Why We Use Tracking Technologies

Think of tracking technologies as small pieces of code that live in your browser and communicate with our servers. They store bits of information—like your login status or course progress—so you don't have to re-enter everything each time you visit. These technologies range from simple text files to sophisticated scripts that monitor how you navigate through lessons and interact with quizzes.

Some tracking is absolutely necessary for our platform to work at all. When you log into your student account, we need to remember who you are as you move between course pages. Without this essential tracking, you'd be logged out every few seconds, making online learning impossible. Similarly, when you add a course to your cart, we track that selection so it's still there when you proceed to checkout.

Analytics help us understand patterns in how students use our platform. We track which lessons get replayed most often (usually the challenging ones), where students tend to drop off in a course, and which types of quiz questions cause the most difficulty. This data doesn't identify you personally—we're looking at aggregated trends that inform how we design better educational content. Maybe we notice everyone struggles with the same concept, so we add more explanatory videos or practice problems.

We also use targeting technologies to customize what content appears on your dashboard. If you've been taking several business courses, we might highlight related programs in entrepreneurship or management. This isn't random advertising—it's about surfacing educational opportunities that align with your demonstrated interests. The recommendations get smarter as we learn more about your learning journey, helping you discover courses you might not have found otherwise.

Here's the real benefit: all this collected information creates a feedback loop that improves education for everyone. When we see that interactive coding exercises lead to better retention than passive video watching, we invest more in developing hands-on learning tools. Your anonymized usage patterns contribute to making online education more effective and engaging for future students.

Managing Your Preferences

You're not locked into accepting all tracking—regulations like GDPR and CCPA give you significant control over your data. Every browser includes built-in tools to manage these technologies, and we provide our own preference center where you can fine-tune what's allowed on our platform specifically.

Safari takes a more aggressive stance by default, blocking most trackers automatically through Intelligent Tracking Prevention. You can review these settings under Preferences, then Privacy, where you'll see options to prevent cross-site tracking and hide your IP address from known trackers. Edge users should check Settings, then Privacy, Search, and Services for comparable controls—Microsoft has been adding more privacy features recently.

On the Hriftino Qoslamos platform itself, look for the "Privacy Preferences" link in your account settings. We've organized options by category: strictly necessary (which you can't disable because the site won't function), functional enhancements, analytics, and personalization. Disabling analytics means we can't track how you use the platform, but you lose personalized course recommendations. Turning off functional trackers might reset your video speed and caption preferences every session—annoying but doable if privacy is your priority.

Some students worry that restricting tracking will break the learning platform entirely. In reality, you'll mostly lose convenience features and customization. Course content remains accessible, videos still play, and you can complete assignments—you just might need to reconfigure your preferences more often. The one exception is login functionality, which requires basic session tracking to work at all.

Third-party tools like Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin offer another layer of control by blocking trackers across all websites you visit, not just ours. These browser extensions maintain lists of known tracking domains and prevent them from loading automatically. Just be aware that aggressive blocking can sometimes interfere with embedded content like discussion forums or third-party quiz tools that we've integrated into our courses.

Finding the right balance depends on your priorities. If you value seamless, personalized learning experiences, allowing functional and analytical tracking makes sense. But if privacy concerns outweigh convenience, you can lock things down and deal with occasional friction. There's no wrong answer—just different trade-offs depending on what matters most to you.

External Providers

Running a modern education platform means partnering with specialized companies that handle specific functions better than we could in-house. We work with video hosting services that deliver lectures smoothly across different internet speeds, payment processors that securely handle transactions, and analytics providers that help us understand user behavior. Each partner receives only the data necessary for their specific function—nothing more.

When you watch a course video, our content delivery network partner collects your IP address, device type, and viewing behavior to optimize streaming quality. Payment processors see your transaction details and billing information but not your course progress or quiz scores. Analytics partners receive anonymized behavioral data—they know someone watched a marketing lecture for 47 minutes but not who that person is.

