Privacy and data notice
Providing a service for teachers and students with digital technology at the heart of everything we do, online safety for our customers is paramount, especially since children also use our product. Visual Education Ltd, makers of Wordwall.net, comply with the General Data Protection Regulation.
Who owns your data?
When you use the Wordwall.net site, you own and control your data, including data relating to your students. We do not ask students directly for their data, but users may do so, for example, through the setting of assignments and the creation of activity leaderboards. You should ask for permission before you collect this data and delete it when appropriate to do so.
We licence Wordwall to both schools and individual teachers. We do not licence Wordwall to students and require credit card details and/or a school purchase order to subscribe to our service.
We consider the data controller and owner to be the individual user (e.g. a teacher) rather than any corporate body that might employ the individual (e.g. a school). Therefore we will not grant access to data made on behalf of individuals, unless the corporate body have contracted with us for the provision of the service (e.g. under a whole-school site subscription service).
Your data
Wordwall.net provides a personalised experience for teachers to use our site.
We recommend that you do not disclose your password to anyone to keep your data secure. We will never ask you for your password when contacting you by phone or email. Wordwall.net automatically logs users out after one hour of inactivity if they are logged in as an individual user. When you have finished using Wordwall.net, we recommend that you log out. This is to ensure that others cannot access your account information if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place such as a library.
Data Backup
Wordwall.net’s backup procedure allows for storage of up to 35 days.
Visual Education collects the following data and stores it securely:
Teacher users
Wordwall.net enables teachers to create and set up their own account. This allows teachers to create their own resources, share them with other teachers (giving us a licence to use the resource) and assign them to students. We ask teacher users for their title, first name, last name, email address, username and password, with the collection of their role and subject interests as optional. We may also collect financial information, including credit card information, for the processing of subscriptions.
At all times, within the definition of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the user (teacher or school) retain the status of Data Controller for the data stored on our cloud service. The data obtained from the students always remains in the ownership of the school, or that of the individual teacher users.
Students
We do not provide user accounts to students or ask them to provide us with their contact details.
Wordwall.net’s assignment and leaderboard tools, allow the collection of a student data:
- users may set assignments that collect the student’s name and response to questions
- user-created activities may include leaderboards which collect the student’s name and score
Users should ensure that in collecting such information they have obtained permission from whoever is completing the assignment or leaderboard-based activity (and if necessary, parental permission).
Data Collection and Use
On our website, we request personal information in the following areas:
Mailing List – Your email address in order to send you relevant news and updates. This requires an additional and explicit opt-in.
Support – Your title, first name, last name, email address, school name, postcode, country and telephone number. We use this information to link your question to your user account so that we can contact you with a relevant and timely response.
User accounts - Your title, first name, last name, email address, school name, postcode, country and telephone number. We also require credit card details for paid subscriptions.
Updating Your Information
You can update or remove your account information by emailing us at help@wordwall.net
Data kept for marketing purposes can be changed at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link on any email from us.
How long does Wordwall.net keep data?
Why We Delete Data
Wordwall.net stores data for its users. To ensure that Wordwall.net does not hold user information in perpetuity, it has set criteria for the deletion of unused data.
User data
Wordwall.net holds data for user accounts. If these accounts are left inactive for seven years they will be deleted, however resources shared with the Wordwall community may be retained, in accordance with our terms.
Results data
Results data for students may be deleted at any time by users (who remains the data controller for this information). The user will be deleted in accordance with the provision above, if held in a dormant account.
Financial & credit card data
We collect information from users for accounting purposes, which will be retained for seven years (as required by VAT regulations). Credit card information is held securely by our merchant provider (Stripe) and is only retained during a subscription period.
Usage Statistics
Usage statistics of Wordwall.net will be kept in perpetuity. No personal/user level information can be extracted from this data.
Sharing Data
Wordwall.net will not share data with third parties unless explicit instruction is given by the user in question, for example, to integrate with a VLE provider or the purposes of SSO, and we will never sell user information or data collected from our website.
Security and Protection of Your Information
All remote access to Wordwall.net is conducted over HTTPS, an encrypted web link secured using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This is the same method used by banks and commercial entities to secure sensitive data from interception. We encrypt user data.
External Data Storage
Wordwall.net stores data on our secure database servers, operated by Microsoft (Azure). Physical access to our servers is strictly limited. Access to the servers in the data centre requires proof of identify (photo ID) and is controlled by magnetic card readers and keys to both the cages and individual cabinets that surround the server racks, all of which are monitored by the data centre security staff using CCTV. Remote access to the data is limited to the tools needed by the IT support staff to maintain and operate the servers and is restricted to known users (identified by usernames and secure keys) connecting from known locations (IP addresses).
Access to Information
The General Data Protection Regulation gives you the right to access information held about you. We will endeavour to make all possible data available to you immediately via your “my account” settings (by clicking on your user profile when logged in, in the top right of your web browser). You may also file a subject access request. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the regulations. We will endeavour to reply to all subject access requests within one month.
Visual Education Ltd. Employees
To ensure that the user receives the best customer care, Visual Education Ltd.’s staff have access to user data (dependent upon their role). Staff access is controlled and only granted on a need-to-know basis.
Wordwall.net and Cookies
A cookie (also called a HTTP cookie, web cookie or browser cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser while the user is browsing that website, which is subsequently sent back to the same website by the browser.
To function, a cookie asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and will subsequently recognise you when you return to a particular site and/or help Wordwall.net analyse its web traffic.
How Wordwall.net Uses Cookies
Wordwall.net uses cookies to provide you with the best possible experience on our website and to identify critical details such as account, user and curriculum identification on our product. This helps us analyse data about webpage traffic and improve our service in order to tailor it to customer needs. We use this information for statistical analysis purposes only in anonymised form, to influence our development plans.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better product, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
Contact Us
Wordwall.net is operated by Visual Education Ltd. (registered in England & Wales, 05900439). If you have questions about how we use your data, our compliance with GDPR or wish to file a subject access request, you can do so via email (help@wordwall.net) or post. Our postal address is: Visual Education Ltd, Lytchett House, 13 Freeland Park, Wareham Road, Poole, Dorset, BH16 6FA, United Kingdom.
This Privacy Notice forms part of Wordwall.net’s Terms of use.
