Privacy & cookies policy

Learn the Web’s privacy & cookie policies. Read and understand the information Learn the Web collects & tracks.

By using Learn the Web, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.

Definitions

We’re going to use some shorthand to make this easier to read. When we say “site” or “website”, we mean learntheweb.courses and the services offered through that site. When we say “we,” “us,” or “our,” we mean Learn the Web (Thomas J Bradley), an Ontario business.

Country of origin

Recognize that this website is run by an entity within Canada and that much of the content & data is stored outside of Canadian borders.

Personal information

Without creating an account to track your progress, we do not collect personal information or use any personal information.

Progressinator & personal information

When signing up for a Progressinator account we receive the following information from GitHub:

This information is never transmitted beyond our local databases & web servers. Nor is it ever transmitted without HTTPS encryption.

Feedback forms & personal information

We have two feedback forms: an anonymous course feedback form & a team project reflection form. Both forms are submitted using Formspree.

The anonymous course feedback form collects no personal information. This anonymous information is transmitted to Formspree’s servers and forwarded to our email accounts. This information may be kept in our email accounts for an unknown period of time.

The team reflection feedback form collects only names of you and your team members. This information is transmitted to Formspree servers and forwarded to our email accounts. This information will be retained until final grades for the term are submitted, about two weeks after term end, at which point the information will be deleted from our email accounts.

Security

All communication with the site is sent over HTTPS.

Progressinator application

The Progressinator application uses your GitHub credentials as the authentication method. We never receive your GitHub password. All communication with GitHub’s servers is encrypted with HTTPS.

  • GitHub — social authentication for Progressinator application—we never get access to your GitHub password.

Teacher & TA area

User login information will be provided by one of our administrators. No personal information will be tracked or stored for access to the secure area beyond a username & password.

  • NearlyFreeSpeech — hosts the secure area and the user access information is protected by the host.

  • KeyCDN — holds the downloadable solutions and only allows access with an encryption key provided by the application hosted on NearlyFreeSpeech.

Cookies

Without creating an account to track your progress, we do not store cookies on your computer nor track your movements with analytics.

Progressinator & cookies

In order to remember who you are and prevent security problems, the Progressinator application will create the following cookies:

  • sessionid — Tracks that you are signed into your Progressinator account
  • csrftoken — Helps with security by providing a unique token for every single request

These cookies are available to all our pages, even outside Progressinator, to facilitate progress tracking and grading of different activities and exercises.

These cookies cannot be opted out of and are required for operation of Progressinator application.

Third-party cookies

Some external service providers, used by the website, will create cookies on your computer:

These cookies cannot be opted out of and are required for operation of the website.

Analytics

We do not record any analytics about page views or track your movements across pages on a remote server.

Hosting provider server logs

Some of our hosting providers track pieces of data when you access pages:

  • The country the request was received from,
  • The page you requested,
  • The date & time of the request.

These analytics cannot be opted out of and are required by our service providers for operation of the website.

Hosting providers

  • KeyCDN — primary website host
    Tracks: country, requested page, date & time.
    IP addresses are anonymized.

  • CloudFlare — DNS, security, performance
    Tracks: country, requested page, date & time.
    IP addresses are anonymized.

  • NearlyFreeSpeech — secure area website host
    No tracking beyond maintaining a session for user access to the secure teacher area.

  • Heroku — Progressinator application host
    No tracking outside of what our applications capture.

  • GitHub — assignment details & repository hosting
    Refer to GitHub’s privacy policy for detailed information.
    We make requests to the public GitHub API without sending any personalized information to download the details for the assignments.

  • Formspree — capture of feedback form data
    Refer to Formspree’s privacy policy for detailed information.
    Information submitted through email forms is retained by Formspree servers for one month & transmitted through email to our accounts.

Stored data

The location and information we store differs based on whether or not you have a Progressinator account.

With a Progressinator account

We store, within our databases, located in the Eastern US on Amazon Web Services machines, personal information as well as progress through the courses.

Each assessment (videos, exercises, activities, etc.) stores the following information—and associates it with your user account:

  • The date the assessment was submitted;
  • Who or what submitted the assessment, Markbot or your teacher;
  • The grade you received on your assessment, as a percentage;
  • Whether or not the automated cheat detection systems were triggered;
  • Extra details pertaining to the specific assessment, e.g. completion time, teacher comments, number of commits, number of correct answers, etc.

On your computer only, we store:

  • The topic pages you’ve visited,
  • Whether to load the custom web fonts or not,
  • Cached versions of the assignments loaded from GitHub.

Clearing your local & session storage will completely remove this local information.

Without a Progressinator account

We store information on your computer to track your progress, e.g. remember which pages you visited. This information isn’t transmitted or stored on a server—it’s only available on your own machine.

On your computer only, we store:

  • The topic pages you’ve visited,
  • The statistics on how much you’ve watched the video playlists,
  • Whether to load the custom web fonts or not,
  • Cached versions of the assignments loaded from GitHub.

Clearing your local & session storage will completely remove this local information.

Markbot

The desktop Markbot application stores the following personal information:

  • Your GitHub username
  • A unique API token assigned to you by the Progressinator application

These two pieces of information are sent to the Progressinator application, only over encrypted HTTPS, to record your assessment progress. Markbot also sends other ancillary information, e.g. completion time, number of commits, automated cheat detection, etc. with every grade submission.

These pieces of information must be sent by Markbot to facilitate application functionality.

Changes to this privacy policy

We may update our privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new privacy policy on this page.

We advise you to review this privacy policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this privacy policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

Contact information

If you have any comments, questions, ideas, or criticism of this document you may contact us.

Thomas J Bradley
thomas@learntheweb.courses
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Or better yet, you can contribute a commit on GitHub!

Effective date: May 22, 2020