Privacy policy

Updated and Effective September 15, 2022

SwiftGrade (“SwiftGrade Platform”, “Platform” or “SwiftGrade”) is committed to maintaining the privacy of Teachers and Students. SwiftGrade complies with various Information and Privacy policy acts by protecting the privacy of personal information while providing individuals with a right of access to their own information. This compliance is inclusive but not limited to FIPPA, FOIPPA, PIPEDA, PIPA, GDPR, FERPA, and COPPA .

This compliance includes the following principles:

• Only the information that is really needed is collected
• The information is only used for the intended purpose.
• We do not sell your personal information to third parties.
• The User has the ability to see their personal information and correct it if it wrong.
• All Teacher and Student personal information and data is stored on Canadian servers
• If personal information is being transferred for processing by a third party processor:
  • i) it must only be used for the original purpose of processing
  • ii) the third party processor must provide an equivalent level of protection the data would have received if it remained with SwiftGrade.
  • iii) The third party does not store any personal information.
• We are transparent in how we handle personal information.
• Reasonable security measures are provided to protect personal information.
• We do not advertise on SwiftGrade. We use your information to provide you with a better learning experience, not to sell you products.

This Privacy policy describes Our policies and procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of your information when you use the SwiftGrade Platform and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. We use your Personal Data to provide and improve the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

1. Introduction

SwiftGrade is owned and operated by Educora Inc. (“Educora”, “us”, or “we”). SwiftGrade helps Teachers save time grading student assessments, and provides Teachers and Students with feedback on these assessments.

SwiftGrade may collect information known as “Personal Data,” “Personal Information,” or “personally identifiable information” (collectively “Personal Information”) when you use the SwiftGrade Platform.

SwiftGrade cares deeply about protecting the privacy of your Personal Information. We understand how important privacy is to you, and we are committed to creating a safe and secure online environment for Teachers and Students of all ages.

This policy has been provided for the teachers and school personnel (together, “Teachers”), their students (“Students”), and the parents or guardians of Students (“Parents”), all together known as a “user” or “you”, who use the SwiftGrade Platform so that we can inform them on the Personal Information we collect, how we use and disclose that information, and what we do to protect it.

By visiting or using our Platform, you consent to our information handling practices described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated by reference into and part of our Terms of Use.

2. Definition of Personal Information

Personal Information is any recorded information that can be used to identify or contact you as an individual. Examples include a person’s name, sex, age, or education. These examples are not exhaustive and many other kinds of information qualify as personal information.

3. Information provided to us

We take the information you provide to us very seriously, and we strive to put you in control of decisions around your information. Only the information that is really needed is collected. The information is not used for other (secondary) purposes, and if in the unlikely case it does, we will ask for the individuals consent

A) Teachers: In order to create an account or login to the SwiftGrade Platform, you must provide us with the Personal Information necessary to create your account. This includes information such as your first and last name, email address, school type and subject. We may also use your email address to send you product updates or other information that may be of interest to you.

If you subscribe to any paid Services on the Platform, your credit card information must be provided. SwiftGrade does not access to your payment information as all payment information is sent to our third-party payment processor, only for the purpose of billing. SwiftGrade thus maintains no record of your credit card information.

If you choose to provide it, we may collect any feedback, testimonials or comments you may provide to us about your use of the Platform.

B) Students Teacher’s can add students to their SwiftGrade class either by adding students themselves, or by providing students with a unique join code. In both situations, the only Student information that will be given to us is the student’s first name, last name and email address.

Students can not use or access SwiftGrade. If the teacher wishes, student names can be printed onto the answer sheets (called “Pre-Filled Answer Sheets”). Once the teacher scans the completed student answer sheets, the teacher has the option to email the students their results. If the teacher chooses to do so, the an email with the results will be sent to the address that the student was added to the class with.

All Student Personal Information is stored on Canadian servers.

We only use student personal information to know which student’s answer sheet is being scanned, report the student’s results to the teacher, and to email the results to the student. Student personal information is not used for any other (secondary) purpose other than indented as mentioned above.

We may also use non-personally-identifiable information to improve our Platform. SwiftGrade is not meant for children under the age of 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from these children. If it comes to our attention that we have unintentionally collected personal information from children under the age of 13, we will promptly delete that information.

If you allow Students under the age of 13 to use the SwiftGrade Platform, the Teacher is responsible for obtaining verifiable parental consent prior to allowing such Students to use the SwiftGrade Platform. SwiftGrade will otherwise fully manage its compliance obligations with COPPA.

SwiftGrade may require additional consent directly from Parents in addition to the consent and information provided by the applicable Teacher. When a Parent agrees to these Terms, the Parent will be associated with a particular Student, and by extension, with the Student’s Teachers. Teachers may use the Platform or your information from the Platform to communicate with you, as a Parent or Student, in connection with school-related matters and use of the Platform.

