Privacy Policy

About this policy

Institute Console ("An Education Operating System") is an Institute management service operated by DEXDEVS (SMC-PRIVATE) LIMITED, a company registered in Pakistan ("DEXDEVS", "we", "us"). This policy explains what personal data is processed when you use the Institute Console web application at app.instituteconsole.com or the Institute Console mobile app for Android and iOS, why it is processed, who it is shared with, how long it is kept, and the rights you have.

Institute Console is used by educational Institutes ("Institutes"). You normally have an Institute Console account because an Institute created one for you: as a member of staff, a teacher, a transport driver, a parent or guardian, or a student.

Who is responsible for your data

Your Institute is the data controller for the records it keeps about its students, families and staff in Institute Console: admissions, enrolment, attendance, fees and payments, exams and results, diaries and homework, timetables, transport, payroll and HR records, messages and documents. The Institute decides what to collect and why, and it is the first point of contact for requests about those records.

DEXDEVS is the data processor for those records. We host and operate Institute Console on the Institute's behalf, only on its documented instructions, and we do not use Institute records for our own purposes.

DEXDEVS is the data controller only for a narrow set of data needed to run the platform itself: platform account and sign-in security data (for example failed sign-in counts and lockouts), anonymous crash diagnostics from the mobile app, platform support requests sent directly to us, and the security and audit logs we keep to protect the service.

The data we process

What is held about you depends on your role and on what your Institute chooses to record.

Everyone with an account

• Name, username or login identifier, email address and mobile number. Depending on the Institute, your login identifier may be your CNIC (Pakistan national identity card number) or your phone number.
• Password, stored only as a salted Argon2id hash. We cannot see your password.
• Role, branch and permissions within the Institute.
• Optional two-factor authentication settings.
• Sign-in history, device records for biometric unlock and push notifications, language and display preferences.

Parents and guardians

• Relationship to the student, contact details, CNIC where the Institute collects it, occupation and address.
• Fee invoices, challans, payments, receipts and balances for linked students.
• Messages, leave requests and attachments you submit.

Students

• Identity and enrolment details: name, admission number, class and section, date of birth, gender, photograph and guardian links.
• Attendance, timetable, homework, diary entries, lecture notes and voice notes from teachers, assessments, exam marks, results and report cards.
• Fee records, transport assignment and, where the Institute records it, health, behaviour or guidance notes.

Staff, teachers and drivers

• Employment details: employee code, designation, joining date, CNIC, qualifications, bank details for payroll, salary and payslips, leave and attendance.
• Self-service attendance check-ins, and an optional evidence photo if you choose to attach one.
• For teachers: lesson content, voice notes and marks you enter.
• For drivers: the location of your vehicle while you are on an active shift (see below).
• Where your Institute uses fingerprint attendance terminals, attendance punch records. Fingerprint templates captured by those terminals may be backed up into Institute Console to restore a terminal; they are held encrypted and are used only for attendance.

Data from the mobile app

• Push notification token (Firebase Cloud Messaging), so we can deliver notifications to your device.
• Anonymous crash reports: error message and stack trace (scrubbed of email addresses and long number sequences), app version, platform, operating-system version and a random per-installation identifier. No account or session identifier is attached, and nothing is sent from development builds.
• Biometric unlock record: that biometric unlock is enabled on a named device. Your fingerprint or face data never leaves your device.

What the mobile app accesses, and why

The app asks for a permission only when you use the feature that needs it, and every permission can be refused or withdrawn in your device settings. Refusing a permission only disables that feature.

• Notifications: to alert you to messages, fee reminders, attendance, results and other updates from your Institute.
• Biometric (fingerprint or Face ID): to let you unlock the app quickly. Matching is done by your device's operating system; Institute Console never receives biometric data.
• Microphone: used only by teachers to record voice notes they attach to lectures and class work. Recording starts only when you press record.
• Photos and files: to attach a document or image you choose, for example to a leave request or as optional evidence for a self-attendance check-in. The app uses the system picker and only receives the files you select.
• Camera: used only when you tap a button that takes a photo, for example the optional photo a staff member can attach to a self-attendance check-in. The app never uses the camera in the background. A photo leaves your device only when you submit the form it belongs to, and goes only to Institute Console.
• Location (precise and approximate): used only by transport drivers, and only between Start Shift and End Shift, to show parents and the Institute the bus's live position. On Android this runs as a visible foreground service with a persistent "Sharing your live location" notification; the app does not request Android background-location access. On iOS the driver may allow location to continue while the screen is locked during a shift. Location is never collected from parents, students or other staff. Parents view the bus position on a map, which does not use the parent's own location.
• Internet and wake lock: to talk to Institute Console's servers and to keep a driver's location sharing running reliably during a shift.

The app does not access your contacts, call logs, SMS or calendar, does not read your other photos or files, and does not request background location on Android. It contains no advertising and does not use the Android advertising ID.

Why we process data, and the legal basis

For Institute records, the Institute determines the purpose and lawful basis, which is typically the performance of its contract with you or your family, its legal obligations (for example financial record-keeping), its legitimate interests in running the Institute, or, for specific features, your consent. We process those records only to provide Institute Console to the Institute.

For the data DEXDEVS controls, we rely on:

• Contract: to provide and secure your account and deliver the features you use.
• Legitimate interests: to keep the service secure, detect abuse, investigate incidents, maintain audit trails and fix crashes. We have balanced these interests against your rights and keep the data minimal.
• Legal obligation: to retain records we are required to keep and to respond to lawful requests.

What we do not do

• We do not show advertising in Institute Console and do not use advertising identifiers.
• We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
• The mobile app contains no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs.
• We do not use students' data for marketing, profiling or behavioural advertising.

