We gather different types of information depending on how you interact with our platform. Some of this comes directly from you when you sign up or update your profile, while other data gets collected automatically as you navigate through courses and learning materials. Understanding what we collect helps you make informed decisions about using our services.

The information falls into three main categories based on how it reaches us. Direct information comes from forms you fill out, automatic collection happens through your platform usage, and occasionally we receive data from third-party sources when you connect external accounts or services.

Information You Provide Directly

When you register for an account or update your profile, you share basic details that help us personalize your experience. This includes your name, username, password, and sometimes additional profile details like your educational background or learning goals—though those extras are totally optional.

• Account credentials: Your email address serves as your primary identifier, along with the password you create during registration. We encrypt passwords before storing them, so even our team can't see your actual password.
• Profile information: You can add details like your preferred name, profile picture, timezone, and language preferences. These help us customize how the platform appears to you and when we send notifications.
• Payment details: If you purchase courses or subscriptions, our payment processors collect billing information. We store limited transaction records but don't keep full credit card numbers on our servers.
• Course interactions: Your assignments, quiz responses, discussion posts, and project submissions are stored to track your progress and provide feedback from instructors.

Automatically Collected Data

As you move through our platform, certain technical information gets logged automatically. This helps us understand how people use different features, identify technical problems, and improve the overall experience for everyone.

• Learning activity data: We track which courses you view, how long you spend on video lectures, when you complete assignments, and your quiz scores. This creates your learning history and helps instructors understand class engagement patterns.
• Device and browser information: We collect details about your operating system, browser type, screen resolution, and device identifiers. This helps us ensure the platform works properly across different devices and troubleshoot technical issues.
• Usage patterns: We record which pages you visit, what time you access the platform, and how you navigate between different sections. Click patterns and interaction data help us understand which features work well and which need improvement.
• Performance metrics: Load times, error messages, and connection quality get logged to maintain platform stability and identify areas where we can speed things up.

Third-Party Sources

Sometimes we receive information about you from other services, particularly when you choose to connect external accounts or when instructors import student rosters. You're always in control of these connections and can revoke them anytime.

• Social authentication: If you sign in using Google or another social provider, we receive basic profile information they share according to your settings with them.
• Educational integrations: When schools or organizations add you to their Blueharborline account, they provide us with your name and email address to create your access.

The data we collect serves specific purposes that directly relate to providing and improving our educational services. We don't sell your personal information to advertisers or third parties—that's just not our business model. Instead, everything we do with your data connects back to making your learning experience more effective, secure, and personalized.

Here's the thing: modern online education requires processing certain data to function properly. When you submit an assignment, we need to store it so your instructor can review it. When you're halfway through a video lecture, we save your progress so you can pick up where you left off. These uses are straightforward and necessary for the service to work.

Platform Improvement and Analytics

We analyze aggregated usage patterns to identify which features students find most valuable and where people commonly get stuck. This informs our development priorities—for example, if we notice many students rewatching certain video segments, we might add supplementary materials to clarify that topic. Performance data helps our technical team optimize load times and fix bugs before they affect large numbers of users.

Personalization and Recommendations

Your learning history and stated interests help us suggest relevant courses you might enjoy. If you've completed several courses in web development, we'll highlight advanced programming classes or related certifications. This personalization extends to the dashboard layout, notification preferences, and content formats you prefer.

Communication and Support

We use your email address to send course-related updates, respond to support requests, and occasionally share platform news or new course announcements. You control most communication preferences through your account settings. System-critical emails—like password resets or security alerts—can't be disabled since they're essential for account security.

Security and Fraud Prevention

Login patterns and device information help us detect suspicious account activity. If someone tries to access your account from an unusual location or device, we might require additional verification. Transaction data gets reviewed to prevent fraudulent purchases and protect both students and instructors from payment abuse.

Legal Compliance

We retain certain records to comply with educational regulations, tax requirements, and other legal obligations. If we receive valid legal requests from authorities, we may need to disclose specific information—though we carefully review each request and only provide what's legally required.

Our platform integrates with various third-party services to provide features that would be impractical to build entirely in-house. These integrations—from video hosting to analytics tools—each have their own data collection practices that work alongside ours. While we carefully select partners who meet our privacy standards, you should know that when you interact with these external services, their privacy policies apply to that data.

We've built these integrations to minimize data sharing wherever possible. For instance, when you watch a video, the hosting service might collect viewing statistics, but they don't automatically receive your full profile information unless specifically needed for the feature to work.

Video and Media Services

Course videos and live sessions are hosted through specialized media platforms that handle the heavy bandwidth requirements and adaptive streaming. These services collect viewing data like watch duration, playback quality, and device capabilities to deliver smooth streaming experiences. They may set cookies to remember your playback preferences and handle video buffering efficiently.

Analytics Platforms

We use analytics tools to understand aggregate user behavior patterns and measure platform performance. These services process information about page visits, click patterns, and user flows through the site. The data helps us identify popular features and troubleshoot areas where users encounter difficulties. We configure these tools to anonymize IP addresses and respect do-not-track settings wherever the tools support it.

Communication Services

Email delivery, push notifications, and in-platform messaging rely on specialized communication providers. These services process your contact information and message content to ensure reliable delivery. They also provide us with delivery reports—like bounce notifications or confirmation that you opened an important course update—so we can verify critical messages reach you.

Payment Processors

When you purchase courses or subscriptions, secure payment gateways handle the actual transaction processing. These providers are certified to handle sensitive financial information and comply with payment card industry standards. We receive confirmation of successful transactions and basic purchase details, but the processors maintain your full payment credentials on their secure systems.

