PRIVACY POLICY

ScholarU LLC (“Scholar U”) has created this Privacy Policy in order to demonstrate its commitment to the privacy and protection of your personal information. To better protect your privacy, we provide this policy to explain our information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used in connection with our products and services.

By using www.scholar-u.com (the “Website”), you confirm that you accept our Terms and Conditions, and that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a material change to the way in which we collect, use, and/or disclose your personal information, we will post a notice on the Website and may send an email to users who have provided an email address for that purpose.

1. What information do we collect and what do we do with it?

Registration.  When you enroll as a student or subscriber (“learner”) on our site or related courses, as part of the enrollment process, we collect the  Personal Information (as defined in Section 2) that you give us. You will have the opportunity to decide whether or not to disclose Personal Information to us. Please be advised that access to certain products and services available on the Website require registration and if you elect not to provide such information, you will not be able to take advantage of those products and services.

Surveys. From time-to-time we may request Personal Information from you in conjunction with a customer survey. Participation is voluntary, and you will have the opportunity to decide whether or not to disclose Personal Information to the Website.

Transaction Information. If you conduct a financial transaction on the Website, such as ordering products/services offered on the Website, we will ask you to complete an order form that will request certain Personal Information from you, including name, address and contact information, demographic information, credit card and other financial information.  Please be aware you will be providing your personal information to our authorized payment processor or other Service Providers (see Sections 6 and 7 below). In such instances, the Privacy Policies of those Service Providers will govern the collection of your personal information. Please refer to the privacy policies of such third parties for any privacy related concerns.

Contacting Customer Care. If you contact us by email, telephone or any other means to report a problem with the Website or our services, or you request information from us, we may record your personal information, as well as the content of your communication, for account management, training, and monitoring purposes. Calls may be monitored or recorded for training purposes to the extent permitted under applicable law.

Electronic Communications. When you engage in email, SMS or MMS communications with us, we may log and store such information, as necessary, or for training and monitoring purposes. We will give you an opportunity to provider you consent before we send any of these types of communications to you.

Email marketing. We may send you emails about our site and related course(s), registration, course content, your course progress or other updates. We may also use your email to inform you about changes to the course, survey you about your usage, or collect your opinion. You will have the opportunity to decide what communications you would like to receive, and to opt-out of our marketing communications when you complete your purchase check out process on the Website or by clicking “unsubscribe” in our emails or replying “STOP” to our text messages.

2. What Information Is Collected From or About You

We may collect the following types of information from or about you (“Personal Information):


3. How is My Information Used? 

We and our Service Providers may use your information for the following purposes:

 

We may also use aggregate information, which is information that is combined with other information so that it does not identify you or any individual, to improve our Website. For example, our Service Providers may report to us that there were a particular number of visitors to a certain area of our Website, or that a certain number of men or a certain number of women completed our registration form in particular areas of our Website. Such information may also be used to analyze the effectiveness of our business and advertising models. 

4. Disclosure

We may disclose your personal information if we are required by law to do so or if you violate our Terms of Service. 

We may also disclose your personal information as is necessary to:

  1. comply with a subpoena or court order;
  2. cooperate with law enforcement or other government agencies;
  3. establish or exercise our legal rights;
  4. protect the property or safety of our company and employees, contractors, vendors, and suppliers;
  5. defend against legal claims;
  6. help with internal and external investigations; or
  7. as otherwise required by law or permitted by law.


We may use the services of independent companies to provide certain services to you, including, without limitation, website hosting services, cloud hosting service providers (such as Amazon Web Services), course content distribution services, credit and debit card processing, mobile application providers (such as Google and Apple), order fulfilment, and internet connectivity services ("Service Providers"). We may share your information with these third parties to the extent necessary to carry out obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.

We also share information with analytics and audience and traffic measurement service providers (such as Google Analytics). Traffic measurement services analyze the traffic on the Website and measure the use of our Services. Audience and traffic measurement services allow us to collect anonymous traffic and behavior information from the Website by monitoring anonymous visitor activity. These services may set and access their own cookies on your computer.

We may disclose your information in connection with the sale or merger of ScholarU LLC, one of our courses, or any transaction that involves the sale or assignment of some or all of our assets.

We may work with Facebook, other social network sites, YouTube, on-line marketing platforms and programmatic advertising services to display interest-based ads to you in various on-line settings. We may share hashed/encrypted email addresses or phone numbers with these social media and on-line platforms to enable them to identify which users purchase our products, visit our web sites, or express interest in our Company or services. If you do not want to receive interest-based ads on these sites, you can adjust your ad preferences through your settings on those sites.

We also use third-party network ad serving services to serve the advertisements on the Website. Network advertisers are third parties that display advertisements based on your visits to this Website and other websites you have visited. Third-party ad serving enables us to target advertisements to you for products or websites you might be interested in. The Website's advertisers, sponsors may themselves set and access their own cookies on your computer.

Cookies allow third-party advertisers to show you advertisements or content you might be interested in. Third party vendors may also pool the information that they collect from the Website with other sources of information, which other sources of information may include your name and mailing address, for purposes of determining whether you might be interested in receiving direct mail. Note that any images (or any other parts of a web page) served by third parties in association with third-party cookies may serve as web beacons, which enable third parties to carry out the previously described activities. Please see Section 10 below for further details.

