Data Privacy Inquiries

DPA

Student Data Privacy is central to our mission here at HTMW. This page is for teachers or administrators who need additional information on how we handle student data before setting up a class or having students access HTMW. Note: information on this page is for information purposes to answer the most frequently-asked questions we receive; please see our full Privacy Policy and related COPPA Policy for our complete legalese breakdown on how we handle student data.

What Personally-Identifiable Information (PII) is collected from students when registering on HTMW?

There are two ways for students to gain access to HTMW for a class stock game:

  1. Teachers Generate Logins. When a teacher creates a class contest on HTMW, they also have an option to generate student logins. In this case, the teacher requests a certain number of logins, and our system will automatically generate randomized usernames and passwords, which they can then distribute to their class to log in to the class stock game. In this case, no PII is collected from students (it is up to the teacher to keep track of which login was distributed to which student). Because no PII is collected from students with this method, a DPA is generally not required.
  2. Students Register Themselves. When a teacher creates a class contest on HTMW, they will receive an invite link to their contest. If a teacher shares this link with their class, students who click this link will be taken to our Registration Form to create their own account. In this case, we may potentially collect PII from students (with many restrictions – see below). Since PII is collected, school districts in many states require a Data Privacy Agreements (DPA) in place, which we are happy to work with.

Restrictions on student-entered PII

If a teacher invites students to create their own logins via the class registration link, students are allowed to choose their own username and password. They may optionally also enter an email address (for our newsletter and responses to support tickets), first name, and last name.

We also ask the student’s Year of Birth, which places further restrictions on the data that may be entered. If a student selects a year-of-birth that would make them under 18 years old on January 1 of that year, they are not able to enter their email address or last name – only their first name, and first initial of their last name (which generally is not considered PII in isolation). The Year-of-birth itself is not stored in our system.

Note that HTMW also supports Single Sign-On (SSO) via Google, including Google Classroom accounts. Students who register via SSO are subject to the same restrictions as those without (we still ask the Year of Birth when connecting via SSO).

PII Retention

All PII from all users is automatically purged from our system 1 year after every user’s last login date (with the exception of the contact information for teachers, which is retained longer for reminders to set up future classes in our separate email marketing platform).

Teachers and administrators can also request we purge the PII from all students from any given class at any time. Note: once a purge request has been processed, students will no longer be able to access HTMW (their logins will cease to exist), and class reporting (i.e. stock game final rankings) will no longer be available.

Advertisements

HowTheMarketWorks is a service that is offered free-of-charge to schools thanks to our sponsorships from the financial services industry – particularly our advertising partners at InvestingChannel. HowTheMarketWorks also has advertisements from Google Adsense to help fund our product.

The types of ads that are displayed may vary by a student’s age, with differentiation applied based on whether a student is flagged “over 18”, “under 18” at the time their account was created. Users who were flagged as “under 18” have special restrictions on the ad code present on the site, with no tracking cookies or any data whatsoever shared with any advertising partners (as part of our compliance efforts for both COPPA and GDPR). Please see our separate Privacy Policy and COPPA Policy for more details.

Ad-Free and LMS Rostering

Please note that we have an ad-free version of our stock game available at PersonalFinanceLab.com, with no ad codes for any users, further restrictions on what information may be shared on the registration pages, and rostering/SSO support for most popular LMS systems.

DPA Requests

If your school district requires a DPA on file with HowTheMarketWorks, please send all inquiries to privacy@howthemarketworks.com. In most cases, we already have state-wide DPAs in place with states where DPAs are required, and so we simply need to have that reflected with your district.

Please note that HowTheMarketWorks is part of the StockTrak brand of financial simulations, and so responses from our team will come from the “stocktrak.com” domain.