Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Thank you for choosing StepsWeb ("we," "us," or "our"). This comprehensive Privacy Policy is designed to provide a detailed understanding of how we collect, use, disclose, and protect your personal information. By accessing or using our services, you agree to the terms outlined in this policy.

For this document, an “Educator” is defined as a parent and/or teacher user on a StepsWeb account.

1. Types of Personal Information Collected and Held

We may collect and hold various types of personal information, depending on your relationship with us.  You may fit under multiple categories.

 

As a StepsWeb Educator:

Contact information about StepsWeb Educators will be visible to other Educators who share the same school account.

 

Contact information

Purpose of holding that information:

  1. Identity validation to enable you to log into the programme as an educator.
  2. Enable us to manage our interactions with you.
  3. Enable us to send confirmations of orders and/or changes to your account.

Origin of information:

Supplied by you when you create your account on StepsWeb.

 

Usage data analytics

Purpose:

Helps us understand which parts of the product are used and how.  It helps us make decisions such as the types and ages of devices we need to support, or which features are important to customers so we can plan future updates.

Origin:

Automatically collected as you use our services.

 

Details about your school/organisation

Purpose:

  1. Accounting.
  2. Billing and shipping details for orders.
  3. Identity validation.

Origin:

Supplied by you when you create a School account on StepsWeb.

Payment and transaction details

Purpose:

Record of purchases.

Origin:

Collected during purchases.  Note that credit card details are never stored.

 

As a StepsWeb student user:

A student’s personal data is supplied by an Educator on the same account.  Pseudonyms can be used if desired.

Information about StepsWeb students is available to Educators on the same account.

 

Full name

Purpose:

Shown to the user when they log in and is always visible in the title bar.  This allows teachers to easily confirm that the student is logged into their own account.  It is also visible to Educators when viewing learning data.

Origin:

Supplied by Educator.

 

Email address (optional)

Purpose:

  1. Allows the student to log in with their email/password, rather than username/password.
  2. SSO account pairing.  If a student uses one of the “Sign in with…” options, then StepsWeb may automatically pair existing accounts with matching email addresses.

Origin:

Supplied by Educator.

 

Date of birth (optional)

Purpose:

  1. Allows StepsWeb to adjust their recommended usage based on the difference between the student’s chronological age and their spelling age.
  2. Used to generate reports for Educators showing comparisons between chronological age and spelling age.

Origin:

Supplied by Educator.

 

Usage data analytics

Purpose:

Helps us understand which parts of the product are used and how.  It helps us make decisions such as the types and ages of devices we need to support, or which features are important to customers so we can plan future updates.

Origin:

Automatically collected as you use our services.

 

Learning activity records

Purpose:

  1. Allows teachers to track the learning outcomes of students.
  2. Used by StepsWeb to record which content students have already completed.

Origin:

Collected as students complete learning activities within StepsWeb.

 

Spelling age

Purpose:

  1. Used by StepsWeb in conjunction with chronological age to recommend minimum usage.
  2. Reporting to Educators so they can see how their students are performing in relation to their chronological age.

Origin:

Determined by the student’s usage within StepsWeb, and/or via the Placement Test.

 

As a website visitor:

We do not disclose visitor information to anyone outside our organisation.

 

Contact Information

Purpose:

  1. Personalised greetings on correspondence.
  2. Used to correlate our interactions with you.

Origin:

Form submissions.

 

Email address

Purpose:

  1. Used to correlate our interactions with you.
  2. Used to send information that you have opted into, such as webinar or newsletter signups.

Origin:

Form submissions.

 

Usage data and analytics

Purpose:

  1. It helps us understand if our website is easy to use and if it contains relevant information.
  2. It helps us make decisions such as the types and ages of devices we need to support, or which features are important to customers so we can plan future updates.

 

In addition to above, if you contact us directly then we may collect:

 

Contact information

Purpose:

Used to manage our interactions with you.

Origin:

Supplied by you when contacting us.

 

Correspondence records

Purpose:

Provides context for future contact.  For example, negotiation of sales that take place between different staff members.

Origin:

Supplied by you when contacting us.

