SpendLens Privacy Policy
Updated September 18, 2026
What the study collects
The pre-simulation survey collects an email address plus age band, gender identity, education level, current work/study status, monthly income or allowance band, main source of money, financial responsibility, financial knowledge relative to peers, financial-decision confidence and expected simulation-spend band. During the experience, SpendLens records simulated shopping events, checkout choices, post-shopping responses, research calculations and optional final feedback.
Participation and primary study use
Before a study session is created, participants confirm that they are at least 16, understand the study and consent to the collection and use of submitted responses and simulated-shopping data for the current SpendLens study. The consent version and timestamp are stored with the research session.
Direct identifiers are separated
Email is stored in a dedicated contact table keyed by a random research session ID. Behavioural events and ordinary researcher exports use the session identifier and do not include the contact table. This is de-identification/pseudonymization, not irreversible anonymization while the separate contact mapping exists.
Browser storage
The browser may retain non-sensitive progress such as cart state, visited shops and completion flags so the flow can continue across navigation. Survey/contact answers are not intentionally persisted in localStorage. The server uses an HTTP-only session cookie to bind participant writes to the active research session.
Optional future reuse and contact permission
At the end of the experience, participants may separately permit de-identified responses to be retained/reused for future research or teaching beyond the current SpendLens study, and may separately permit follow-up contact. Both choices are optional and unselected by default.
Security and scope
Participant database writes go through server routes rather than anonymous direct database writes. Research tables use row-level security and are not opened to anonymous browser writes. Researcher access is revalidated server-side before privileged reads. SpendLens is educational and does not provide personal financial advice.
Retention and withdrawal
The final retention period must still be approved by the project owner/research supervisor before formal data collection, so no retention expiry is assigned by default. During an active session, the “Withdraw from this study” control deletes the current research session and its linked contact, survey, event, checkout, diagnostic and feedback rows. After a session is complete, a deletion request can be sent to the project contact email below. An admin-only privacy workflow can then locate the matching session by verified email and permanently cascade-delete its linked data.
Contact
Questions about research data handling can be sent to maryambilalahmed@gmail.com.