Last updated: October 10, 2026
Passdown keeps what students know about their courses, year after year, and makes room for campus life. These rules keep it useful, fair, and safe. They're part of the Terms of use and apply to everything you post on it: posts, comments, polls, reviews, links, files, photos, handles, and your profile photo.
In short
- Write about courses, material, and studying, not about people.
- Honest, fair criticism of a course or of teaching is welcome. Personal attacks aren't.
- Don't post anyone's personal details.
- Upload only what you may share.
- No cheating: nothing from an exam or assignment that's still open.
- See something that breaks the rules? Use "Hide and report".
Not allowed
- Hurting a person. Insults, humiliation, harassment, threats, bullying, or mocking someone's looks, origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. Posts about a specific student, named or recognizable, aren't allowed, anonymous or not, in Global too.
- Other people's personal details. Phone numbers, addresses, ID numbers, grades, screenshots of private chats, or a photo of someone who didn't agree to it. Nothing that helps find someone.
- Defamation. A false or unfounded claim that could shame a person or harm their good name, such as accusing them of a crime or misconduct. Lecturers and staff included.
- Copyright infringement. Material that isn't yours and that you have no permission to share, such as a textbook, paid material, or a lecturer's slides when they didn't allow sharing them. See "Files and material" below.
- Cheating. Questions or answers from an exam or assignment while it's still open, offers to do work for others, or buying and selling work. Past exams from the institution's exam bank are fine.
- Hateful or illegal content. Incitement, racism, violence, sexual content, or anything else the law forbids.
- Spam and scams. Ads, misleading links, attempts to get passwords or sign-in codes, and posting the same thing over and over.
- Impersonation. Don't present yourself as someone else, or pick a handle that looks like another person's name.
Wrong information: a comment correcting it usually works best. We remove information that misleads on purpose or could cause harm.
Reviews of courses and lecturers
Harsh criticism is fine, as long as it's honest and to the point. Write about the course, the material, the exams, and the teaching, for example: "The lectures move fast and are hard to follow", "The exam was nothing like the tutorials", or "The tutorials helped more than the lectures". Don't write about the person: not their looks, not their private life, no insults, and no accusations. An opinion is fine when it reads as one. A fact has to be true.
Anonymity
An anonymous post or comment shows to students without your name. Passdown itself keeps who wrote every post, to deal with abuse. Only the team can see it, and it's never shown to other students. We'd hand it over only when the law requires it, such as under a court order. Anonymity isn't a license to hurt anyone: every rule applies to it too.
Files and material
Before every upload, you confirm that you may share the files. You can upload:
- your own work: summaries, solutions, explanations, and questions you wrote;
- past exams from the institution's exam bank, and their solutions;
- material whose rights holder allowed sharing it;
- photos you may share, where everyone in them agreed.
Don't upload other people's material that you have no permission to share, such as textbooks or files marked not for distribution. If the institution asks us to stop exam uploads there, we can switch them off.
Reporting
Every post and comment has "Hide and report" in its ⋯ menu. It's hidden for you at once, and the team reviews the report. After several reports, it's hidden from everyone but its author until the team decides. No one sees who reported. False or repeated reports meant to silence someone are an abuse of the tool.
What we do
When something breaks these rules, we may:
- remove it;
- change an offensive handle;
- limit uploads or other actions;
- suspend an account for a while or for good, when a breach is serious or repeated.
Think we got it wrong? Write to passdown.space@gmail.com and we'll look again.
Copyright: asking us to remove something
If you hold the rights to a work, or act for whoever does, and you found it on Passdown without permission, send passdown.space@gmail.com a notice with:
- your name and contact details;
- the work you hold the rights to;
- where it is on Passdown: a link, or the course and a description of the post;
- a statement that you hold the rights or may act for whoever does, and that you didn't allow this use;
- a statement that the details are accurate.
We remove infringing content within 48 hours of a complete notice, and let the uploader know. If you think your content was removed by mistake, write to us and explain. Someone who infringes again and again loses the ability to upload files.
Other requests
To report a privacy violation, defamation, or other content, write to passdown.space@gmail.com with a link to it (or the course and a description of the post) and what's wrong.