Data Usage Policy

Welcome to Westmontdata's comprehensive guide on how we collect and process information through various tracking technologies on our online education platform. This document explains the technical methods we employ to deliver a functional, personalized learning experience while respecting your privacy choices. You'll find detailed information about cookies, analytics tools, and other tracking mechanisms that help us understand how students and educators interact with our courses and services.

We believe transparency is essential when it comes to data collection practices. That's why we've created this policy to walk you through exactly what happens when you visit our platform, which technologies operate in the background, and what control you have over these processes. Our goal is simple: provide you with enough information to make informed decisions about your online privacy while using our educational services.

Why These Technologies Are Important

Performance and analytical tracking helps us understand how our platform actually performs in real-world conditions. We monitor metrics like page load times, video buffering rates, and which educational resources students access most frequently. This data reveals patterns that guide our technical improvements—if we notice students consistently dropping off during certain lesson types, that signals we need to redesign that content or fix underlying technical issues. These insights are invaluable for maintaining a smooth, frustration-free learning environment.

Functional technologies remember your specific preferences across sessions, creating a more personalized interface without requiring constant re-configuration. Let's say you prefer video subtitles turned on, larger text for easier reading, or a specific layout for your course dashboard—functional cookies store these choices so they apply automatically every time you return. This category also includes language preferences, accessibility settings, and notification preferences that shape your individual learning environment according to your needs.

An optimized learning experience means students spend less time fighting technology and more time actually learning. Consider how frustrating it would be to manually re-enter your preferences every single day, re-watch course introductions you've already completed, or navigate a platform that doesn't remember you've already passed certain prerequisites. By tracking your progress and preferences, we create a seamless educational journey where the technology fades into the background and the content takes center stage. Students report higher engagement and completion rates when platforms adapt to their individual learning styles and remember their progress automatically.

Managing Your Preferences

You have substantial control over tracking technologies on our platform, and several regulations—including GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California—guarantee these rights explicitly. We respect your autonomy to decide which tracking you're comfortable with and which you'd rather disable. While some essential functions require basic cookies to operate, most analytical and personalization features can be turned off without preventing you from accessing our core educational content.

Modern browsers give you direct control over cookie management through their settings menus. In Chrome, navigate to Settings → Privacy and Security → Cookies and other site data, where you can block third-party cookies or clear existing ones. Firefox users can find similar options under Settings → Privacy & Security → Cookies and Site Data. Safari users should look under Preferences → Privacy → Manage Website Data. Edge follows a similar path: Settings → Cookies and site permissions → Manage and delete cookies and site data. Each browser presents slightly different options, but they all allow you to view, delete, or block cookies on a site-by-site basis.

Disabling certain categories has specific consequences you should understand. Turning off essential cookies will likely prevent you from logging in or maintaining a stable session, which essentially makes the platform unusable. Blocking functional cookies means you'll need to reset your preferences every visit—video quality settings, subtitle preferences, and dashboard layouts won't persist. When you disable analytics cookies, we lose visibility into how you use the platform, which makes it harder for us to improve the experience or troubleshoot issues you might encounter. Personalization cookies, when blocked, result in generic course recommendations rather than tailored suggestions based on your interests and performance.

Third-party tools like Privacy Badger, Ghostery, or uBlock Origin offer additional layers of control specifically designed for education platform users who want comprehensive tracking protection. These browser extensions identify and block cross-site trackers that might follow you between different websites. However, be aware that aggressive blocking can sometimes interfere with legitimate embedded content—like videos hosted on external platforms or integrated discussion forums—that are central to your learning experience.

Finding the right balance requires some experimentation. Start by enabling all features to experience the full platform capabilities, then gradually restrict what you're uncomfortable with while monitoring how it affects your experience. Many students find that keeping essential and functional cookies enabled while blocking advertising or social media trackers provides an acceptable middle ground. The key is understanding that privacy and convenience often exist in tension—more privacy usually means less personalization and convenience, so you'll need to determine your own comfort level.

Other Methods

Web beacons and tracking pixels are tiny, transparent images embedded in web pages or emails that record when you've loaded specific content. When your browser displays a page containing a pixel, it automatically requests that image from our server, which logs the request along with associated information like your IP address, timestamp, and browser type. We employ these primarily in course completion tracking—when you finish a lesson, a pixel fires to record that milestone in our database. Email pixels help us understand which course announcements actually get read versus immediately deleted.

