Privacy Policy

Effective October 15, 2026

This policy covers the LearnSCADA store at learnscada.com and its online courses (the "store"), run by Mountaintop Solutions Inc ("LearnSCADA", "we"). It explains what we collect, why, who helps us process it, and the choices you have. Questions: [email protected].

What we collect

• Your email address, when you join, sign in, buy something, or ask to be told about a course. It is your account name.
• Your name, if you give it, and a password if you choose to set one. Passwords are stored only as a salted one-way hash; we cannot read them.
• Your membership and purchases: your tier (Free Reader or Pro Library), what you bought, when, the amount, the sales tax charged, and the state or country used for tax. If you buy the PLC Simulator, also whether your access is active or was revoked by a refund, the purchase and revocation dates, an internal id for your simulator access, and Stripe's reference for the payment. If you start the free trial, that you did, when, the same internal id, and how much of the trial time you have used.
• Paperback orders: if you buy a printed book from the store, the name, shipping address and phone number you give at checkout (the phone number is required by the delivery carriers), the shipping method and cost, and the order's printing and shipping status and tracking number.
• Course progress: which lessons you have completed, so your account can show where you left off.
• PLC Simulator activity: when you open your simulator, the simulator service logs your sign-ins (with your email address and IP address). Your private simulator keeps a log of the Modbus connections to it (their IP addresses), the values written to it and the changes you make, and the workbooks you upload. The administrator can open any simulator to support it or deal with abuse; each such view is logged.
• Your newsletter choice: whether you want occasional emails about new books and courses.
• Technical data: like any website, our hosting provider receives your IP address, browser type and the pages requested, for delivery, security and abuse prevention.

We do not see or store your card number or bank details. Payment is entered in Stripe's checkout (Stripe's own page, or for paperbacks Stripe's checkout form shown inside our page) and handled by Stripe.

How we use it

• To create and sign you in to your account, including emailing you sign-in links.
• To deliver what you bought: PDF downloads, course access and Pro Library benefits, kept in your account, and printed books, which we have printed and shipped to the address you give (see our print and fulfillment partner below). For a paperback we email you an order confirmation and, when it ships, the tracking link.
• To keep accounting and tax records.
• To send our newsletter, but only after your email address has been confirmed (by a sign-in link or a confirmation email), and only until you unsubscribe.
• To answer you when you write to us, and to protect the store from fraud and abuse.

We do not sell or rent your information, and we do not use advertising or tracking cookies.

Services that process data for us

• Cloudflare hosts the store and its database and files, and protects the admin area.
• Stripe processes payments, subscriptions and refunds, and calculates sales tax. Yearly Pro members manage their subscription on Stripe's customer portal. Stripe's own privacy policy applies to what you enter on its checkout and portal pages, and in its checkout form on our paperback checkout page, where Stripe may use cookies and your IP address to prevent fraud.
• Our print and fulfillment partner prints and ships the paperbacks you buy from the store. For each paperback order we send it the shipping name, address, phone number and email address on the order, the book and the shipping method, and it passes the address and phone number to the carrier that delivers it. It tells us the order's status and tracking. Its own privacy policy applies to what it holds.
• Resend sends our sign-in and confirmation emails, and paperback order and shipping emails.
• Mailchimp holds our newsletter list and sends the newsletter.
• Google Fonts serves the typefaces the pages use, so your browser contacts Google when a page loads.
• YouTube plays course videos through its privacy-enhanced (youtube-nocookie.com) player, which Google runs.

Links to Amazon, Audible and the Order direct seller's page take you to their sites, where their own privacy policies apply. We do not send them your account details.

Cookies and browser storage

• ls_member keeps you signed in for up to 30 days. It holds only your email address and an expiry time, signed so it cannot be forged. It is needed for your account to work, so the store has no cookie banner.
• The interactive course pages save your completed lessons and your narration preference in your browser's local storage, so they work even when you are not signed in. Clearing your browser data removes them.
• plcsim_session, set by the PLC Simulator at sim.learnscada.com, keeps you signed in to it for up to 4 hours.
• Stripe sets its own cookies on its checkout page to process payment and prevent fraud.

How long we keep it

Your simulator's activity log is kept in memory only, the most recent few hundred entries, and is erased whenever your simulator stops. Your simulator's workbooks, settings and blocked-IP list are kept while you own it. If the purchase is refunded, they are deleted 30 days after the refund; your Modbus port number is never given to anyone else. A free trial's workbooks, settings and blocked-IP list are deleted 30 days after the trial simulator last ran, unless you buy the simulator; the record of your trial (so it isn't given twice) is kept while your account exists. We keep your account while it is in use. Purchase and tax records, including the shipping details of paperback orders, are kept as long as accounting and tax law require, even after an account is closed. Newsletter records are removed from the mailing list when you unsubscribe.

Your choices and rights

• Newsletter: every newsletter has an unsubscribe link, or email us.
• See, correct or delete your data: email [email protected] from the address on your account. We will answer within 30 days. Deleting your account removes your access to purchased downloads and courses, and some purchase records must be kept for tax law.
• Depending on where you live (for example the EU, the UK or California), you may have further rights, such as data portability or objecting to processing. Email us to use them.

Security

The store is served only over HTTPS, sign-in uses one-time email links or hashed passwords, and the admin area is behind Cloudflare Access. No system is perfectly secure, but we limit what we collect and who can reach it.

Children

The store is meant for adults and students of industrial automation. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

International visitors

LearnSCADA is run from the United States, and our service providers may process data in the United States and other countries.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update it here and change the effective date at the top. Significant changes will also be announced by email to members.

Contact

Mountaintop Solutions Inc, LearnSCADA: [email protected]