Privacy Notice

Who operates TAIF Lab

TAIF Learning Lab is operated in South Africa as a partnership by Stephen Coetzee and Astrid Schmulian from Lynnwood Road, Pretoria, South Africa.

Responsible party and operator roles

TAIF is intended for university and other higher-education use. Educator accounts remain restricted to adults aged 18 or older. Eligible higher-education minors may participate where the instructor has the necessary authority and the required processing and permission arrangements exist. Individual instructors may register directly in their professional capacity; registration does not itself represent institutional procurement, endorsement or approval.

Before providing learner information or permitting participation, including Open participation, instructors must obtain required approvals and permissions, including parent or guardian permission where required. Any necessary parental acceptance of the Terms must be arranged separately outside TAIF. The institution or authorised instructor keeps the detailed evidence securely; TAIF does not routinely request parental documents, dates of birth or identity uploads. TAIF records the exact versioned confirmation, notices, actor, class or activity scope and server time. A learner confirms instructor permission and their own identifier; a team representative confirms permission to enter details and accepts the Terms for themselves only. These declarations are not independent identity or permission verification. TAIF does not offer general school or children’s self-service participation; unusually young higher-education cases need prior individual review. If permission is missing, withdrawn or the use is unsupported, contact the instructor and TAIF privacy contact. TAIF can restrict the class while reviewing lawful deletion, correction or justified limited retention. Being a minor with the required arrangements is not itself a permission incident.

Data-protection roles depend on how TAIF is deployed. Where an educational institution decides why and how learner assessment information is processed, that institution will ordinarily act as the responsible party and TAIF will ordinarily process the information as an operator on the institution's documented instructions. TAIF may act as a responsible party for educator-account, service-administration, security and support information where TAIF determines the purpose and means of that processing.

Where an instructor adopts TAIF directly without an institutional agreement, that instructor is responsible for confirming that they have authority to use learner information for the class and for following applicable institutional rules. TAIF remains responsible for the processing it independently determines for account administration, service operation, security and support.

The institution and TAIF should confirm their exact roles, instructions, security duties, subprocessors, retention requirements, incident process and exit arrangements in writing before institutional adoption. Contact TAIF for an educational data arrangement; the preparation document describes the current service and the matters to settle. It is not an executed institutional agreement.

Information TAIF may process

TAIF collects information reasonably needed to provide and secure the service. Depending on how an instructor or institution uses TAIF, this currently includes:

• student and instructor names;
• institution-issued learner identifiers, and instructor email addresses and identity details;
• organisation, class and team membership;
• assessment questions, answer options, instructions and explanations;
• individual think responses, team answers, attempts, marks, scores and reflections;
• assessment status, progress, timing, connection checks and support incidents;
• educator email verification challenges, failed-attempt counts, invitation and session information;
• protected class-scoped learner-usage keys and counts, and a separate protected Free-allowance eligibility key used to avoid duplicate claims. Ordinary removal from a roster does not refund a consumed place. Minimal consumption evidence may remain after ordinary account/class changes to enforce the allowance; full learner records are not retained solely for this purpose. Deletion and retention requests remain subject to the published purposes and review process;
• records of Terms acceptance, Privacy Notice acknowledgement, educator age declarations, learner participation permission and class authority confirmations and identifier attestations, including the applicable versions and timestamps;
• administrator entitlement, suspension and support actions; and
• technical, security and audit information reasonably required to operate and protect TAIF.

Privacy mode labels

In optional Privacy mode, instructors supply team labels or individual aliases, such as Otter or Heron 01, and keep real learner names, institutional identifiers, group membership and attendance outside TAIF. TAIF records label-based answers, attempts, results, progress, private entry codes, random device sessions and versioned participation declarations. This flow creates no learner or membership records. The instructor exports one result per label and allocates any marks in local institutional records.

Privacy mode supports graded and ungraded activities with one answering device per label. It does not provide named attendance, member devices, individual Think First or member reflections. Existing class rosters remain separate. Labels and assessment content may still identify a person if identifying information is entered; do not put real learner details or an identity mapping into TAIF. Technical and security processing still applies. Privacy mode reduces disclosure and does not guarantee irreversible anonymity or remove institutional privacy duties. Current instructor authority and applicable learner permissions remain required.

