Privacy policy

What we collect and why

• Your name. Your full legal name, as it appears on your government ID. It goes on your certificate, and the identity check before your exam compares it with your ID.
• Your email address. Your sign-in identifier, and where we send account and certificate emails.
• Your course and exam records. Your course, your progress, your quiz results, the date you sat the exam and the result. On a pass, your certificate and its expiry date.
• A record of account activity. Account creation, sign-ins, email confirmation, password resets, name corrections and your agreement to this policy. These let us answer questions about a certificate years later and trace any change to a record.
• Your employer, if they paid. We record which organization bought your place on the course.
• Google sign-in. If you use it, we receive your email address and your Google display name. The display name only prefills a form you then correct, and it never appears on a certificate.

We do not collect your home address, date of birth, phone number or employment history.

How we use it

To run your course, mark your exam, issue and maintain your certificate, confirm it is genuine when someone checks it, keep your account secure and meet our legal obligations.

We email you about your account, your exam result and your certificate. The reminder before your certificate expires is one you ask for, and every reminder has a one-click unsubscribe.

Analytics

If you accept analytics, an analytics provider helps us see how visitors use our public pages. Nothing is recorded unless you accept.

• What is recorded. Which pages are visited, what is clicked on them, the site that referred the visit, the device and browser, and an approximate location worked out from the IP address. The IP address itself is then discarded.
• Where it runs. Only on the pages around creating an account and paying: the home page, the pages that describe the course, our information pages, sign-up and sign-in, checkout, and your account page. It never runs in the course, the quizzes or the exam.
• What is never recorded. Your name, your email address, your answers or your results. On your account page, the parts that show your name, email address, certificates and orders are left out.
• When you are signed in. Your visits are linked to a coded identifier made from your record, not to your name or email address. At your request we can find that identifier and delete what the provider holds under it.
• Where it is stored. Our analytics provider stores this data in the United States.
• Your choice. It is separate from your agreement to this policy, and you can change it at any time with Cookie settings at the foot of our public pages.

The final exam

The final exam is supervised. We ask for your agreement first, and the exam does not start without it.

• What is recorded. During the exam only, we record video from your camera, the sound from your microphone and, on a computer, your screen. Software on your own device also listens for talking and tells us that speech was heard and for how long.
• What is kept. When your sitting ends we keep only the short clips around anything the software flagged, and destroy the rest, usually within a day. If nothing is flagged, no recording of your sitting is kept at all. Screen recordings can show exam questions, so nothing from them is copied into any other record.
• Identity check. Before the exam you show a government-issued ID and take a photo of yourself with our identity verification provider. Those images stay with the provider and are never uploaded to this platform; we receive the outcome of the check. As the exam opens, one picture from your camera is compared with your ID-check photo, and that picture is kept with the rest of the evidence from your sitting.
• Who looks. Recordings are looked at only when a sitting needs review, and every look is logged. No automated check can fail your exam: only a person can fail it for a supervision reason, and they must record why.
• When it is deleted. What we keep is deleted 30 days after your result and the close of the period for appealing it. What stays is the record of the check itself: that your identity was confirmed, what was decided, who decided it, and which version of our proctoring rules applied. It contains no images, and it is kept with your certificate record as the evidence that your exam was sat properly.
• Leaving the exam. Leaving the exam ends it. If you close the tab, go to another page or sign out, your exam is submitted as it stands and anything unanswered is marked incorrect; a person reviews every sitting that ends that way. Reloading the exam page is allowed, and is recorded. If you reload, the page has to open again within 90 seconds, or your exam is submitted as if you had left.
• Lost connection. If your connection or camera is lost for long enough that supervision stops, that sitting ends and does not count. It is not scored and is not treated as an attempt. You can sit a fresh exam at no cost.

Who else sees it

• Stripe. Payments are processed by Stripe. Your card number never reaches our servers: Stripe collects it directly and tells us that the payment succeeded. Your billing name and address stay with Stripe, under Stripe’s own privacy policy. We keep a record of what was bought, when and for how much, which tax law requires us to hold.
• Our identity verification provider, for the check before your exam, as described above.
• Our analytics provider, only if you accept analytics, as described above.
• Anyone with your certificate number. They can check it is genuine. The verification page shows your name, the certificate number, the program, and the issue and expiry dates. That is what the certificate itself shows, and nothing else.
• Your employer, if they bought your seat. Their roster shows your name, your email address, where you have got to (invited, on the course, or certificate issued, expiring or expired), the date they gave you the seat, and your certificate’s issue and expiry dates. It does not show your quiz answers, your exam answers, your score, or any image taken during your exam.
• Service providers. The companies that host this platform and deliver our email handle your information only to provide those services to us.

Otherwise we disclose your information only at your request, or where the law requires it.

How long we keep it

• Certificates. A certificate is valid for five years, and we must be able to confirm it is genuine for at least that long, so a certificate record outlives the course it came from.
• Exam recordings and images. 30 days, as above. They are the shortest-lived thing we hold.
• Payment records. Kept for six years from the end of the tax year, which is what tax law requires.
• Analytics. Kept for one year, and only if you accepted analytics.
• Course and exam records. Kept for several years after you finish, because a regulator or an appeal may need them. The exact period is set per course, and it is not yet confirmed for this one. It will be stated here, under a new policy version, before enrolment opens.

Your agreement, and changes to this policy

We ask you to agree to this policy when you create your account, and we record which version you agreed to and when. The version in force is shown beside this text.

Each version carries a date, and publishing a new one does not change what your record says you agreed to. A change to what we do with your information means we ask again: before you continue using your account, you are shown that the policy has changed and asked to agree to the version in force. An edit that does not change what we do, such as clearer wording, does not re-ask.

You can withdraw your agreement at any time. Withdrawal ends our ability to run your course or issue you a certificate. We keep the records we are required to keep, including a certificate already issued, and we will tell you which those are.

Your rights

The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is the federal law governing how private-sector organizations in Canada handle personal information. Under it you can:

• Get a copy. You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct it. To correct the name or email address we hold for you, write to us. Your name is the one checked against your photo ID before your exam, so we correct it against that ID rather than on request alone, and a certificate already issued keeps the name it was issued in.
• Complain. If you are not satisfied with how we answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Questions