What are Khan Academy’s Deletion Practices?
We collect data as you use Khan Academy services. What we collect, why we collect it, and how you can manage your information are described in our Privacy Policy. This article describes why we hold onto different types of data for different periods of time.
General practice. Our practice is to retain personal data only for as long as necessary to provide our services to you, including maintaining your account on Khan Academy. In determining how long we retain various data, we consider factors such as how keeping the information will help you (or the school, in the case of school accounts) in your learning, our legal requirements and other legitimate business needs, such as continuing to improve our products and services.
Khan Academy Account data. Information in your Khan Academy account typically includes profile information and information relating to your use of the website. This includes your learning activity on our service, such as which videos you have watched, assignments completed, the questions and responses you post, and other usage information. Our practice is to include this information in your account record until the account is deleted.
Khanmigo usage data. If your account has Khanmigo, our AI tutor and teaching assistant, enabled on it, your learning activity includes additional types of data relating to your interactions with Khanmigo. A description of each data type and our deletion practice is included in the chart below:
Data element | Purpose | Deletion Period |
Khanmigo conversations
|
The account holder (and an associated teacher or parent of a child or student) may view the chat history in the account, to review conversations and access results of chats. |
Khanmigo conversations may be viewable in chat history for up to 365 days after the end of the relevant conversation. Beginning on or after December 9, 2024, we may delete Khanmigo conversations that have been inactive for 365 days or more.
The account holder (or parent or school customer, in the case of a child or student account) may request earlier deletion. |
Khanmigo User Insights Includes chat summaries, other summaries that are derived from chats, and Interests |
Data is used for purposes of personalizing the learner experience. | Data may be retained until the user’s account is deleted. |
Khanmigo documents Consists of the final output of content that is co-authored by a user and Khanmigo. This Includes Writing Coach outputs and teacher-generated documents (such as lesson plans and exit tickets). |
Khanmigo documents consist of content that is co-authored by a user and Khanmigo. The resulting document is part of the learning activity and/or may be useful to the user in the future. For example, if a teacher creates a lesson plan, the lesson plans are retained until the teacher no longer has an account. |
Data may be retained until the user’s account is deleted. |
Data subject to longer retention periods for legitimate business needs. Sometimes business and legal requirements oblige us to retain certain information, for specific purposes, for an extended period of time. Reasons we might retain some data for longer periods of time include:
- Financial record-keeping
- Security, fraud & abuse prevention
- Complying with legal or regulatory requirements
- Supporting longitudinal research studies
- Ensuring the continuity of our services, including retention of data in backup systems in order to protect users from accidental data loss
- Records of direct communications with users
- As permitted by law, such as when needed to defend our rights or the rights of others
When we no longer need access to your personal data in order to provide our services, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible, we will securely store any personal information and restrict any further processing until deletion is possible.
Use of non-personal data. We may retain and use non-personal data elements (such as de-identified, anonymized, pseudonymized or aggregated usage information and feedback) for product development, research, analytics and other purposes, including for the purpose of analyzing, improving or marketing our Service, for demonstrating the impact of our Service, or conducting educational research. We may use de-identified, pseudonymized or anonymized Khanmigo conversations and usage data to improve our products and services..
Deletion of inactive user accounts. If we determine that your Khan Academy account is inactive, we may delete the account. Khan Academy determines whether an account is inactive by looking at sign-ins, learning progress, and other activity in the account over the last two years. Accounts that do not have any activity over a two year period may be deleted in accordance with our inactive account policy. Accounts that are included in an active Khan Academy Districts subscription, and parent accounts that have a child account associated with them are considered active. Prior to account deletion, we will attempt to notify you via the email address associated with your account (if any) to allow you to take action to retain the account.
Deletion at the account holder’s request. You may delete your account at any time. To request deletion of your account please log into your account and select “delete your account“ through Settings. You can learn more in our Help Center. If you wish to request deletion of your Khanmigo conversations please submit a deletion request to our support team via the Help Center. You are not required to delete your account in order to delete Khanmigo conversations.
For some accounts held by students in school accounts, the ability to modify or delete the account or account information is held by the School. Accounts included in a Khan Academy Districts subscription are managed by or at the direction of the school customer. If you have a School Account, please contact your School administrator for information regarding your account. Schools and educational institutions are responsible for managing student data which they no longer need for an educational purpose by submitting a deletion request.
For free website accounts (not included in a Khan Academy Districts subscription) deletion requests may be exercised directly by the account holder or, for child accounts (users under age 13), by a parent with an account connected to the child’s account.