Tracking Technology Information

Purpose of Our Tracking Methods

Our platform relies on several types of tracking technologies to deliver the educational services you expect. These technologies—primarily cookies and similar tools—work by storing small pieces of data either on your device or in your browser session. Cookies are text files that websites place on your computer or mobile device when you visit them, and they help us remember who you are and what you prefer. Some stick around for years, while others disappear the moment you close your browser window.

We can't run dungeonporch without certain essential technologies. These handle the basics like keeping you logged in as you move between course modules, remembering items in your learning cart, and ensuring secure connections during payment processes. Without these foundational elements, you'd find yourself constantly re-entering credentials, losing progress mid-lesson, and facing serious security vulnerabilities. They're the backbone of any functional educational platform—think of them as the digital equivalent of keeping your notebook open to the right page.

Analytics technologies help us understand how students interact with our courses and where they struggle. We track metrics like which video lectures get rewatched most frequently, where learners tend to drop off in a module, how long students spend on practice problems, and which navigation paths lead to course completion. This data transforms into concrete improvements: we might redesign a confusing quiz interface, add supplementary materials where students consistently get stuck, or reorganize course content based on actual usage patterns rather than assumptions.

Functional technologies remember your preferences and choices across sessions. When you adjust video playback speed, select a preferred language for subtitles, choose between light and dark mode, or set your dashboard to display certain course categories first, these technologies preserve those decisions. They personalize your learning journey so the platform adapts to your study habits rather than forcing you to reconfigure settings every single time you log in.

Our customization features draw on your course history and interaction patterns to suggest relevant educational content. If you've completed three coding courses focusing on web development, the system might recommend an advanced JavaScript course or a related design program. These technologies analyze your learning path, quiz performance, and stated interests to surface opportunities you might actually care about, rather than bombarding you with random promotional content that wastes your time.

The entire ecosystem works together in ways that aren't immediately obvious from the outside. Essential technologies lay the groundwork, analytics reveal improvement opportunities, functional tools remember your preferences, and customization systems build on all that data to create a coherent experience. When these layers communicate effectively, you get a platform that feels intuitive and responsive—one that seems to anticipate your needs because it's actually paying attention to patterns in your behavior.

Managing Your Preferences

You have substantial control over how tracking technologies operate on dungeonporch, and regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation and similar privacy frameworks guarantee these rights. We can't force you to accept non-essential tracking—you're entitled to browse our public content, review course catalogs, and make informed decisions about which technologies you'll allow. That said, blocking essential technologies will break core functionality, so we'll clearly indicate which categories are truly necessary versus optional.

Most modern browsers give you granular control over tracking technologies through their settings menus. In Chrome, click the three-dot menu, select Settings, navigate to Privacy and Security, then click on Cookies and other site data to configure your preferences or block specific sites. Firefox users should click the menu button, select Settings, go to Privacy and Security, and look for the Cookies and Site Data section where you can set standard, strict, or custom protections. Safari users on Mac can open Preferences, click Privacy, and manage website tracking settings along with the option to block all technologies entirely. Edge users navigate to Settings, select Cookies and site permissions, then Manage and delete cookies and site data.

Dungeonporch provides its own preference management center accessible from your account dashboard. Once logged in, you'll find a Privacy Settings section where you can toggle different tracking categories on or off, view which specific technologies are active on your account, and download a report of data we've collected about your learning activities. This interface updates your choices immediately—you don't need to wait or clear your browser cache for changes to take effect.

Disabling analytics technologies means we lose visibility into how you use the platform, which makes it harder to spot usability problems or improve course designs based on real student behavior. Blocking functional technologies will reset your preferences each session—annoying, but not catastrophic. If you reject customization systems, you'll still access all courses and materials, but you won't receive personalized recommendations or see content suggestions tailored to your learning history. It's a tradeoff between privacy and convenience that only you can evaluate.

Third-party tools like browser extensions can supplement built-in browser controls. Privacy Badger learns to block invisible trackers as you browse, uBlock Origin lets you filter specific elements and scripts, and Ghostery provides detailed breakdowns of tracking technologies on each page you visit. For educational platforms specifically, you might want solutions that allow academic analytics while blocking advertising networks—most extensions let you whitelist trusted sites or create custom filter rules.

Finding the right balance requires some experimentation. Start by blocking everything optional and see which features you actually miss during normal usage. Maybe you discover that personalized course recommendations genuinely help you find relevant materials, or perhaps you realize you never clicked on those suggestions anyway. The goal isn't maximum privacy at all costs or complete convenience without regard for data collection—it's figuring out which tracking serves your educational goals and which you can comfortably live without.

Further Considerations

We keep different types of data for varying periods based on legitimate business needs and legal requirements. Essential session data typically expires within 24 hours after your last activity, while authentication credentials might persist for 30 days if you select "remember me" options. Analytics data gets aggregated and anonymized after 90 days, meaning we retain statistical insights but delete the connection to your individual account. Course completion records and transcript information stay in our systems indefinitely since they represent your educational achievements, though you can request deletion under certain circumstances.

Security measures protecting this data include encryption both in transit and at rest, meaning your information gets scrambled when traveling between your device and our servers, and it stays encrypted in our databases. We enforce strict access controls so only authorized personnel with legitimate reasons can view specific data types, and we maintain detailed audit logs of who accessed what information and when. Regular security assessments and penetration testing help us identify vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them.

