FAQs Terms of Service Privacy Policy Student Data

Privacy and Student Data FAQs

Desmos’ services are designed for use by higher-ed students, K-12 students, teachers, professors, parents, math enthusiasts, video game designers, data scientists, and more. The goal of this page is to respond to frequently asked questions about our policies regarding privacy, student work, advertising, and various laws and regulations like COPPA, FERPA and GDPR. Please note that this is just an overview, and that usage of our services is governed by our Terms of Service, our Privacy Policy, our Student Data Privacy Statement, and, if executed by your school and Desmos, our School Data Processing Addendum.

We expect our different services will be used in very different ways, so our policies differ from service to service. For the rest of this document, we will talk about the following services:

“Desmos Tools”: which include our tools on www.desmos.com, including the Graphing Calculator, Scientific Calculator, Four Function Calculator, Geometry Tool, and future standalone tools to come. This term also includes any apps associated with those tools, including (i) the Desmos Graphing application, available on Android and iOS; (ii) the Desmos Scientific Calculator application, available on Android and iOS; and (iii) the Desmos Test Mode application, available on iOS for iPads.

“Desmos Classroom”: which includes all our services (i) on https://teacher.desmos.com (“teacher.desmos.com”) including those for creating and assigning activities (“Activities”) and the Desmos provided curriculum available at www.desmos.com/curriculum (the “Desmos Math Curriculum”), and (ii) on https://student.desmos.com (“student.desmos.com”), specifically, those for the use of activities or curricula as directed by an instructor on teacher.desmos.com.

Q. How is your service free? Are you making money from advertising?

A. No! Desmos’s business model is built around two lines of business: (1) paid partnerships with publishers, assessment companies, and educational institutions (Interested? Check out www.desmos.com/partners), and (2) our premium Desmos Math Curriculum (Interested? Check out www.desmos.com/curriculum). We will never profit from third-party advertising to students or selling personal data about students. Specifically, we pledge that:

These promises will live on, even in the case that we’re purchased or go bankrupt.

Q. Can I use the Desmos Tools and Activities on my digital learning platform, if I’m providing a class as part of a commercial platform or if I am creating tuition-based asynchronous classes?

Desmos often allows individual instructors to use Desmos Tools and Activities in connection with (i) instruction via a commercial platform and (ii) tuition-based asynchronous classes, but requires advance written (including via email) permission from Desmos for each such use. In addition to seeking permission, the instructor should provide attribution to Desmos within the course materials.

If a commercial instructional entity, company, or provider is interested in permission to use Desmos across their entire digital platform, or across curricula taught by the entity’s entire teaching faculty of said curricula, then a formal licensing agreement with Desmos is required.

Please email partnerships@desmos.com with any questions and permission requests.

Q. Do you comply with COPPA?

A. Yes. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is a United States federal law designed to protect the privacy of children under 13 years of age.

First, neither our services at teacher.desmos.com nor our Desmos Tools are directed at children under 13, with the sole exception of the Desmos Four Function and Scientific Calculators (which do not collect personal data). We do not intend for children under 13 to use those services. If you believe that we have accidentally collected personal information from a child under 13 without the consent of a parent, guardian, or school, let us know at privacy@desmos.com and we will remove that information as soon as possible.

Our service at student.desmos.com is intended for use by students, including students over or under the age of 13. Usage requires an invitation code provided by a teacher. Schools and/or teachers are expected to have appropriate permissions before directing any student to use Desmos, including students under 13. Once a school or teacher has provided consent for Desmos to collect a student’s personal information, Desmos protects that student’s privacy as required by COPPA. Please see our Student Data Privacy Statement for more details.

We do intend for our Four Function and Scientific Calculators to be used by people and students of any age. The Four Function and Scientific Calculators do not collect personal data.

Q. Do you comply with FERPA?

A. The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), is a federal law that protects the privacy of student educational records. Unlike COPPA, which applies to all online operators, FERPA regulates an educational institution’s use of student data. Here is how our product policies can help those institutions meet their obligations under FERPA.

We expect only teachers, not students, to use teacher.desmos.com for creating and running activities and using curricula in connection with Desmos Classroom.

Our Desmos Tools are intended for individual usage. We don’t know when any of these tools is used at the direction of a teacher as part of an assignment, so we can’t be helpful with FERPA compliance. For this reason, teachers and schools should only use Desmos Classroom (teacher.desmos.com and student.desmos.com) for collecting academic assignments.

We assume that all work in student.desmos.com has been assigned by a teacher or school for academic purposes. We don’t own any personal information collected through student.desmos.com – that is controlled by the teacher and school. Parents and students have rights under FERPA to access that work. Note that only the relevant teacher, school, parent or the student can ask Desmos to delete work done on student.desmos.com. Note further that if an account on teacher.desmos.com is deleted, student work associated with any activities that the teacher ran will be deleted as a result, even for students who still have an account. Please see our Student Data Privacy Statement for more details.

