What your account stores

What we store

• Your username and email address
• Your password, kept only as a one-way hash that nobody can read back
• When you agreed to these terms and when you verified your email
• Which introductory courses you started and which lessons you finished
• If you apply to a cohort: your application answers and your CV, which is stored privately and can be opened only by SPARK staff

Signing in with Google

• You can choose to sign in with a Google account instead of a password. If you do, SPARK keeps only Google's account number for you and the email address Google showed. Never your Google password, your contacts, your photo or anything else from Google.
• Google confirms who you are each time; SPARK still decides which account you have. A cohort participant's first sign-in is always by the code we email, and Google can only be linked afterwards, to the same email address.
• Every link and unlink is recorded, and you can unlink at any time from your account page or LMS settings once you have a password.

How it is used

• To run your account and send the emails it needs, such as verification and password reset
• To record your progress in the introductory courses
• To consider people who complete the introductory courses for admission to a cohort
• To review applications and decide who is admitted to a cohort

Emails and notifications

• In the LMS, SPARK tells you about new assignments, quizzes and materials, deadlines, announcements, grades, your team project's milestones and feedback, today's daily tasks and live session reminders. They appear under the bell, and by email if you choose.
• Emails say what happened and link to the page. They never include your grades or anyone else's details, and each goes to you alone.
• You choose, in Settings, which kinds are emailed straight away, in one daily summary, or not at all, and your quiet hours. Every email has a link to stop that kind.
• A few cannot be turned off: security and account emails, and changes to a deadline or a live session. Announcements can come in the daily summary but not stop altogether, because they are the programme's official way to reach you.
• SPARK keeps a record of when each email was sent, for 12 months, but not its text.

Support tickets

• A ticket you raise under "Get help" is seen by you, your team's TA, the TA coordinator who leads them and SPARK's administrators. Other participants never see it, unless you are your team's coordinator and choose to make it a team issue.
• If you tick "This is about my TA", only administrators see it. Your TA and their coordinator do not.
• Staff may add notes to a ticket that only staff see. Every change to a ticket is recorded: who made it, when and why.
• Screenshots you attach are re-saved and their hidden details, such as location and camera, are removed. Never attach patient images, dataset extracts, passwords or tokens: messages that look like a password or token are refused.
• Messages are never edited. An administrator can hide one that should not be there, giving a reason. When a cohort finishes, its open tickets are closed and participants no longer see them.

Blog posts

• Anyone with a SPARK account can write a post for the blog. An administrator reads it before anything is published, and tells you the reason if it is returned or declined.
• A published post shows your name, never your photo, and stays on the site until an administrator unpublishes it.
• A cover photo you add is re-saved and its hidden details, such as location and camera, are removed. Every step in a post's review is recorded: who took it, when and why.

Live sessions on Zoom

For live sessions on Zoom that count towards certification, SPARK keeps Zoom's attendance report for each session: the name you used in the call, your email if you were signed in to Zoom, and when you joined and left. It is matched to your account by that email, or by another email of yours that an administrator has confirmed and recorded, to work out your attendance credit. Only SPARK administrators see the report itself. Your attendance at each session (your minutes and credit) is seen by you, your team's TA, the TA coordinator who leads them, and your team's coordinator. Your team's mentors see your team's overall attendance and, if you miss two counted sessions in a row, your name on a short list so they can check in. A coordinator lead who oversees your team sees only its overall rate. People in a call who are not SPARK participants are credited to nobody, and their names and emails are removed from the report when the cohort finishes. When the cohort is archived, every name and email is removed from the report; your attendance record (minutes and credit) is kept with your grades.

Team meetings on Google Meet

• If your team uses a SPARK team meeting, your email address is given to Google so that you can be invited. The meeting is a Google Calendar event with a Meet link, sent from SPARK's dedicated meetings account. Your Team page shows that account's exact address.
• The meetings account is a personal Google account, not a business service with its own agreement with SPARK, so Google handles your address under its own terms and privacy policy. Google's terms also apply when you join the call.
• Other guests cannot see your email address in the invitation.
• Team meetings are optional. They never count towards attendance, grades or certification, and SPARK does not record or keep who joined.

Datasets

• Before you can open a dataset used in the programme, you accept its data-use agreement by typing your name. SPARK keeps that acceptance, with the exact version of the agreement you accepted.
• Each time you open a dataset, SPARK records that you did and when. Only administrators see this record.

The full terms

The complete privacy and data use terms are being finalised and will be published on this page. To ask about your data now, email info.camera.mri@gmail.com.