Students can parents can request to see their personal information and can make changes, or delete such information by either accessing the “My account” section of SwiftGrade or contacting us at hello@goswiftgrade.com.

4. Information We Collect Automatically

Like many other services, we may automatically collect the following information about your use of our Platform or Services through our servers and in log files: domain name; browser type and operating system; web pages viewed; links clicked; the length of time spent on our Platform; the length of time our Services are used; the referring URL, or the webpage that led a user to our Site; language information; device name and model; operating system type, name, and version; and activities within our Platform. We use this information to analyze trends, administer the Platform, gather demographic information about our user base as a whole, and better tailor our Services to our users’ needs. This automatically-collected data is not linked to Personal Data.

When you visit our Services, we may assign your computer one or more cookies, to facilitate access to our Services and to personalize your online experience. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user’s computer for record keeping purposes. Cookies can be either session cookies or persistent cookies. A session cookie expires when you close your browser and is used to make it easier for you to navigate our website. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. Through the use of a cookie, we may automatically collect information about your online activity on our Services, such as the pages you view and the links you click. Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies. If you choose to decline cookies, please note that you may not be able to sign in or use some of the interactive features offered on our Services.

We may also collect IP address, device identifier or a similar unique identifier from users of our Platform; we only use such identifiers to support the internal operations of our Platform in the same manner as described above.

5. How We May Use Your Personal Information

We may use information that we collect about you to:

• Create your account and deliver the Services
• Manage the Services and provide customer support
• Perform research and analysis about your use of our Services so we can improve them
• Develop and display content for the Services
• Enforce our Terms of Service
• Manage our business
• Perform functions as otherwise described to you at the time of collection.

SwiftGrade uses your Personal Information as directed by you to provide you with the SwiftGrade Platform features and services. SwiftGrade does not use your personal info for anything other than to successfully provide our services or contact you about upcoming features or necessary information such as student results. We do not sell or share your personal info for any reason except to provide your services. SwiftGrade does not market or advertise to students, and only contacts students on your behalf when you release feedback and results to them. You retain ownership and control of all Personal Information provided on the SwiftGrade Platform. SwiftGrade does not share or provide Personal Information with any third-parties except in the limited circumstances described in this Privacy Policy as set forth below:

A) Other SwiftGrade Users: Upon your initiation, we will disclose your information to other SwiftGrade users as part of our Services. For example, teachers will receive information about the students who have taken their assessments. This information may include the Student’s first and last name. Similarly, Students will receive information about their teachers, such as their username or assessments prepared by the teacher.

B) Service Providers: We may need to share minimally required personal information with our authorized service providers that perform certain services on our behalf. These services may include performing business functions or sales analysis and supporting our website functionality. Examples of such services would be to recognize and convert handwritten text into machine text so that it can be then graded by SwiftGrade. These service providers may have access to personal information needed to perform their functions but are not permitted to share or use such information for any other purposes and must adhere to confidentiality and security obligations in a way that is consistent with this Privacy Policy. We may use analytics services, to aid us in gaining understanding on how to improve our service.

C) Legal Compliance: We may disclose your information in order to comply with the law, regulation, a judicial proceeding, subpoena, court order, or other legal process, including informal law enforcement or governmental requests for information.

D) Business transfers: We may disclose your Personal Information to another entity if we are acquired by or merged with another company, if we sell or transfer a business unit or assets to another company, as part of a bankruptcy proceeding, or as part of any other similar business transfer. This Privacy Policy will persist to your Personal Information, and the entity would only have the power within this Policy (unless you give consent to a new policy). You can delete your account, or contact the new entity if you do not wish that yourIf you do not consent to the use of your Personal Information by such a successor company, you may request its deletion from the company.

E) Protecting Rights and Interests: We may disclose your information where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety any person, violations of our Terms and Conditions or this Privacy Policy, or as evidence in litigation in which we are involved. We may also disclose Personal information if we think it is necessary in good faith to protect the rights, property, or safety of SwiftGrade, our employees, our community, or others, or to prevent violations of our Terms of Service or other agreements.

F) Anonymous data: Where permitted by law, we may aggregate or anonymize data we collect to create Anonymous Data. Anonymous Data does not identify you individually. We may use this Anonymous Data for our own purposes, such as to better understand how users access and use our Services in order to improve our Services and respond to user desires and preferences, and for other research and analytical purposes. For example, we may collect data on handwriting recognition accuracy to improve our services.

We also may disclose Anonymous Data to third parties in order to meet these purposes. Aggregated or Anonymous Data will have all Personal Identifiers removed. This includes, but is not limited to, name, email, subject etc. Furthermore, SwiftGrade agrees not to attempt to re-identify Data and not to transfer de-identified Data to any party unless that party agrees not to attempt re-identification.

