Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy translations

Our Privacy Statement

Oxford University Press (“OUP”) is committed to protecting your personal information and respecting applicable data protection laws around the world, including where applicable, the UK Data Protection Act 2018, the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. This privacy policy explains how we do this and how it applies to your use of OUP websites, products, and services.

If you are taking an Assessment, such as The Oxford Test of English, please also review the privacy information provided during that process, including any information provided by the test centre administering your test.

What information does OUP collect?

We collect and process personal data about you when you purchase or use our goods and services and interact with us and our websites.

This information includes:
  • Account details: Your name, username, and password;
  • Contact details: Your residential or business address, email address, and phone number;
  • Purchase information Your payment and delivery details, including billing and delivery addresses and credit card details, where you make purchases from us;
  • Usage information: Records of your use of OUP services, including data collected as part of your product use, such as audio recordings or homework results if applicable. We also collect your IP address if you use of our online products;
  • Institution details, such as role and establishment name, if you are using an OUP product or service via your educational establishment.
  • ID documents in certain circumstances if you are sitting Oxford Test of English. For example, we may request to see your passport as part of a malpractice investigation.
Information we obtain through cookies and similar technologies:
  • Your usage: to understand how our customers are using our websites for the purposes of facilitating browsing, improving our websites, and ensuring security
  • Your device: we process your device information to ensure our websites present in the correct device format.
  • Your engagement with advertisements: on some of our Academic websites, we use cookies to identify which advertisements you have clicked on to provide advertisements that are more relevant to you and to bill our advertising partners.

More information about how we use cookies and similar technologies, including how to manage your cookie preferences, can be found in our Cookie Policy.

How does OUP use your information?

We process your personal information for the following purposes:

To provide a product or service:

We use basic personal information, such as contact details, to fulfil your order and provide our products and services. For example, we may need your postal address to send you the order you have purchased or your email address to log in to your online account. This information is also used to notify you of changes to our services and provide customer service. We record calls to our customer service for the purposes of training and monitoring.

If you are using our products and services via an institutional subscription, we use basic information provided by your institution, such as names and email addresses, to create your account. The amount of data we use for this depends on the product you have access to. For schools, this is usually limited to name, which is transferred to us directly from your educational institution.

To bill our customers:

We use your payment details to process your payment and issue refunds. This may also be done via our payment provider partners. You can manage your payment information, and receive copies of institutional invoices, by contacting customer services.

To monitor compliance with our terms and conditions:

We use some personal information, such as your usage data, to monitor compliance with our terms and conditions so that we can protect the integrity of our products, services and intellectual property.

To personalize our products and services:

We may use your personal information to tailor our products and services for you or to suggest additional products or services that you may be interested in. This may include combining data from related products and services that you use. For example, if you use Oxford Online Practice, we may suggest you take the Oxford Test of English based on your scores. We may also use your personal information to enable personalization services within your account if you choose to do so, such as requesting automated email notifications.

To communicate changes to our products and services:

If you have purchased a product or subscription, we will use your contact information to inform you of changes to our products and services, and to let you know when your subscription may be expiring.

To administer prize draws and competitions:

We will need to use your personal information to administer the prize draw or competition. For example, if you are a winner, we may need to process your postal address or email address to send the prize. In some locations, we may also need to make available the winner’s name and region.

To provide examination services:

If you take an Oxford Test of English or other assessment product, we will process your personal data for the purposes of test delivery, identity verification, scoring, and certification. We may process ID documents, photographs, audio recordings, and (where applicable) video recordings to confirm your identity and to maintain the security and integrity of the assessment. We also process personal data, including assessment data and behavioural data, to detect, investigate, and prevent malpractice, fraud, and misuse of our assessment services. This may include analysis of test session data and patterns of behaviour. We may share your test results and certification data with institutions, employers, or other organisations that you nominate, for the purposes of verification and admissions. For information about how test centres use your personal information, please see the Privacy Policy of the test centre you are attending.

To send marketing to you:

We use your personal information to show you products and services we think you may be interested in as well as offers and free trials. We may do this via email or telephone communications or by advertising on third party sites. We may also use information to monitor how these adverts perform.

For the purposes of advertising:

We utilize some paid-for advertising on our Academic websites and use personal information to understand the effectiveness of these adverts and to tailor our advertising to display adverts that are more relevant to you.

To improve our products and services:

Information about the use of our websites, such as analytics, alongside product feedback survey responses and market research is used to improve how our products and services work. We also use this information to develop new products and services that we think will be useful to our customers.

Information of children

Due to the nature of some of our products and services, we process a limited amount of information about individuals who are under 18, for example if your child uses one of our Education Products either at home or in school. We work with parents and schools to ensure processes are in place for the protection of this information. We also provide a Privacy Notice specifically aimed at primary school aged children, which is available on all online products aimed at this age group.

