Terms of Use & Sale

These Terms of Use & Sale ("Terms") govern your access to and use of these study guides, including the websites at cippe.thesmios.com and aigp.thesmios.com and any related sites we operate (together, the "Service"). The Service is operated by Victor Humenhuk, an individual based in London, United Kingdom ("we", "us" or "our").

Please read these Terms together with our Privacy Policy and our Disclaimer, which form part of your agreement with us. If you have any questions, or need a postal correspondence address for formal notices, contact us at hello@thesmios.com and we will provide one.

1. Acceptance of these Terms

By accessing or using the Service, creating an account, or purchasing access to a practice question bank, you confirm that you accept these Terms and agree to comply with them. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service. If you are using the Service on behalf of someone else, you confirm that you have authority to accept these Terms for them.

You must be at least 16 years old, or the minimum age required to consent to use online services in your country, to create an account or make a purchase.

2. About the Service

We provide independent, self-published study materials for IAPP and AI-governance certifications, such as the CIPP/E, CIPP/U and AIGP examinations. The Service is made up of two parts:

• Free study notes. The study notes are free and openly available to read.
• Optional paid question bank. The practice question bank for a given certification is unlocked with a single one-time payment, which grants lifetime access to that certification's question bank for the account that made the purchase. "Lifetime" means for as long as we continue to operate that question bank as part of the Service; it does not mean the Service will be available indefinitely. If we withdraw a paid question bank you have access to, section 11 explains the refund approach that applies.

One account works across our sites. Purchasing access to one certification's question bank does not grant access to any other certification's question bank, which is sold separately.

The Service may evolve over time. We may add, change, suspend or remove features, content or question banks, and we aim to keep paid materials available and reasonably current, but we do not promise that any specific feature or item of content will always be available. See section 11 (Changes to the Service and these Terms).

3. Accounts

You can create an account using your email address and a password, or by using "Sign in with Google". Authentication is handled by Supabase Auth, and passwords are handled and hashed by Supabase; we never see your password. For more detail on what we store and how, see our Privacy Policy.

You are responsible for:

• keeping your login details confidential and secure;
• all activity that takes place under your account; and
• providing an email address that is accurate and that you control.

Please tell us promptly at hello@thesmios.com if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

4. Acceptable use

Access to the paid question bank is for your own personal study use only. When using the Service, you agree that you will not:

• share, lend, resell, sublicense or otherwise make your account or the paid content available to anyone else;
• copy, reproduce, publish, distribute or republish the question bank or other paid content, in whole or in part;
• scrape, harvest, crawl, bulk-download or use automated means to extract content or data from the Service;
• attempt to circumvent any access controls, paywall or entitlement checks;
• use the materials to build, train or populate a competing product, dataset or service; or
• interfere with, disrupt, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service or its underlying systems.

If you breach these Terms, we may suspend or terminate your access without refund, to the extent permitted by law. This does not affect your statutory rights as a consumer.

5. Intellectual property and licence

All study notes, questions, explanations, text, design and other materials made available through the Service are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws. Subject to your compliance with these Terms, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable licence to access and use the materials for your own private study and examination preparation only.

Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership rights to you. All rights not expressly granted are reserved. You may not redistribute the materials or use them for any commercial purpose.

Certification names and related marks, where referenced on the Service (including CIPP, CIPP/E, CIPP/U and AIGP), are trademarks of the IAPP. Other certification marks that may be referenced belong to their respective owners: CIPM and CIPT are trademarks of the IAPP; PMP and PMI are trademarks of the Project Management Institute; and CAMS is a trademark of ACAMS. These and any other third-party marks are used here for identification and descriptive purposes only (nominative fair use). The Service is independent and is not affiliated with, authorised, endorsed or sponsored by the IAPP, PMI, ACAMS or any certification body, as further explained in our Disclaimer.

6. Payment, pricing, cancellation and refunds

Payments. Payments are handled entirely by Stripe through Stripe Checkout. Stripe is the payment processor. We never receive or store your full card number; we store only a Stripe customer or session identifier and a record of your entitlement (what you purchased). Your use of Stripe is also subject to Stripe's own terms and privacy policy.

Pricing. The price for each question bank is shown at checkout before you pay. The amount you pay is the price displayed at the time of your purchase, including any applicable taxes where shown. We may change our prices from time to time, but a change will not affect a purchase you have already completed.

What you get. A successful one-time payment unlocks lifetime access to the relevant certification's question bank for your account, as described in section 2.

Order confirmation. After a successful purchase, you will receive an order confirmation by email, together with your activated entitlement on your account. This confirms the content you bought and the terms on which it was supplied.

