Learn how Michael uses cookies, pixels, and similar tracking technologies to improve performance, remember preferences, and safeguard your learning experience.
Last updated: November 1, 2025
1.What Are Cookies?
Cookies are small text files placed on your computer, tablet, or mobile device when you access websites, applications, and digital services. Along with cookies, we utilize related web technologies including local storage, session storage, and security tokens to maintain state and preserve user configurations across interactive educational sessions.
These technologies allow our academic platform to recognize your device, securely confirm authentication credentials, verify coursework progress, and deliver seamless interactive coding sandboxes without requiring you to re-authenticate on every page navigation.
2.How We Use Cookies
We use cookies and telemetry storage solely for lawful operational, pedagogical, and platform security purposes, specifically:
Authenticating Learners: Verifying active academic sessions, protecting administrative accounts, and ensuring seamless transitions across course modules.
Preserving Coursework Progress: Storing interactive code editor state, unsubmitted laboratory outputs, and video playback milestones.
Analyzing Feature Adoption & Performance: Monitoring latency across global edge servers, detecting network bottlenecks, and optimizing video lecture delivery.
We deploy two broad duration categories of cookies across our learning environments:
Session Cookies: Temporary files that exist only during your active browsing session. They are automatically deleted from your device memory when you close your browser or terminate your active terminal session.
Persistent Cookies: Stored on your device for a predetermined expiration window (typically between 30 days and 12 months) to remember return login preferences, active interface configurations, and language choices across separate visits.
4.Essential & Authentication Cookies
Essential cookies are technically required for our academic platform to function. Because core services cannot be delivered without them, these cookies cannot be deactivated in our privacy settings:
Authentication & CSRF Tokens: Safeguard student sessions and protect against cross-site request forgery attacks.
Sandbox State: Maintain continuity across remote virtual machine containers, compiler instances, and peer code review tools.
Load-Balancing Telemetry: Distribute server load evenly across worldwide academic clusters for zero-downtime exams.
Important: Essential cookies operate strictly within the Michael domain infrastructure and never track your browsing behavior across unrelated third-party websites.
5.Performance & Analytics Cookies
Performance cookies collect anonymized, aggregated telemetry that helps us understand how students interact with curriculum content and diagnostic tooling:
Streaming Stability: Tracking video buffering incidents, adaptive bitrate switching, and audio track latency across diverse global network connections.
Diagnostic Telemetry: Capturing client-side JavaScript warnings and compilation interface exceptions to rapidly deploy bug fixes.
6.Preference & Personalization Cookies
These cookies allow the platform to remember your individual learning environment choices, eliminating the need to reset configurations upon each return visit:
Interface Aesthetics: Remembering high-contrast modes, system light/dark themes, and typographical scaling.
Multimedia Controls: Preserving default video playback speeds (e.g., 1.25x, 1.5x), audio balance, and closed-caption display styling.
Regional Locale: Retaining language localization and regional time zone formats for synchronized assignment deadlines.
7.Third-Party Technologies
We integrate carefully vetted enterprise vendors to support specialized instructional infrastructure, enterprise SSO integrations, and secure billing services:
Cloud & Edge Infrastructure: AWS and Cloudflare provide distributed DDoS mitigation, global DNS caching, and low-latency edge caching.
Single Sign-On (SSO): Institutional integrations via Google Workspace, Canvas LMS, and Microsoft Entra ID may place security verification tokens during enterprise login federations.
Payment Processing: Stripe handles encrypted credential storage and fraud scoring during tuition and certificate checkout flows.
8.Managing Your Cookie Preferences
You maintain full control over non-essential cookie technologies across our academic environment:
Browser-Level Controls: Most contemporary browsers (Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge) allow you to view, restrict, or clear stored cookies through their native settings panels. Please note that disabling essential cookies will prevent authentication and disrupt active laboratory assignments.
9.Updates to This Policy
We may periodically update this Cookie Policy to reflect technical enhancements, architectural migrations, or evolving regulatory requirements. When material changes are implemented, we will notify you through platform dashboard banners or via registered email before new practices take effect.
10.Contact Information
If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Cookie Policy or our data telemetry practices, our data protection desk is here to help:
Mailing Address
Michael Academic Systems Inc. 452 Innovation Boulevard, Suite 700 San Francisco, CA 94107