Privacy
The short version: we keep what you type into the grid, because marking it is the product, and we keep your account so your progress survives a new laptop. We do not sell anything to anybody and there is no advertising on this site.
The first lesson needs no account, and nothing that identifies you is stored while you are doing it.
The data controller is Excel Lessons, reachable at hello@excel-lessons.com.
What is collected
| What | When | Why | Kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name, username and email | When you make an account | To sign you in, and to greet you by name rather than by username. | Until you delete the account. |
| Every answer you submit | Each time you press Enter on a step | To mark it, to score it, and to find steps where everyone types the same wrong thing. | Until you delete the account. |
| Lesson progress and points | As you work through a lesson | So a lesson resumes where you left it, on any device. | Until you delete the account. |
| The site that sent you here | Once, when you make an account | So we know which pages and links bring people in. We keep the site's name — google.com, a forum, a link someone shared — and never the full address, which could say more about you than the name does. We also keep the first page you opened on the day you made the account, from the visit record below. Nothing is stored on your device to do this, and nothing is read on any later visit. | Until you delete the account. |
| A record of each visit, with no name attached | On every page, unless you have said no to analytics | Which page you arrived on, the site that sent you, and how far you got: a lesson you tried, a sign-up or payment wall you met, whether you opened the checkout. To tell one visit from another on the same day, the server mixes your address and your browser's name with a secret that it deletes the next day. It never writes your address down, and it stores nothing on your device. In the EU, the UK, Switzerland and Turkey, your time zone, language and screen size are only sent after you say yes. Saying no stops it and deletes today's record. | Thirteen months. After its day ends, nothing can link it to you. |
| Counts, with no name attached | Each step reached, answered or passed in the free lesson, each time a sign-up or payment wall is shown, and every answer from someone with an account | How many people reach each step, and which wrong answers are common. Totals only. The counts from the free lesson hold no answer text. | Indefinitely. Nothing in them points to a person. |
| A request counter | Each time you ask the server for something | So one account or one address cannot fetch every answer in the library by machine. | A few hours, then it expires by itself. It goes with the account too. |
| Product analytics | In the EU, the UK, Switzerland and Turkey, only after you say yes. Elsewhere, from your first page, unless you turn it off below. | Which pages are visited and how far people get through a lesson. The site works the same if you say no. | 26 months, which is Google's shortest setting. |
| Error reports | When something on a page breaks | The error, the line of code and the page address. Never your answers. | Our error service deletes them after a fixed time. |
Why we are allowed to
The law asks for a reason for each thing, and the reasons here are three. Your account, your answers and your progress are kept because that is the service you asked for: without them nothing can be marked or resumed. The counts, the request counter, the name of the site that sent you, the record of each visit, and error reports are kept because a site has to know what is working and has to defend itself; none of them can point back at you, and the referring site is reduced to its name before it is written down. Google Analytics sets cookies, so in the EU, the UK, Switzerland and Turkey it runs only with your permission, and nothing is sent to Google until you give it. Elsewhere the law does not ask for a yes first, so it runs unless you turn it off below.
In your browser
We set no cookies ourselves. The only analytics cookies are Google's. In the EU, the UK, Switzerland and Turkey they arrive only after you say yes; elsewhere they arrive unless you turn them off below. There are no advertising cookies and no tracking pixels. On the home page, Paddle's payment script sets one security cookie on its own domain, which is how it tells a person from a robot. What it keeps on your own device is small, and this is all of it: the token that keeps you signed in, which Google's sign-in library stores for us in your browser's database; the answers you give in the lesson that needs no account, so they can be carried into an account if you make one; how each task went on the free skills test, so a reload does not lose it; your onboarding choices; a note that your account details are already complete, so we do not check on every page; only in a browser where the site's owner has signed in, a note so the owner's own test visits are not counted; and your answer to the analytics question, so it is not asked again. All of it stays on the device and clears with your browser's site data.
Deleting everything
Your account page has a delete button. It removes the account, your sign-in, every lesson's progress and every answer you have submitted. You do not have to email anybody and there is no waiting period.
We keep a second copy of your answers in the analytics warehouse where we study which lessons are hard. That copy cannot be removed the same second, because the warehouse refuses to delete rows it has only just received. It is removed within a day, by a job that runs every night, and your account id is the only thing kept in the meantime so that the job knows what to remove.
The record of each visit is not tied to your account. After the day it was made, nothing links it to you, so there is nothing of yours in it to find. Turning analytics off below deletes today's record straight away.
What survives is arithmetic: how many people attempted a step and which wrong answers are common. Those totals contain no identifier and cannot be traced back to a person, which is why removing them would destroy the only measurements we have while protecting nothing.
Who else touches it
- Google Firebase — sign-in, the database and the code that marks your answers. The database and that code run in Belgium, inside the EU. Google acts on our instructions under its data processing terms.
- Cloudflare — serves the pages from a worldwide network, so the request that fetches a page may be handled outside the EU. It sees the request, not your answers, and processes it under its data processing terms. It also counts page views for us at its own edge. That count writes nothing to your device and holds no identifier for you; it records the address the request came from, the page and the browser.
- Sentry — collects the technical details when something on this site breaks in your browser. It loads only at the moment an error happens, so a visit where nothing goes wrong sends Sentry nothing at all. What it then sends is the error, the line of code it came from and the page address. It writes nothing to your device, it is never told who you are, and anything after the question mark in the address is removed before sending. We use it to find faults we would otherwise never hear about, and we keep it outside the cookie question because a page that breaks before it finishes loading never gets to ask you.
- Google Analytics — visit counts and where visitors came from. In the EU, the UK, Switzerland and Turkey it loads only after you say yes, so a visit with the question unanswered sends Google nothing. Elsewhere it loads on your first page. Wherever you are, you can turn it off at any time, below.
- Paddle — handles payments as merchant of record, and its script loads on the home page and the pricing page so that a link in a failed-payment email can update a card in one press. That means Paddle sees the address, the browser and the page for a visit to either, whether or not you ever buy anything. Card details go to Paddle and never reach this site, so we never hold a card number. What we receive back is whether your subscription is active, which plan it is, and when the paid period ends. Refunds are theirs to send too, which the refunds page explains. Their checkout also offers a tick-box asking whether you want product updates by email. It is off unless you tick it, ticking it is not a condition of buying anything, and you can untick it later from the link in any such email or by writing to us.
Fonts are served from this domain, not from a font CDN, so loading a page does not tell a third party that you visited.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete it. A copy and deletion are both buttons on the account page: the copy downloads as a file straight away, in a format you can take elsewhere. You can also ask us to stop using your data for a particular purpose, or to hold it without using it while a disagreement is settled. For any of those, or if you cannot sign in, email hello@excel-lessons.com and we will answer within a month.
If you think we have handled your data wrongly and we have not put it right, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live. We would rather hear from you first.
The site is for people aged 16 and over. If you are younger, ask a parent or guardian before making an account; the lessons that need no account are open to everyone.
When this page changes, the date below changes with it, and a change that matters is announced on the site before it takes effect.