Sometimes we combine tracking data with other information sources to enhance educational services. Your quiz performance might get analyzed alongside time-spent metrics to identify optimal study durations, or course completion rates could be cross-referenced with video engagement statistics to determine which instructional formats work best. We might also integrate data from student surveys or direct feedback submissions to add qualitative context to quantitative patterns—this helps us understand not just what students do, but why they make those choices.

Our practices comply with multiple regulatory frameworks relevant to educational services. Besides GDPR covering European users, we adhere to regulations around student data protection, which impose stricter rules when the platform gets used by minors or in institutional academic settings. We also follow data localization requirements for certain jurisdictions that mandate storing citizen data within specific geographic boundaries. Compliance isn't just about avoiding penalties—it's about building trust with students who deserve responsible data stewardship.

International users should know that data handling varies by region due to local laws and infrastructure considerations. European users benefit from GDPR protections including explicit consent requirements and comprehensive access rights. Users in California get similar protections under state privacy legislation. When you access dungeonporch from outside our primary operating regions, data might get transferred across borders, but we use standard contractual clauses and other legal mechanisms to ensure equivalent protection regardless of where servers physically sit.

External Providers

Dungeonporch works with selected partners who provide specialized services we can't efficiently handle in-house. These partners fall into several categories: video hosting providers who deliver course content reliably at scale, payment processors who handle financial transactions securely, analytics services that offer sophisticated insight tools beyond our internal capabilities, and infrastructure providers who keep the platform running smoothly. We don't just let anyone plug into our system—partners undergo vetting processes and must agree to strict data handling terms.

These external providers collect various data points depending on their specific function. Video hosts might track which portions of lecture videos you watch, pause, rewind, or skip, along with technical details like connection speed and device capabilities that affect streaming quality. Payment processors need transaction details, billing information, and purchase history to complete financial operations and prevent fraud. Analytics partners receive information about your browsing patterns, feature usage, and interaction sequences, though usually in pseudonymized formats that don't directly identify you.

Partners use collected data primarily to deliver their contracted services, but some also aggregate information across their entire client base to improve products and detect industry-wide patterns. A video hosting provider might analyze buffering issues across thousands of educational platforms to optimize their content delivery network. An analytics service could identify common usability problems that affect multiple learning management systems. We choose partners whose additional data usage aligns with educational values rather than those who prioritize advertising or unrelated commercial purposes.

You can often control partner data collection through the same preference management tools discussed earlier, since many partners respect the tracking choices you communicate through our platform. Some partners also offer their own opt-out mechanisms—payment processors typically let you manage saved payment methods and purchase history visibility, while major analytics providers maintain pages where you can install browser plugins that block their tracking across all websites. We document these options in our partner list, which you'll find linked from your account settings.

We establish contractual and technical safeguards before allowing any data sharing with external providers. Contracts specify exactly what data gets shared, how partners can use it, how long they can retain it, and what happens if they experience a security breach. Technical measures include encrypted transfer protocols, access logging, and regular audits to verify partners handle data according to agreed terms. If a partner violates these requirements, we can terminate the relationship and migrate to alternative providers—your trust matters more than convenient vendor relationships.

Other Methods

Beyond cookies, we employ web beacons and tracking pixels—tiny transparent images embedded in web pages or emails that report back when they load. These tell us whether you opened a course announcement email, which sections of our site get viewed most frequently, and how users navigate between different parts of the platform. They're essentially invisible signposts that ping our servers when you pass by. While they collect less information than cookies, they still track your interactions across our digital properties.

Local storage and session storage represent more sophisticated browser-based technologies that can hold larger amounts of data than traditional cookies. We might use local storage to cache course materials you've recently accessed so they load faster on repeat visits, or to save draft responses to discussion forum posts so you don't lose work if your browser crashes. Session storage handles temporary data that only needs to persist until you close your browser tab—things like your current position in a multi-step enrollment process. This data typically stays on your device rather than getting transmitted to our servers with every request.

Device fingerprinting technologies attempt to recognize your computer or phone based on its unique combination of characteristics—screen resolution, installed fonts, browser plugins, time zone settings, and dozens of other attributes that collectively create a distinctive signature. We use limited fingerprinting primarily for fraud prevention and security purposes, like detecting when someone tries to access your account from a completely different device profile than usual. This isn't about tracking you across the internet, but about protecting your account from unauthorized access attempts.

Server-side tracking methods analyze information that your browser automatically transmits with every request, including IP addresses, user agent strings that identify your browser and operating system, referrer headers showing which site sent you to ours, and requested URLs that reveal your navigation path. These server logs help us diagnose technical problems, monitor platform performance, detect abuse patterns, and understand traffic sources. Since this data collection happens at the infrastructure level, browser settings won't affect it—though you could use VPNs or privacy-focused browsers that mask some of this information.

Managing these alternative technologies requires different approaches than simply clearing cookies. For web beacons, ad-blocking browser extensions often filter them out automatically. Local and session storage can be cleared through your browser's developer tools or privacy settings, usually under the same menu where you manage cookies. Device fingerprinting is harder to control—specialized privacy browsers like Tor provide some protection by making many users look identical, or you can use browser extensions that randomize fingerprint characteristics. Server-side tracking gets addressed through network-level tools like VPNs, proxy servers, or privacy-focused DNS providers that obscure your true IP address and location.