dark), compass_pin_snooze_until (hides the PIN prompt for 30 days after "Not now"), compass:survey-mode, compass:plan-keep-both, compass-view-preference-v2, compass:resource-using, workshop-resume:[workshop] (where you stopped watching), workshop-captions, workshop-caption-size, workshop-rate and workshop-time-remaining, and compass_analytics_consent (your choice below).
  3. For one visit only (session storage): compass_utm_params, compass_session_id, compass_prompt_pin_reset, compass_just_signed_in, and viewed_[resource] (avoids counting a view twice).
  4. Analytics, only if you allow them: PostHog stores an identifier in a cookie and in local storage (names starting ph_) to link your activity to your account. Google Analytics, if enabled, sets cookies starting _ga.

Analytics only run if you allow them. Choose Allow or No thanks on the bar the first time you visit, and change your mind any time with Cookie settings in the footer. If you choose No thanks, PostHog and Google Analytics do not load, set cookies or record anything, and Compass works the same. Your browser settings also let you clear or block cookies.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask to see the data we hold about you, have it corrected, have it deleted, get a copy to take elsewhere, limit how we use it, or object to our use of it, including analytics. Email compass@saadhanastudios.com from your account email and we will reply within one month. You can also change your profile and PIN yourself in Profile. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. LBS-only material (electives, workshops and their slides) can only be read by signed-in @london.edu accounts, and that rule is enforced in the database itself, not only on the page.

Changes

If we change how we use your data, we will update this page and its date, and tell you in Compass if the change is significant.

Contact

compass@saadhanastudios.com