Tracking Technology Information

Why These Technologies Are Important

Tracking technologies include small files and scripts that store information about your interactions with our platform. Cookies are probably the most familiar – they're tiny text files that live in your browser and remember things between visits. But we also use similar technologies like local storage, which works differently but serves comparable purposes. These tools create a bridge between your individual sessions, turning disconnected visits into a cohesive learning journey.

Some tracking is absolutely necessary for Frixo to work at all. When you log in, we need to remember who you are as you move between course pages – otherwise, you'd have to re-enter your credentials constantly. We track your progress through lessons so you can pick up exactly where you left off. Session management, security verification, and basic navigation all depend on these essential technologies. Without them, you couldn't access your enrolled courses or complete assignments.

Performance tracking helps us understand what's working and what isn't across thousands of users. We measure page load times to identify slow sections that frustrate learners. We track error rates to catch bugs before they affect too many students. Analytics show us which course formats lead to better completion rates, which video lengths hold attention best, and where students typically get stuck. This data drives real improvements – like when we redesigned our quiz interface after noticing mobile users struggled with the old layout.

Functional technologies remember your preferences to save you time and annoyance. We store your language selection, volume settings for video lectures, preferred text size, and whether you like dark mode or light mode. For educators, we remember dashboard configurations and frequently used tools. These aren't critical for the site to work, but they make your experience much more pleasant. Imagine resetting your preferences every single time you logged in – that's what we're preventing here.

Customization takes things further by adapting content to your learning style and goals. When you're struggling with a particular concept, we might suggest supplementary materials that helped other students with similar challenges. If you're excelling in one area, we can recommend advanced content to keep you engaged. We track which study times correlate with your best quiz performance, then gently suggest optimal learning schedules. This personalization makes education more effective, not just more convenient.

An optimized learning platform directly impacts educational outcomes in measurable ways. Students who receive personalized content recommendations complete courses 35% more often than those who don't. Fast-loading pages reduce frustration and keep learners in the flow state that's essential for deep understanding. When we remember where you paused a video lecture, you save those few seconds of scrubbing – multiply that across hundreds of videos and it adds up to hours saved. The smoother the technical experience, the more mental energy you have for actual learning.

Restrictions

You have extensive rights over your data under frameworks like GDPR (for European users) and similar regulations worldwide. You can access what we've collected about you, request corrections if something's wrong, ask us to delete your information entirely, or restrict certain types of processing. You can object to specific uses of your data, and in many cases, you can download your information in a portable format. These aren't just nice-to-haves – they're legal requirements we take seriously.

Managing tracking technologies in your browser is straightforward once you know where to look. In Chrome, click the three dots in the top right, go to Settings, then Privacy and Security, and finally Cookies and other site data – from there you can block third-party cookies or clear existing ones. Firefox users should click the menu icon, select Settings, then Privacy & Security on the left sidebar. Safari users on Mac can find these controls under Preferences, then Privacy. Edge follows a similar path to Chrome since they share underlying technology. Each browser also offers incognito or private browsing modes that don't save tracking data between sessions.

Frixo provides first-party management tools directly on our platform too, which is often easier than browser settings. When you first visit, you'll see a preference center where you can accept or reject different categories of tracking. You can change these choices anytime by clicking the preferences link in the footer. We've organized options into clear categories – necessary, performance, functional, and customization – so you can be selective about what you allow. Your choices sync across devices when you're logged in, which is pretty convenient.

Rejecting different categories has varying consequences for your experience. Block necessary tracking and you simply can't use Frixo at all – login becomes impossible, course progress won't save, and interactive features break entirely. Disable performance tracking and the site still works perfectly for you, though you're no longer contributing to our improvement efforts. Turn off functional tracking and you'll reset preferences constantly, manually adjusting settings each visit. Reject customization and you lose personalized recommendations, adaptive difficulty, and tailored study suggestions – you get a generic experience that may not match your learning style as well.

