Privacy and trust
Student data privacy is an important issue for teachers, parents, administrators and learners. It is for Hāpara as well. In fact, Hāpara was founded to help educators make the best use of cloud tools in a safe, secure and trusted online environment.
Hāpara is CIPA, COPPA AND FERPA compliant.
This toolkit outlines the ways that we protect the privacy of your learners, and answers a few of the questions that you may have as a Hāpara user. You’ll learn about our principles, practices and commitment to protecting learner privacy.
We’re here to help if you have other questions, because student privacy is a top priority for us. Feel free to reach out to trust@hapara.com if you need more information or have a question that we haven’t covered here.
Best wishes,
Hāpara Trust & Safety Team
Hāpara proudly serves over 2.2M learners in more than 40 countries.
The educators and learners who use Hāpara products inform the growth and direction of those products, and trust is essential to them. This trust comes from knowing that privacy is built into Hāpara’s products. Trust is the basis of our strong relationship with our schools, and has been since 2010 when we started at Point England School in New Zealand.
Our policies and practices are described in our Privacy policy. We have tried to make our Privacy policy clear and easy to understand, but we know that many of these issues are complicated. To make things easier, we put together a summary of some key aspects of what we do and don’t do with user information. We hope you will share them with teachers, administrators, parents and learners.
What we DO:
- Collect limited personal information from users (for learners, this is first name, last name and school-provided G Suite email address).
- Require learners and teachers to have G Suite accounts set up by the school.
- Help some schools create those Google accounts.
- Use HTTPS (SSL) to protect our entire site.
- Disclose clearly in our Privacy policy what learner information we collect, and the limited ways that information is used or shared with third parties (e.g., to understand how we can improve our products).
- Maintain a comprehensive security program – made up of administrative, technical and physical safeguards – that is designed to protect learner information.
- Gather information about which parts of our software are used and by whom, to improve that software for users.
- Appoint our CTO as our Chief Privacy Officer, to ensure all departments are accountable to the Chief Privacy Officer.
- Regularly hire security professionals to test our systems as hackers would.
What we DON’T do:
- Collect, use or disclose sensitive learner information, such as social security numbers or home addresses; all that’s asked for from learners is a first and last name.
- Sell or rent user information to third parties.
- Interact with GPS or camera functions on learner devices.
- Collect, use or share learner information for non-educational purposes.
- Retain and utilize user information after a school cancels their subscription. Users own their own data, not Hāpara.
- Permit individuals not affiliated with a school or Hāpara Technical Support to access or view information about a learner.
- Permit individuals not affiliated with a school to communicate with learners.
- Provide a new way for learners to send private communications to other learners.
- Make material changes to our privacy policy without first providing users with notice and allowing them choices.
Frequently asked questions
What is Hāpara?
Hapara’s web-based tools facilitate cloud-based learning.
- Hāpara Workspace structures learning projects, and helps teachers and students to organize groups, resources, goals and evidence.
- Hāpara Student Dashboard is a one-stop hub for students to access all of their Google Drive files, Workspaces, Gmail, Google Classroom assignments and notifications.
- Hāpara Teacher Dashboard helps teachers to access learner work in Google Drive.
- Hāpara Highlights helps teachers supervise and understand the work being done on Chromebooks. Teachers can open and close tabs, message students and see open tabs and screenshots.
Are my students’ information safe on Hāpara?
Protecting student privacy and safety are paramount to Hāpara. Students’ work is kept in Google Drive, not in Hāpara’s systems, and so are protected by Google’s comprehensive security and privacy plans. Workspaces are kept on Hāpara’s servers, protected by our security and privacy plan. We don’t collect information we don’t need, and we only use it for the purpose for which it was gathered (such as customer support, or provisioning student accounts).
Who can see a student’s information?
Hāpara takes great care to ensure that only the school and students themselves can grant access to the online work of students. Only teachers of a class, the IT administrator of the school, or Hāpara’s Support staff acting under instruction from the IT administrator of the school, can use Hāpara products and grant access to others.
What safeguards does my school have?
Hāpara schools and districts have access to extensive controls across Hāpara Teacher Dashboard, Highlights, Workspace and Student Dashboard. The school or district can enable or disable entire features, manage the hours and networks on which they can be used and which teachers have access to the work done by students. Google Workspace for Education itself comes with extensive controls that let school and district administrators grant and limit access to student work.
Can users request deletion of user data?
Schools can request the deletion of Hāpara-kept user data at any time. Hāpara honors all such requests, and does not retain student or school data. Hāpara always acts for the school: you own your data, not Hāpara.
What happens when children are no longer users of Hāpara?
Hāpara does not collect, use, keep or share data for non-educational purposes. When a student is removed from their Hāpara-managed classes, their work will no longer be accessible by their teachers, administrators or parents. Student work will remain in their school-provided Google Drive, owned by them.
What is Hapara’s understanding of its obligations under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and how are you complying with these laws?
Hapara’s obligations under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act include:
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To allow schools, parents and students to request to view and amend information that is recorded on the student.
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Any student data containing personally identifiable information that is collected by Hapara can only be used for the purpose that the data is provided to Hapara for, as specified in Hapara’s Terms and Conditions.
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Student information is not shared with any third parties, other than ones which constitute as part of Hapara service, in which case the data is shared for the sole purpose of enabling Hapara to provide its service to schools.
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To execute a data security program to ensure that student information is protected from unauthorized disclosure.
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To notify schools if there is a change in Hapara’s Terms and Conditions, and Privacy Policy.
Hapara’s obligations under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act include:
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Providing a published, comprehensive privacy policy, and making it accessible from each part of Hapara’s product, as well as Hapara’s website.
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Hapara products are used solely for educational purposes, hence Hapara is able to obtain consent for the collection of information from students from the school.
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To ensure that information collected from students is protected from unauthorized disclosure.