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Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy was last updated on September 27, 2023.

Thank you for joining UpSky Academy. We at UpSky Academy (“UpSky Academy”, “we”, “us”) respect your privacy and We want you to know how we collect, use, and share your personal data. This Privacy Policy explains our data collection practices and your rights under privacy law.

This Privacy Policy applies to all users of UpSky Academy websites, mobile applications, APIs, and related services (the "Services"). This includes both consumers and businesses. By using the Services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy or any other agreement that governs your use of the Services, you should not use the Services.

1. The Data We Collect

We collect information about you in a few different ways:


Directly from you: This includes information you enter yourself, such as your name, email address, and billing information. It also includes data about how you use our services, such as the courses you take and the lessons you watch.

From third-party platforms: When you connect your UpSky Academy account to a third-party platform, such as Google or Facebook, we may receive information from that platform.

Automatically: We collect some information about your device and how you use our services automatically. This includes information such as your IP address, browser type, and device model.

1.1 Data You Provide to Us

We may collect different data from or about you depending on how you use the Services. Below are some examples to help you better understand the data we collect.

When you create an account and use the Services, including through a third-party platform, we collect any data you provide directly, including:

Category of Personal Data

Description

Legal Basis for Processing

Account Data

To use certain features (like accessing content or becoming an instructor), you need to create a user account. This requires us to collect and store your email address, password, and account settings. As you use certain features on the site, we may also collect additional information such as your name, occupation, government ID information, verification photo, date of birth, race/ethnicity, skill interests, and phone number. When you create an account, we assign you a unique identifying number.

  • Performance of contract

  • Legitimate interests (service provisioning, identity verification, fraud prevention and security, communication)

Profile Data

You can also choose to provide profile information, such as a photo, headline, biography, language, website link, social media profiles, country, or other data. This information will be publicly visible to others..

  • Performance of contract

  • Legitimate interests (enhanced platform functionality, convey content source information)

Shared Content

Some features of the Services allow you to interact with other users or share content publicly. This includes uploading courses and other educational content, posting reviews, asking or answering questions, sending messages to students or instructors, or posting photos or other work. The content you share may be publicly viewable by others, depending on where you post it.

  • Performance of contract

  • Legitimate interests (service provisioning, enhanced platform functionality)

Learning Data

When you access content, we collect data about what you have viewed and completed, as well as any interactions you have with instructors, teaching assistants, and other students. This data includes:


Which courses, assignments, labs, workspaces, and quizzes you have started and completed

Content and subscription purchases and credits

Subscriptions

Completion certificates

Essays, answers to questions, and other items submitted to satisfy course and related content requirements.

  • Performance of contract

  • Legitimate interests (service provisioning, enhanced platform functionality)

Student Payment Data

When you make a purchase, we collect the information we need to process your order, such as your name, billing address, and ZIP code. You may also choose to save your payment information for future purchases. You will need to provide your payment and billing information directly to our payment service providers, including your name, credit card information, billing address, and ZIP code. We may also receive limited information from payment service providers to facilitate payments, such as the fact that you have a new card and the last four digits of that card. For security, UpSky Academy does not collect or store sensitive cardholder data, such as full credit card numbers or card authentication data.

  • Performance of contract

  • Legal obligation

  • Legitimate interests (payment facilitation, fraud prevention and security, compliance)

Instructor Payment Data

If you are an instructor, you can link your PayPal, Wise, or other payment account to our services to receive payments. When you do this, we collect and use certain information, such as your payment account email address, account ID, and physical address. We need this information to send payments to your account. In some cases, we may collect ACH or wire information to send payments to your account. To comply with applicable laws, we also work with trusted third parties to collect tax information as required by law. This tax information may include residency information, tax identification numbers, biographical information, and other personal information necessary for taxation purposes. For security, we do not collect or store sensitive bank account information. The collection, use, and disclosure of your payment, billing, and taxation data is subject to the privacy policy and other terms of your payment account provider.

  • Performance of contract

  • Legal obligation

  • Legitimate interests (service provisioning, payment facilitation, fraud prevention and security, compliance)

Data About Your Accounts on Other Services

If you connect your social media or other online accounts to your UpSky Academy account, we may collect certain information from those accounts. For example, if you log in to UpSky Academy using Facebook, we may ask for your permission to access your name, profile picture, account ID number, login email address, location, physical location of your access devices, gender, birthday, and list of friends or contacts.

Third-party platforms and services share information with us through their APIs. The specific information we receive depends on what information you have chosen to share with them (via your privacy settings) and what information they have chosen to share with us.

If you access or use our Services through a third-party platform or service, or click on any third-party links, the collection, use, and sharing of your data will also be subject to the privacy policies and other agreements of that third party.

