Data Preferences and Tracking Technologies
Kitchen‑Flom takes your privacy seriously and believes you deserve clear information about how we track and analyze your interactions with our online education platform. This document explains the various tracking methods we employ, why they matter for your learning experience, and how you can control them. We've written this in straightforward language because technical jargon shouldn't stand between you and understanding your rights.
Purpose of Our Tracking Methods
When you visit our platform, small pieces of data get stored on your device—think of them as digital sticky notes that help our website remember you and improve your experience. These tracking technologies come in different forms, but they all serve the common goal of making your educational journey smoother and more personalized. Some stay on your device for just one session, while others persist for months or even years, depending on their purpose and the permissions you've granted.
Our essential tracking methods keep the platform running properly—without them, you couldn't log into your account, access your enrolled courses, or maintain your learning progress as you navigate between lessons. These fundamental technologies remember your authentication status so you don't have to sign in every time you click to a new page, they maintain your shopping cart when you're browsing course offerings, and they ensure that security features work correctly to protect your account from unauthorized access. Disabling these would essentially break the core functionality that makes online learning possible on our platform.
We gather analytics data to understand how students interact with our educational content and where they struggle or succeed. This means tracking which lessons get completed most frequently, where students tend to drop off in a course, how long people spend on particular video lectures, and which quiz questions cause the most confusion. The insights we gain from this information directly influence how we improve course structure, redesign confusing interfaces, and create supplementary materials for topics that clearly need more explanation. Without this data, we'd be designing courses in the dark, guessing at what works rather than knowing.
Our functional technologies remember your preferences and choices to make each visit feel tailored to you. They store settings like your preferred video playback speed, whether you like subtitles enabled, your language selection, and even which notification preferences you've configured. If you've customized your dashboard layout or created bookmarks within courses, these technologies ensure those personalizations persist across sessions. The goal here is efficiency—you shouldn't have to reconfigure your learning environment every single time you return to continue your studies.
When it comes to customization features, we analyze your learning patterns to suggest relevant courses and resources that align with your interests and skill level. If you've completed several cooking courses focused on Italian cuisine, our system might recommend advanced pasta-making workshops or wine pairing classes. These recommendations draw from your browsing history, course completions, quiz scores, and even the time of day you typically study. The personalization extends to the homepage you see, the email newsletters you receive, and the in-platform notifications about new content that might interest you specifically.
The entire technology ecosystem works in concert—essential tracking enables the platform to function, analytics help us understand aggregate user behavior, functional technologies remember your individual preferences, and customization features create a unique experience tailored to your learning journey. These different types often share information with each other: for example, analytics might reveal that students who prefer Spanish-language content also tend to study during evening hours, which then informs how our customization algorithms time notifications and suggest courses. It's an interconnected system designed to serve both your immediate needs and your long-term educational goals.
Control Options
You have significant control over how Kitchen‑Flom tracks your activity, and we're committed to respecting the choices you make. European data protection regulations (GDPR) and similar frameworks in other jurisdictions give you explicit rights to manage, delete, or restrict the processing of your personal data. These aren't just theoretical rights—we've built practical tools into both our platform and provided guidance for browser-level controls that let you exercise these rights whenever you choose.
Most modern browsers include built-in controls for managing tracking technologies. In Chrome, navigate to Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Cookies and Other Site Data—here you can block all tracking, allow only essential ones, or create exceptions for specific sites like Kitchen‑Flom. Firefox users should visit Settings, select Privacy & Security from the sidebar, and adjust the Enhanced Tracking Protection settings to Standard, Strict, or Custom based on your comfort level. For Safari, open Preferences, go to the Privacy tab, and you'll find options to prevent cross-site tracking and manage website data. Edge follows a similar path: Settings, then Cookies and Site Permissions, where you can configure tracking prevention at Basic, Balanced, or Strict levels.
Within the Kitchen‑Flom platform itself, you'll find a consent management tool typically accessible from the footer of every page or your account settings dashboard. This interface lets you toggle different categories on and off—you can accept essential tracking while rejecting analytics and customization, or create any combination that works for you. Changes take effect immediately, though you might need to refresh your browser for the new settings to fully apply. We save your preferences so you don't have to reconfigure them each visit, though clearing your browser data will reset these choices.
Understanding the consequences of your choices matters. If you disable essential tracking, you won't be able to log in or access any personalized features—the platform essentially becomes view-only for public content. Blocking analytics won't affect your experience noticeably, but it means your usage patterns can't contribute to the aggregate data we use for improvements, which ultimately might result in a less refined platform over time. Rejecting functional technologies means you'll lose convenience features like remembered preferences, requiring you to reconfigure settings each session. Turning off customization results in generic course recommendations and content suggestions that don't reflect your specific interests or skill level.
- Privacy Badger is a browser extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that automatically blocks invisible trackers, learning as you browse to identify which domains are following you across sites. It won't interfere with essential platform functionality but can effectively limit third-party tracking that occurs through embedded content or analytics services.
- uBlock Origin goes beyond traditional ad blocking to prevent tracking scripts from loading, giving you granular control over which domains and script types get blocked. Advanced users can customize filtering rules specifically for educational platforms to allow necessary functionality while blocking unnecessary surveillance.
- Disconnect provides visualization of tracking attempts and blocks them across categories like advertising, analytics, and social media, with separate mobile and desktop versions. The paid tier includes VPN services for additional privacy protection when you're accessing courses over public networks.
