Privacy Policy
About CodeHS
CodeHS, Inc. is a comprehensive online coding platform to help schools and districts teach computer science. The platform includes web-based curriculum, teacher tools and resources, and professional development.
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully before accessing or using the Website. In this Policy, we refer to these products as the “Website” or the “Services”.
What is this policy all about?
This privacy policy (the “Policy”) explains what data we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with it. It applies to you if you’re a student, a teacher, or anyone else who uses our Website.
This Policy applies to information that we collect when you use our Services online. It does not apply to information we may collect offline or if you provide any information to a third party (including through any application or content that may link to or be accessible from the Website). We use the term “Personal Information” to refer to any information that would identify you as an individual (e.g. your name and/or email address).
By using the Service, you accept and agree to this Privacy Policy. Your use of the Service is also governed by the Terms of Use. You should read both of these documents together.
What information do we collect and why?
We aim to collect only the information necessary to provide you with a great learning or teaching experience. We receive and store any information you knowingly enter on the Services. We also receive and store some information automatically. The following section provides further explanation of what we collect and why.
ACCOUNT INFORMATION
When you create an account (as either a student or a teacher), you need to enter your name, a username, and your email address. For students in schools, you will enter a class code provided by your teacher to link your account to your classroom and your school. For teachers, you will be asked to provide information about your school so we can verify that you are a real teacher.
TECHNICAL DATA
As you use our Website, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. For example, we may collect: details of your visits to our Website, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data; and information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.
The information we collect automatically is statistical data and does not include Personal Information. It helps us to improve our Website and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to:
- estimate our audience size and usage patterns;
- monitor site performance and uptime;
- resolving technical issue for Website users;
- store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Website for you; and
- recognize you when you return to our Website.
The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include tools such as cookies and web beacons. Cookies are small files that websites place on your computer as you browse the web. Web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) are small electronic files that permit us, for example, to count users who have visited certain pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity). You may choose to disable cookies in your browser settings. However, if you choose to do this, many of our Website’s features may not function properly.
COURSEWORK AND GRADING
If you are a student, we collect information about your projects, including the responses you provide, how many attempts you made, and the time taken. This helps us to give you a great experience with our Service, including allowing you to save your work, helping us to improve our courses, and allowing teachers to assess and monitor students’ progress.
STUDENT CODE, PROGRAMS, PROJECTS, AND UPLOADED FILES
If you are logged in to your CodeHS account, we save the code and programs you have written. We do this so that teachers and students can revisit their work at a later time, and can continue working on their programs where they left off. As a student or a teacher, you can also upload content through the Website. If a student or teacher uploads content as part of writing a program, that content will be stored on the Website.
STUDENT AND TEACHER WEBSITES
As you work on CodeHS, students and teachers have the option to create personal websites. You can upload and create content on these sites, which will then become publicly available.
MESSAGES
Students may send messages to their teacher through the Website, and a teacher may send messages to their students. In the case where an individual learner or school has specifically signed up for tutoring services, messages may be sent between students, teachers, and tutors. Only the participants in each of these conversations may see the contents of the messages.
SURVEYS AND DEMOGRAPHICS
Occasionally we will send out optional online surveys to students asking for data such as age, gender, race and academic background. This data is only ever used in the aggregate and for the purposes of improving the Website and ensuring that we are reaching a diverse and representative group of learners.
Who can access your information?
We do not sell or rent your Personal Information to any third party for any purpose, including advertising or marketing. We do not allow any advertising on our services.
We restrict access to your information to CodeHS employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to process it for us and who are subject to strict contractual security standards and confidentiality obligations. They may be disciplined or their contract terminated if they fail to meet these obligations.
Account information, coursework and grading, as well as student programs, projects, and uploaded files can be accessed by the student who created them and his or her teacher. Messages are accessible to participants in that conversation. All users of the Website must abide by the Terms of Use, which include obligations about interacting with other users.
We may disclose information that we collect or you provide as described in this privacy policy to a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, in which Personal Information that we hold is among the assets transferred. This Privacy Policy will continue to apply to your information, and any acquirer would only be able to handle your Personal Information as per this Policy (unless you give consent to a new policy). We will provide you with prompt notice of an acquisition, by posting on our homepage, or by email to your email address that you provided to us. If you do not consent to the use of your Personal Information by such a successor company, you may request that the company delete it.