Sparing the above situations, we won’t disclose your Personal Information for any purpose unless you consent to it.

6. Security

SwiftGrade uses reasonable security safeguards to ensure the protection of personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. We protect your login information and the transmission of data using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.

SwiftGrade only works with 3 rd party providers that provide an equivalent level of protection the personal information would have received if it remained within SwiftGrade.

You should take steps to protect against unauthorized access to your password, phone, and computer by, among other things, signing off after using a shared computer, choosing a robust password that nobody else knows or can easily guess, and keeping your log-in and password private. We are not responsible for any lost, stolen, or compromised passwords or for any activity on your account via unauthorized password activity.

7. How We Protect Your Personal Information

We take security measures (including physical, electronic, and procedural measures) to help safeguard your personal information from unauthorized access and disclosure. We use SSL encryption on our application and signup forms. While on a secure page, such as our application page, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Firefox and Chrome becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when users are just ‘surfing’.

All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices and data centers. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, a customer service representative) are granted access to personal information. All employees are trained and kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Finally, the servers that store personal information are in a secure environment.

Although best efforts are made, SwiftGrade cannot guarantee security. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise the security of user information.

8. Accessing, Modifying or deleting Your Personal Information

You have several choices regarding our use of your Personal Information on our Services:

Modifying and Deleting Your Personal Data

• You may request a copy of the Personal Data SwiftGrade has about you.
• You may edit or delete any of the non-required information from your Personal Data through the profile page in the “My Account” section.
• You may request that we transfer your information to a third-party provider of services
• You may revoke your consent for the processing of your information
• You may request deletion of your Personal Data or your entire Account by contacting us at hello@goswiftgrade.com. Please note that the SwiftGrade Platform will not work properly without some Personal Information, so if your Personal Information is deleted, you may not be able to continue to use the Platform or all of its features.

9. Regulatory compliance:

We strive to comply with Canadian, Provincial, U.S, State, Federal, EU, and certain international regulations and privacy acts. This includes, but may not be limited to, FIPPA, FOIPPA, PIPEDA, PIPA, FERPA, COPPA, GDPR, and California AB 1584.

Different regions require extra precautions for creation of student accounts and handling of student data under certain ages. In the United States, COPPA requires extra restrictions for students under the age of 13. Similarly in many EU countries under GDPR, precautions are required under 13, 14, 15, or 16 years of age, depending on each country’s individual rules. Because of this, we take the same level of care to student accounts regardless of age or location.

All regions require similar standards for the collection, handling, disclosure and ability for the user to modify or delete information, which has been outlined through this policy.

If you are employed by a school or district subject to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”), you agree to appoint SWIFTGRADE as a “school official” as that term is defined in FERPA and as interpreted by the Family Policy Compliance Office, and determine that SWIFTGRADE has a “legitimate educational interest” for the purpose of delivering the Platform’s services in accordance with these Terms. SWIFTGRADE agrees that it will be bound by all relevant provisions of FERPA, including operating under the direct control of your school or district with respect to handling of “personally identifiable information” from “education records,” as those terms are defined in FERPA (together, “PII”).

For Canadian privacy acts (FIPPA, FOIPPA, PIPEDA, PIPA), in addition to the compliance mentioned above, note that SwiftGrade’s servers are located in Canada.

We highly recommend that you read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service to make sure that we adhere to your local regulatory needs.

9. Marketting communications

We do not send marketing emails or communications to Students, and we do not share Teacher or Student Personal Information with third parties for marketing purposes. If you decide to subscribe to receive updates from SwiftGrade, we will ask you to provide your first name and email address so that we may personalize our messages to you. In this case, we may send periodic promotional or informational emails to Teacher users about our services, products, or events. You may opt out of such communications by following the ‘un-subscribe’ instructions contained in the e-mail. If you opt out of receiving emails about recommendations or other information we think may interest you, we may still send you administrative e-mails about your account; For example – a password change notice.

10. Closing your account

Your Personal Information is kept as long as you have an active account with SwiftGrade You may close your account at any time, and if you do we will delete your Personal Information associated with the account.

11. DNT option for California Residents

Some browsers offer a “do not track” or “DNT” option. This DNT option depends on a technology known as a DNT header, which sends a signal to web sites visited by the user about the user’s browser DNT preference setting. SwiftGrade does not track its users over time and across third-party websites and does not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals.

12. No rights of third parties

This Privacy Policy does not create rights enforceable by third parties or require disclosure of any personal information relating to users of the Services.

13. Updates to this Privacy Policy

SwiftGrade will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect customer feedback and changes in our practices and Services. We will notify you of changes, and we will revise the “Last Updated” date at the top of this Privacy Policy.

14. Contact Information