You can opt out of certain partner tracking through their own privacy settings. Many analytics providers offer browser extensions that exclude your data from their systems entirely. For advertising partners (if we display any promotional content), you can visit industry opt-out pages that let you refuse tracking from hundreds of companies at once. We try to work with partners who respect these preferences, even if it means our data becomes less complete.

We put several safeguards in place before allowing any external provider access. Partners must sign data processing agreements that legally bind them to protect your information. We limit data sharing to the minimum required—often using anonymization or pseudonymization so partners never see identifying details. And we regularly audit partners to confirm they're following security protocols and honoring the terms of our agreements.

Alternative Technologies

Beyond standard browser storage, we use several other methods to collect information about platform usage. Web beacons—tiny transparent images embedded in course pages—tell us when you've loaded a particular lesson or opened an email notification. They're usually one-pixel GIFs that trigger a request to our servers when displayed, letting us track engagement without requiring interactive elements.

Local storage and session storage are like enhanced versions of traditional methods, capable of holding larger amounts of data directly in your browser. We might store your entire course syllabus in local storage so it loads instantly without server requests, or keep your draft assignment responses in session storage so they survive browser crashes. Local storage persists until explicitly deleted, while session storage clears when you close your browser tab.

Our server logs automatically record basic information about every request your browser makes: the page URL, your IP address, timestamp, and browser type. These logs help us troubleshoot technical problems, detect security threats, and understand traffic patterns. They're stored separately from your user account and typically deleted after 90 days unless needed for investigating specific issues.

Managing these alternative technologies requires different approaches. For web beacons, most ad-blocking extensions will prevent the tiny images from loading. Local and session storage can be cleared through your browser's developer tools or privacy settings—look for options to "clear site data" or "manage storage." Device fingerprinting is harder to block without specialized browser configurations or privacy-focused browsers like Brave or Tor, which randomize the identifying characteristics.

Supplementary Terms

We don't hold onto tracking data forever—retention periods vary based on what the information is used for. Session data disappears when you log out or after 24 hours of inactivity, whichever comes first. Analytics data gets aggregated and anonymized after 26 months, then the original detailed records are deleted. Marketing preference data persists until you change your settings or close your account, at which point everything gets wiped within 30 days.

Security measures protecting this data include encryption both in transit and at rest, access controls that limit which employees can view tracking information, and regular security audits by external firms. Our systems are designed to separate identifying information from behavioral data whenever possible—your name and email live in one database, your course viewing patterns in another, and they're only linked when necessary to provide specific services.

Compliance with education-specific regulations like FERPA (in the US) and additional GDPR requirements for educational institutions shapes our entire approach. We treat student data with extra care, recognizing that educational records deserve special protection. This means more stringent access controls, longer audit trails, and additional review before sharing any information with partners or third parties.

We don't currently use automated decision-making that significantly impacts your access to education. No algorithms automatically reject your enrollment or limit your course access based on tracked behavior. If that ever changes—say we introduced an AI system that automatically places students in different difficulty levels—we'd provide clear information about the logic involved and offer ways to request human review of any automated decisions.

Policy Revisions

This tracking technology information gets reviewed quarterly by our legal and product teams to ensure accuracy as we add new features or adjust our technical infrastructure. Whenever significant changes occur—like introducing a new analytics provider or substantially changing how we use tracking data—we update this document and notify active users through email and prominent dashboard announcements.

You can review the change history by checking the "Last Updated" date at the bottom of this page, and we maintain an archive of previous versions in your account settings under "Privacy History." Major revisions include a summary at the top explaining what changed and why, making it easier to spot relevant updates without reading the entire document again.

Changes typically take effect 30 days after notification for existing users, giving you time to review updates and adjust your preferences if needed. For new users joining after an update, the revised terms apply immediately upon account creation. If we ever make changes that require additional consent—like using tracking data for fundamentally different purposes—we'll ask for your explicit approval before the changes take effect.