Learning Tools and Integrations

Some courses incorporate external learning tools like code editors, virtual labs, or specialized software. When you use these embedded tools, they may collect interaction data relevant to the learning activity. Instructors sometimes use these insights to understand how students approach problems and where additional guidance might help.

Security isn't just about having the right technology in place—though that's certainly important. It's about creating a culture where every team member understands their role in protecting user information and consistently follows best practices. We've built our security program around multiple layers of protection, so if one measure fails, others continue safeguarding your data.

That said, I want to be upfront: no system is completely immune to security risks. We work hard to minimize vulnerabilities and respond quickly when issues arise, but perfect security doesn't exist in the real world. What we can promise is that we take this responsibility seriously and continuously invest in improving our defenses.

Technical Security Measures

All data transmitted between your device and our servers travels through encrypted connections using modern TLS protocols. This prevents anyone intercepting the connection from reading your information—similar to how banks secure their websites. Once data reaches our servers, it's stored in secure data centers with physical access controls, environmental monitoring, and redundant systems to prevent data loss from hardware failures.

We encrypt sensitive information like passwords using one-way hashing algorithms, meaning even our own staff can't reverse the encryption to view your actual password. Database access is restricted to essential personnel and protected by multiple authentication layers. Regular security scans check our systems for known vulnerabilities, and we promptly apply security patches to address any issues discovered.

Access Controls and Staff Training

Team members only receive access to user data when genuinely necessary for their role. A support representative helping with your account issue can access relevant information, but they can't browse through unrelated user records out of curiosity. We log all access to sensitive systems and review these logs for unusual patterns that might indicate a security concern.

Every employee completes security training covering data protection principles, recognizing phishing attempts, and proper handling of user information. We reinforce these practices regularly and update training as new security challenges emerge. Contractors and partners who might handle user data sign confidentiality agreements and must meet our security requirements.

Monitoring and Incident Response

Automated systems continuously monitor our infrastructure for suspicious activity, unusual traffic patterns, or potential security breaches. If something looks wrong—like a sudden spike in failed login attempts or unexpected database queries—our team receives immediate alerts to investigate. We maintain detailed incident response procedures that outline exactly what steps to take if a security breach occurs, including how and when to notify affected users.

Regular security audits by both internal teams and external experts help identify potential weaknesses before they become serious problems. We treat security as an ongoing process rather than a one-time setup, constantly adapting our defenses as new threats emerge and attack methods evolve.

Data Retention and Deletion

We keep your personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes outlined in this policy or as required by law. When you close your account, we begin a deletion process that removes your personal data from active systems, though some information may persist in backups for a limited time before being permanently purged. Course materials you created and discussion contributions may be retained in an anonymized form to preserve the learning experience for other students who participated in those courses.

Like most modern websites, we use cookies and similar technologies to make our platform work properly and understand how people use it. Cookies are small text files stored on your device that help us remember your preferences and recognize you when you return. Some cookies are essential for basic functionality—like keeping you logged in as you navigate between pages—while others help us analyze usage patterns and personalize your experience.

You have control over cookie settings through your browser preferences. Most browsers let you block or delete cookies, though this might affect platform functionality. Disabling essential cookies could prevent you from logging in or accessing certain features, while blocking analytics cookies simply means we won't collect that usage data from your sessions.

Types of Cookies We Use

• Essential cookies: These keep the platform functioning and remember your authentication status as you move between pages. Without these, you'd need to log in again every time you clicked a link.
• Preference cookies: These remember your settings like language choice, timezone, or whether you prefer light or dark mode. They save you from reconfiguring preferences every visit.
• Analytics cookies: We use these to understand which features people use most, how long they spend on different pages, and where they might be encountering problems. The data helps us prioritize improvements and fix issues.
• Performance cookies: These help us monitor site speed and identify technical problems affecting user experience. They collect information about load times and error messages.

Throughout our courses and learning materials, you'll encounter links to external websites—whether that's supplementary reading, tool documentation, or additional resources recommended by instructors. These external sites operate independently and aren't covered by our privacy policy. When you click through to another website, their privacy practices and terms of service govern how they handle your information.

We try to link to reputable sources, but we can't control how external sites collect or use data. Before submitting personal information to any external website, take a moment to review their privacy policy and understand their practices. This applies especially to sites where you might create accounts or enter payment information.

Privacy regulations evolve, our services expand with new features, and occasionally we need to update this policy to reflect those changes. When we make revisions, we'll post the updated policy on this page with a new effective date at the top. For significant changes that materially affect how we handle your information, we'll provide more prominent notice—typically an email to your registered address or a notification when you next log in.

We encourage you to review this policy periodically, especially if you haven't checked it in a while. By continuing to use the platform after changes take effect, you're agreeing to the updated terms. If you disagree with significant changes, you can close your account, though we'd prefer to address your concerns if you reach out to us first.

Certain services within our platform may have supplementary privacy terms that provide additional details specific to those features. For example, enterprise accounts where organizations purchase licenses for their employees have separate agreements addressing how organizational administrators can access usage data for their team members. If you're accessing Blueharborline through your employer or educational institution, their policies may also govern aspects of your data handling.

We take special care with accounts for users under 18, implementing additional protections required by children's privacy regulations. If you're creating an account for a minor, please review the specific terms that apply to youth accounts and understand your responsibilities as the authorizing adult.

If you have questions about this privacy policy, want to understand how we're handling your specific information, or need help exercising your privacy rights, our support team is available to help. You'll find contact options throughout the website, including in your account settings and on our help center. We aim to respond to privacy inquiries promptly, though complex requests might take a bit longer as we carefully review your situation and gather the necessary information.

For general questions about platform features or technical support, our standard support channels work great. But if your inquiry specifically involves privacy concerns or data access requests, mentioning that upfront helps route your message to team members with specialized expertise in privacy matters.