We recognize the importance and responsibility of keeping children and their information safe online. In addition to our data protection practices, we also ensure safeguarding processes are in place to ensure a safe learning environment for children and young people.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies

We may use some artificial intelligence technologies in some of our products and services. For example, we utilize chatbots or other tools in some of our online products to enable users to find resources more easily, and AI tools to provide transcripts and captions for our Videos on Oxford Academic. AI technologies are used in accordance with current legislation such as the (UK) GDPR, EU AI Act, and the Data Use and Access Act. They are subject to the same rigorous due diligence and data protection assessments as our usual process for vendors, in addition to AI-specific risk assessments.

Lawful basis for processing

Contractual obligation

We are required to process some personal information to fulfil our contractual obligations. For example, if you purchase a book, we will process your delivery address to deliver it to you.

Legitimate business interests

We process personal information where this aligns with our legitimate interests as a publishing organization. For example, we analyse the use of our products and services so we can improve our levels of service and develop future products and services that our customers may be interested in.

Consent

We process personal information with our users’ consent where we are required to do so for a specific purpose. For example, we may ask for your consent to send you marketing and to place cookies on your device.

Legal obligation

We may be required to process your personal information to comply with legal obligations to which OUP is subject. For example, we may be required to share personal information with law enforcement or other government bodies.

Who is your personal data shared with?

  • Third party service providers who process your information on OUP’s behalf for the purposes above, for example, technology providers. The service providers we use to process customer information have undergone robust due diligence and have signed agreements with us that include specific obligations and responsibilities for handling personal data.
  • Competition partners and event partners who require your personal information to administer the competition or facilitate registration to the event.
  • Learned societies on whose behalf OUP publishes journals to which you or your institution subscribes. Some of this information includes usage information to enable these societies to understand society member activities.
  • Institutional customers through which you have access to OUP services. For example, we share usage information with educational establishments for the purposes of licence administration, user management, content engagement and reporting. We may also provide online tools to our institutional customers for this purpose.
  • Test Centres where you are taking an examination such as Oxford Test of English. These centres process personal data as independent data controllers for the purposes of exam administration, identity verification, and local delivery of assessment services.
  • Social media providers for the purposes of targeted advertising and lookalike audience creation. Information shared with social media providers is limited and does not include information about your use of our products. If you would like to opt-out of this, you can do so by emailing [email protected].
  • Parents/guardians where their child is using an educational product that has an option to share their progress. Where this is selected, the parent/guardian will receive emailed progress reports.
  • OUP Group companies who provide our products and services.
  • With government authorities and/or law enforcement officials if required by law.

Security of your personal information

We have measures in place to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your personal information. These include of the maintenance of standards under ISO 27001 and ISO 27701, and implementation of a host of technical and organizational security practices to defend against data being lost, stolen, or used in an unauthorized way.

Data transfers

Your personal information may be stored and processed outside of the country where it is collected, including outside of the United Kingdom (“UK”) and European Economic Area (“EEA”). When transferring information, we ensure that appropriate and suitable safeguards and technical measures are in place to protect your personal information. To do this, we will only transfer data to countries that have been identified as providing adequate protection or where we have approved transfer mechanisms in place to protect your personal data.

For transfers of personal information from the UK/EEA, we make use of standard contractual clauses that have been approved by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office and European Commission. Where appropriate, we may rely on Binding Corporate Rules put in place by our suppliers, or we may implement other similar measures required by laws around the world.

Retention of your personal information

We will only keep records of your personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes for which we have collected it, and to comply with any statutory or regulatory obligations.  We respect requests to stop processing your personal data for marketing purposes but will retain a record of your request indefinitely. This is retained only for the purpose of suppression to ensure we respect your right to opt-out of receiving marketing from us.

Your rights

In some circumstances, you may have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

  • To request access to your personal information;
  • To request rectification of your personal data;
  • To request erasure of your personal information;
  • To object to processing of your personal information, including for direct marketing;
  • To request human intervention where there is automated decision-making.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights described, you can complete our Personal Data Request Form or contact us at [email protected]. We may ask you for further information to help us locate your data and speed up the request process. Where you request a copy of your personal data, we will ask you to provide proof of identity to ensure we are sharing the personal data with the correct person.

In the case of some of our educational subscription products which you access via your school’s subscription, we maybe coordinate with your school to process your request.

Complaints

Under the recent Data Use and Access Act (DUAA) legislation, you also have a statutory right to complain directly to OUP about how we are processing your personal data. You can do this using our Personal Data Request Form as above.

If you are unhappy with OUP’s response to your complaint, you also have the right to lodge a complaint regarding our processing of your personal information with a data protection supervisory authority in a country where you live, work, or where you believe a breach may have occurred.

For individuals in the United Kingdom, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office via their website www.ico.org.uk

For individuals in the EU, you can find your supervisory authority by visiting the following website: Our Members | European Data Protection Board (europa.eu)

Contacting us

The data controller for our websites, products, and services is The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford, trading as Oxford University Press, of Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, United Kingdom, unless otherwise indicated on the website, product, service, or form through which you have provided your personal data to us. For example, if you provided your personal data through the website www.oupe.es, the data controller is Oxford University Press España S.A. If you are unsure who your data controller is, or have other queries relating to this policy, OUP’s Data Protection Officer can be reached at the same address or by email at [email protected].

 

Last reviewed July 2026