When you contact us, we may collect:
-    Correspondence
-    Contact information

 

2. Consent to collect children’s information

Student accounts are typically created by teachers, school administrators or parents. By creating student accounts on StepsWeb, teachers/parents provide consent and authorisation for StepsWeb to store and process personal data about those children.

 

3. Access and Correction of Personal Information

StepsWeb Educator Personal Information

Educators may request access to and correction of their own personal information.  Please make any request via email, using the same address that you use for your StepsWeb account.  Requests can be made to info@stepsweb.com.

 

StepsWeb Student Personal Information

Student data may be requested by Educators on the same account.  It may also be requested by associated professions, such as specialist teachers supporting that account.  However, in those cases, we require verification from the account owner that this person has the account owner’s permission to access the student’s data.

If, as an Educator, you want to make a request for information from us, please make the request via email, using the same address that you use for your StepsWeb account.

Students themselves, or guardians of those students, must request information from an Educator on that account.   They can only request information directly from us with verified permission from an account Educator.   This information is limited to their own personal information and does not include information about any other student on the account.

 

Non-StepsWeb Personal Information

Upon verifying your identity, you may request access and correction of your personal information via email to info@stepsweb.com.

 

4. Sharing information with third parties

We do not sell student or user personal information, and do not release personal information collected or received to any unrelated third parties for promotional purposes.  We may, however, share aggregated product usage data with unrelated third parties, and share personal information only as described below:

 

Service Providers

We may share your information with our service providers—that is, organizations providing services to support StepsWeb functions, such as our hosting services provider, mail and email processing providers, payment processing providers, and research and support providers. All such service providers are bound by contract to refrain from using the personal information we collect from you for any purpose other than providing the specified services to StepsWeb.

In our commitment to privacy and tailored experiences, HubSpot tracking is specifically employed for teacher interactions, not students, ensuring a focused educational environment free from monitoring. For site and login analytics, Google Analytics is used, excluding the app post-login to safeguard student privacy. Additionally, Datadog supports our system's reliability and performance, without involving personal data, maintaining a secure and efficient service for all users.

 

Distribution Partners

If we have a distribution partnership with a company for your region, then we may disclose information to them for sales and support purposes.

 

5. Data Sub-Processors

AWS
Website: https://aws.amazon.com
Purpose: They provide the infrastructure for StepsWeb to operate, and host all of our data including all personal data. All data stored and processed on AWS is in Australia and under Australian Law. All data stores are encrypted. AWS meets ISO 27001 (Information Security Standard), ISO 27017 (Cloud Security), ISO 27701 (Privacy and information Management), ISO 27018 (Cloud Privacy) and others that can be seen at: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-protection/

Google Analytics
Website: https://analytics.google.com
Purpose: They provide metrics on customer facing website and login page. We do not track students inside the app, and they do not store any Personally identifiable information (PII). Google states that all data is collected at a local datacentre and anonymised, before being processed and stored at a different and possibly international datacentre, this meets GDPR and EU regulations.

Datadog
Website: https://www.datadog.com
Purpose:  Datadog is a monitoring and analytics tool for DevOps teams that can be used to determine performance metrics as well as Event monitoring for infrastructure and the web application. All personal information is obscured from any logs that it processes, and all data is stored encrypted. Logs data is stored in the US, and falls under US laws. Datadog has ISO 27701 (Privacy and Information Management), ISO 27001 (Information Security Standard) more information on their privacy can be found at: https://www.datadoghq.com/privacy/

 

6. Complaints about Privacy Breaches

If you wish to make a complaint about any privacy issues to do with StepsWeb or, if you are unhappy about anything contained in this Privacy Policy, you can file a complaint by contacting us at info@stepsweb.com. We will promptly investigate and address your concerns.

 

7. Changes to Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices. We will notify users of any material changes through the appropriate channels.
For any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact us at info@stepsweb.com.

 

Contact

The best way to contact us is by email at one of the following email addresses:

info@stepsweb.com
technical@stepsweb.com

Our postal address is:

The Learning Staircase Ltd
PO Box 582
Rangiora 7440
New Zealand