Privacy Policy
Permly ("we", "us") makes software that driving schools use to run their programs: enrollment, classes, driving lessons, forms and scheduling. This policy explains what personal information we handle, why, who sees it, and your choices. Questions: hello@gopermly.com.
Who this covers and our role
- Visitors to gopermly.com and people who request early access. For this information, Permly decides how it is used.
- Students, parents or guardians, instructors and school staff who use Permly through a driving school. For this information, the driving school decides how it is used, and Permly handles it on the school's behalf and under its instructions. The school's own privacy notice also applies. If you have a question about your records, you can ask your school or us.
What we collect
From this website. If you request early access: your name, school name, email, phone, and roughly how many students your school teaches a year. Our host may also collect basic technical data, such as IP address and browser type, for security and to keep the site running.
For schools using Permly. Depending on what the school uses:
- Enrollment: name, date of birth, address, phone, email, learner's permit number, optional photos of the permit (front and back), preferred language, the answer to an optional accommodations question, and whether the student is deaf or hard of hearing (which the state asks schools to report each year). For students under 18, the parent or guardian's name, relationship, email and phone.
- Signatures: the typed name, the exact text signed, and the date, time, IP address and device details recorded with each electronic signature, kept as proof of signing.
- Training records: class attendance, quiz and exam answers and scores, behind-the-wheel lesson records, instructor ratings and comments, and the forms made from them, such as the Maryland MVA's DE-003 completion form.
- Driving lessons and scheduling: lesson bookings, changes, cancellations and no-shows; the instructor and pickup place for each lesson; a student's home address when the family asks for a home pickup; anyone riding along; pauses the school places on online booking; and instructors' working hours and time off.
- Accounts: sign-in details for students, parents or guardians, instructors and staff.
- Instructors' calendars (only if an instructor adds one): see "Calendars" below.
- Messages and notices: the emails and in-app notices Permly sends (and text messages, once a school turns them on), with when they were sent and to whom, and each person's text-message choice (the wording shown, the time and the phone number).
- Payments (only if a school takes payments through Permly in the future): the status and amount of a payment. Card details go directly to the school's payment provider; Permly never sees or stores them.
We do not collect Social Security numbers.
How we use it
- To provide Permly to the driving school: keeping its records, preparing its forms, running classes and lesson booking, and sending the messages the school turns on.
- To contact people who request early access about Permly.
- To keep the service secure, fix problems, and meet legal obligations.
We use school records only to provide Permly to that school. We don't use them for our own marketing, and we don't combine one school's records with another's.
Lesson emails and notices
When a school uses Permly for driving lessons, Permly emails the student, their parent or guardian (for students under 18) and the instructor when a lesson is booked, moved, cancelled or requested; the day before each lesson; and when the student is close to the school's or the state's deadline. Instructors and owners also get reminders about their own tasks. Each lesson email can include a calendar invitation. The same notices appear in the app. Emails come from hello@gopermly.com in your school's name, and replies go to your school. These messages are about lessons the student is already enrolled in; we don't put advertising in them. A home pickup address is shown only inside Permly, to the school's staff, and is never put in an email.
Calendars
Lesson and class invitations. Instructors receive their driving lessons and classes as calendar invitations, which update or disappear when the lesson or class changes in Permly. A lesson invitation shows the time, the place and the student's first name and last initial; a class invitation shows the class, the time and, for an online class, its meeting link. An instructor's time off and the days the school is closed are added the same way. When an instructor stops teaching at the school, Permly removes their upcoming lessons and classes from their calendar. Families can add their own lessons to their calendars.
School calendar. A school can choose to send a copy of every lesson and class to a calendar of its own, at an email address the owner confirms. Each copy shows the time, the place, the instructor and the student's first name and last initial.
Instructors' calendars. An instructor can choose to add a private link to their own calendar (Google, Outlook or Apple) so students can't book them when they're busy. About every 15 minutes, Permly's server reads the calendar through that link, keeps only the start and end time of each busy period, and immediately discards everything else (event titles, descriptions, locations, attendees). The link itself is stored where no one can see it in the app, including school staff. Busy times are used only to protect the instructor's availability in Permly; they aren't shared or used for anything else, and school staff never see what they are. If a busy period overlaps a lesson that's already booked, Permly tells the instructor and the school's owners that the instructor has another appointment then, without saying what it is. When an instructor removes the link, Permly deletes it and the busy times taken from it. Anyone who has a calendar's private link may be able to see the whole calendar, so instructors should keep it private and can reset it in their calendar's settings at any time.
We never sell personal data
We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for advertising. We do not build profiles of anyone for advertising. Mobile phone numbers and text-message opt-in information are never shared with third parties for their marketing or promotional purposes.
Who we share it with
- The driving school you enrolled with, and the people it authorizes (owners and instructors), according to their role.
- Service providers that run Permly for us, only for that purpose and under contracts that require them to protect the data: hosting, database and file storage (Supabase, in the United States), website and app hosting (Netlify), email delivery (Resend, in the United States), calendar services that receive lesson invitations, and, once a school turns them on, a text-message provider and the school's payment provider. A current list is available on request.
- When the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.
- If Permly is sold or merged, the buyer would be bound by this policy for the information it receives.
A driving school reports course completion to the Maryland MVA itself, through the MVA's own portal.
Students under 18
Many driving school students are 15 to 17. We handle their information only to keep the school's records and carry out the school's instructions. We never sell it, never use it for targeted advertising, and never build profiles of minors for any other purpose. A parent or guardian signs the school's rights form, and text messages to a student under 18 are sent only with consent from a parent or guardian. A parent or guardian who signed the school's forms can have their own login to book and manage their child's driving lessons. When a student turns 18, we tell them their parent still has access, and they can remove it themselves. A parent or guardian can ask the school, or us, to see, correct or delete their child's information; some records must be kept by law (see "How long we keep it").
Your rights, including under the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act
If the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act applies, you may have the right to confirm whether we process your personal data and to access, correct, delete or get a copy of it, and to opt out of targeted advertising, sale and certain profiling (we don't do those). For records a driving school holds about its students, we act on the school's behalf, so we may pass your request to the school, and we'll help the school answer it. To make a request, email hello@gopermly.com. If we decline, you can appeal by replying to our response, and you may contact the Maryland Attorney General.
How long we keep it
- Early-access requests: until you ask us to remove them or we no longer need them.
- School records: for as long as the school uses Permly. Maryland requires driving schools to keep student records for at least 3 years, so records are kept at least that long unless the school takes them elsewhere. When a school leaves Permly, we give the school a copy of its records and then delete them within 90 days, except where the law requires us to keep something.
- Permit photos: until the school no longer needs them to verify the permit.
- Lesson bookings and notices: as part of the student's school record. A home pickup address is kept with the lesson it was for.
- Instructors' busy times: only for the weeks scheduling needs, and deleted when the calendar link is removed.
Security
We use access controls so each person sees only what their role allows, private storage for permit photos, and encryption in transit. No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a security breach affecting a school's records, we will tell the school promptly, and the school will notify affected people as Maryland law requires.
Changes
If we make a material change, we will update the date above and tell schools before it takes effect. We will not use information already collected in a materially different way without the consent the law requires.