Privacy Policy

SmarterServices, LLC provides services to educational institutions (schools) and their students, faculty, and administrators. This privacy policy describes the data that either identifies you or that can be used to identify you that we receive from you and that we receive or obtain from others.

SmarterServices, LLC complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information transferred from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States. SmarterServices, LLC has certified to the Department of Commerce that it adheres to the Privacy Shield Principles. If there is any conflict between the terms in this privacy policy and the Privacy Shield Principles, the Privacy Shield Principles shall govern. To learn more about the Privacy Shield program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/ SmarterServices is subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

1. Who We Get Personal Data About

We receive, obtain, and process information about the following kinds of persons:

  • current, potential, or former students of a school (our references to “students” includes current, potential, and former students),
  • current, potential, or former faculty members of a school (our references to “faculty” includes current, potential, and former faculty),
  • school administrative staff from schools that receive services from us,
  • individuals, whether they are acting individually or on behalf of an organization, who provide test support services to us, including services related to testing locations and proctoring services, and
  • anyone who visits our website, smarterservices.com.

This Privacy Policy is applicable to all of these individuals. In this Privacy Policy, we call these individuals “you.”

2. When You are Outside the United States

While infrequent, in some situations you or a school will subscribe to our services in a way that requires us to receive your personal data when you are physically located outside the United States.

If you are located in the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom (UK), or other countries of the European Economic Area (EEA) when you engage or interact with our services, we may seek your explicit consent to gather and process this information. Specifically, we seek your explicit consent to obtain and process personal data:

  • in the United States;
  • for certain SmarterProctoring services, because of our collection of certain biometric data;
  • for certain SmarterProctoring services, because of our collection of information about where you are located when you take the test, about the physical and electronic environment in which you take the test, and about your behaviors and movements in connection with taking the test. Because this kind of information relates to your performance at your school, your reliability, behavior, location, and movements, certain laws may consider this “profiling,” which may require your explicit consent to obtain and process; and
  • for all of our services, for our collection of information that allows us to contact and interact with you related to the services we provide.

If you are located in the EU, the UK or other countries of the EEA, we will ask for your explicit consent when you sign up for our services. We may also ask you to re-affirm your consent at the time you interact with our services.

3. Our Services

We may provide four services to you and your school:

  • SmarterMeasure™: A suite of assessment tools that are used by schools to assess students and teachers. They are used to determine whether a student is ready for a particular course, whether a teacher is ready to teach a course, a student’s testing anxiety, and other measures that are important to achieve a more effective learning experience. We collect, analyze, and score your answers and provide your school access to your scores and our analysis.
  • SmarterAssessments™: An assessment platform that we or your school may use to design and deploy assessments. We collect, analyze, and score your answers and provide your school access to your scores and our analysis.
  • SmarterProctoring™: A system to assist the proctoring of tests under various testing conditions. We may locate and manage the test locations, provide live proctors, or perform automated test-taking and proctoring services. We may also collect, analyze, and score your test answers and provide your school access to your scores and our analysis.
  • SmarterID™: A set of tools and processes to authenticate a person who is taking a test or assessment. Some of these processes use facial biometric data to authenticate users.

4. Personal Data That We Collect

How we use this information is described in the “How We Use Your Personal Data” section of this Privacy Policy.

A. Personal Data of Students

We may receive your personal data from the following sources: from you, from your test environment, from your school, from proctors, and from other test support providers. For some SmarterProctoring services, just before, during, and just after you take a test, we may collect information about the physical and electronic environment in which you take a test.

(1) From You

We collect the kinds of information from you needed to provide our services to you and your school. 

If you use any of the SmarterMeasure™ assessments, we may collect contact information, demographic information, information from custom questions asked by your school, as well as readiness information that can be non-cognitive (i.e., your motivation, procrastination, technical knowledge, etc.) and cognitive (i.e., your current competence in math and writing). 

From you, we may obtain your name, email address, phone number, residence or other address, and information about the tests you are to take (type of test, your availability to take the test, where you will take the test, etc.). When you take a test that we provide, you will also provide us with information that allows us, proctors, and other test support providers to identify you. We also may collect the answers you provide to the test questions and other information about your testing experience, such as how long you took to take the test. We may also collect information that helps proctors and other support providers to identify you.

If you use any assessment or tests provided through the SmarterAssessments™ platform we may collect contact information, demographic information and information from custom questions asked by your school. From you, we may obtain your name, email address, phone number, residence or other address, and information about the tests you are to take (type of test, your availability to take the test, where you will take the test, etc.). When you take a test that we provide, you will also provide us with information that allows us, proctors, and other test support providers to identify you. We also may collect the answers you provide to the test questions and other information about your testing experience, such as how long you took to take the test. We may also collect information that helps support providers to identify you.

Our SmarterProctoring™ services can be used alone or in combination with our other services. When you take a test where we provide these services, you will provide us with information that allows us, proctors, and other test support providers to identify you. We also may collect the answers you provide to the test questions and other information about your testing experience, such as how long you took to take the test.

If you use our automated or live virtual SmarterProctoring™ services, we may take videos, still pictures, and audio information related to the room in which you are taking the test, as well as video and audio of your own behaviors during and for a short time before and after the test. During your session we also may monitor and log what your computing devices are displaying, what you are typing, what programs are running on your computing device, what information sources you are connected to, and what information you are sending and receiving. If your test is setup to require the SmarterProctoring Utility Application, once it is downloaded and executed, we may also collect any system information except for your browsing history.

Our SmarterID™ user authentication system can also be used alone or in combination with our other services. If you receive our automated or live virtual SmarterProctoring™ services, you will provide us an image of your driver’s license or other picture-ID. We may also collect facial biometric data. You will be prompted each time facial data is collected. We may also collect information that helps support providers to identify you.

If you do not use one or more of our services, then we will not collect the information listed for that service. We only collect the data associated with the service you actually use.

(2) From Your Environment

If you use our automated or live virtual SmarterProctoring services, we may take videos, still pictures, and audio information related to the room in which you are taking the test, as well as video and audio of your own behaviors during and for a short time before and after the test.

We also may monitor what your computing devices are displaying, what you are typing, what programs are running on your computing device, what information sources you are connected to, and what information you are sending and receiving.

As you are using our services on our domains, we may collect information on your use of our services on our domains, such as pages visited, links clicked, non-sensitive text entered, and mouse movements, as well as information more commonly collected such as the referring URL, browser, operating system, cookie information, and Internet Service Provider.

(3) From Your School

Your school will typically provide us with your name, email address, and other contact information, what tests you are to take, the time parameters of when you are to take the test, the test questions, and other test requirements (e.g., whether it is an open book test, length of test), as well as information about who to contact for additional information if needed.

(4) From Test Support Providers

We may obtain information about you from test support providers who facilitate your taking of the test. If you are to take the test at a testing location, we may be told whether you showed up or not and when. From proctors, we may receive information about the testing environment and your behaviors before, during, and after you take the test.

(5) Payment Information

We may collect payments from you. We use a third-party payment processor: Stripe. Our payment processor’s use of your personal data is set forth on its website:https://stripe.com/us/privacy. We do not otherwise capture or obtain payment information from you, other than as necessary to keep track of your payments to us and our accounts receivable, which are for our accounting and invoicing systems.

In the context of this onward transfer of your information, SmarterServices has responsibility for the processing of personal information it receives under the Privacy Shield and subsequently transfers to a third party acting as an agent on its behalf. SmarterServices shall remain liable under the Principles if its agent (Stripe) processes such personal information in a manner inconsistent with the Principles, unless SmarterServices proves that it is not responsible for the event giving rise to the damage.

B. Personal Data of Faculty Members

(1) From You

We collect the kinds of information from you needed to provide our services to you and your school. From you, we may obtain directory information such as your name and email address, and information about the tests you administer (type of test, testing window, allowable resources, etc.). When you administer a test that we provide, you will also provide us with information that allows us to identify you. We also may collect the answers you provide to the test questions and other information about the testing process experience.

(2) From Your School

Your school will typically provide us with your name, email address, and other contact information, what tests you are to administer, the time parameters, and the test questions, as well as information about who to contact for additional information if needed.

C. Personal Data of Proctors and Other Test Support Providers

If you assist with arranging or administering testing locations or if you are a proctor, we may obtain your name, email address, telephone numbers, and other contact information. We also capture and facilitate any needed communications between proctors and the school.

D. Personal Data of School Administrative Staff

If you are an administrator at a school who is a customer, we also collect the following of items of your personal data: name, email address, phone numbers, and other information needed to contact you.

