Schools and student privacy

Students use Erode Lab through a class link their teacher shares. They open it and the lab starts: no sign-up, no account, nothing to type. A class link is built to collect nothing about students.

In short

No student accounts. No names, emails or free text from students, and no way for a student to sign in, make an account or buy anything.
No ads, no analytics. No Google Analytics, no advertising, no visitor statistics and no app usage on a class link. Nothing about students is sold or shared.
No third parties. The student's browser talks only to our own site. The elevation, geology and fossil data the lab uses are fetched by our server and passed on, and the browser is told to refuse anything from any other site.
The model runs on the student's own computer. Nothing is simulated on our servers, and runs aren't sent to us from a class link.

What we keep, and from whom

From	What	Why	How long
Students	Two cookies: `dt_class` (the class link's code) and `dt_cm` (classroom mode is on). Nothing that identifies the student.	So the lab knows it's a class link, and keeps ads and analytics off.	Until the class link ends
Each class link	The number of browsers that opened it each day. Not who, not which device, and no IP address.	The 40-students-a-day limit, and a total for the teacher	30 days after the link ends or is turned off
Teachers	Email address, the class name (we ask for no student names), the link's end date, and the teacher's confirmation that their school has authorised them	To sign the teacher in and run their class links	Until the teacher deletes the link or their account
Paying schools	Payment and invoice records: billing contact, address, tax status, purchase order number. Card details go to Stripe, never to us.	Payments, invoices and tax	As long as tax law requires, typically 7 years

Request rates are limited by IP address in memory for a short time only; nothing is written down.

Who processes data

Cloudflare hosts the site and sends sign-in email for teachers.
Stripe handles payments by card and invoices for teacher classes and site licences.

Neither receives anything about students beyond what any web host sees to deliver a page.

Security

HTTPS only, everywhere.
On a class link the browser enforces a content security policy that allows our own site and nothing else.
On a class link our server answers only a short list of requests; accounts, purchases, rooms and sharing are switched off on the server, not just hidden. The games aren't on this site at all.

Younger students

Accounts are for people 13 and older. Class links are the way a school can let younger students use the lab, and we treat everyone who opens one as possibly under 13.

For teachers

A teacher class is $59 a year for one class of up to 40 students; see Pricing. Paying by invoice or purchase order is fine.
Make and revoke links on your classes page. Revoking a link stops it straight away.
Please keep student names out of class names.
You can delete your links, and your whole account, at any time. Deleting your account deletes your class links.

Agreements and questions

If your school or district has its own data privacy agreement, send it to us and we'll review it. For privacy questions or data requests, email hello@erodelab.com. The full details are in the Privacy policy and the Terms.