Privacy Policy

Lockstep is operated from the United Kingdom by Jonathan Lockett trading as Lockstep, 54 Croft Street, Farsley, Leeds, UK, LS28 5HA. We are the data controller for the information described here, which means we are the ones who decide what is collected and why, and the ones you can hold to account for it. You can reach us at lockstepchemistry@gmail.com.

For anything in this policy, including a request to see or delete your data, email lockstepchemistry@gmail.com.

Almost all of it you hand us directly by using the site.

• Account details. Your email address, and your name if you choose to give one. Sign-in is handled by Clerk, so if you sign in with Google or a similar service we receive the email address and name that service passes on, and never your password.
• Subscription details. Whether you are subscribed and the identifiers that link your account to your Stripe customer and subscription records. We never see or store your card number - card details go to Stripe and stay there.
• Your practice record. Which problems you have attempted, the answers you chose, whether each was right, the score and per-step verdicts on drawings you submitted, and the written feedback you were given. This is what your progress page is made of.
• The drawings themselves are not kept. When you submit a mechanism, the image is sent to Anthropic to be graded and the result is returned to you. We do not write the image to our database or to storage, and we cannot retrieve a drawing you submitted.
• Questions you write, if you teach a class. The questions, answers and answer keys you write for your own classes, and which assignments you set them in. They are shown only to students in your classes.
• If you try a problem without an account. We keep whether your trial drawing was right and its score, with no name or account attached. To limit how many free trial drawings one network can have graded each day, we also keep a code made from your IP address and the date. It is scrambled with a secret key, so it cannot be read back as your address from our records, it changes every day, and it is deleted after two days. A cookie in your browser counts how many trial drawings you have had.
• Technical and usage data. Ordinary server logs from hosting, which include IP addresses, error reports when something on the site breaks, and analytics about which pages are used. See section 7 on cookies.
• Anything you email us. If you write to us about a refund, a bad grade or anything else, we keep the correspondence so we can deal with it.
• Your address, if you join the waiting list. Until Lockstep opens to students you can ask to be told when it does. If you do, we hold the address you gave and the date you gave it, and nothing else - no name, and no record of what you looked at.

UK data protection law requires a specific lawful basis for each use rather than a general one. Ours are:

• To give you the Service you asked for - creating your account, opening problems, grading your drawings, and showing your progress. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
• To take payment and manage your subscription - including refunds and cancellations. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
• To keep tax and accounting records - invoices and payment records. Basis: our legal obligations.
• To keep the Service working and stop abuse - server logs, error reports, rate limits, and enforcing the free-tier and trial limits so that no one account or visitor can run up unlimited grading costs. Basis: our legitimate interests in running a service that is not being taken advantage of, weighed against the fact that this needs very little data about you.
• To understand how the site is used and improve it - analytics, and anonymised aggregate figures such as which subtopics students get wrong most often. Basis: your consent for analytics cookies (see section 7); our legitimate interests for aggregate figures that no longer identify anyone.
• To answer you when you get in touch. Basis: performance of our contract, or our legitimate interest in replying to people who write to us.
• To tell you when Lockstep opens, if you joined the waiting list. Basis: your consent, given when you typed your address in. That consent covers one email announcing that it is open and nothing else - there is no newsletter, and we will not use the list for anything wider without asking you separately. You can withdraw it at any time by emailing lockstepchemistry@gmail.com, and we delete the address.

We do not sell your data, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not use your practice record to target advertising at you.

We use a small number of specialist services to run Lockstep. They process data on our instructions and are not free to use it for their own purposes.

We may also share information where the law requires it, or where we need to in order to establish or defend a legal claim. If the business is ever sold or transferred, your data may pass to the buyer, who would be bound by this policy or one no less protective.

We are in the UK, but several of the services above are based in the United States, so some of your data is transferred outside the UK. Those transfers are made under the safeguards UK data protection law provides for them - the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the service is certified under it, and the International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum to the standard contractual clauses otherwise.

On the drawings specifically: they go to Anthropic to be graded and come back as a grade. They are not used to train models, and as set out in section 2 they are not retained by us.

• Your account and practice record are kept for as long as you have an account, because they are what your progress page shows. Cancelling a subscription does not delete them; closing your account does.
• Drawings are not retained at all. The grade and feedback text are kept with your practice record.
• Trial records keep their network code for two days, after which it is deleted and what is left is an anonymous result that identifies no one.
• Payment and invoice records are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires us to keep them, which is longer than your account may last and is not something we can delete on request.
• Server logs, error reports and analytics are kept for a short period in the ordinary course, according to the retention settings of the services in section 4.
• Email correspondence is kept for as long as we may need it to deal with the matter and any dispute arising from it.
• Waiting-list addresses are deleted once the launch email has gone out, or sooner if you ask. They are not carried over into a mailing list.

Some cookies are strictly necessary: the ones Clerk sets to keep you signed in, the one that counts your free trial drawings so the trial stays free for everyone, and the ones involved in taking a payment securely. Without them the site cannot do what you are asking it to do, so they are set without asking you. You can block them in your browser, but you will not be able to sign in.

Analytics cookies are different. They are not necessary for the site to work, they exist for our benefit rather than yours, and they are only set where you have consented to them. If you have not been asked, or you said no, no analytics script is loaded at all. You can change your mind either way, here:

Data protection law gives you rights over the information we hold about you. You can ask us to:

• give you a copy of it;
• correct it, if it is wrong;
• delete it, and close your account;
• restrict what we do with it, or object to us relying on legitimate interests;
• send it to you, or to someone else, in a portable form, where it was provided by you and is processed by consent or under a contract; and
• withdraw a consent you gave, such as for analytics cookies, at any time, without that affecting what was done before you withdrew it.

Email lockstepchemistry@gmail.com from the address on your account and we will deal with it, normally within one month. There is no charge. We will not treat you worse for exercising any of these.

If you think we have handled your data badly, please tell us first - it is usually quicker. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or to the data protection regulator where you live if that is not the UK.

Access to the site is over an encrypted connection, sign-in and payment are handled by specialist services rather than built by us, and card numbers never reach our systems. No service can promise perfect security, but the amount we hold about you is deliberately small, which is itself part of the answer.

Lockstep is meant for students at college level and is not directed at children. As set out in the Terms, you need to be at least 13 to hold an account. If you believe a child under that age has given us their information, email lockstepchemistry@gmail.com and we will delete it.

We will update this policy as the Service changes. The date at the top always shows when it last changed, and if a change materially affects how we use your data we will tell you by email rather than quietly editing the page.

Questions about this policy, or a request about your data: lockstepchemistry@gmail.com. See also our Terms of Service.