Full policy

SPARK is the e-learning platform of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), run by its Learning and Innovation Programme. This policy explains what personal data the platform holds about you, why it holds it, who else can see it, and how you can ask us to change or remove it.

In short: we hold the details you give us when you register, a record of the courses you take and how far you get in them, and technical logs of your visits. We use that to give you access to courses, to issue certificates, and to understand which material is being used. We do not sell personal data and we do not use it for advertising.

Who is responsible for this platform

SPARK (elearningunodc.org) is operated by the Learning and Innovation Programme of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Vienna International Centre, P.O. Box 500, 1400 Vienna, Austria.

Questions about this policy, or about the personal data the platform holds about you, can be sent to unodc-elearning@un.org.

The framework this policy follows

UNODC is part of the United Nations. As such it is not subject to national or regional data protection legislation; instead it applies the United Nations Personal Data Protection and Privacy Principles adopted by the High-Level Committee on Management in October 2018. Those principles require, among other things, that personal data be processed fairly, for specified purposes, only to the extent necessary, kept accurate, retained no longer than needed, and held securely.

Nothing in this policy waives the privileges and immunities of the United Nations.

What personal data the platform holds

Data you provide

• Account details — your name, email address, and the country, institution and professional role you enter when registering. Some of these are required to create an account; the rest are optional and can be left blank or removed later.
• Profile content — anything you choose to add to your profile, such as a description or a profile picture.
• Contributions — posts you write in course forums, answers you submit in quizzes and activities, and files you upload as part of a course.

Data the platform records as you use it

• Course activity — which courses you are enrolled in, which activities you have opened and completed, your progress and your results.
• Certificates — the certificates issued to you, including your name as it appears on them and the date of issue. Certificates carry a verification code so that a third party you show one to can confirm it is genuine.
• Technical logs — the pages you request, the time of the request, your IP address and your browser's user agent string. Moodle keeps these to let administrators trace problems and investigate misuse.

Why the platform holds it

• To give you access to the courses you enrol in and to record your progress.
• To issue and verify certificates of completion.
• To send you messages about courses you are enrolled in, and to answer you when you contact us.
• To understand which material is being used, so that the programme can decide what to improve or retire.
• To keep the platform secure and to investigate misuse.

We do not sell personal data, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not use it to build profiles for any purpose other than showing you your own learning progress.

Who else can see your data

• Course teachers and facilitators see the participation, submissions and results of the learners in their own courses.
• Other participants see what you post in shared spaces such as forums, and the parts of your profile you have chosen to make visible.
• Platform administrators at UNODC can access account and activity data where needed to run the platform and to support you.
• Partner institutions that sponsor a particular course or cohort may receive participation and completion figures for that group. Where this applies, it is stated on the course itself.

Services outside the platform

SPARK is hosted in Europe and its web analytics run on UNODC's own infrastructure. A small number of components are nevertheless loaded from, or send data to, services outside it:

• Web analytics (Matomo) — self-hosted at analytics.elearningunodc.org. Usage statistics stay on UNODC infrastructure and are not shared with an analytics provider. See the Cookie Policy for the cookies this sets. 
• Content delivery networks — some scripts and stylesheets are loaded from cdn.jsdelivr.net and cdnjs.cloudflare.com. Requesting a file from those services discloses your IP address and browser to them. They are used to deliver files only; they receive no account or course data.
• Video meetings — where a course includes a live webinar, the meeting itself runs on Zoom, and the data you provide when joining is processed by Zoom Video Communications under its own terms. 
• Mobile app stores — links to the SPARK mobile app point to Apple's App Store and Google Play. Following one takes you to that provider, where its own terms apply.

How long data is kept

Certificates and the records that prove them are kept longer than ordinary account data, because their purpose is to remain verifiable after a course has ended.

Your rights over your data

You may ask us to:

• tell you what personal data the platform holds about you;
• correct anything that is wrong;
• delete your account and the personal data attached to it.

Some of this you can do yourself: your profile is editable at any time from your account, and the platform's privacy tools let you request a copy of your data or its deletion under Profile → Privacy and policies → Data requests.

Deletion has limits we should be honest about. Contributions you have made to shared spaces, such as forum discussions, may remain where removing them would break a conversation others took part in; where that applies, they are detached from your name. Records that prove an issued certificate are kept so that the certificate stays verifiable.

Security

The platform is served over encrypted connections (HTTPS), passwords are stored only as cryptographic hashes, and administrative access is limited to the staff who need it. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise; if a breach affects your data, UNODC will act on it under the UN system's procedures for such incidents.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes materially, the platform will ask you to review the new version the next time you sign in. Earlier versions remain on record.

Full policy

SPARK uses a small number of cookies. Two are needed for the platform to work at all — they keep you signed in and remember that you have seen this notice. Two more are set by UNODC's own analytics software, which counts how the platform is used. No cookies are set for advertising, and none are shared with an advertising network.

What cookies are

A cookie is a small file a website asks your browser to store and send back on later visits. Cookies are what allow a site to recognise that two page requests come from the same person — which is how staying signed in works. Some of the entries below are not cookies in the strict sense but data stored in your browser for the same reason; they are listed because the distinction makes no difference to you.

The cookies SPARK sets

Necessary for the platform to work

Name	Set by	Purpose	Kept for
MoodleSession	SPARK	Identifies your session so the platform knows that the pages you request belong together. Without it you cannot sign in, and anything you submit would be lost between one page and the next.	Until you sign out or close the browser
EU_COOKIE_LAW_CONSENT	SPARK	Records that you have seen and acknowledged the notice about these policies, so that it is not shown again on every page.	30 days
MOODLEID1_	SPARK	Set only if you ask the platform to remember your username on the sign-in page. It stores that username, nothing else.	Until you clear it

These cannot be switched off while using the platform: without them there is no signing in and no way to keep a page's state.