You have the option to provide or withhold your consent when you complete your registration on the Website. If after you opt-in, you change your mind, you may withdraw your consent for us to contact you, for the continued collection, use or disclosure of your information, at anytime, by contacting us at [email protected].

5. Thinkific

Our courses and site are hosted by Thinkific Labs Inc. (“Thinkific”). They provide us with the online course creation platform that allow us to sell our product/services to you.

Your data is stored through Thinkific’s data storage, databases and the general Thinkific application. They store your data on a secure server behind a firewall.

For more insight, you may also want to read Thinkific’s Terms of Service here https://www.thinkific.com/resources/privacy-policy/ or Privacy Statement here https://www.thinkific.com/resources/terms-of-service/ .

6.  Payment:

If you make a purchase on our site, we use a third party payment processor such as Stripe or Paypal. Payments are encrypted through the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). Your purchase transaction data is stored only as long as is necessary to complete your purchase transaction.

All direct payment gateways adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover.

PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of credit card information by our site and related courses and its service providers.

7. Third Party Services

In general, the third-party providers used by us will only collect, use and disclose your information to the extent necessary to allow them to perform the services they provide to us.

However, certain third-party service providers, such as payment gateways and other payment transaction processors, have their own privacy policies in respect to the information we are required to provide to them for your purchase-related transactions.

For these providers, we recommend that you read their privacy policies so you can understand the manner in which your personal information will be handled by these providers.

Certain providers may be located in or have facilities that are located in a different jurisdiction than either you or us. If you elect to proceed with a transaction that involves the services of a third-party service provider, then your information may become subject to the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in which that service provider or its facilities are located.

As an example, if you are located in Canada and your transaction is processed by a payment gateway located in the United States, then your personal information used in completing that transaction may be subject to disclosure under United States legislation, including the Patriot Act.

Once you leave our course website or are redirected to a third-party website or application, you are no longer governed by this Privacy Policy or our website’s Terms of Service.

8. Links

When you click on links on our course site, they may direct you away from our site. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites and encourage you to read their privacy statements.

9. Security

We take reasonable precautions and follow industry-standard practices to protect your Personal Information against being inappropriately lost, misused, accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed.

If you provide us with your credit card information, the information is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL) and stored with a AES-256 encryption.  Although no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, we follow all PCI-DSS requirements and implement additional generally accepted industry standards.

10.  Cookies

We collect cookies or similar tracking technologies. This means information that our website’s server transfers to your computer. This information can be used to track your session on our website. Cookies may also be used to customize our website content for you as an individual. If you are using one of the common Internet web browsers, you can set up your browser to either let you know when you receive a cookie or to deny cookie access to your computer.


11.  Web Analysis Tools

We may use web analysis tools that are built into the Website to measure and collect anonymous session information.

12. Age Requirements

This Website is a general audience website. Our content is neither directed toward minors nor children who are under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of 13. If we or our Service Providers become aware that a minor or a child under the age of 13 has provided us with Personal Information without parental consent, that information will be deleted from our databases. Parents who have questions about Personal Information that may have been submitted by a child under the age of 13 should email us at: [email protected].

13. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the Website. 

14. California Privacy Rights

California residents may request information from us about the information we have collected from and about them and the information we have shared with service providers and other third parties over the past twelve (12) months, including: (1) the categories of personal information we have collected about you, (2) the categories of sources from which the personal information is collected, (3) the business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information, (4) the categories of third parties with whom we have shared your personal information, (5) the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, and (6) the categories of personal information we have sold or disclosed for a business purpose. Requests may be submitted to [email protected].

California residents may request that we delete information we have collected from or about them, subject to several exceptions, including, but not limited to, if the information is necessary for us or our service provider to: (1)(a) complete your transaction, (b) provide you a good or service, (c) perform a contract between us and you; (2) protect your security and prosecute those responsible for breaching it; (3) fix our system in the case of a bug; (4) protect the free speech rights of your or other users; (5) comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code 1546 et seq.); (6) engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interests that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws; (7) comply with a legal obligation; or (8) make other internal and lawful uses of the information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it. Requests may also be made at [email protected].

We will use commercially reasonable efforts to respond to a verifiable consumer request for access or deletion within forty-five (45) days of its receipt. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. We will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

Other than as is stated by this Privacy Policy, we will not share any personal information about you with outside third-parties for their direct marketing purposes to the extent prohibited by California law, unless you agree otherwise as authorized by your prior written consent.

California residents have the right to request information from us regarding the manner that we may share personal information with affiliated companies and third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To find out what and how we share such information, you may send us an e-mail request at: [email protected] and receive the following information:

A. The categories of information we disclosed to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year, if any;

B. The names and addresses of the third parties who received information for their direct marketing purposes; and

C. Examples of the products and services subject to the third-parties' direct marketing programs, if the nature of the third parties' business cannot be determined from their names.

You may direct us not to sell your personal information to third parties. If you wish to opt-out of the disclosure of information described for interest based targeting advertising and/or data cooperatives, you can do so by emailing [email protected].

Unless permitted by law, we will not do the following as a result of your pursuing any rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act: (i) deny you goods or services, (ii) charge you a different price or rate for goods or services, (iii) provide you a different level or quality of goods or services, or (iv) suggest that you will receive a different price or level of quality of goods or services.

15.       Questions and Contact Information

If you would like to: access, correct, amend or delete any personal information we have about you, register a complaint, or simply want more information contact our Privacy Compliance Officer at [email protected].

 

Effective Date: April 18,2023