Who we share data with

Your data is visible within your Institute only to people whose role permits it, and only for their own branch where the Institute is organised in branches. We share data with service providers who help us run Institute Console, under contract and only as needed:

• Hosting: a virtual private server provider that hosts the Institute Console application, database and file storage.
• Network and security: Cloudflare, which provides TLS encryption, content delivery and protection against attacks for traffic to Institute Console.
• Push notifications: Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which delivers notifications to Android and iOS devices.
• Maps: Google Maps, which displays maps in the app for transport features. To draw a map, Google receives the technical details of the request (such as your IP address and device information) and handles them under Google's Privacy Policy.
• Backups: encrypted off-site backup storage providers.
• Error monitoring: a server-side error monitoring service configured not to send personal data by default.
• AI-assisted features: where an Institute enables them, an AI model provider (Anthropic) processes the content needed to answer the request.
• Providers your Institute connects: SMS, WhatsApp, email or payment providers that your Institute chooses and configures. These act for the Institute.

We may also disclose data where required by law, a court order or a competent authority, or to protect the safety of any person, and to a successor if DEXDEVS is reorganised or acquired, subject to this policy. A current list of sub-processors is available on request from privacy@instituteconsole.com.

International transfers

Some of our service providers process data outside Pakistan and outside your country, including in the United States and the European Union. Where the law requires it, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses or the provider's equivalent commitments.

How long we keep data

Institute records are kept for as long as the Institute's subscription is active and as the Institute decides, plus any period agreed at offboarding. Some records are kept for longer because the law or audit requires it. Specific periods we apply:

• Bus location history: 30 days by default, then removed.
• Data-export files you request: available to download for 7 days, then the file is removed.
• Fee, payment and accounting records: retained as financial records required for statutory and audit purposes. After an erasure they are kept without your identity attached.
• Audit log: retained permanently and append-only, because it is the tamper-evident record of who changed what. Personal details in audit entries are masked.
• Backups: kept on a rolling schedule for disaster recovery. Some long-term archive copies are retained for longer, encrypted and access-restricted, and are used only to restore the service.

How we protect data

• Encryption in transit: all connections use HTTPS with TLS 1.2 or higher, with HTTP Strict Transport Security.
• Encryption at rest: backups are encrypted, and sensitive fields such as integration credentials and biometric attendance templates are additionally encrypted at the application level.
• Tenant isolation: each Institute's data is separated at the database level using row-level security, so one Institute cannot read another's records.
• Access control: role- and capability-based permissions, scoped to branches, with sensitive identifiers such as CNIC and phone numbers masked for users who do not need to see them.
• Account security: Argon2id password hashing, optional two-factor authentication, account lockout after 5 failed sign-in attempts for 15 minutes, and short-lived access tokens.
• Audit logging: create, update and delete actions are recorded with the actor, Institute, branch and time in a cryptographically chained, append-only log that is checked for tampering automatically.
• On your device: sign-in tokens are kept in the device's secure storage (Android Keystore or iOS Keychain).

No system is perfectly secure. If you believe your account has been compromised, change your password and contact your Institute or support@instituteconsole.com.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access your data and obtain a copy, correct it, have it erased, restrict or object to its processing, receive it in a portable format, and withdraw consent. Californian residents have the rights to know, delete and correct, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them; we do not sell or share personal information.

How to exercise your rights:

1. In the app: open Settings, then Privacy & data, to request deletion of your account or of a linked child's record, follow the request, and withdraw it. On the web, the same option is under your Profile as Data & account deletion.
2. Through your Institute: for corrections to records, or a copy of your data, contact your Institute's office.
3. By email: write to privacy@instituteconsole.com from the email address on your account, or to our data protection contact at dpo@instituteconsole.com. If a request concerns Institute records, we will pass it to the Institute and help it respond.

We respond within 30 days. If a request is complex we may extend this as the law allows, and we will tell you why. We may need to verify your identity first. How deletion works, including the grace period during which you can change your mind, is described on our Account and data deletion page.

Children

Many students who use Institute Console are under 18, and some are under 13. Students cannot register themselves: their accounts are created by their Institute, which is responsible for obtaining any consent the law requires. Parents and guardians can see their child's information in the app and can exercise their child's rights. Read our Children's Privacy Notice for details.

Data breaches

If a personal data breach occurs, we will notify affected Institutes without undue delay, with the information they need to meet their own obligations. Where DEXDEVS is the controller, we will notify the competent supervisory authority within 72 hours of becoming aware of a notifiable breach, and inform affected people directly where the risk to them is high.

Cookies and local storage

The web app uses only strictly necessary storage: a session cookie and a sign-in indicator, the sign-in token and device identifier needed to keep you signed in, and preferences such as language, theme and whether you have seen a product tour. We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. The mobile app stores sign-in tokens in secure storage and preferences, cached data and a random crash-report identifier on your device; uninstalling the app removes them.

Changes to this policy

We will publish any change on this page with a new version number and effective date. For material changes we will also notify Institutes and show a notice in the app before the change takes effect.

Contact and complaints

• Privacy questions and requests: privacy@instituteconsole.com
• Data protection contact: dpo@instituteconsole.com
• General support: support@instituteconsole.com
• Post: DEXDEVS (SMC-PRIVATE) LIMITED, 2 A Abu Dhabi Road, Adjacent to KIPS College, Rahim Yar Khan 64200, Punjab, Pakistan

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the data protection supervisory authority where you live or work, for example the Information Commissioner's Office in the United Kingdom or your local authority in the European Union, or to the competent authority in Pakistan.