Privacy

There are no ads and no student accounts. Nothing a student types or answers goes anywhere except to their teacher's class, and visits to the site are counted only as totals.

Last updated October 28, 2026.

When a student joins a class

We store the first name the student types, their answers, and when they answered, under the teacher's class code, along with what their play earned: the missions they completed and the path their atom took in the carbon game, or the challenge rounds they solved in a simulation. Nothing else: no last name, no email, no location. Only that teacher can see it.

How long it is kept

Student answers delete themselves 12 months after the assignment was created, which covers a school year. A teacher can delete an assignment, and every answer in it, at any time.

Teachers

A teacher account stores an email address, the assignments made with it, and any questions written in the question bank. It is used for signing in and nothing else. We never send marketing email. While a teacher is signed in, the browser keeps a sign-in cookie so the site can open simulations that are not public yet to that account; it lasts an hour at a time and is removed on signing out. Students never get one.

Counting visits

Every page reports a visit to Vercel Web Analytics, and how fast it loaded and responded to Vercel Speed Insights, so we can see how people find the site and whether it runs well on school devices. A report holds the page's address with any class code removed, the time, the site the visitor came from, and the speed numbers; Vercel adds the country, device type, browser, and operating system from the request. Neither sets a cookie, and we see only totals. No name, answer, or class code is ever part of it.

Where it is kept

Class data is stored in a database run by Supabase, and the site is served by Vercel. Both keep ordinary server logs, which include the address a request came from, for a short time. To stop a script from flooding a class or guessing class codes, the database also counts joins, answers, and wrong codes from each internet address for the current hour; those counts hold only the address and a number, are never linked to a name or an answer, and are deleted after about two hours.

Schools and student privacy laws

Blue Marble is made for teachers to use with their classes, and a student gives us data only by joining a class a teacher set up. We use class data for one thing: showing each teacher their own students' work. We never sell it, share it beyond the two services named above, show ads, or build profiles of students. That is the use the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) lets a school approve for its students, and for schools covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) we treat class data as part of the school's records, under the school's control.

Seeing or deleting a student's data

A parent or student can ask the teacher, who can delete the assignment and every answer in it. Or email hello@bluemarblesims.org with the class code and the first name used, and we will send what is stored or delete it within 30 days. A teacher can ask us the same way to delete their account; their assignments, questions, and students' answers are deleted with it.

Keeping it safe

Everything travels over an encrypted connection. The database lets each teacher read only their own classes, and a student's answers can be seen only by that teacher. If class data were ever exposed, we would tell the affected teachers promptly.

On this device

When a student joins, the browser remembers their place in that assignment so a reload does not lose their work. The simulations and the game also keep badges, what was discovered, and settings in the browser. None of it is sent anywhere, and clearing the browser's site data removes it.

Questions

Email hello@bluemarblesims.org with anything about this page or the site.