Local storage and session storage represent more sophisticated data retention methods than traditional cookies, allowing websites to store larger amounts of information directly in your browser. Session storage holds data only for the duration of your current browsing session and automatically clears when you close the tab, which we use for temporary information like your current position in a multi-step enrollment process. Local storage persists indefinitely until explicitly deleted, storing items like your dashboard customization settings, recently viewed courses, and cached content that helps pages load faster on subsequent visits. These storage mechanisms can hold several megabytes of data compared to cookies' 4-kilobyte limit.

Server-side tracking methods record information directly on our web servers rather than storing it in your browser, which means clearing cookies doesn't eliminate these records. When you interact with our platform, our servers log your IP address, request timestamps, pages accessed, and referral sources. These server logs help us diagnose technical problems, prevent security threats, and understand aggregate traffic patterns. Unlike client-side cookies, you can't directly delete or block these logs since they reside on our infrastructure, though they're subject to our data retention policies and aren't used for cross-site tracking.

Managing these alternative methods requires different approaches for each type. Most browsers let you clear local storage through the same menus where you manage cookies—look for options to clear site data or browsing history. Browser fingerprinting is harder to control, though privacy-focused browsers like Firefox or Brave include built-in protections against common fingerprinting techniques. For server-side logs, your control is limited to access requests under privacy regulations—you can ask to see what information we've collected or request deletion in accordance with applicable laws, but you can't prevent these logs from being created during normal platform usage.

Further Considerations

We maintain different retention schedules depending on the type of data collected through tracking technologies. Essential session cookies expire automatically when you close your browser, while functional preference cookies typically last for twelve months before requiring renewal. Analytics data gets anonymized after six months, stripping out identifiable information while preserving aggregated usage patterns. Video progress markers and course completion records persist for the lifetime of your account since they're educational records rather than merely tracking data. When you delete your account, we purge associated tracking data within 30 days, though anonymized analytics may remain in our systems indefinitely.

Security measures protecting collected data include encryption both in transit and at rest, with all cookie data transmitted over HTTPS connections to prevent interception. Our servers employ access controls that restrict which team members can view raw tracking data, and we conduct regular security audits to identify potential vulnerabilities. Database encryption ensures that even if someone gained unauthorized server access, the stored information would remain unreadable without proper decryption keys. We also segment tracking data from core educational records, storing them in separate systems to minimize exposure if one system experiences a breach.

Regulatory compliance shapes every aspect of our tracking practices, with specific frameworks like FERPA governing educational records in the United States, GDPR protecting European users' data rights, and COPPA imposing strict rules for users under thirteen. We've structured our tracking systems to respect these varied requirements, which is why users from different regions might encounter different consent mechanisms or data handling procedures. Education-specific regulations are particularly stringent because they recognize the sensitive nature of student information and the power dynamics between institutions and learners.

International users face special considerations since data protection laws vary significantly between jurisdictions. European visitors benefit from GDPR's strong consent requirements and right-to-erasure provisions, while users in California have specific rights under CCPA to know what information we collect and opt out of its sale (though we don't sell student data). We process data from international users according to the strictest applicable standard, which often means European regulations effectively set our global baseline. Data transfers between regions comply with approved mechanisms like Standard Contractual Clauses, ensuring your information receives consistent protection regardless of where our servers physically process it.

Policy Updates

We review and update this policy annually or whenever significant changes occur in our tracking practices, regulatory requirements, or the technologies we employ. Major platform redesigns, integration of new analytics tools, or changes in applicable privacy laws all trigger immediate policy reviews. Our legal and technical teams collaborate during these reviews to ensure accuracy and completeness, examining whether our documented practices still match our actual implementation and whether new tracking methods require disclosure.

When we make significant changes, you'll receive notification through multiple channels—an email to your registered address, a prominent banner on the platform homepage, and an in-app notification the next time you log in. We provide at least thirty days' notice before implementing changes that materially affect your privacy, giving you time to review the updates and adjust your preferences accordingly. Minor clarifications or updates that don't alter the substance of our practices might not trigger active notification, though we'll still update the "Last Modified" date at the top of the policy.

Significant changes requiring notification include introducing entirely new categories of tracking technologies, beginning to share data with new third parties, extending retention periods for collected information, or expanding the purposes for which we process tracking data. These alterations materially affect your privacy expectations and rights, so we treat them with appropriate gravity. Minor updates might include clarifying existing language, updating contact information, adding examples to improve understanding, or reflecting new browser names—these don't fundamentally change what we do with your data, just how we describe it.