Legal
Privacy policy.
This policy explains what we collect, why, who else handles it, and what you can ask us to do about it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.
What applies to this website as it stands today. Checkout, accounts and sign-in are now open, so most of this policy is live rather than forward-looking. Concretely: you can buy an exam, you can sign in, and we send email — a receipt and license key when you buy, and a reply if you use the object to an answer form. Signing in sets a cookie, described in section 5. We serve no advertising or tracking pixels, run no third-party analytics, make no request to any other company from these pages, and send no marketing email.
What changed on 8 September 2026. We now count four things for ourselves, so we can tell whether the site works: an assessment was started, an assessment was finished, someone went to the payment page, and something was bought. Each count records the step, a short word for where the visitor came from (an advertisement, a link, or nothing), and the time. No identifier, no cookie, no IP address, and no score. Two counts cannot be told apart or joined up, and nothing about your answers is sent anywhere. It is described in full in section 3.6, and it is our own; no analytics company is involved. The free readiness assessment at /sample still needs no account. Anything below that is not yet in use is still marked as such.
What changed on 21 and 22 September 2026. At the end of the free assessment — and, since 22 September, at the foot of each free guide — you can now choose to leave an email address to be told when the questions are updated for a new FortiOS release. It is entirely optional, it is the only thing on that page that records anything, and your answers are still not recorded — only the address you type. We store the address, which page it came from, and the time. Nothing else. Section 3.7 describes it, including how to come off the list. There is still no marketing email, no automated sequence, and no newsletter: the list exists so that one message can be written by a person when the bank actually changes.
What changed on 1 October 2026. The home page now has a box where you can suggest a practice exam or anything else you would like to see. It has no email field and nothing is sent back to you. We keep the text you type, the page, and the time — nothing that identifies you unless you type it yourself. Section 3.8 describes it.
1. The short version
- We collect an email address, a record that you bought something, and what you did inside the practice exams. That is all of it. If you ask to be told when the questions change, we also keep the address you gave us for that — see 3.7.
- We never store passwords. We never see one. Sign-in is handled entirely by our authentication provider.
- We never see your full card number. Payment is handled entirely by our merchant of record.
- We do not sell your data, we do not share it for advertising, and we run no behavioral advertising trackers.
- We do not fingerprint your device and we do not install anything on it.
2. Who we are
Grindstone Prep, operated by Grindstone Prep, LLC, a United States company.
For questions about this policy or about your data, write to contact@grindstoneprep.com. We aim to reply within 5 business days.
3. Every category of data we collect
This list is meant to be exhaustive. If we add a category, we update this policy.
3.1 Account data — in use
| What | Why | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | To identify your account, deliver your license, and contact you about your purchase | Our authentication provider, as processor |
| A stable, opaque user identifier | To link your account to your purchases and your exam history | The authentication provider; we store the identifier too |
| Sign-in metadata — times, and whether sign-in succeeded | Security, and to enforce the two-session limit in the terms | The authentication provider, and us for the session count |
| Display name, if you provide one through a linked sign-in account | To address you in the interface and in email | The authentication provider |
We do not collect, receive, or store passwords. If you sign in with a linked account, we receive an email address and an identifier, and nothing else from that provider.
3.2 Purchase data — in use
| What | Why | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| Record of what you bought, when, at what price, and in which currency | To grant access, to support you, and for our accounting | The merchant of record, as seller of record; we hold a copy |
| License key and its status, expiry, and activation count | To grant and expire access | The merchant of record; we hold a copy |
| Billing name, billing address, and country | Tax calculation and fraud prevention, both performed by the merchant of record | The merchant of record only |
| Payment card or payment account details | To take payment | The merchant of record and its own payment processors only. We never receive these and cannot see them. |
| Tax identifiers you supply, if any | Tax treatment of the sale | The merchant of record only |
| Refund and chargeback records | To administer refunds and the pass-or-refund guarantee | The merchant of record; we hold a copy of the outcome |
Where you make a guarantee claim under the refunds page, we also receive whatever result documentation you choose to send us. We ask you to redact anything not needed to establish which examination you sat, when, and the outcome. We delete claim documentation once the claim is settled and any accounting retention period has passed.