Your right to cancel. If you are a consumer, you normally have a legal right to cancel an online purchase within 14 days and receive a refund, without giving a reason. However, the paid question bank is digital content that we make available to you immediately on purchase. By completing your purchase and gaining immediate access, you expressly ask us to begin supplying the digital content straight away, and you acknowledge that you will lose your 14-day right to cancel once supply has begun. We capture this consent and acknowledgement at checkout, and the order confirmation records it. Where you do not gain immediate access, your 14-day cancellation right continues to apply.

If something goes wrong. We want you to be satisfied. If the content is faulty, access did not unlock, the content is not as described, or you were charged in error, contact us at hello@thesmios.com and we will work with you in good faith to put it right, which may include a repair, a replacement, a price reduction or a refund as appropriate.

Your statutory rights. Nothing in this section or these Terms removes or limits any refund, cancellation or other rights you have under applicable consumer law, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

7. Third-party services

The Service relies on third-party providers to function, including:

• Stripe for payment processing;
• Supabase for authentication and database storage;
• Vercel for site hosting and content delivery; and
• Google for "Sign in with Google".

These services are provided by their own operators and are governed by their own terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for the acts, omissions, availability or content of third-party services. For more detail on how these providers process data, see our Privacy Policy.

8. Disclaimers

The materials are for general educational and examination-preparation purposes only. They are not legal advice and do not create any professional, advisory or other relationship between you and us. Using the Service does not guarantee that you will pass any examination or achieve any particular result; the certification bodies set and control the actual exams, and we have no involvement in or influence over them.

While the materials are prepared with care, laws, regulations and examination syllabi change, and the materials may contain errors or become out of date. You should always verify the content against official primary sources and the certification body's current body of knowledge.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service and all materials are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties or conditions of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy or non-infringement. This is intended to apply in full to the free study notes.

These exclusions do not apply to your non-excludable statutory rights. In particular, if you are a consumer who has purchased the paid question bank, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires that paid digital content is of satisfactory quality, fit for a purpose you made known to us, and as described, and nothing in these Terms excludes or limits those rights. See our Disclaimer for further detail.

9. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including your statutory rights as a consumer and, where you have purchased the paid question bank, your remedies under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 for digital content that is not of satisfactory quality, not fit for purpose or not as described.

Subject to the paragraph above, and to the maximum extent permitted by law:

• we will not be liable for any loss or damage that is not reasonably foreseeable, or for any indirect, special, incidental or consequential loss;
• we will not be liable for loss of profits, loss of business or opportunity, loss of goodwill, examination outcomes or results, or loss or corruption of data; and
• our total aggregate liability to you arising out of or in connection with the Service and these Terms will not exceed the greater of the amount you actually paid to us for access to the relevant question bank, or GBP 50.

The cap and exclusions above do not apply to, and do not reduce, any non-excludable statutory remedy you are entitled to as a consumer under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 in respect of the paid question bank (for example a refund, repair, replacement or price reduction). You use the materials at your own risk.

10. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, losses, damages, costs and reasonable expenses (including legal fees) arising out of or connected with your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Service, or your infringement of any third party's rights. This does not apply to anything you do as a consumer acting in good faith within your statutory rights.

11. Changes to the Service and these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time, for example to reflect changes to the Service, to our providers, or to legal requirements. When we do, we will update the date below. Material changes will, where reasonably practicable, be made clear. Your continued use of the Service after the changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not agree to a change, you should stop using the Service.

We may also change, suspend, withdraw or discontinue all or part of the Service. Because lifetime access is the basis on which the paid question bank is sold, if we permanently withdraw a paid question bank you have access to, and the withdrawal is not because of your breach of these Terms, we will offer you a fair refund. Where the withdrawal happens within 24 months of your purchase, that refund will be a pro-rata refund of the price you paid (treated over a 24-month reference period) or such greater amount as is fair in the circumstances. This is in addition to, and does not affect, any non-excludable statutory rights you have as a consumer.

12. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service at any time and may ask us to delete your account by emailing hello@thesmios.com. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms or use the Service in a way that may cause harm to us, other users or third parties. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination - including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity and governing law - will continue to apply.

13. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or the Service (including non-contractual disputes or claims), are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales will have jurisdiction, except that if you are a consumer resident elsewhere, you may also benefit from any mandatory protections and the courts of the country where you live, as required by applicable law.

14. Contact

For any questions about these Terms, your account, support or legal matters, contact us at hello@thesmios.com. You can also return to the home page, or read our Privacy Policy and Disclaimer.

Last updated: 20 June 2026.