Protecting your Data and Privacy
You are in charge of how you use our website on how to recognize plagiarism. You can choose which parts to use or not use. It's up to you.
Your Registration and Certification Test Results
We store your registration information on secure Indiana University computers. If you pass a Certification Test, we also store your unique test ID, the date and time at which you passed, the IP address of the device you used to take the test, duration of the test, and the test level (Undergraduate or Graduate).
You can later access your own information by logging in with your e-mail address and the password you created when registering. Your instructors can validate your Certificate only if you provide them with your unique test ID number and one other piece of information on the Certificate.
Improving this Instruction
In order to improve this online instruction, we use Google Analytics to record which parts of our website you use.
- We do not share individual information about how you specifically use our website.
- We do not share your registration information with Google.
In order for us to learn which parts of our website best help you succeed by passing a Certification Test, we use Google Analytics as a software tool to summarize overall patterns of our website usage. This website usage information is reported in aggregate form, which means that you cannot be identified individually, separately from the millions of other users of our website. To repeat, we do not share your Certification Test registration information with Google, and we do not share information with others about how you, in particular, specifically use our website.
Cookies and Device IP Numbers
Although our website does not directly store cookies in your Web browser's memory, Google Analytics may do so. A cookie is small data file that contains info that can be used to identify your device, websites it has visited, browser used, operating system, website login status, your location, etc.
Fundamentally, Web servers send information (such as this Web page) to your device when requested (e.g., when you tap or click on a hyperlink or button icon). The information is routed through the Internet to the IP address currently assigned to your device. Your device, in turn, is running a Web browser (e.g., Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) which receives the digital info and renders it (e.g., as text, graphics, photos, music, video). The received info may further contain cookie data and instructions for managing it. Embedded JavaScript code, for example, may also instruct your browser to send info to a Google Analytics server that includes the address (URL) of the webpage you are viewing, the current date, and time.
- If you want to obscure the location of your device (IP address), we recommend that you use VPN.
- If you do not want to be tracked by Google Analytics on this website, we recommend that you review and, if need be, modify your browser privacy settings (how cookies are handled). Alternatively, use a browser which deters tracking of website usage (e.g., Brave, DuckDuckGo, etc.).
This website should still work correctly with no cookies. If you block all cookies, it means that data on which parts of this website you use will not be collected by Google Analytics. This website consists of hundreds of webpages. About 28% of our webpages incorporate Google Analytics for tracking their usage; the remainder do not. For example, Google Analytics does not track which Certification Test questions you are asked; but it is used to track which parts of the instruction you try and which patterns of plagiarism you study.
Logs of Certification Tests taken
Our testing software also stores logs of tests taken. These logs are purged on a regular basis because of high usage of Certification Tests and the amount of storage space required. During a busy week, more than 50,000 tests are taken (e.g., early in a semester in 2021-22), and on a busy day over 2,000 tests are passed.
The logs are primarily used for daily monitoring of usage of the testing system.
We do not share these logs with others, nor do we share a student's own test taking records with that student or with their teacher. These logs are primarily used for internal monitoring purposes, and they can help us detect abnormal activities--including attempts to hack or abuse the testing system. Logs are stored in a highly secure location at Indiana University, not on the Web, inaccessible by Web browsers, and restricted to a few Certification Test developers with proper authentication.
Logs further provide information about patterns of passing and failing Certification Tests. As an example, when we see the same student repeatedly failing one test after another, each with durations under two minutes, this usually means that they are guessing answers and not carefully reading the test questions. This observation has led to adding a FAQ on the chances of passing a test solely by guessing.
Logs can also provide additional insight into problems reported by users, which in turn can lead to changes in our instruction and tests. For example, users occasionally report that they are "sure" they passed a Certification Test, but the system failed to award them their Certificate. Yet the logs reveal that this user incorrectly answered at least 2 questions of the same type on that test. This user had mistakenly concluded that they only missed one question. The adaptive test feedback provides one link for each type of error. Each link goes to a prototypical example which illustrates how to determine the correct answer for that kind of mistake. This led us to add a new FAQ:
We also modified the wording on the test feedback page to further emphasize that these were types of mistakes, not how many questions were answered incorrectly. For each type of mistake, we revised the description of its associated plagiarism pattern to help students better understand why their answer was incorrect. We further added a link to the decision rules applied to determine the correct answer. Note: In order to make it harder to create answer keys for cheaters, we have stopped providing correct answers to specific questions missed on a test (read more here...).
We do not control how our learning resources are utilized by others.
We have no control over whether or not your teacher or school expects you to pass a Certification Test. We have not been specifically paid to develop and maintain these tutorials and tests. See our volunteers, who have made significant donations of their time and expertise to help students learn to recognize plagiarism--from 2002 to the present, now in our 3rd decade. Your school is not paying us, you are not paying us, we accept no paid advertising, nor do we sell your data to advertisers. See our privacy policy. We provide these tutorials and tests for free in good faith, as they are, with no guarantees or warranties implied. If you need extra help, we advise you to ask your teacher for assistance.