3.3 Exam attempt data — not in use yet; the free sample records nothing
| What | Why | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| Which product you opened, and when | To show you your history and to enforce entitlement | Us |
| Practice session records: start and end time, mode, filters used | To let you resume and review sessions | Us |
| Per-question events: which question was shown, what you answered, whether it was right, how long it took, whether you flagged it | To score sessions, show explanations, and report your progress by objective | Us |
| Aggregate difficulty statistics across all customers, not linked to you | To find questions that are badly worded or wrong, so we can fix them | Us |
We use exam attempt data to run the product and to improve the question bank. We do not use it to profile you, to make automated decisions about you, or to advertise to you.
3.4 Technical and security data
| What | Why | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| IP address, at the time of a request | Rate limiting and abuse prevention. Held in short-lived counters, not in a permanent log tied to your account | Us and our hosting provider, Cloudflare |
| Browser user-agent string | To diagnose display problems | Us and Cloudflare |
| Server error records | To find and fix faults | Us and Cloudflare |
3.5 Email data — in use, transactional only
We send transactional email only — license delivery, receipts, security notices, and replies to the objection form — through Resend, acting as our processor and named in section 7 as this policy promised it would be before the first message was sent. Your email address reaches Resend so that a message can be delivered to it. We send no marketing email and run no automated sequence of any kind, and this policy does not permit one. The one list we keep is the opt-in update list in 3.7: you are on it only if you typed your address into the form at the end of the free assessment or at the foot of a free guide, it is used only to tell you the questions have changed, and every message says how to stop it.
3.6 Aggregate usage counts — in use, and not linked to you
To know whether the site is working — whether people who start the free assessment finish it, and whether anyone reaches the payment page — we count five steps. This is the whole of our analytics, and we run it ourselves on our hosting provider’s infrastructure. There is no analytics company, no tracking script, and no request to any other domain.
| What | Why | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| A count that a free assessment was started, and one that a free assessment was finished | To see whether the assessment is useful or people abandon it | Us, on Cloudflare |
| A count that someone was sent to the payment page, and a count that a purchase completed | To see whether the buying path works at all | Us, on Cloudflare |
| A count that somebody asked to be told when the questions change — the count only, never the address | To see whether that offer is wanted, and to take it off the page if it is not | Us, on Cloudflare |
| With each count: a short word for where the visitor came from — the name of an advertisement or campaign, the site that linked to us, or nothing | To know which of the places we appear actually brings people who find the product useful | Us, on Cloudflare |
| With each count of a free check started or finished: which free check it was (for example the CCNA one). This is the same for everyone on that page | To see each exam’s free check separately | Us, on Cloudflare |
| With each count of a checkout click or a completed purchase: which exam or bundle it was for. This is the same for everyone who buys that product | To report sales by product in our own dashboard | Us, on Cloudflare |
What is deliberately not in those counts: no name, no email address, no account identifier, no IP address, no device or browser fingerprint, and no exam answer or score. Everyone who arrives from the same advertisement carries the same word, so the counts cannot distinguish two people, cannot be joined to your account, and cannot be turned back into a person — by us or by anyone we hand them to, because we hand them to nobody.
The one thing this puts on your device is described in section 5: a single short word, in your browser’s per-tab session storage, which is discarded when you close the tab. When you buy something, that same word is attached to the record of the purchase, so we can tell which advertisement led to a sale. That is the only place it is kept for longer than a browsing session.
3.7 The update list — in use, opt-in, and only if you typed an address
At the end of the free assessment, and at the foot of each free guide, there is one optional field: leave an email address and you will get one email when the questions are updated for a new release. It is the same field and the same three-field record in both places. Nobody is added to it any other way — not by buying something, not by signing in, and not by using the objection form.
| What | Why | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| The email address you typed | So we can tell you the questions changed | Us, on Cloudflare |
| Which page you typed it on | So we know which part of the site the request came from | Us, on Cloudflare |
| The date and time | So we know how old a request is | Us, on Cloudflare |
Those three things are the whole record. Not your answers, not your score, not the domains you were weak in, not an account identifier, not your IP address, and not your browser. The free assessment still records nothing about how you did, and this does not change that.
It is never sold, rented, shared or handed to anyone, and it is not used to advertise anything to you. It is not connected to any marketing platform, there is no automated sequence, and no message is ever sent to it by software on a schedule — a person writes one message when a bank actually changes. Your address reaches our email provider, Resend (section 7), only at the moment a message is sent to it.
To come off it: reply to any message from us saying stop, or write to contact@grindstoneprep.com. We delete the record rather than marking it inactive, and we do not send anything to confirm it.
3.8 Content suggestions — in use, anonymous, and only if you send one
At the foot of the home page there is a box where you can suggest a practice exam, a guide, or anything else you would like to see. It is optional and has no email field. It is separate from the update list in 3.7 and from the objection form: sending a suggestion does not put you on any list.
| What | Why | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| The text you typed, up to 500 characters | So we know what visitors want us to write next | Us, on Cloudflare |
| Which page you sent it from | So we know which part of the site it came from | Us, on Cloudflare |
| The date and time | So we know how old a suggestion is | Us, on Cloudflare |
Those three things are the whole record. No email address, no account identifier, no IP address, and no browser details are stored with it. To stop one connection flooding the box, your IP address is turned into a one-way hashed counter that lives only in our server’s memory, for at most a day, and is never written to the record or to our logs. Please do not put anything personal in the box; if you do, it is kept with the suggestion.
Nothing is sent to you, because we have no way to: there is no address to send it to. A copy of the suggestion is emailed to us through our email provider, Resend (section 7), so that a person reads it. It is never sold, shared, or published. We keep suggestions while they are useful for deciding what to write, and delete them when they are not. If you want one removed, write to contact@grindstoneprep.com with the wording and roughly when you sent it, since we have nothing else to find it by.
4. What we do not collect
Stated explicitly, because our customers ask.
- No passwords. Ever.
- No card numbers, expiry dates, or security codes.
- No device fingerprinting, canvas fingerprinting, or hardware identifiers.
- No third-party advertising or behavioral tracking pixels, and no third-party analytics of any kind. The counts in 3.6 are ours, are anonymous, and involve no other company.
- No session recording or screen capture.
- No cross-site tracking. Nothing we set or send can follow you to another website, and nothing we receive tells us where you went next.
- No location data beyond the country the merchant of record derives for tax, and the IP address described in 3.4.
- No data from children. The service is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
5. Cookies and similar technologies
This website sets no cookie until you sign in. Browsing, reading, and taking the free assessment set none. Signing in sets what the service needs to work, and nothing else:
| Purpose | Set by |
|---|---|
| Keeping you signed in | Our authentication provider |
| Remembering an in-progress practice session | Us |
| Security and abuse prevention | Us and Cloudflare |
We use no advertising cookies and no third-party analytics cookies. Every cookie in the table above is strictly necessary to deliver something you asked for.
Session storage, which is not a cookie but is worth naming anyway. Two
short values may be kept in your browser’s sessionStorage, which
belongs to a single tab and is discarded the moment you close it. Neither is sent to any
other website, and neither identifies you:
| Value | Why |
|---|---|
| The exam you asked to buy | So that signing in and coming back from the payment page continues where you left off, instead of starting again |
| A short word for where you arrived from — for example the name of an advertisement, or the site that linked to us | So the counts in section 3.6, and a purchase if you make one, can be attributed to the right place. It is not unique to you: everyone arriving the same way carries the same word |
6. Why we are allowed to process this — lawful bases
- To perform our contract with you: account data, purchase data, exam attempt data, transactional email. Without these there is no product.
- Our legitimate interests: security and abuse prevention, aggregate question-quality statistics, the anonymous usage counts in 3.6, and fault diagnosis. We have considered your interests and think these are narrow, expected, and low-impact: the counts hold nothing about a person, are not shared, and exist so that a very small business can tell whether what it built is any use.
- Legal obligation: tax and accounting records, retained by the merchant of record and by us.
- Consent: the update list in 3.7, and only that. You give it by typing your address into an optional field, and you withdraw it by telling us to stop, which deletes the record.
7. Processors — who else handles your data
We use a small number of service providers. Each acts on our instructions, under contract, and is not permitted to use your data for its own purposes. The status column is accurate as of the date at the top of this page, and is there because a provider list that quietly includes services not yet in use is not much use to you.
| Role | Provider | What it handles | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting and content delivery | Cloudflare | Serving this site; short-lived security and rate-limit records; the anonymous usage counts in 3.6 | In use |
| Authentication | Clerk | Email address, sign-in, session tokens. Holds no password we ever see. | In use |
| Merchant of record | Lemon Squeezy | Payment, billing details, tax, license keys, refunds. It is the seller of record for your purchase and its own privacy notice applies to the payment. | In use |
| Transactional email | Resend | Delivery of license keys, receipts, security notices, replies to the objection form, and — when a bank is updated — the update message to the list in 3.7 | In use |
Some of these providers operate infrastructure outside the United States. Where data moves across borders it does so under the provider’s own transfer safeguards.
8. How long we keep things
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account data | While your account exists, then 30 days after you ask us to delete it |
| Exam attempt data | For your access term, plus 12 months so you can review past results, then deleted or anonymised |
| Aggregate question statistics | Indefinitely, in a form not linked to you |
| Purchase and tax records | As long as tax and accounting law requires — held principally by the merchant of record |
| Rate-limit and security counters | Short-lived; 7 days at most |
| Aggregate usage counts (3.6) | Three months, then deleted by our hosting provider automatically. The word describing where a purchase came from is kept with the purchase record for as long as that record is |
| Update-list address (3.7) | Until you ask to come off the list, or until the list is discontinued, whichever is first. Then deleted |
| Transactional email logs | 30 days |
9. Security
- Passwords are never stored, because they never exist on our side.
- The paid question bank is served from a server that checks entitlement on every request. It is never shipped wholesale to a browser.
- Secrets — provider keys and webhook signing secrets — are held server-side only and never appear in anything sent to a browser.
- Payment webhooks are signature-verified before any access is granted.
- Access is limited to two simultaneous sessions per license.
- Traffic to and from the service is encrypted in transit.
No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a breach affecting your data, we will notify you and any regulator we are required to notify, without undue delay.
10. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- access the data we hold about you;
- correct it if it is wrong;
- delete it, subject to records we must keep for tax and accounting;
- export it in a portable form;
- object to or restrict processing based on our legitimate interests;
- withdraw consent, where consent is what we relied on;
- complain to your local data protection authority.
We do not discriminate against you for exercising any of these. To exercise a right, write to contact@grindstoneprep.com. We may need to confirm you control the account’s email address. We aim to respond within 30 days.
Note on deletion during an access term: deleting your account ends your license. We cannot restore access afterwards, and deletion is not a refund. If you want a refund, read the refunds page first.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. Material changes will be announced by email to the address on your account and posted here with a new version number and date. The version and date at the top always tell you which version you are reading.
12. Contact
Grindstone Prep
Grindstone Prep, LLC
A United States company
contact@grindstoneprep.com
Related: the terms of service, the refunds and guarantee page, and the sourcing methodology.