Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) respects your privacy. Any personal information that you provide to EDC through the SolveMe apps is retained only for education purposes and will be used and safeguarded as described below.
What information do we collect?
The SolveMe apps do not require any user information of any kind unless a user wishes to save user progress and puzzles across devices or to differentiate between users on a single device. For those purposes, users must create an account with a unique username and password of 6 characters or more containing at least one number and one letter. If users are over the age of 13, they may also choose to provide an email address for password recovery or account removal purposes only, but they must provide their birth month and year to verify their age.
What do we use your information for?
Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: to allow you, and only you, to request password reset; to allow you or your school to request account removal; or to verify the age of registered users so that emails are only collected for persons age 13 and older.
We may publish user-created puzzles that have been shared with the SolveMe community in educational forums including but not limited to conferences and journals. Such shared puzzles will not be personally identifiable.
Notice to Parents and Schools
For the protection of users, EDC requires that your username be entirely different than your real name. For example, if your name is Suzie Smith, the username ILikeBlue08 is acceptable but SuzieBlue08 is not. Usernames should not contain any words or numbers that could identify you.
COPPA rules may not apply, but EDC supports COPPA’s protections for our child visitors. The only personal information that we collect is email addresses (for password recovery and account removal requests) and birth month and year (to verify age in compliance with COPPA); these data are collected only from users over the age of 13 and only at the user’s option; and email addresses are used only for user- or school-initiated password recovery or account removal.
Users or parents of users can request deletion of data in a personal account by sending a request to solveme@edc.org from the personal email address associated with the account. Schools or districts can request deletion of data in school accounts by sending either a list of school email address or a school email domain name, and all accounts with matching email addresses will be removed. Users and parents cannot request removal of accounts created with school email addresses. Schools and districts cannot request removal of accounts created with personal email addresses. Only accounts created with an associated email address can be removed.
How do we protect your information?
We implement a variety of security measures, including use of a secured server, to maintain the safety of your personal information when you enter, submit, or access your personal information (username, month and year of birth, password, email, user progress, and saved puzzles). In addition, the month and year of birth and email address are encrypted in our database and will be accessed only by authorized individuals.
In the event of a data breach, we will follow the established EDC data breach response plan.
Do we use cookies?
We use one cookie in order to allow users to "log in" to the apps. We also use Google Analytics, which uses three cookies, to record usage information. (You can learn more about Google's use of cookies and privacy policy here.) We do not use any other types of cookies.
Do we disclose any information to outside parties?
We do not sell, rent, or lease to outside parties your personally identifiable information collected through the SolveMe apps. This does not include providing access to this information to trusted third parties who assist us in operating the SolveMe apps, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our policies, or protect our or others' rights, property, or safety.
We may, in the course of education research, share user-created puzzles that have been saved to the SolveMe community.
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance
We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act). As required by COPPA, we do not: