This policy explains how ClassTogether (classtogether.net) processes the personal data of teachers who use it and of students who join a lesson. It is written to meet the information duties of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, Articles 13 and 14) and the UK GDPR; it also applies to users elsewhere.
1. Who is responsible
Controller: [COMPANY / FULL NAME]
Address: [ADDRESS]
Company registration / tax number: [REGISTRATION NO.]
Contact: the contact form, or in writing to the address above.
A student's data inside a lesson (name, answers) is processed to run that teacher's lesson. A teacher who uses ClassTogether on behalf of a school or an organisation should note that the school or organisation may be a controller of that data in its own right.
2. In short
- From teachers we keep only what the account needs (name, e-mail address, password) and the lesson content they upload.
- Students do not create accounts; they join a lesson by typing a name. A nickname is fine.
- Data is stored on Amazon Web Services in the United States; see section 7 for what that means for users in the EU and the UK.
- Students' answers are deleted automatically after a set period; the periods are in section 8.
- There is no advertising, no profiling, no sale of data and no tracking cookie.
- A teacher can download a copy of their data and delete their account at any time (the My account page).
3. Teachers' data
| Data | What for |
|---|---|
| Name, e-mail address, password | Creating the account, signing in, resetting the password. We cannot read the password; the sign-in service (Amazon Cognito) stores only a one-way hash of it. |
| Lesson content: courses, presentations (PDF, Marp), pictures, quizzes, survey templates, files for students; the address of a git repository a course was imported from | Teaching the lesson and showing it to students; re-importing a course from its repository on request. |
| Classroom details: join code, projector key, the open deck and slide, the timer, the lesson's settings (hints, virtual teacher, AI questions) | Connecting students and the projector to the right room. |
| Usage details: last activity, daily counts of lessons, slides, quizzes and students, storage used, the list of played quizzes | Running the service, planning capacity and cost, noticing abuse. |
| The version of the terms and of this policy you accepted, and when | Being able to show that the terms were accepted. |
| Messages sent through the contact form | Answering questions and requests. |
4. Students' data
Students do not create accounts; no e-mail address, phone number or password is asked for. To join a lesson, only the join code shown by the teacher and a name the student types are used.
| Data | Who sees it |
|---|---|
| Display name (the name or nickname the student typed), the animal icon chosen for a quiz | The lesson's teacher; during a quiz the name and score are also shown to the class (the board, the ranking, the podium). |
| Quiz answers, response times, scores and rank | The lesson's teacher. The student sees their own result and the class ranking. |
| Course-wide leaderboard: name and total score | The lesson's teacher and the class. |
| Yes/no votes, end-of-course survey answers, energy-meter levels, "following the teacher" and "finished the exercise" marks, hints taken on an exercise slide | The lesson's teacher; anonymous. These are kept against a random browser identifier, not the name. We suggest not writing personal details into free-text survey answers. |
| A question typed for the AI helper, together with the text of the open slide | Sent to the AI provider to produce the answer and shown to that student only; neither the question nor the answer is stored by us. The teacher sees only the number of questions asked. |
Students' data is shared only with that lesson's teacher and, as described above, with the class. It is not used for advertising or any other purpose.
5. Technical data
- IP address. Processed by the Amazon Web Services infrastructure to deliver every request. To prevent abuse (rate limits, lockouts after repeated wrong codes) it is kept only as an irreversible hash, for at most 24 hours.
- Error logs. When the server fails, the requested address and the error details are logged; these logs are kept for 30 days. If the error-reporting service (Sentry) is switched on, the technical details of server errors (error type and message, requested address) are also sent to Sentry, without a name, e-mail address, IP address or submitted content. The pages themselves carry no error-reporting or analytics tool.
- Connection records. An open lesson connection (which room, student or teacher) is kept while the connection lasts, for at most 3 hours.
6. Purposes and legal bases
| Purpose | Legal basis (GDPR Article 6(1)) |
|---|---|
| Creating the teacher's account and providing the service (lessons, quizzes, classroom tools, content) | (b) performance of a contract with the teacher |
| A student joining the teacher's lesson; showing their answers and scores to the teacher | (f) legitimate interests: running a lesson the student chose to join, with minimal data (a name only) and short retention periods |
| Answering a student's question with the AI helper | (f) legitimate interests: the student asked; nothing is stored |
| Security, preventing abuse, fixing errors, usage statistics | (f) legitimate interests |
| Recording accepted terms, requests and administrator actions | (f) legitimate interests in establishing and defending legal claims; (c) legal obligations |
| Answering lawful requests from public authorities | (c) compliance with a legal obligation |
No processing relies on consent. We do not ask for special-category data (health, religion, biometrics and the like) and ask teachers not to request it in quizzes or surveys.