E. From Visitors to Our Websites

If you are a visitor to our websites, we may capture certain information automatically. What we capture automatically is described in our Cookie Policy.

On our websites, there are a number of places where you can provide us information, including signing up for demonstrations, viewing case studies, receiving other downloads, and participating in webinars. We only collect the information that you provide to us.

5. What We Do With Your Personal Data and the Purpose

A. Generally

(1) Our Contractor

We have one subcontractor that has access to this data and on whose computers we process your personal data, which is AuthenticID. AuthenticID also provides us with facial recognition technologies that allow us to identify students based on the picture-ID you provide to us. The privacy policy of AuthenticID is available at http://authenticid.co/privacy-policy/.

(2) Our Uses of De-Identified Data

We also use information we obtain from you in combination with information from other persons to monitor and improve our products and services. We also use this information to identify needs that may be met with new products and services. However, the information we use to monitor and improve our products and services, and identify new products and services is “de-identified” before we use it for these purposes. Information that identifies or can be used to identify you is either eliminated from the data we use or your information is aggregated with the information from other individuals in a manner that prevents this information from identifying you individually.

(3) The Controller

For the purposes of compliance with laws applicable to the EU, the UK or other countries of the EEA, the school is the “controller” of the personal data, and we are the “processor.”

B. For Students Who Take Tests

If you are a student, your school controls the information we obtain and process. Our use of your personal data is limited by our agreement with your school. Your school has access to the information we collect and our processing of that information. We do not control what your school does with the data we make available to them. You should refer to your school for what your school does with the personal data that we capture and process.

We will process the information we receive from you and make it available to your school.

We also provide personal data to proctors and other test support persons in order to provide the testing services to you. Proctors and other test support persons are prohibited from using your personal data for any other purpose, by contract.

We will make available your assessment and test answers to your school. For certain assessments and tests, we may also score your answers and make that score available to your school. We also may make available to the school information about the environment of and your behaviors just before, during, and just after test-taking and any observations we have or conclusions we draw from the analysis of you and your environment during the testing process.

(1) Our Uses of Biometric Data and Profiling

If you receive our SmarterID services or certain of our automated or live virtual SmarterProctoring services, you will provide us an image of your driver’s license or other picture-ID. We then use your picture on the ID and a picture that is taken on the device with which you will take the test for the purposes of identifying you. This is the only biometric data that we capture. Amazon Web Services is our host for facial identification services.

If you receive our automated or live virtual SmarterProctoring services, we may also collect information about where you are located when you take the test, about the physical and electronic environment in which you take the test, and about your behaviors and movements in connection with taking the test. Because this kind of information relates to your performance at your school, your reliability, behavior, location, and movements, certain laws may consider this “profiling.” This information is obtained to determine whether the test was administered in a fair manner and whether you cheated. These are the only reasons we obtain this information. This information is also made available to your school.

In connection with our collection of the physical and electronic environment in which you take the test, the determinations of whether you cheated or not is not based solely on an automated decision-making process. The decision of cheating or not is made based on a review by individual persons of the information captured in connection with the test. Your school will also have access to this information to reach its own conclusions. We may use automated means to determine whether the information should be reviewed for possible evidence of cheating.

(2) Consequences of Our Use of Your Personal Data Specific to Students

For our SmarterProctoring and SmarterID services, we help determine whether the test is administered fairly and whether you are cheating. If you cheat and we report evidence of your cheating to your school, then you may be faced with disciplinary actions associated with cheating. While your school determines the consequences of cheating, they could include your failing the test, the course, or even expulsion from the school.

We will also report to the school whether you actually took the test. If you fail to take the test as required, you may also suffer consequences from your school. While your school determines the consequences of failing to take the test, they could include your failing the test, the course, or even expulsion from the school.

Failing the test, the course, expulsion, or other consequences of cheating or failing to take the test as required may have other consequences, including loss of scholarships or other benefits. These other consequences are also up to your school.

C. For Faculty Who Take Tests

If you are a faculty member, the consequence of your taking the test is a function of your answers and what a school does with that information. For example, if you are being evaluated for your abilities to teach an on-line course, your score may result in your not being asked to teach the course.

The personal data we receive from you or obtain about you from others is quite limited, consisting of your name, email address, phone numbers, and possibly other addresses. 

