Privacy policy

1. Who we are

K53 Simulator is made by Kindly Made, a small independent app maker in South Africa. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean Kindly Made. For the purposes of South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Kindly Made is responsible for any personal information described here. You can reach us at support@kindlymadeapps.com.

2. What the app keeps on your phone

To run your mock tests and remember how you are doing, K53 Simulator saves the following in its own private storage on your phone:

• Your settings: your learner’s licence code (1, 2 or 3) and the look you chose.
• A test or practice round in progress: the questions drawn, your answers and flags so far, and when the test’s time runs out, so that you can carry on after closing the app.
• Your results: your last 20 mock tests, with your answers, so that you can go through them again.
• Your progress: for each question you have answered, whether you got it right and when. This is how the app finds your weak spots and picks questions you haven’t tried yet.
• Your free start: when you first started a test or practice round, which starts your 3 free days, and when you started your last few mock tests, so the app knows whether today’s free test is used.
• The pass: the last answer Google Play gave about whether you have the one-month pass, and the last price it showed, so the pass keeps working when you are offline.

Other apps cannot read any of it. It never leaves your phone, except in your own Android backup (section 5). We cannot see it. K53 Simulator works without an internet connection, and it does not even have Android’s permission to use the internet: when you buy or check the pass, it is the Google Play Store app on your phone that talks to Google (section 7).

3. The one permission it uses

K53 Simulator has one Android permission: Billing (com.android.vending.BILLING), so that you can buy the one-month pass through Google Play.

It does not have, and does not ask for, permission to use the internet, your location, contacts, camera, microphone, photos, files or phone calls.

4. Reporting a mistake

Under every explanation there is a “Report a mistake” button. It opens your own email app with a message to support@kindlymadeapps.com that names the question: its number and its words. Nothing is sent unless you send the email yourself, and you can change or delete anything in it first. Section 9 explains what happens to the emails we receive.

5. Android backup

If backup is turned on for your phone, Android can include K53 Simulator’s settings, results and progress in your phone’s backup (Android Auto Backup), which Google stores in your own Google account. This lets them come back when you set up a new phone. The backup is made and kept by Google under Google’s privacy policy. We have no access to it. On Android 9 and later, if your phone has a screen lock, the backup is encrypted with it.

You can turn backup on or off in your phone’s settings (usually under Settings › System › Backup, or Settings › Google › Backup), and you can delete old backups from your Google account.

6. Google Play

You download K53 Simulator from Google Play, which Google runs under its own terms and privacy policy. Google gives us statistics about the app, such as the number of installs, ratings and reviews, and the countries, Android versions and phone models it is used on. These come to us as totals. Google also shows us reports when the app crashes or freezes, from people who have chosen to share usage and diagnostics data with Google. Those reports describe the phone model, the Android version and what the app was doing, not who you are. We use them only to fix problems.

If you write a review on Google Play, it is public, along with the name on your Google account. We may reply to it there. The app itself never asks you for a rating.

7. The one-month pass and payments

Everything in K53 Simulator is free for your first 3 days, and after that one mock test a day stays free. The one-month pass unlocks the rest for a month. Our terms of use explain how it works.

• Google Play takes the payment. You buy the pass through Google Play, under the Google Play Terms of Service and Google’s privacy policy. Google handles your card or other payment method. We never see your card or bank details, and the app never touches them.
• The app only asks whether you have the pass. To know whether the pass is on, the app asks Google Play, on your phone, whether your Google account holds a K53 Simulator pass, and after you buy, it confirms the purchase to Google Play, as Google requires. The app keeps only the answer on your phone. It sends nothing about your purchase to us or to anyone else, and we have no server that receives it.
• What Google tells us. Like every app sold on Google Play, we can see the orders for K53 Simulator in our Google Play account: an order number, what was bought, the price, and whether it is active, has ended or was refunded. Google’s sales reports also give, for each order, the buyer’s country, sometimes their province or postal code, and the model of phone used. Google does not give us your card details. We can look up an order by its number or by the buyer’s email address, which we do only if you write to us about a purchase. We use this only to look after your purchase, to answer you, and to keep the records that tax and accounting law ask for. Under GDPR, our reasons are to provide the pass you bought and to meet those legal duties.
• Google Play’s own diagnostics. Google’s billing software is built to send Google some information about how billing is working. K53 Simulator leaves out the internet permission that needs, so from the app it sends nothing. What the Google Play Store app itself sends is covered by Google’s privacy policy.
• Nothing renews. The pass is paid once and does not renew, so there is nothing to cancel.

8. What we never do

• We do not show ads, and K53 Simulator contains no advertising code.
• We do not use analytics, tracking or crash-reporting tools inside the app.
• We do not ask you to create an account or sign in.
• We do not send your results to anyone: not to us, not to a driving school, and not to any testing centre or government body.
• We do not sell, rent or share your information with anyone.
• We do not use your information to build a profile of you or to make automated decisions about you.

9. When you email us

If you write to us, for example to report a mistake in a question, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to tell us. We use it only to answer you and to improve K53 Simulator. We keep emails only as long as we need them to help you, and usually no longer than two years after we last hear from you. You can ask us to delete them sooner. Mail to support@kindlymadeapps.com is passed on by Cloudflare’s email routing to a Google (Gmail) mailbox, where it is stored, and may be kept on servers outside South Africa or the European Union, under the protections those companies offer.

Under GDPR, our reason for using this information is our legitimate interest in answering your questions and looking after K53 Simulator.

10. This website

This website has no ads, no analytics and no tracking, and it uses no cookies of its own. Its fonts and pictures come from the site itself, not from other companies. The site is hosted by Cloudflare, which handles technical information such as your IP address and browser type to deliver the pages and protect the site from attacks. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

11. Young people

You can take the learner’s licence test from the age of 16 (code 1, for small motorcycles) or 17 (code 2, for cars), so many people who use K53 Simulator are under 18. The app is not meant for children under 13. It does not collect personal information from anyone, of any age: everything stays on the phone.

If you are under 18, please ask a parent or guardian before you buy the pass. If a young person emails us, we use their message only to answer it, and a parent or guardian can ask us to delete it.

12. Your rights (POPIA and GDPR)

Wherever you live, you can ask us:

• whether we hold any personal information about you, and for a copy of it;
• to correct it, or to delete it;
• to stop using it, or to limit how we use it;
• to object to how we use it.

In practice, the only personal information we could hold is emails you have sent us and, if you buy the pass, the order records Google Play shows us (section 7). Your tests and progress are on your phone, so you are in control of them (section 13), and we cannot see, copy or delete them for you.

To use any of these rights, email support@kindlymadeapps.com. We will reply within 30 days. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to South Africa’s Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za) or, in the European Union or the United Kingdom, to your local data protection authority.

13. Deleting your data

• Your results and progress: in the app, open Settings and tap Clear my results and weak spots. It also ends any test or practice round in progress.
• Everything on your phone: uninstall K53 Simulator, or use Settings › Apps › K53 Simulator › Storage › Clear storage on your phone.
• Android backups: delete the app’s data from your phone’s backup in your Google account (Google Drive › Backups, or your phone’s backup settings).
• The pass: Google keeps its own record of your purchases under its privacy policy. The order records Google Play shows us stay in our Google Play account, and we keep copies only as long as tax and accounting law requires.

14. Changes to this policy

If we change what K53 Simulator does with information, we will update this page and the dates at the top before the change reaches the app. If a change means the app would send anything from your phone, the app will ask you first.

15. Contact us

Kindly Made, South Africa
support@kindlymadeapps.com

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