What is stored, and how to delete it
What we store
- How you started. If you pressed Start free practice, a learner record is created for you with no name, no email and nothing you typed. If instead you were given a private link, the label it was created with is stored, along with a one-way digest of the link’s code — the code itself is never stored, so nobody can read it back out.
- Your sign-in. A session identifier, when it was created and when it expires.
- Your answers. Which option you chose for each question, when, and the exact version of the question and teaching material you saw.
- Which panels you opened. Whether you opened Explain or Compare, and whether you revealed an answer after finishing. This records that a panel was opened. It does not record that you read it, and we do not claim otherwise.
- Optional feedback and any report of a problem with a question, in your own words.
- Whether you clicked the newsletter link. That a link was opened, and nothing about what happened afterwards.
What we do not ask for
The Lab never asks for your name or your email address, and there is no field for either. Your invitation identifies a learner record, not a person.
One honest caveat. The feedback and question-report boxes are free text, and we store what you type in them. If you write your name, your employer, a colleague's name or details of a real project, that is stored too — we cannot filter it out. Please keep those boxes to the questions and the explanations, and leave out anything personal or confidential. You can delete everything at any time using the button below.
We do not store, and could not:
- Anything you type into an external AI assistant, or anything it replies. Those conversations happen on that service, not here.
- Any measure of how long you spent reading. Only timestamps exist, so no reliable reading or attention measure is produced or reported.
- Payment details of any kind. There is nothing to pay.
The newsletter
The newsletter invitation is a link to Stanton Press's own signup page. Using the Lab does not subscribe you to anything. If you choose to subscribe, you enter your email on their page and confirm it from a message they send you, and that record lives with them, not here.
External AI
The optional AI exploration can open an external assistant with a prompt already filled in. Opening that link shares the prompt with that service. The prompt contains the concept being discussed. It does not contain your identity, your answers, your results, your history, or any link back to your session. You decide whether to send the message.
How long it is kept
Your records are kept for 180 days after your last activity, and are then deleted — unless you delete them yourself sooner, which you can do at any time using the button below.
The clock runs from the last thing you actually did here, so it restarts every time you come back. Go quiet for six months and your records are removed; keep using the Lab and they stay. Before anything is deleted the operator can see exactly which records would go, and deleting is a separate, deliberate step — nothing is removed by a command that was only meant to look.
Separately, your sign-in expires after fourteen days, and a private link, if you were given one, expires after thirty. Neither deletes anything. They end access; your answers stay where they are until they are deleted or the retention period ends. If you signed in with a private link and lose it, ask us to replace it — you keep your saved answers.
If you started with the button rather than a private link, your practice lives in this browser’s session. Clearing your cookies, or using a different browser or device, starts you somewhere new rather than signing you back in — that is the cost of not asking you for an account, and it is a deliberate trade.
Deleting everything
You can delete your records at any time, for any reason, without asking anyone. It removes your answers, your sessions, your feedback, your reports, your learner record and your sign-in. It cannot be undone, and it ends your access.
What deletion does, and what it does not do straight away
Three different things, described separately because merging them would be misleading:
- The live records go immediately. The rows are deleted from the database when you press the button, not marked hidden and not queued.
- Backups still hold the older copy for a while. We take backups so nobody loses their work to a failure, and a backup taken before your deletion still contains what it contained. Those backups are kept on the same retention clock and are not read for any other purpose.
- Restoring a backup cannot bring you back. Your deletion is recorded in a separate record kept outside the database and outside every backup. A restored copy is not usable until that record has been applied to it, which deletes you again and re-withdraws any access that was withdrawn. If that record is missing or damaged, the restore is refused rather than served — the software will not hand back deleted data on incomplete evidence.
What is kept after a deletion is one line recording that a deletion happened, how many records it removed, and a SHA-256 digest of the internal learner identifier. That digest is not anonymous and we will not describe it as such: anyone holding a candidate identifier can hash it and confirm a match — which is precisely how the safeguard above knows whom to delete from a restored copy. It contains no name, email address or answer.
Contact
For access problems, a question you think is wrong, or anything about your records: dean@stantonpress.com.
It is read by a person, not a ticketing system, so allow a few days.