Protecting Your Privacy: Psychological Self-Tests on the Internet

How We Protect Your Privacy

This site does not retain any information about the answers you provide to screening tests or other quizzes provided on this site.

All our tests are scored by your own computer, using javascript code that is loaded by your web browser along with the page that contains the quiz you are taking. Unlike quizzes on many other sites that make use of CGI or ASP technology for scoring quizzes, our method means that your individual answers are never even transmitted to this site.

As far as we are aware, this is the only site on the web that can make you that guarantee.

Once the javascript has computed your test results, it requests a page from our site to describe the results for the relevant score range. This page request is the only interaction between your individual test results and this site. In accordance with our privacy policy, we use aggregate data about which pages of the whole overall site site have been visited for site development purposes, but individual users are not identified in these aggregate data.

Things to Check Before Taking a Psychological Self-Test

Unlike CounsellingResource.com, other sites do not normally guarantee you in advance that your quiz results won't be retained or otherwise processed by the site itself. So, before submitting your personal information to any website offering a free psychological self-test or other screening test, here are some things you can check to help ensure your privacy is being respected:

Does the site have a stated privacy policy?

If the site does not even mention how it uses your personal details, your privacy is probably not a high priority for the site owner.

Does the quiz ask for demographic information, such as your gender, age, or country of origin?

The results of most psychological screening tests do not depend explicitly on these demographic factors; a site which requests them may be collecting data for a research project. If a site collects data about you for research purposes, it should explain how your data will be treated.

Does the quiz appear on a page with a file extension of .cgi, .php, .asp, or other extension indicating a server-side scripting technology? Do your test results appear on such a page?

If the quiz appears on a page using server-side scripting technology -- and especially if the test results themselves are delivered by such a page -- there is a much greater chance that your individual test answers are being stored on the website itself. (Note that it does not guarantee that they are, but it makes it much more likely.) The most common situation suggesting server-side scripting to handle test results is an ordinary (X)HTML page with a .htm or .html extension sending results via a page ending in .cgi. If you see your test results being delivered back to you via a .cgi-generated page, you can be almost 100% certain that your question answers have been transmitted back to the website for processing -- and possibly for retention and other use.