Alternative privacy measures can protect you while keeping essential functionality intact. Browser extensions like Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin intelligently block third-party trackers while allowing first-party necessities. VPNs mask your location without interfering with site functions. Using Firefox with enhanced tracking protection strikes a decent balance. You can also clear your cookies regularly while whitelisting Frixo so you don't lose your login. These approaches require more setup but offer granular control.

Making informed decisions means understanding the tradeoff between privacy and functionality in your specific context. If you're accessing Frixo from a shared device at a library, you might want to reject everything except what's absolutely necessary, then clear all data when you're done. On your personal laptop at home, accepting functional and performance tracking makes sense for most people. Think about your actual threat model – are you concerned about government surveillance, corporate profiling, or just general privacy hygiene? Match your settings to your real concerns rather than theoretical ones.

Additional Provisions

Data retention varies by type and purpose, following both legal requirements and practical necessity. Essential login session data expires after 24 hours of inactivity, forcing a fresh login for security. Course progress and completion records stay active for seven years after your last activity, giving you time to return and pick up where you left off even after long breaks. Performance analytics get aggregated and anonymized after 90 days, so we retain useful patterns without keeping individual-level detail indefinitely. When you delete your account, most personal data disappears within 30 days, though we keep certain records for legal compliance – like payment history for tax purposes or serious academic integrity violations.

Security measures protect your data through multiple layers of technical and organizational safeguards. All data transmits over encrypted connections using TLS 1.3, so nobody can intercept it in transit. We store information in encrypted databases with access limited to specific engineering teams who need it for their work. Regular security audits from third-party firms test our defenses and identify vulnerabilities before attackers do. Employee training ensures our team understands data protection responsibilities. We've implemented automated systems that detect unusual access patterns and flag potential breaches immediately. These aren't perfect – no security ever is – but they're comprehensive and regularly updated.

Tracking data integrates with our broader privacy framework rather than existing in isolation. Information collected through cookies feeds into the same systems governed by our main privacy policy. When you exercise your right to access your data, that includes tracking information alongside your course history and account details. Data flows follow documented paths – for example, when you watch a video, that generates an analytics event that's processed by our learning management system, aggregated for reporting, and eventually anonymized. Understanding these flows helps you see how individual data points connect to the bigger picture of our operations.

Regulatory compliance efforts span multiple jurisdictions since education crosses borders naturally. We meet GDPR requirements for European users, including appointing a data protection officer and conducting impact assessments for high-risk processing. FERPA governs how we handle educational records for U.S. students, with strict limits on disclosure without consent. California's CCPA gives additional rights to users in that state. We track evolving regulations in dozens of countries and adjust our practices accordingly. For educational institutions, we offer BAAs (Business Associate Agreements) where COPPA or similar student privacy laws apply, establishing clear data handling responsibilities.

International data transfers happen because our servers and partners span multiple countries, which creates legal complexity. We rely on Standard Contractual Clauses approved by regulators to govern transfers from Europe to other regions. Additional safeguards include data minimization (only transferring what's absolutely necessary), encryption during transit and at rest, and contractual requirements that receiving parties maintain equivalent protection. When possible, we keep data within its region of origin – European user data on European servers, for instance. Where cross-border transfers are unavoidable for technical reasons, we document them clearly and apply maximum protection.

External Providers

Frixo allows carefully selected partners on our platform to provide specialized services we couldn't efficiently deliver ourselves. These fall into categories like content delivery networks that speed up video streaming, analytics providers that process usage patterns, payment processors that handle transactions securely, and communication tools that power live tutoring sessions. We also work with learning content creators who embed interactive elements directly into courses. Each partner serves a specific function, and we don't just let anyone access our users.

Partners collect various data points depending on their role and technical requirements. Video CDNs see your IP address, viewing duration, and playback quality to deliver smooth streaming. Analytics providers receive information about pages you visit, features you use, and general navigation patterns – though usually in aggregate rather than individually identified form. Payment processors need your billing information but we never see your full credit card number ourselves. Communication tools for live sessions collect session metadata like connection quality and duration. The key point is that partners only get data relevant to their specific service.

