Privacy

Every page here is a static file. There is no account to create, no form to fill in, and no part of the site that writes anything to your device.

Specifically:

The site is served by Cloudflare. Like any web server, Cloudflare's handles the request and logs the ordinary technical details of it: the IP address it came from, the page asked for, the time, and the browser's user-agent string.

We use that only to keep the site up, to see roughly how much traffic it gets, and to stop abuse. We do not use it to build a profile of you, and we do not try to work out who you are from it.

The site gives you three ways to reach us: email, phone and WeChat. Whatever you put in that message is what we have — usually a name, a way to reply, and what you are asking about.

We use it to answer you and to arrange a class. We do not add you to a mailing list, because we do not run one.

If we send you a trial-class form, it runs on Google Forms and the answers land in a spreadsheet only we can open.

It is deliberately short on the student. We ask for a first name and a grade. We do not ask for a surname, a date of birth, a home address, a school, or anything medical.

What it does ask about is the parent or guardian: a name, an email address, and a phone number or WeChat ID if you would rather we used one of those. Then what the student is interested in and when they are free.

Enrolling means signing our Participation Agreement. That paper collects the parent or guardian's name and signature, the student's name and signature, and the date.

Two things in it are worth repeating here. The lab has motion-activated security cameras at the entrance and inside the room, and none in the restrooms. And the agreement includes permission to photograph and record students for our educational and promotional use — the lab photographs on this site exist because of it.

The agreement is the document that governs any of this. If it and this page ever disagree, the agreement wins.

Our students are in grades 6 to 12. We do not ask children to contact us, register, or send us anything through this website, and there is nothing on it that would let them.

Everything runs through a parent or guardian: the inquiry, the form, the agreement, the payment, the scheduling. If you believe a child has sent us something we should not be holding, email us and we will delete it.

Job applications arrive as email, because our careers page asks for exactly that. An application usually contains a résumé, work samples and a note about availability.

We keep applications while the role is open and for a while after, in case something else comes up. Say the word and we will delete yours sooner.

Anyone we actually hire to work with students goes through a background check. That is run by a screening provider, who sees what the check needs and nothing about our students.

A short list of companies handle our information in the course of doing their job for us: the host that serves this site, the email provider that carries our mail, Google for the form and the spreadsheet behind it, and WeChat if that is how you chose to message us.

They process it on our behalf and under their own terms. Nobody else gets it, unless the law requires us to hand it over.

We have never sold personal information, we do not share it for anyone's advertising, and we are not going to start.

Inquiries that go nowhere are deleted once it is clear nothing is coming of them.

Records tied to an actual enrollment — the signed agreement, attendance, what we were paid — we keep for as long as we have to for our own tax and corporate records, which in practice means a number of years.

Security camera footage is overwritten on a rolling basis and kept only long enough to be useful after an incident.

Email us and ask. You can ask what we hold about you or your child, ask us to correct something that is wrong, ask for a copy, or ask us to delete it.

We will do it, and we will tell you when it is done. The one thing we cannot delete is a record we are legally required to keep, and we will say so plainly if that is the case.

The accounts holding this information use strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication. The site itself is served over HTTPS and has no database behind it to break into.

Only people who need it have access, and today that is a very short list.

No system is perfect. If something did go wrong in a way that put your information at risk, we would tell you.

We link to aryf.org, the foundation's own site. It runs on different software and has its own privacy policy, which governs your use of it.

WeChat, Google and any other service you use to reach us are run by other companies under their own policies. This page covers what we do with what arrives, and not what they do on their side.

We will change it when what we do changes, and the date at the top will move with it.

If a change matters — if we start collecting something we did not collect before — we will say so rather than leave you to spot it.