How your reading is protected
Plain-language description of where WorkStyle Compass data lives, who can reach it, and what we have done to keep it that way. If any of this is unclear, ask — see Your data.
One system, in Canada
All questionnaire answers, readings and the accounts they belong to are stored in a single dedicated database hosted in Canada (Montréal region). Partner sites do not keep their own copies of your answers; they read from this one system.
Keyed access only
The database has no public door. Each partner site (Hire Mountain, Scholar Quest, this website) holds its own secret key with only the permissions it needs, and can call the system only from its own web address. Keys are stored hashed, so they cannot be read back even by us.
Your session, your token
While you answer the 48 pairs, your session is protected by a random token that only your browser holds. Nobody can read or change your answers without it, and it expires after 24 hours.
What we store
| Data | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your 48 answers | To compute your reading, and to recompute it if the method is ever corrected | 3 years, then deleted |
| Your reading (four scores, profile code) | The result you and any partner you authorise can use | 7 years, then unlinked from you and kept only as an anonymous statistic |
| Name, email, country (only if a partner site asked for them) | So the reading can be shown to you again and connected to your account on that partner | Until you ask us to erase it, or 7 years of inactivity |
| A hashed (scrambled) form of your internet address | To stop abuse and to detect attacks. The address itself is never stored | 7 years with the audit trail |
| Consent record | What you agreed to, on which site, under which policy version | As long as the related data exists |
| Abandoned, unfinished sessions | Nothing useful | Deleted after 7 days |
What we never do
- Sell readings or personal details, or share them for advertising.
- Use tracking pixels, advertising cookies or third-party analytics on this site. There is no cookie banner here because there are no cookies to consent to.
- Let one partner see another partner's users. Hire Mountain cannot look up Scholar Quest students; Scholar Quest cannot look up Hire Mountain applicants.
- Expose the direction behind each answer while you are answering. The scoring runs on our servers, not in your browser.
How it is built
- No direct database access. The database schema is not reachable from the internet at all. Every read and write goes through one small program that checks the caller's key, its permissions, its web address and its request rate before touching anything.
- Deny by default. Every table has row-level security switched on with no exceptions granted, so even a misconfiguration elsewhere would return nothing.
- Append-only audit trail. Every start, completion, lookup and erasure is logged with a timestamp, the calling app and a hashed address. Audit rows cannot be edited or deleted, by anyone.
- Automatic retention. A scheduled job applies the retention periods above every night; nobody has to remember.
- Encryption. All traffic is TLS; data is encrypted at rest by the hosting provider; passwords are never held here (partner sites handle their own logins).
- This website is static, served with a strict content-security policy, HTTP strict transport security, and no third-party scripts. The only thing it can send is a data request form, and that goes through our own server, never directly to the database.
Compliance
WorkStyle Compass is operated from Ontario, Canada. We design to the requirements of PIPEDA (Canada's federal privacy law) and Québec's Law 25, and we honour the rights of the EU/UK GDPR and California's CCPA/CPRA for anyone covered by them: access, correction, erasure, portability and withdrawal of consent. Data is stored in Canada, which the European Commission recognises as providing adequate protection. Because Scholar Quest is used by secondary-school students, the school version collects the minimum possible and is designed to be read with a parent.
An honest note: no system can promise that a breach is impossible, and we will not claim it. What we can promise is that the design above means there is very little to breach, that any incident would be visible in the audit trail, and that we would notify affected people and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the law requires.
Reporting a security concern
If you believe you have found a vulnerability, please write to security@workstylecompass.com. We will acknowledge within two business days and will not take action against good-faith research.