Privacy policy

Who we are

RudimentaryLabs (“we”, “us”) runs this learning site for schools, their teachers and their students. This policy explains how we handle personal information when you visit the site or use an account.

Schools and us

Accounts come through schools. A school registers, invites its teachers and students, and approves each one. For information about a school's teachers and students, the school decides who joins and what they can open, and we handle that information on the school's behalf to provide the service to it. The school is responsible for having the right to invite its students, including any permission from parents that its local law or its own rules require. If you are a student, you can also ask your school about how it uses RudimentaryLabs.

What we collect

If you visit without an account

• Server logs: your IP address, the page you asked for, the time, and whether it worked. We use these to keep the site running and to stop abuse. They are deleted automatically after a short time (see below).
• Small settings stored in your own browser, such as your grade and time zone (see Cookies and browser storage).

If you have an account

• Who you are: your name; your email address, or for under-13 students a username plus a parent or guardian's email and when they gave consent; your password, which we store only in scrambled (hashed) form, so we can't read it; and whether you are a student or teacher.
• Your school: which school you belong to, your role there (student, teacher or school admin), whether you're approved, and, for students, your grade and class group.
• Your learning: lessons you open and finish, quiz scores, project steps you tick off, research digests you read, items you save, which days you studied (for streaks), and your answers and marks on practice exam papers.
• What teachers make: lessons, reading lists and other material that teachers publish for their school, which content each student may open, and requests teachers send us for new content or features.
• Sign-in sessions: a record that you are logged in, which expires after 30 days or when you log out.

If you register a school

The school's name, country, website and description, and its invite codes.

What we don't do

• We don't show adverts and don't use your information for advertising.
• We don't sell or rent personal information to anyone.
• We don't use analytics or tracking tools, or third-party cookies.
• We don't send marketing emails. We keep a parent or guardian's email so we can contact them about their child's account if we need to.
• We don't ask for more than we need: no home address, phone number, photo or date of birth.

How we use it

• To run your account: signing you in, keeping your place, showing your progress, streaks and saved items.
• To let your school manage its members, choose what students can open, and see how its students are doing.
• To keep the site safe and working: preventing abuse, fixing problems and keeping backups.

We use your information only to provide RudimentaryLabs to you and your school, or where the law requires it.

Who can see it

• Your school: teachers and admins at your school can see the names, grades, class groups and learning progress of its students, their answers and scores on practice papers they hand in (so teachers can mark them and give feedback), and who its members are. Other schools can't see any of it.
• Our team: the few people who run RudimentaryLabs can reach the data when that's needed to run the site, approve schools or answer a request.
• Our hosting provider, which runs the server the site and its database live on, under its own security and confidentiality duties.
• The authorities, only if the law requires us to share something.

YouTube videos

Many pages suggest videos from YouTube. Their preview pictures load from YouTube's servers, so YouTube sees your IP address when a page with a video is shown. The video player itself only loads when you press play, and uses YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode. Once you play a video, or follow a link to YouTube, YouTube's own privacy policy applies. Links to research papers and other sites take you to sites with their own policies.

Cookies and browser storage

We use only what the site needs to work, never for tracking or adverts:

• rl_session: keeps you logged in. Set when you log in; removed when you log out or after 30 days.
• rl-grade: remembers the grade you picked, so pages match your level.
• rl-tz: your time zone, so study streaks count the right days.
• Browser storage on your device: your theme, text size and reading font; project checklists; your practice-question results; and unfinished answers on exam papers. These stay in your browser; your submitted papers and other progress are saved to your account.
• Offline copies: pages you open may be saved in your browser so they can be read without a connection.

You can clear all of these in your browser settings. If you do, you'll be logged out and lose your device settings.

How long we keep it

• Account and learning information: for as long as the account exists. Leaving or being removed from a school ends your membership there, but doesn't delete your account; ask us if you want it deleted.
• Deleted accounts: removed from the live database when you ask; copies in our backups disappear within 14 days, as old backups are deleted.
• Server logs: overwritten automatically, normally within a few weeks.
• Schools: if a school stops using RudimentaryLabs, it can ask us to delete the school, its material and its members' accounts.

Keeping it safe

Passwords and sign-in tokens are stored only in hashed form. Each school's information is kept apart from other schools', and every page checks what the signed-in person is allowed to see. We keep daily backups. No system is perfectly secure; if something goes wrong that affects your information, we'll tell the people and schools involved and any authority we must.

Children

Many of our users are children. Students join only through their school. Students under 13 sign in with a username rather than an email, and a parent or guardian gives their email and agrees before the account is made. Parents and guardians can ask to see, correct or delete their child's information at any time by emailing us; we may need to check who you are first, and may let the child's school know.

Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• get a copy of the information we hold about you;
• have it corrected if it's wrong;
• have it deleted;
• object to or limit how we use it; and
• complain to your local data protection authority.

To ask, email hello@rudimentarylabs.com. We'll reply within 30 days. If you joined through a school, we may pass your request to the school or ask it to confirm, because the school manages its members.

Where it's stored

Our server is run by a hosting provider and may be in a different country from you. Wherever it's stored, we protect your information as this policy describes.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If a change matters, such as collecting something new, we'll tell schools before it takes effect. Using RudimentaryLabs is also covered by our Terms of use.

Contact us

Questions, requests or worries: email hello@rudimentarylabs.com. See also our Terms of use.