7. Where it is stored, who receives it
Storage location and international transfers. All data is stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United States: the database (Amazon DynamoDB), files (Amazon S3), teacher accounts (Amazon Cognito) and server-side processing (AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway). For users in the EU, the EEA and the UK this is a transfer of personal data to a third country. It is covered by the European Commission's and the UK's adequacy decisions for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the UK Extension, to which AWS is certified, and by the standard contractual clauses in AWS's data processing addendum.
Processors. AWS for hosting and for sending e-mail verification codes; Anthropic, PBC for the AI helper (it receives the student's question and the open slide's text, nothing else, and only when the teacher switched the helper on); Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry), if switched on, for server error reports that contain no personal data. Processors act only on our behalf and on our instructions.
Sharing with others. Students' data is shared with the lesson's teacher and, in a quiz, the name and score with the class. Beyond that, data is disclosed only to public authorities where the law requires it. We do not sell data and do not share it with advertising networks.
8. How long we keep it
| Data | For how long |
|---|---|
| Teacher account and all its content | While the account exists. Deleting the account deletes it at once (account, content, files, classroom and quiz data). |
| The list of played quizzes (quiz title, date, number of players and answers) | While the account exists, at most 400 days |
| A quiz's working data: players, answers, scores | Deleted 2 days after the quiz started |
| Quiz response log (student name, answer, timing) | 180 days |
| Course-wide leaderboard (name, total score) | Until the teacher resets it, deletes the course or closes the account |
| Yes/no questions and votes | 365 days |
| End-of-course surveys and answers | 365 days |
| The energy meter's per-minute class average | 24 hours |
| A student's current energy level, open connections | When the connection closes, at most 3 hours |
| Whether a student is following the teacher | At most 2 minutes |
| The "finished the exercise" mark during an exercise | At most 12 hours |
| Highlights the teacher drew on a slide | 24 hours |
| Contact-form messages and data requests | 730 days (2 years) |
| Administrator action records (for example suspending or deleting an account; including the account's e-mail address) | 730 days (2 years), even after the account is deleted |
| A short record of a deleted account (to close its open sessions) | 2 days |
| IP address hash | At most 24 hours |
| Server error logs | 30 days |
| Database backups | Up to 35 more days in backups |
Expired records are removed by the database's automatic expiry. It runs in the background, so deletion happens within a few days after the period ends.
9. Your rights and how to use them
Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR you have the right to:
- access the personal data we hold about you and receive a copy (Article 15),
- have inaccurate data corrected (Article 16),
- have your data erased (Article 17),
- have processing restricted (Article 18),
- receive the data you provided in a portable format (Article 20),
- object to processing based on legitimate interests (Article 21),
- not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that has legal or similarly significant effects on you (Article 22); we make no such decisions,
- lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: in the EU, the authority of the country where you live or work; in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office.
Teachers: do it yourself
After signing in, the My account page lets you download a copy of your data (a JSON file), correct your name and delete your account with all its data. Deletion cannot be undone.
Requests
For everything else, choose "Request about my personal data" on the contact form, or write to [ADDRESS]. If you send the form while signed in as a teacher, the request is linked to your account. Because students have no account, please tell us the join code or the teacher's name, the name you used in the lesson and roughly when it took place, so that we can find your data. We may ask for more details to confirm your identity.
We answer requests free of charge within 30 days (the GDPR allows one month, extendable by two months for complex requests; we will tell you if that is needed).
10. Cookies and browser storage
ClassTogether uses no cookies. The details the service needs to work, such as your sign-in, your join code and the name you typed, are kept in the browser's own storage (localStorage, sessionStorage) and stay on your device. The details are on the cookies and browser storage page.
11. Security
Connections are encrypted (HTTPS, WSS). The database and the files are stored encrypted on AWS; files are reached only through short-lived signed links. Teacher passwords are kept as one-way hashes. Only the people and systems needed to run the service can access the data.
12. Children
Students join a lesson without an account and without giving an e-mail address, phone number or date of birth; the only personal data is the name they type, and a nickname is fine. ClassTogether is not directed at children outside a lesson run by a teacher. Where a school uses ClassTogether with pupils under the age at which they can consent to online services themselves, the school is responsible for having the necessary basis to do so; we do not knowingly collect any other data from children, and we delete a child's data on request from a parent, guardian or school.
13. Changes
When this policy changes we publish the new version on this page with its date. Teachers are shown the new version at their first sign-in after the change and asked to accept it.