Understanding how the platform is used

Name	Set by	Purpose	Kept for
_pk_id.*	Matomo, hosted by UNODC at analytics.elearningunodc.org	Assigns your browser a random identifier so that repeat visits can be counted as one visitor rather than several. The identifier is not linked to your account and carries no information about you.	13 months
_pk_ses.*	Matomo, hosted by UNODC	Marks the pages you open in one sitting as a single visit, so that visit counts are not inflated.	30 minutes

The analytics software runs on UNODC's own servers. Usage statistics are not sent to an external analytics provider, and they are not combined with data from other websites.

Stored by your browser, not as cookies

SPARK also keeps a small amount of data in your browser's local storage: translations of interface text, icon definitions and page templates. This is a cache — it makes pages load faster and is discarded when you clear your browsing data. It contains no personal data and is never sent back to the server.

Cookies set by other services

Some parts of a page are loaded from services outside the platform. They do not set cookies of their own on SPARK, but requesting a file from them discloses your IP address and browser to that service:

• cdn.jsdelivr.net and cdnjs.cloudflare.com — scripts and stylesheets
• assets.elearningunodc.org — images and fonts, hosted by UNODC

If a course includes a live webinar, joining it opens Zoom, which sets its own cookies under its own policy. That happens on Zoom's side, not on SPARK.

What you can do

Every browser lets you view, delete and block cookies, usually under settings named "Privacy", "Cookies" or "Site data". Blocking cookies from SPARK will prevent you from signing in, since the session cookie is what keeps you signed in.

If you prefer not to be counted in the usage statistics, most browsers offer a "Do Not Track" setting, which the analytics software respects. You can also block analytics.elearningunodc.org in your browser; the platform works normally without it.

Changes

The table above describes the platform as it is configured today. If cookies are added or their purpose changes, this policy is updated and, where the change is material, you will be asked to review it.

Full policy

SPARK is the e-learning platform of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. These terms set out what you may do on it and what you may not: use the courses for your own learning and professional work, keep your account to yourself, treat other participants decently, and do not redistribute course material without permission. Certificates say that you completed a course; they are not a UNODC qualification or endorsement.

1. What SPARK is

SPARK (elearningunodc.org) is the e-learning platform of the Learning and Innovation Programme of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). It offers self-paced courses, live sessions and learning resources, primarily for criminal justice practitioners and others working in UNODC's mandate areas.

By creating an account or using the platform you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the platform.

2. Your account

• Register with your own details and keep them accurate. An account is personal: do not share your password, and do not let anyone else use your account. Certificates are issued in the name on the account, so an account used by more than one person makes its certificates meaningless.
• Tell us at unodc-elearning@un.org if you believe someone else has gained access to your account.
• Some courses are open to anyone; others are restricted to a particular cohort, institution or programme, and access to them is granted by UNODC or by the partner running the course.

3. How you may use the platform

You may use SPARK for your own learning and for your professional work. You may not:

• use it for any unlawful purpose, or in a way that would bring the United Nations into disrepute;
• attempt to gain access to accounts, courses or data you have not been given access to;
• interfere with the platform's operation, including by automated retrieval of content at a scale that affects other users;
• upload malware, or content that is unlawful, defamatory, discriminatory or harassing;
• impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation.

4. Conduct towards other participants

Courses on SPARK deal with subjects — organised crime, corruption, drug policy, criminal justice — on which participants from different countries and systems hold different views. Discussion is welcome; contempt is not. In forums and other shared spaces, address the argument rather than the person, and do not post material that demeans anyone on grounds such as nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender or profession.

Do not repost elsewhere what another participant has written in a course space, and do not quote it outside the course in a way that identifies them, without their agreement.

5. Course material and intellectual property

Course material on SPARK — text, video, graphics, assessments — belongs to UNODC or to the partners who contributed it, unless a different licence is stated on the material itself.

You may:

• use the material for your own learning;
• apply what you have learned in your professional work;
• quote short passages with attribution to UNODC SPARK.

You may not, without written permission:

• republish, sell or redistribute course material;
• use it to run your own training offering, whether paid or unpaid;
• remove attributions or licence notices.

Where a course states that its material is published under an open licence, that licence governs and takes precedence over this section.

6. What you contribute

You keep the rights to what you write and upload. By posting it on SPARK you give UNODC permission to store it, display it to the people the course is shared with, and keep it as part of the course record. UNODC may remove contributions that breach these terms.

7. Certificates

A certificate records that you completed a specific course on SPARK on a specific date, under the conditions that course set. It carries a verification code so that anyone you show it to can confirm it is genuine.

A certificate is not:

• an academic qualification or an accredited award;
• a UNODC endorsement of you, your employer or your work;
• a licence, authorisation or professional accreditation of any kind.

Presenting a certificate as any of those, or altering one, is a misuse of it and a breach of these terms.

8. Availability

The platform is provided as it is. UNODC aims to keep it available and current, but does not guarantee uninterrupted access, and may change, suspend or withdraw courses and features. Courses are educational material, not professional or legal advice for a particular situation.

9. Suspension of accounts

UNODC may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms. Where circumstances allow, you will be told why and given an opportunity to respond first.

10. Privacy

What the platform does with your personal data is set out in the Privacy Policy, and the cookies it uses in the Cookie Policy. Both form part of your agreement with us.

11. Privileges and immunities

Nothing in these terms constitutes a waiver, express or implied, of the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, including UNODC.

12. Changes to these terms

These terms may be updated. When they change materially, you will be asked to review the new version the next time you sign in. Continuing to use the platform after that means you accept the updated terms.

13. Contact

Questions about these terms, about a course, or about access: unodc-elearning@un.org.