How partners use collected data is governed by contracts that restrict purposes significantly. Analytics data helps them improve their services and provide us with insights, but they can't sell it to third parties or use it for unrelated advertising. CDNs use performance data solely for content delivery optimization. Payment processors follow PCI DSS standards and use transaction data only for fraud prevention and payment processing. We explicitly prohibit partners from building profiles for purposes beyond their contracted services. When partners violate these terms, we end relationships – it's happened before and we take it seriously.

User control options for partner tracking vary but we try to maximize your choices within technical constraints. Our preference center lets you reject analytics partners specifically, though that won't block CDNs necessary for video delivery. Some partners offer their own opt-out mechanisms – we link to those where available. Browser-level controls like blocking third-party cookies affect many partner trackers automatically. For partners essential to core functionality, we can't offer opt-out without breaking features entirely, but we minimize data sharing even for required partners. You can always reach out asking which specific partners support your courses and what control options exist.

Safeguards for partner data sharing include both contractual and technical measures that create accountability. Contracts require partners to maintain security standards equivalent to our own, limit data retention to specified periods, allow us to audit their practices, notify us of breaches promptly, and delete data when the partnership ends. Technical measures include sharing data through secure APIs rather than bulk transfers, using tokens and pseudonymization to avoid exposing raw personal information, and implementing access logging so we can verify what partners actually retrieve. We review partners annually and terminate relationships if standards slip. Several potential partners never made it through our vetting process because their data practices didn't meet our requirements.

Supplementary Collection Tools

Web beacons and tracking pixels are tiny invisible images, usually just 1x1 pixel in size, embedded in pages or emails. When your browser loads the page, it requests the image from our server, which tells us you viewed that content. We use these primarily in email communications to know if you opened our course announcement or password reset message. On the platform itself, pixels help track whether you completed viewing an entire lesson page or navigated away early. These work even if you block cookies, though they provide less detailed information without accompanying cookie data. You can block them through email settings that prevent automatic image loading or browser extensions that strip tracking pixels from pages.

Device recognition, sometimes called fingerprinting, identifies your specific device through a combination of characteristics like screen resolution, installed fonts, browser version, timezone, and language settings. We use limited fingerprinting primarily for fraud prevention – detecting if someone's trying to access multiple accounts from the same device or identifying suspicious login patterns. Unlike cookies, you can't easily clear a device fingerprint since it's based on inherent device properties. We deliberately avoid aggressive fingerprinting techniques that some companies use for cross-site tracking because they feel invasive and don't align with educational values. Our approach collects only what's needed for security, not marketing.

Local storage and session storage are browser-based storage mechanisms that hold more data than cookies and persist differently. Session storage clears automatically when you close your browser tab, making it perfect for temporary information like form drafts or current quiz state. Local storage persists indefinitely until explicitly cleared, so we use it for preferences you want remembered across sessions – theme choices, caption settings for videos, or your last-viewed course. These technologies enable offline functionality too; we cache some course materials in local storage so you can review them without internet connection. Managing these is less intuitive than cookies – you'll typically need to use browser developer tools or clear all site data.

Server-side techniques track activity through logs and session identifiers without relying on client-side storage at all. When you're logged in, your session ID travels with each request, letting us associate actions with your account without cookies. Server logs record every page request with timestamps, allowing us to reconstruct user journeys for debugging and security monitoring. We also use server-side A/B testing that assigns you to experiment groups based on your user ID rather than a tracking cookie. These methods are harder for users to block and more reliable for us, though they require careful implementation to avoid privacy problems since all data lives on our servers.

Control options for these supplementary methods are honestly more limited than for standard cookies. Blocking JavaScript disables many of these technologies but also breaks most website functionality – not a practical option. Browser privacy modes prevent local storage from persisting but don't stop it during your session. Some browsers let you selectively clear local storage per site through developer tools. For server-side tracking, your main control is simply choosing whether to create an account and log in – anonymous browsing prevents much identity-based tracking, though it also prevents accessing course content. Ad blockers catch some pixels and beacons. Real control here comes from understanding what's collected and deciding whether you trust the platform enough to use it at all.