Quiz Space by Unknown IITians is a site for practising previous year papers of the IIT Madras BS degree. This page explains what we collect when you use it, why, who else handles it, and how to have it removed. We do not sell your data and we do not show advertising.
What we collect
- Your Google account basics. When you sign in with Google we receive your name, email address and profile photo. Your name and photo appear next to anything you post; your email address identifies your account, is never shown publicly, and is seen only by the site’s admins when they manage accounts.
- Your practice. The papers you sit, your answers, marks and time taken, and the mistakes you retry, so we can show your results and analysis. Comparisons with other students use totals only and never show who anyone is.
- What you write. Discussion posts (shown publicly with your name) and reports of errors in questions.
- Teachers’ work. Explanations and board drawings a teacher writes are published with the teacher’s name. Recordings are made and kept in the teacher’s own browser until they are uploaded or thrown away. They are published on the site’s YouTube channel, Unknown IITians, either by the teacher in YouTube Studio or through the site’s upload feature (see below).
- Access given by email. An admin can give teacher access to an email address before its owner has signed in. The address is seen only by admins and is kept until its owner first signs in with it, when the access is applied, or until the admin cancels it.
- Searches. We count the words people search for, by day, to suggest popular searches. Nothing records who searched.
- Technical logs. Our hosting provider records requests (such as IP address, browser and time) to keep the site running and secure.
YouTube API Services
Quiz Space uses YouTube API Services. By watching explanation videos on the site, or uploading through it, you are also bound by the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google handles data from those services under the Google Privacy Policy.
We use YouTube API Services for three things:
- Showing explanation videos with YouTube’s embedded player, in its privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com).
- Checking a video link a teacher adds to an explanation: that the video exists, is on the site’s channel, and can be played here. We read the video’s title, channel, visibility and whether it can be embedded, and keep only its link.
- Uploading teachers’ recordings to the site’s own channel. The channel’s owner gives the site permission once, from Google’s consent screen. We keep that permission encrypted, together with the channel’s id, and use it only to upload recordings and read those videos back. For each upload we keep the title, visibility, file size, the video’s id and whether it finished. A recording normally goes from the teacher’s browser straight to YouTube; when that route is blocked it passes through our server on its way, and is not kept there.
We do not access or store anything from a visitor’s own YouTube account. Other information we read from YouTube, such as the channel’s name, is fetched when it is needed and not stored.
Withdrawing access
Anyone who has given the site access to a Google account can withdraw it at any time on Google’s security settings page. The site stops being able to use that access at once. The channel’s owner can also disconnect the channel inside the site, which deletes the stored permission immediately. The site also checks every day that the permission still works: once access has been withdrawn on Google’s page, the next check deletes the stored permission and the channel’s id, well within 30 days.
Who else handles your data
We share data only with the services that run the site, and only for that purpose:
- Supabase, which stores the database and handles sign-in;
- Vercel, which hosts the site;
- Cloudinary, which stores and serves the images in questions;
- Google, for sign-in, and YouTube, for the videos as described above.
Explanations, board drawings and videos are public once published, as are discussion posts. We do not sell or rent personal data, and we do not give it to advertisers.
Other companies’ content on the site
Explanation videos play in YouTube’s player, which YouTube serves. It loads only when you open an explanation with a video, and once you play it YouTube may collect information and set cookies under the Google Privacy Policy. No third party serves advertising on Quiz Space.
Cookies and storage on your device
- Sign-in cookies keep you signed in. They are needed for the site to work.
- A short-lived cookie is set while an admin connects the YouTube channel, and removed within ten minutes.
- Your browser’s own storage holds an unfinished paper’s answers, your recent searches and, for teachers, recordings and uploads that have not finished. This stays on your device and you can clear it in your browser’s settings.
We use no analytics or advertising cookies.
Keeping and deleting data
We keep your account data while your account exists. Ask us to delete your account and we will delete it, with your attempts, posts and everything else linked to it, within 30 days — and any data we hold from YouTube API Services about you within 7 days. Published explanations can be taken down on request in the same way.
Contact
Questions or complaints about privacy, requests for your data, and deletion requests go to legal@hq.unknowniitians.com. Anything else about the site: desk@unknowniitians.com. We aim to answer within a week.
Changes
When this page changes, the date at the top changes with it. The terms of use cover the rest of how the site may be used.