D. For School Administrators

For school administrators, we capture and use your personal data only for the purposes of communicating with you about the services we provide to your school.

The personal data we receive from you or obtain about you from others is quite limited, consisting of your name, email address, phone numbers, and possibly other addresses. 

E. For Proctors and Other Test Support

For those who proctor tests or provide other test support services, we receive and use your personal data only for the purposes of communicating with you about the services that you provide to us or the school. We may retain your personal data for the purposes of following up on a particular service that you provided or contacting you for other opportunities to work together.

The personal data we receive from you or obtain about you from others is quite limited, consisting of your name, email address, phone numbers, and possibly other addresses. 

F. Personal Data of Those Who Access Our Website

For those who access our websites, we capture and use the personal data that you provide to us for the purposes of responding to your requests, to follow up with you to determine whether you have questions or are interested in receiving our services, or whether we can provide you with additional information.

The personal data we receive from you or obtain about you from others is quite limited, consisting of your name, email address, phone numbers, and possibly other addresses. 

G. We Do Not Sell Personal Data

We do not sell your personal data to anyone. We do not use or disclose your personal data to anyone for the purposes of advertising products and services of third parties. Our use of your personal data for our own marketing purposes is described in the section titled For Those Who Access Our Website.

If we sell our business, the buyer would have access to and use of your personal data in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

H. We Do Not Repurpose Personal Data

We obtain personal data only for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

6. You May Withdraw Consent at Any Time

You may contact us at support@smarterservices.com to withdraw your consent to receive or use your personal data in the future at any time. If you are a student or faculty, our inability to capture personal data in the future may prevent our ability to provide test-taking services to you. Your inability to take a test may have consequences to you, as generally described in the section of this Privacy Policy called “Consequences of Our Use of Your Personal Data.” You will also need to arrange to take any tests using services other than ours.

If you as a student, faculty or other user do not provide initial consent or later withdraw consent, then you will not be allowed to utilize the services provided through SmarterMeasure, SmarterAssessments, SmarterProctoring and/or SmarterID. It is your responsibility to contact your school to determine what other options they have available for taking the applicable test.

If you contact us and withdraw your consent to use or distribute your personal data that we have already captured, our continued use of your personal data will be governed by our agreement with your school. Unless we are required under our agreements with your school, we will delete your data within a reasonable period of time after receipt of your notice to us.

For school administrative staff, proctors and other test support providers, or those who access our websites, we will delete your data within a reasonable period of time after receipt of your notice to us.

7. Purposes and Length of Retention

We retain personal data related to our services in accordance with the agreements with our schools. We delete data related to our providing of services when we are no longer required to keep them in our agreements with the schools or when we are required to do so under those agreements.

For personal data we obtain from proctors and test support personnel, we review our retention of this personal data at least once a year and delete it when we determine that it is no longer reasonably needed for the purposes for which we obtained the personal data.

8. Specific Requirements Related to the European Union, the UK and EEA

This section related to personal information received by us if at the time of receipt you are located in the EU, the UK, or the EEA.

A. Your Access to and Correction of the Personal Data We Collect or Process

(1) For Students, Faculty Members, or School Administrators

If you are a student, faculty member, or a school administrator, you should contact your school if you wish to have access to any Personal Data that we collect or process or if you wish to correct or rectify any information we retain that you believe is inaccurate. You should also contact your school if you wish to exercise your right to be forgotten an accordance with the laws of the EU, UK, or member countries of the EEA. You may also ask your school to restrict our collection of your personal data while the accuracy of the personal data is being contested.

(2) For Proctors, Other Test Support Personnel, or a Visitor to Our Websites

If you are a proctor, other test support personnel, or a visitor to our website, you can contact us at support@smarterservices.com to gain access to any Personal Data that we collect or process or if you wish to correct any information we retain that you believe is inaccurate. You should also contact us at the same address if you wish to exercise your right to be forgotten an accordance with the laws of the EU, UK, or member countries of the EEA. You may also request that we restrict our collection of your personal data while the accuracy of the personal data is being contested.

B. Your Right to Lodge a Complaint

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in the country of your residence if you believe that we or the school have violated the law.

C. Data Safeguards

Your personal data is also protected by contractual clauses between us and your school. In addition, we take additional technical safeguards with your personal data. For more detailed information about our technical safeguards, please email us at support@smarterservices.com.