We may also disclose your Personal Information:
- to comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request;
- to ensure site security, or to enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes;
- if we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of CodeHS, Inc., our customers, or others; and
- to a state or local educational agency, including schools and school districts, for K-12 school purposes, as permitted by state or federal law.
We may disclose aggregated information about our users, and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction.
How do we store and delete your information?
Website users may update, correct, or remove Personal Information in their CodeHS accounts at any time via the Account Settings page.
Students and teachers may deactivate their account at any time from the Account Settings page.
A teacher or a student may request deletion of your own Personal Information by sending us an email at hello@codehs.com. In appropriate circumstances, teachers and parents may also request deletion of a student’s Personal Information. IN SUCH CASE, WE WILL NO LONGER ALLOW THE APPLICABLE USER TO USE THE SERVICES. We will delete your or your student's information using reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access to, or use of, the information in connection with its deletion. When we delete a user's Personal Information, it will be deleted from our active databases but we may retain an archived copy of such user's records as required by law or for legitimate business purposes.
We will retain Personal Information, including after the school term in which a teacher or student uses the Services, for only as long as is reasonably necessary to fulfill the purpose for which the information was collected. Generally, CodeHS will delete a user's Personal Information 4 years after the user's last login to the Services.
How do we protect and secure your information?
We have implemented reasonable measures designed to secure your information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. Any payment information is transmitted using HTTPS encryption and is processed through Stripe, a third party payment provider. CodeHS does not directly collect or store payment instruments.
The safety and security of your information also depends on you. You are responsible for choosing a strong password and keeping it confidential.
If there is a data breach affecting your information, we will comply with any relevant legal or regulatory notification requirements.
Children under the age of 13
Because some of our users may be interested in it, we have included some information below related to the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (“COPPA”). COPPA requires that online service providers obtain parental consent before they knowingly collect personally identifiable information online from children who are under 13. Therefore, we only collect Personal Information through the Services from a child under 13 where that student’s school, district, and/or teacher has agreed (via the terms described in the Terms of Use) to obtain parental consent for that child to use the Services and disclose Personal Information to us. A parent or guardian may sign up his or her child for the Services and provide Personal Information about that child to us. However, no child under 13 may send us any Personal Information unless he or she has signed up through his or her school, district or teacher and such school, district or teacher has obtained parental consent for that child to use the Services and disclose Personal Information to us. If you are a student under 13, please do not send any Personal Information to us if your school, district, and/or teacher has not obtained this prior consent from your parent or guardian, and please do not send any Personal Information other than what we request from you in connection with the Services. If we learn we have collected Personal Information from a student under 13 without parental consent from his or her parent or guardian or obtained by his or her school, district, and/or teacher, or if we learn a student under 13 has provided us personal information beyond what we request from him or her, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a student under 13 may have provided us personal information in violation of this paragraph, please contact us at hello@codehs.com.
If you are signing up for this service and creating accounts on behalf of student(s), you represent and warrant that you are either (a) a teacher or school administrator or otherwise authorized by a school or district to sign up on behalf of students or (b) the parent of such student(s). If you are a school, district, or teacher, you represent and warrant that you are solely responsible for complying with COPPA, meaning that you must obtain advance written consent from all parents or guardians whose children under 13 will be accessing the Services. When obtaining consent, you must provide parents and guardians with these Terms and our Privacy Policy. You must keep all consents on file and provide them to us if we request them. If you are a teacher, you represent and warrant that you have permission and authorization from your school and/or district to use the Services as part of your curriculum, and for purposes of COPPA compliance, you represent and warrant that you are entering into these Terms on behalf of your school and/or district.
Changes to the Privacy Policy
Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will post any changes we make on this page with a notice on the Website’s homepage that the privacy policy has been updated. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will email you at the email address associated with your account. You can access older versions of this Privacy Policy at codehs.com/privacy2013.
Questions?
To ask questions or comment on this Privacy Policy and our privacy practices, contact us at hello@codehs.com.