TAIF also uses browser local storage or session storage for items such as active team codes, random session tokens and public-demo continuity. Cloudflare may process ordinary network and request information needed to deliver and protect the service, such as IP address, request time, browser or device information, security signals and diagnostic logs. TAIF does not use this information for advertising or cross-site profiling.

TAIF does not currently provide a separate employee-number field or a standalone student account. Students may enter an institution-issued learner identifier when forming or joining a team. TAIF normalises it, uses a keyed lookup value to find the relevant class record, and holds the identifier itself in a restricted encrypted mapping for roster reconciliation and authorised gradebook export. The identifier is not copied into ordinary attempt, team-session or analytics records.

Where Open participation is enabled, a participant who is not on the uploaded roster enters a name and institution-issued learner identifier. TAIF records these as self-reported and Unmatched until the relevant instructor or institution verifies them. TAIF otherwise receives roster information from authorised instructors or institutions, account and support information from the relevant user, and assessment, technical and audit information when people use the service.

Billing information and payment processing

When an authorised billing owner starts a purchase, TAIF sends their account email address, the selected subscription option and an opaque checkout reference to Lemon Squeezy. Do not enter learner details into billing fields. The hosted payment service collects the payer and payment information it requires, which may include a name, billing address, tax information and payment-method details. TAIF does not receive or store full payment-card numbers.

TAIF retains payment references, the workspace and owner association, subscription status, invoice amounts, currency, tax information, paid periods and reconciliation and audit information needed to provide access, manage subscriptions, resolve payment issues and meet applicable record-keeping requirements. It retains references and redacted diagnostics rather than raw webhook payer payloads or signed management links. These billing records do not contain learner rosters, assessment answers or student identifiers.

Lemon Squeezy acts as merchant of record and processes payment and payer information under its own terms and Privacy Policy. Payment processing may involve international transfers and supporting financial providers. TAIF does not send class rosters, learner identifiers, assessment questions, answers or results to Lemon Squeezy for payment processing.

Anonymous public demo activity

When a visitor meaningfully starts the simulated public demo, TAIF records one anonymous demo session with server timestamps, the number of committed answer attempts, completion status and, when deliberately included in the shared link, a short source tag. A temporary random session identifier is kept in the browser's session storage only to prevent refreshes and retries from duplicating that active session.

This public-demo measurement does not collect names, email addresses, student identifiers, real assessment data, IP addresses, advertising identifiers or device fingerprints, and it is not used for advertising or cross-site profiling.

Why TAIF processes information

TAIF may process this information to:

• create and manage instructor accounts and authorised access;
• create and administer classes, rosters and instructor roles;
• reconcile class rosters, place participants into teams and verify team membership using institution-issued learner identifiers;
• deliver assessments and synchronise collaborative activity across permitted devices;
• record answers, attempts, reflections and scores and provide immediate feedback;
• show results and reconnect marks to institution-issued learner identifiers during an explicit authorised gradebook export;
• support users and diagnose technical problems;
• provide subscription access, reconcile payments, manage billing and resolve payment issues;
• maintain security, assessment integrity and audit records; and
• meet applicable legal requirements.

TAIF does not sell or rent personal information, show advertising to students, use learner information for cross-site advertising profiles, or use assessment content or learner responses to train general-purpose artificial-intelligence models.

When information is required

Privacy mode uses an instructor-issued private label code and does not require a learner identifier. In the existing identified participation routes, an institution-issued learner identifier is required for roster matching, self-enrolment and personal-device team verification. In Open participation, a learner who is not found on the roster may still participate by supplying a name and identifier, but the record remains Unmatched and self-reported until reviewed. If the required information is not provided, TAIF cannot match the learner, reconnect the mark to a gradebook identifier or verify personal-device membership.

Who may see the information

• Students may see information relevant to their own participation and their team’s assessment activity. A learner identifier entered for matching is not shown to teammates.
• Authorised instructors may see class, roster, team, assessment, attempt, reflection and result information for classes they are permitted to access. Institutional identifiers are masked in ordinary screens and included in a gradebook file only through an explicit authorised export. Roles limit what each instructor can change.
• Authorised TAIF administrators may access information where reasonably necessary to operate, support, moderate or secure the service.
• Service providers may process limited information where required for hosting, databases, authentication, security, technical infrastructure or payment processing.

