Privacy Policy
Last updated: August 1, 2026
SurveySim is a browser-based land surveying simulator with an optional classroom tier for instructors and their students. This policy describes exactly what we collect, why, and what we will never do with it. It is written to be read, not skimmed — it is short because we collect very little.
The short version
- Students never give us an email address, a date of birth, or any contact information.
- A student is a display name chosen by their instructor — nicknames are fine and encouraged — plus a PIN we store only as a cryptographic hash.
- We show no ads, use no analytics or tracking, and never sell, rent, or share data with anyone for any commercial purpose.
- Instructors can delete a student, a class, or their entire account at any time, and deletion is immediate and permanent.
What we collect
| Who | What | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Instructors | Email address, a password (stored only as an argon2 hash), plan level, and the classes, rosters, and assignments they author. | Sign-in, account verification, and running their classes. |
| Students | The display name their instructor put on the roster, a self-chosen PIN (stored only as an argon2 hash), coursework — simulated measurements, digital field book entries, attempt telemetry from inside the simulator — and grades. | Letting a student sign in with a class code and letting their instructor see and grade their work. Nothing else. |
| Everyone | Standard transient server logs, including IP addresses, kept briefly for rate limiting and abuse prevention. | Keeping the service up and secure. |
We do not collect student email addresses, dates of birth, photos, location, or contact information, and there is no field anywhere that asks for them. Instructors are invited to use nicknames or aliases on rosters — the service never needs legal names.
What we never do
- No advertising, and no data use for advertising of any kind.
- No sale, rental, or trade of any personal information — ever, including in bankruptcy or acquisition, except as a continuation of this same policy by a successor bound by it.
- No profiling, no building of student profiles for any purpose other than showing coursework to the student and their instructor.
- No redisclosure of school-provided information to third parties, except the service providers below acting on our instructions.
- No third-party analytics, tracking pixels, or advertising cookies. Sign-in state is kept in your browser's local storage and sent only to our own API.
For schools: the school-official basis (FERPA)
Where a class roster comes from an educational institution's records, SurveySim operates as a school official with a legitimate educational interest under 34 CFR §99.31(a)(1):
- We use education records solely to provide the service to that class — no other purpose.
- The institution (through its instructor) retains direct control: instructors can view, export, correct, and permanently delete every piece of their class's data from inside the product, without asking us.
- We do not redisclose education records.
- On request of the instructor or institution, or on account termination, we delete the data — see Retention below.
- If we ever have reason to believe student data was acquired by an unauthorized party, we will notify the affected institution without unreasonable delay.
Age
SurveySim is built for college and career-technical surveying programs. It is intended for users 13 and older, or younger students only where a school has authorized use under its own authority consistent with COPPA guidance. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 outside that school authorization, and we collect no birth dates from anyone.
Service providers
- Render (US region) hosts the application and database.
- Resend delivers instructor account-verification emails. Student data never touches an email provider because students have no email addresses here.
- If you use the optional real-world terrain picker or multiplayer, your browser talks directly to public map services (AWS terrain tiles, OpenStreetMap) and to WebRTC signaling; those services see your IP address the way any website you visit does. No account or coursework data is sent to them.
Retention and deletion
- Data is kept while the owning account or class exists, and no longer than needed to provide the service.
- Removing a student from a roster immediately and permanently deletes their sign-in, coursework, field book, and grades.
- Deleting a class immediately and permanently deletes its roster and every student's work in it.
- Deleting an instructor account immediately and permanently deletes everything that account owns.
- Residual copies in the host's encrypted database backups age out on a rotation measured in days, not months.
Security
All traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS). Passwords and student PINs are stored only as argon2 hashes and cannot be recovered — only reset. Accounts lock after repeated failed sign-ins. The single most effective protection is structural: we minimize what exists to breach — no student emails, no legal-name requirement, no payment card data (there are no paid checkout flows in the product today).
Changes and contact
If this policy changes in a way that affects student data, we will post the change here with a new date, and material changes will be announced to instructors on sign-in. Questions, deletion requests, or institutional agreements: rickasmith@gmail.com.