Q. Does Desmos comply with GDPR?

A. Yes. If you are a resident of the United Kingdom, Iceland, Liechtenstein, or Norway, or a member state of the European Union, you may have additional rights under the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR (the “GDPR”) with respect to your personal data.

Depending on how and which Desmos services you access, either Desmos or your school may be the “controller” of your Personal Data processed in connection with the services for purposes of the GDPR.

If your school is acting as the controller of your personal data, please first contact your school to exercise your rights under the GDPR with respect to such personal data.

If we are acting as the controller of your personal data, please feel free to contact us to exercise your rights with respect under the GDPR to your personal data.

In accordance with Article 27 of the GDPR, we have appointed EDPO as our representative. You can contact EDPOas follows:

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – European Representative

Pursuant to Article 27 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Desmos, Inc. has appointed European Data Protection Office (EDPO) as its GDPR Representative in the EU. You can contact EDPO regarding matters pertaining to the GDPR:

UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - UK Representative

Pursuant to Article 27 of the UK GDPR, Desmos, Inc. has appointed EDPO UK Ltd as its UK GDPR representative in the UK. You can contact EDPO UK regarding matters pertaining to the UK GDPR:

Additionally, as required by GDPR, Desmos has SCCs with our subcontractors who process Personal Data.

Q. Can I ask Desmos to sign a Data Processing Agreement with my school located in Europe?

A. Yes. We offer data processing addendums (“DPAs”) with attached Standard Contractual Clauses (“SCCs”) for schools that operate in the United Kingdom or European Economic Area.

Our DPA supplements our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and contains contractual terms that address the GDPR's requirements for data processing agreements between controllers and processors, including with respect to personal data transfer, and that reflect our data privacy and security commitments.

You can review our standard, template DPA with attached SCCs here. If you represent a school and would like to enter into that DPA (and attached SCCs) with us, please send an email to privacy-gdpr@desmos.com, with the following information about the school: (i) name, (ii) address, (iii) telephone number, (iv) signatory name, (v) signatory title, and (vi) signatory email address, and (vii) teacher.desmos.com account usernames. We will then send the school’s signatory a copy of the DPA for electronic signatures via DocuSign or equivalent.

Q. Does Desmos have a Student Data Privacy Agreement with my school in the United States?

A. We have data privacy agreements with many school districts across several states and are happy to work with your school to get an agreement in place. Please email us at privacy@desmos.com for more information.

Q. Is Desmos compliant with NY State Education Law 2-D?

A. Yes. Education Law 2-D is a New York state law designed to protect the personally identifiable information of students. We are happy to work with New York school districts to put Education Law 2-D compliance documents, such as data sharing agreements, into place. We reserve the right to request modifications to such compliance documents to clarify or reflect our internal compliance processes for certain requirements of Education Law 2-D, such as the return and/or the deletion of student data. Please email us at privacy@desmos.com for more information.

Q. Is Desmos compliant with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)?

A. Yes, may review the details of Desmos’ compliance in our California Privacy Rights Statement.

Q. Does Desmos use or collect Cookies?

A. Yes, but we work incredibly hard to only collect what is necessary to maintain a consistent experience. For example, Desmos.com uses cookies to enable persistence when you are signed in. In addition, on subdomains help.desmos.com, learn.desmos.com, and pontoon.desmos.com, third party service providers use cookies for functionality and for analytics. Where possible, we have minimized what cookies are collected by those third party service providers. For more information, please review the Desmos Cookie Policy.

Q. How do you protect the privacy of student data you share with third parties?

A. We work hard to protect your data while it’s in transit and once it’s stored. All of our sites, apps, and services use Secure Socket Layer Encryption (SSL) to transfer your data. We only share and store your data with trusted services that are also committed to security. We maintain a list of those services here:

https://github.com/desmosinc/policies/blob/master/third-party-services.md

We try our hardest to keep this list up to date, but we may add or subtract service providers at any time. Please contact us at privacy@desmos.com to confirm our most up to date list of service providers at any given time.

Q. How will I know if you update your policies?

A. We make it easy to see any changes we make to our policies. We host our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Student Data Privacy Statement, Cookie Policy, and List of Third Party Services in a public github repository at https://github.com/desmosinc/policies. These FAQs are also hosted there.

As a result, you can see both the current version of each document and a complete history of changes. In addition, we will prominently post a notice on our websites if we make any major changes to any of these policy documents. We will not necessarily notify you for small changes (e.g. modifications to the list of Third Party Services). However, you can subscribe to notifications from the github repository if you’re interested in being updated on every change. (Instructions.)

These FAQs were last updated on November 1, 2021.

Q. What if I have other questions?

A. If you have any questions about any of our policies, just send us an email at privacy@desmos.com.