Student information is not intended to be public.

Instructor-provided student information

Instructors or institutions may add learners to a class roster or otherwise provide learner information. They are responsible for ensuring that they are authorised to provide and use that information through TAIF and for following their institution’s rules and applicable law.

Assessment information

TAIF records assessment activity according to the assessment configuration chosen by an authorised instructor. This may include question order, scoring by attempt, team membership, access controls, individual think responses and immediate feedback.

Service providers and international processing

TAIF uses the following infrastructure and payment services to run the platform and provide subscriptions:

• Cloudflare — Workers application hosting, D1 database storage, KV application caching, Images delivery, Turnstile security checks, transactional email delivery, network security, traffic routing and technical logs; production D1 primary database in Western Europe; other infrastructure and network processing may be global.
• Lemon Squeezy — merchant of record, hosted checkout, subscriptions, receipts, payment management, tax handling and refunds; receives billing information, not learner records; payment and payer processing may occur internationally through its supporting financial providers; see its Privacy Policy at https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/privacy.

TAIF's production D1 database currently reports its primary region as Western Europe. It has no jurisdiction restriction and read replication is disabled. This region is not a promise of storage in a particular country, and Cloudflare's network and supporting services may process information elsewhere. TAIF will use international processing only where permitted by applicable law and covered by appropriate contractual or other safeguards. The provider list will be updated here when the production setup changes materially.

Retention and deletion

Active classes keep the information needed for normal teaching and assessment use. Archived classes remain stored, become review-only and are hidden from normal active use; an authorised Course Owner can restore them.

Deleting a class permanently removes the class and its class-specific rosters, teams, assessments, questions, attempts, answers, scores, reflections, session records and activity records through TAIF’s deletion process. Limited information may remain temporarily where reasonably required for secure backups, recovery, legal obligations or legitimate institutional record-keeping.

Educator authentication challenges are designed to expire after approximately 10 minutes and are stored as one-way hashes rather than usable codes or links. Educator email sessions are designed to expire after approximately 30 days, and colleague invitation links after 14 days. Expired authentication challenges are purged opportunistically. Those authentication periods do not determine how long class or assessment records are kept.

Billing and financial records may be retained independently of teaching records for subscription operation, accounting, dispute resolution and applicable legal obligations. Deleting a class does not delete its workspace purchase history. Requests about personal information can be sent to the privacy contact above; payment-provider records may also need a request to that provider.

Read the Data & Retention policy →

Your rights and privacy concerns

Subject to applicable law and legitimate institutional record-keeping requirements, a person may request access to personal information, correction of inaccurate information, deletion where appropriate, information about processing, or object to certain processing where legally applicable.

Send a request to: info@taiflab.org. A request to remove a student’s information does not automatically require an institution to erase legitimate academic or assessment records that it is entitled or required to retain.

Complaints

Please raise a privacy concern with TAIF first using the privacy contact above. You may also have the right to approach South Africa’s Information Regulator. The Regulator’s official contact and complaint information is maintained on its own website.

Security and changes to this notice

TAIF uses reasonable technical and organisational measures designed to protect information, including server-enforced passwordless educator access, Cloudflare Turnstile, authentication rate limits, hashed single-use challenges, role-based class permissions, encrypted institution-issued learner identifiers, keyed lookup values and session controls. Authentication emails are delivered through Cloudflare Email Service from info@taiflab.org. Student sessions, incidents, answers and routine analytics use random TAIF learner IDs rather than institutional identifiers. Full identifiers are restored only for an explicit authorised gradebook export. No online service can guarantee absolute security.

If TAIF has reasonable grounds to believe that personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, TAIF will investigate, preserve relevant records, notify the responsible institution where applicable, and support notification to affected people and the Information Regulator as required by applicable law and institutional agreements.

This notice may be updated as TAIF, its providers or applicable requirements evolve. The current version and effective date will remain displayed on this page. When a change is material, TAIF may require instructors and active student participants to acknowledge the current notice before they continue.