Sept. 30, 2016 – This summer, IHT became the first fitness wearable company to sign the Student Privacy Pledge, re-emphasizing our commitment to protecting the personal data of students using the IHT Spirit System.
“Protecting the personal data of schools and their students has always been an important aspect of IHT’s mission to empower students through data,” said IHT founder and CEO Ben Bentzin upon the signing. “Taking the Student Privacy Pledge symbolizes IHT’s commitment to protecting our customers and their students.”
Protecting data
The Spirit System uses personal information to provide a detailed fitness report for each student following every workout wearing an IHT heart rate monitor. The system delivers that report to the teacher, the student and the student’s parents after each workout. IHT protects student privacy by ensuring that only authorized teachers, administrators, students and their families have access to personal student data.
To date, 307 education technology companies have signed the pledge, which consists of 12 commitments providers must make to affirm that data is “maintained in a secure, private and responsible framework.” The commitments are legally binding, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General in each state.
Other notable signatories include Apple, AT&T, Google, Khan Academy, Microsoft and Shutterfly. Student Privacy Pledge signatories commit to, “carry out responsible stewardship and appropriate use of student personal information according to the commitments below and in adherence to all laws applicable to us as school service providers.”
The commitments include:
- collecting, storing and using data only for authorized educational purposes;
- Support access to and correction of information by student and authorized parent;
- Not selling personal information;
- Not use or disclose student information for advertising purposes.
IHT has an extensive privacy policy that is published on our company website. We continue to evaluate the policy and our practices to ensure we are utilizing the most modern, secure measures to protect the information we collect through the Spirit System.
