Privacy policy

Privacy policy

Last updated October 11, 2026

The Goodness Factor (“we,” “us”) runs goodnessfactor.app and the Goodness Factor program for schools. This policy explains what information we collect, why, who can see it, and the choices you have. We wrote it to be read, not skimmed. If anything is unclear, write to support@goodnessfactor.app.

The short version

• Children never create accounts and we never collect information directly from a child. Schools enter a child's name and the acts their staff witnessed; the school owns that data and we process it on the school's behalf.
• No advertising, no selling of data, no analytics or trackers on any page that shows a child. The public site runs without analytics too.
• Data is hosted in the United States. Each school's data is separated from every other school's at the database level.
• A school can correct, export, and ask us to delete or de-identify a child's record. We answer within thirty days.

1. Who this policy covers

It covers visitors to goodnessfactor.app, school staff who use the logged-in program (admins, teachers, counselors), and the children and families whose information a school enters into the program. Where a school is the data owner, the school's own privacy notice to families applies alongside this policy.

2. What we collect

From visitors to the public site

Nothing that identifies you. Our hosting providers keep standard server logs (such as IP address, browser type and the pages requested) for security and to keep the service running. We do not run analytics, advertising pixels or third-party trackers.

From school staff

Your email address and name when you sign up; the school you belong to and your role; the entries you make in the program, which are attributed to you; and technical logs of your use of the service. Sign-in is handled by our authentication provider, which sends you a verification code by email. We do not store passwords.

About children, entered by the school

A child's name as the school records it, the class and age band, a Goodness ID that the program assigns, and the entries staff make: acts of goodness, Harmony-week confirmations, and, where a counselor records one, a deduction and its restoration with the counselor's note. The school decides what it enters. We ask schools to keep notes factual and brief and never to enter health, religious, political or other sensitive information.

3. Why we use it

To run the program for the school: to show teachers their classes, to compute a child's points and badges from the entries, to show the school who has been recognized and who has not, and to keep the record honest. To keep the service secure and working. To answer your questions. Nothing else. We never use children's information for advertising, profiling for commercial purposes, or training artificial intelligence models.

4. Who can see it

Within a school: the child's teachers see the children in their own classes; counselors and admins see every child in the school; the counselor's notes on deductions and restorations are visible to counselors and admins only. Families will see their own child's record when the family view opens, and nothing about other children. No child's record is shown to other families, on any public page, or to any other school.

Our staff may access a school's data only to support that school at its request, to keep the service secure, or when the law requires it, and every such access is logged.

5. Service providers

We use a small number of providers to run the service, each bound by contract to use the data only to provide their service to us:

• Clerk, for staff sign-in and verification-code email.
• Vercel, which hosts the website.
• DigitalOcean, which hosts the program's application and database in New York, United States.
• Cloudflare, for domain name services.
• Zoho, for our support email.

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it with data brokers or advertisers.

6. Children's privacy

Children do not sign in and we do not knowingly collect personal information directly from anyone under 13, or under 16 where that is the applicable age. Information about a child is entered by the child's school, which acts as the data owner and obtains any consent its own policies and the law require. For US schools we act as a “school official” with a legitimate educational interest under FERPA, under the school's direction and control. If you believe a child's information has been entered without the proper authority, write to us and we will act promptly.

7. How long we keep it

A school's records are kept while the school's account is active and for up to twelve months after it ends, so the school can export them, unless the school asks us to delete them sooner. Staff account information is kept while the account exists. Server logs are kept for a short, fixed period for security. The program's record is designed so that entries are written once and corrected by new entries; when a school asks us to delete or de-identify a child's record, we remove the information that identifies the child so the remaining entries can no longer be linked to them.

8. Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, restrict or delete your information, and to complain to a supervisory authority. Staff can do most of this from their account; schools make requests on behalf of their students; families make requests through their school, or to us directly if the school cannot help. Write to support@goodnessfactor.app. We answer within thirty days and never charge for it.

9. Security

Data travels encrypted and is stored on managed infrastructure with access controls. Each school's data is separated from every other school's at the database level, so even an error in our software cannot show one school another's records. Every entry in the program is attributed to the staff member who made it, and the record is kept in a form where any alteration is detectable. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting your information, we will tell the affected school and, where required, you and the authorities, without undue delay.

10. International users

We host data in the United States. If you use the service from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States under this policy and the school's agreement with us.

11. Changes

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top and, for changes that matter, tell schools by email before they take effect.

12. Contact

The Goodness Factor, support@goodnessfactor.app. See also the terms of use and how we keep the record honest and private.