Finding the right balance between privacy and functionality depends on your personal priorities and how you use Kitchen‑Flom. If you're a casual browser just exploring course offerings, aggressive blocking probably won't hinder your experience. However, active students who want progress tracking, personalized recommendations, and seamless continuation across devices will benefit from allowing at least functional and essential technologies. Consider starting with a moderate approach—accept essential and functional categories while initially blocking analytics and customization—then adjust based on whether you miss certain features or feel comfortable expanding permissions.
Further Considerations
Different types of tracking data have different lifespans on our systems. Session-based information expires as soon as you close your browser, while authentication tokens typically last 30 days unless you explicitly log out. Analytics data gets anonymized after 14 months, meaning we retain aggregate statistics but remove identifying information that could link activity back to you specifically. Course progress and completion records persist for 7 years to support long-term learning transcripts and certificates, though you can request earlier deletion if you're no longer using the platform.
We protect tracking data through multiple security layers including encryption both in transit (using TLS 1.3 protocols) and at rest (AES-256 encryption standards). Access to this information is restricted to authorized personnel who need it for specific job functions, and we maintain detailed audit logs of who accessed what data and when. Our infrastructure undergoes regular security assessments by third-party auditors, and we maintain incident response procedures that would notify you within 72 hours if a breach compromised your information.
Kitchen‑Flom sometimes combines tracking data with information from other sources to create a more complete picture of your educational needs. If you've interacted with our customer support team, attended a webinar, or participated in surveys, those interactions might get linked to your tracking profile to better understand your full journey. We also receive data from payment processors about transaction success rates and from email service providers about which messages you opened, though these integrations follow strict data processing agreements that limit how third parties can use your information.
Our data practices comply with GDPR for European users, CCPA for California residents, FERPA where applicable to educational records, and COPPA for any users under 13 (though our platform is designed for adult learners). We've appointed a Data Protection Officer who oversees compliance, conducts regular privacy impact assessments, and serves as your point of contact for rights requests. These frameworks aren't just legal checkboxes—they represent commitments we've built into our platform architecture and business processes.
For international users, we handle data differently based on your location. European data stays within EU-approved facilities or transfers under Standard Contractual Clauses, while users in other regions might have their data processed in our primary data centers with appropriate safeguards in place. We maintain transparency about these data flows in our main privacy policy, and you can request specific information about where your data resides and which entities might access it. Cross-border educational services create complex data scenarios, but we're committed to meeting the highest standard applicable to your situation.
External Technologies
Kitchen‑Flom integrates several external services that power different aspects of our platform, and these third parties implement their own tracking technologies. We use analytics providers to measure traffic and engagement patterns, video hosting platforms to deliver educational content efficiently, payment processors to handle transactions securely, and communication tools that enable our live session features. Each of these categories involves sharing certain information with external parties, though we carefully vet partners and limit data sharing to what's necessary for the specific service.
Analytics providers typically collect your IP address, device type, browser version, pages visited, time spent on each page, click patterns, and referral sources. They use this information to generate aggregate reports about platform performance and user behavior trends—not to track you individually across the internet, though some services have that capability on other sites. Video platforms receive information about playback events (play, pause, skip), video quality selections, and viewing duration, which helps them optimize content delivery and helps us understand which lessons resonate with students.
External parties use collected data primarily for service delivery and their own business analytics. A video hosting provider might analyze aggregate playback patterns across all their clients to optimize compression algorithms, while an analytics service could study bounce rates to improve their reporting features. We contractually prohibit partners from selling your data or using it for purposes beyond the specific service they provide to Kitchen‑Flom, though you should review each provider's privacy policy for complete details on their practices.
You can often control external tracking independently from Kitchen‑Flom's own technologies. Many analytics providers offer opt-out browser extensions or respect "Do Not Track" signals—check their websites for specific instructions. Video platforms typically have their own privacy settings accessible through their corporate sites, where you can limit tracking across all embedded players. Payment processors handle data under strict financial regulations that limit sharing and retention, though you'll need to review those policies separately from ours. These external controls layer on top of your Kitchen‑Flom preferences to create comprehensive privacy protection.
We establish contractual safeguards requiring partners to meet specific security standards, limit data use to defined purposes, delete information when no longer needed, and promptly notify us of any breaches. Technical measures include encrypted data transmission, access controls that restrict which partner employees can view Kitchen‑Flom user data, and regular security audits that verify compliance. We review these partnerships annually and don't hesitate to terminate relationships with vendors who fail to maintain our privacy standards, even if it means rebuilding features with alternative providers.
Changes to This Policy
We review this tracking technologies document quarterly as part of our regular privacy compliance process, and we update it whenever we add new tracking methods, change data retention periods, integrate different third-party services, or respond to regulatory changes. Not all updates are significant—sometimes we're just clarifying existing practices or correcting outdated information—but material changes that affect your rights or how we use your data trigger a formal notification process.
When updates occur, we'll notify active users through email sent to your account address, with in-platform banners that appear on your dashboard for 30 days, and by updating the "Last Modified" date at the top of this document. For substantial changes like introducing new tracking categories or sharing data with additional third parties, we'll provide at least 30 days notice before the changes take effect, giving you time to adjust your preferences or object to the new practices. Historical versions remain accessible through our legal documents archive, linked from the footer of every page.
You'll need to provide fresh consent if we introduce tracking methods that fall outside the original scope of your permissions, expand data sharing to new categories of third parties, or change retention periods in ways that extend how long we keep your information. We can't assume your previous consent covers significantly different practices. When re-consent is required, you'll encounter a new consent banner with clear explanations of what's changed and separate options to accept or decline the new tracking methods while maintaining your existing preferences for unchanged categories.