The Hedy Team understands how important privacy is to our community, especially kids and parents. We wrote this Privacy Policy to explain what information we collect through our website, how we use, process, and share it, and what we're doing to keep it safe. It also tells you about your rights and choices with respect to your information, and how you can contact us if you have any questions or concerns.
For the purpose of this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual, such as your year of birth or your gender.
In order to save programs, join classes, or share programs, you need to make an account. During account creation, we ask you for a username, your country, birth year, gender and your email address (or your parent or guardian's email address if you are under 16 years old). You are not required to share any of the above information with the exception of a username. We ask that you select a username that does not disclose your real name or other information that could identify you. Other users can see your username and country, but not your age, gender, or email address.
We collect any information that you provide to us when you create Hedy projects (including unshared projects).
When you use Hedy, we collect information about you and your device through automated means, such as cookies and web server logs. By using Hedy, you consent to the placement of cookies and similar technologies in your browser in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
The information collected in this manner includes your what browser you are using and operating system version, language preferences, and information about the usage of Hedy, such as the code examples you select and the error messages you see. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, most browsers allow you to automatically decline cookies or be given the choice of declining or accepting the transfer to your computer of a particular cookie (or cookies) from a particular site. You may also wish to refer to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html. If, however, you do not accept cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of Hedy.
We use Personal Information for internal and Site-related purposes, including to operate, provide, and maintain the Hedy. For example. we might look at an error message that many children get, and then investigate whether older kids are less likely to see this error. We can use this type of information to make Hedy better in the future, for example in research studies intended to improve our understanding of how people learn with Hedy. The results of this research are shared with educators and researchers through conferences, journals, and other publications.
We may send emails to an email address you provide to us for customer-service or technical-support purposes, to send you information about topics or content that we think may interest you, or updates about the latest developments or features on the Site. We may also send a newsletter to the email address you provide to us if you subscribe to receive the newsletter.
In accordance to rules applying in the European Union, we only process your Personal Information based on a valid legal ground, including when:
You have consented to the use of your Personal Information, for example, to receive electronic marketing communications; We need your Personal Information to provide our services, including for account registration, to respond to your inquiries, or for customer support; We have a legal obligation to use your Personal Information; or We have a legitimate interest in using your Personal Information. In particular, we have a legitimate interest in using your Personal Information to personalize our services and provide you with tailored content, conduct analytics, and otherwise improve the safety, security, and performance of our Site.
We disclose information that we collect through the Site to third parties only if you have explicitly given us permission to do so on account creation, or if we are required to do so by law.
You can update your password, email address, and country through the Account Settings page. You can also reset your password through the Account Reset page. You cannot change your username, but you can make a new account and manually copy your projects to the new account. If you want to delete your account, login to Hedy, and then click your username in the top right-hand corner. Select "My personal settings" then click the "Delete account permanently" button. Deleting your account hides all information from public view, but does not remove all of your information from our servers. If you want to have all of your information removed from our servers, please contact hello@hedy.org for assistance.
If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to receive our newsletter, please follow the unsubscribe instructions provided in any of the newsletters.
In certain jurisdictions, you have the right to request access and receive information about the Personal Information we maintain about you, to update and correct inaccuracies in your Personal Information, to restrict or object to the processing of your Personal Information, to have the information blocked, anonymized, or deleted, as appropriate, or to exercise your right to data portability to easily transfer your Personal Information to another company. Those rights may be limited in some circumstances by local law requirements. In addition to the above-mentioned rights, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority subject to applicable law. Where required by law, we obtain your consent for the processing of certain Personal Information collected by cookies or similar technologies, or when we carry out other processing activities for which consent may be required. If we rely on consent for the processing of your Personal Information, you have the right to withdraw it at any time and free of charge. When you do so, this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before your consent withdrawal. To update your preferences, ask us to remove your information from our mailing lists, or submit a request to exercise your rights under applicable law, please contact us as specified in the “How to Contact Us” section below.
We take measures to delete your Personal Information or keep it in a form that does not allow you to be identified when this information is no longer necessary for the purposes for which we process it, unless we are required by law to keep this information for a longer period. When determining the retention period, we take into account various criteria, such as the type of services requested by or provided to you, the nature and length of our relationship with you, possible re-enrolment with our services, the impact on the services we provide to you if we delete some information from or about you, mandatory retention periods provided by law and the statute of limitations.
The Hedy Team has in place administrative, physical, and technical procedures that are intended to protect the information we collect on the Hedy website against accidental or unlawful destruction, accidental loss, unauthorized alteration, unauthorized disclosure or access, misuse, and any other unlawful form of processing of the Personal Information in our possession. For example, we use SSL/TLS for all data transfer and strictly limit access to the Hedy servers and the data we store on them. However, as effective as these measures are, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot completely guarantee the security of our databases, nor can we guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet.
We review our security measures and Privacy Policy on a periodic basis, and we may modify our policies as appropriate. If we make significant changes, we will notify you through the Site. We encourage you to review our Privacy Policy on a regular basis. The “Last Updated” date at the bottom of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Your continued use of the Site following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.
Hedy is based in the Netherlands but relies on services around the world. Information that we collect may be transferred to, and stored at, any of our service providers which may be inside or outside the European Economic Area, including the United States. By submitting your personal data, you agree to such transfers.
Please do not share personal contact information (such as your name, physical address, email address, or phone number) in code.
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is the entity responsible for the processing of your Personal Information. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or if you would like to exercise your rights to your Personal Information, you may contact us at f.f.j.hermans@vu.nl
Last updated: December 2022