EraPin is a free curriculum-aligned history and geography activity, played as a map-based session. We take privacy seriously, especially because our classroom mode is used by students. This page explains what we collect, why, and how long we keep it.
EraPin's classroom mode (class.erapin.com) operates under the school authorization exception to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Schools authorize the collection of student data for educational purposes only.
Inside classroom mode, we collect only:
We do not collect: email addresses, device identifiers, IP addresses, persistent user IDs, location data, or any other identifier that could be used to contact or re-identify a student.
By design, EraPin holds no data that can identify an individual student. The name field is free text with no validation, and in practice it is frequently pseudonymous — students often enter a nickname such as "Thor", their initials, or a single letter. Because there is no reliable link between a name and a real child, there is generally no individual record to isolate or erase. Deletion instead operates at the room level (see "Deletion requests"), which removes the entire dataset in which a child could ever appear.
Real first names enter our database only if a teacher deliberately chooses to put them there. EraPin's Pro features — class dashboards, per-student reports, scheduled publishing — all work without any real student name ever being stored. The single exception is the optional class roster: a teacher may upload a CSV of students' first names so students pick from a list at join instead of typing. Uploading a roster is an explicit, opt-in choice that introduces first-name personal data. When a school makes that choice, the school is the data controller for that information and EraPin processes it solely to provide the service to that school, and the teacher can delete an individual student's records at any time from their dashboard.
We do not display advertising, marketing, or links to our consumer products inside classroom mode. Data collected from students under school authorization is used solely to deliver the classroom experience to the authorising school. We do not use this data for any commercial purpose, including marketing or analytics for our consumer product.
Daily activity (erapin.com): We store a randomly generated player ID in your browser's localStorage. We also store a display name in localStorage if you create or accept a Challenge-a-Friend duel — this name is sent with your duel result so the friend who challenged you can see who took the challenge. The display name is local to your browser; it is not tied to an email or account. Daily scores are saved to our database linked to the anonymous player ID. We use PostHog for analytics on this page; PostHog uses its default configuration here, which may include the visitor's IP address for geolocation and bot detection.
Teacher portal (teach.erapin.com): Teachers sign in with an email address (used for authentication and to associate rooms with the teacher) and provide a teacher name and school name. PostHog runs on this page with IP capture disabled, session recording disabled, and text/attribute masking enabled.
Classroom mode (class.erapin.com): PostHog runs with IP capture disabled. Only the data listed in the previous section ("Student data in classroom mode") is collected.
We do not collect email addresses from students or from consumer (erapin.com) visitors. Teachers provide an email to create a teacher account; that email is stored only for authentication and to associate rooms with the teacher, never used for marketing. We do not collect last names from students. We do not collect ages. We do not use advertising cookies or trackers. We do not sell or share data with third parties. We do not use data for advertising.
PostHog — anonymous analytics. IP capture is disabled on the classroom and teacher pages (class.erapin.com and teach.erapin.com); session recording is disabled and text/attribute masking is enabled there. The consumer page (erapin.com) uses PostHog's default configuration, which may include IP-based geolocation. PostHog privacy policy.
Supabase — database hosting for scores, rooms, and curriculum content. Data stored in the US. Supabase privacy policy.
Vercel — website hosting. Vercel privacy policy.
Google Maps — used on the consumer activity (erapin.com) only, never in classroom mode, for location search (Places) and the optional Street View hint. Subject to Google's privacy policy.
Image sources — historical photographs, paintings, and documents shown in EraPin are drawn from multiple free and open cultural-heritage collections, including Wikimedia Commons, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rijksmuseum, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, Europeana, and NASA. Each image is shown with its source, license, and attribution.
Daily activity scores are stored indefinitely to maintain streaks and the archive feature. Classroom scores and student names are retained until a teacher deletes them — there is no automatic time-based deletion. Teachers can delete any room they own, or an individual student's records, at any time from their dashboard (see "Deletion requests" below).
Teachers can delete all data for any room they own at any time, via their teacher dashboard. This is the simplest path for parents to request deletion: ask the student's teacher to clear the room.
Parents may also email admin@erapin.com directly. Because student names are free text and frequently pseudonymous, in most classrooms there is no individual record to single out — so deletion operates at the room level, removing the entire dataset in which the child could appear. This is comprehensive by design: there is no fragment of a student's data left behind, because there was never an identifiable individual record to miss. Where a teacher has uploaded a class roster of real first names, that named data can additionally be deleted on its own — on request, or directly from the teacher's dashboard.
erapin.com is a general-audience product anyone may use, including children playing independently of a school context. It is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children using erapin.com. If we learn we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 13 on the consumer product, we will delete it.
You can clear all locally stored EraPin data by clearing your browser's localStorage for erapin.com. Teachers can request additional deletion of their classroom data by contacting us at admin@erapin.com.