  • Legitimate interests (identity verification, user experience improvement)

Communications and Support

When you contact us for support or to report a problem or concern, we collect and store your contact information, messages, and other information about you, such as your name, email address, messages, location, UpSky Academy user ID, refund transaction IDs, and any other data you provide or that we collect automatically (which we cover below). We use this information to respond to you and investigate your question or concern, as permitted by this Privacy Policy.

  • Legitimate interests (customer and technical support)

The data listed above is stored by us and associated with your account.

1.2 Data We Collect through Automated Means

When you access the Services (including browsing content), we collect certain data by automated means, including:

Category of Personal Data

Description

Legal Basis for Processing

System Data

Information about your device, such as its IP address, type, operating system, unique identifiers, browser, browser language, domain and system data, and platform..

  • Performance of contract

  • Legitimate interests (service provisioning, customer and technical support, fraud prevention and security, communication, product improvement)

Usage Data

Information about how you use our services, such as the content you view, the pages you visit, the features you use, the time you spend on each page, your search queries, and other data about your interactions..

  • Legitimate interests (service provisioning, user experience improvement, product improvement)

Approximate Geographic Data

An approximate geographic location, including information like country, city, and geographic coordinates, calculated based on your IP address.

  • Legitimate interests (user experience improvement, fraud prevention and security, compliance)

We collect the data listed above through server log files and tracking technologies (see the “Cookies and Data Collection Tools” section below). We store it and associate it with your account.

2. How Do We Collect Data About You

We use tools like cookies, web beacons, and similar tracking technologies to gather the data listed above. Some of these tools offer you the ability to opt out of data collection.

2.1 Cookies and Data Collection Tools

**We use cookies and other data collection technologies to collect information about your activity across websites, including on UpSky Academy. This information helps us remember your preferences, make the site easier to use, and track the performance of our services. To learn more about cookies, visit https://cookiepedia.co.uk/all-about-cookies.


Some of the data collection technologies we use include:


Cookies: Small text files stored on your device by your web browser.

Server log files: Files that record activity on our servers, such as the pages you visit and the time you spend on each page.

Web beacons: Transparent images that can be embedded in emails and web pages to track when they are opened or viewed.

Device or browser fingerprints: A unique identifier generated based on your device's hardware and software configuration.

We use this data to:


  • Provide and improve our services.

  • Personalize your experience.

  • Measure the performance of our services and marketing campaigns.

  • Prevent fraud and abuse.

  • Comply with legal requirements.

  • In some cases, we tie data collected through these data collection technologies to other data that we collect about you, such as your account information. This helps us to provide you with a more personalized experience and to better understand how you use our services.**


2.2 Why We Use Data Collection Tools

UpSky Academy uses different types of data collection tools to collect data for various purposes, including:

  • Strictly necessary: These tools enable you to access the site, provide basic functionality, secure the site, protect against fraudulent logins, and detect and prevent abuse or unauthorized use of your account. These are required for the Services to work properly, so if you disable them, parts of the site will break or be unavailable.

  • Functional: These tools remember data about your browser and your preferences, provide additional site functionality, customize content to be more relevant to you, and remember settings affecting the appearance and behavior of the Services (like your preferred language or volume level for video playback).

  • Performance: These tools help measure and improve the Services by providing usage and performance data, visit counts, traffic sources, or where an application was downloaded from. These tools can help us test different versions of UpSky Academy to see which features or content users prefer and determine which email messages are opened.

  • Advertising: These tools are used to deliver relevant ads (on the site and/or other sites) based on things we know about you like your usage and system data, and things that the ad service providers know about you based on their tracking data. The ads can be based on your recent activity or activity over time and across other sites and services. To help deliver tailored advertising, we may provide these service providers with a hashed, anonymized version of your email address (in a non-human-readable form) and content that you share publicly on the Services.

  • Social media: These tools enable social media functionality, like sharing content with friends and networks. These cookies may track a user or device across other sites and build a profile of user interests for targeted advertising purposes.

You can set your web browser to alert you about attempts to place cookies on your computer, limit the types of cookies you allow, or refuse cookies altogether. If you do, you may not be able to use some or all features of the Services, and your experience may be different or less functional. To learn more about managing data collection tools, refer to the section on your choices about the use of your data.

In short, UpSky Academy uses data collection tools to improve your experience on the site, provide relevant ads, and measure and improve the Services.

3. What We Udo with Your Data

We use your data to:

  • Provide and improve our services: This includes enabling you to participate in educational content, earn completion certificates, see customized content, and communicate with other users.

  • Process payments: We process payments to instructors and other third parties.

  • Process your requests: We process your requests and orders for educational content, products, specific services, information, or features.

  • Communicate with you: We communicate with you about your account, such as responding to your questions and concerns, sending you administrative messages and information, and sending you information about your progress in courses and related content, rewards programs, new services, new features, promotions, newsletters, and other available instructor-created content.

  • Personalize your experience: We manage your account and account preferences and personalize your experience.

  • Protect our services: We facilitate the technical functioning of our services, including troubleshooting and resolving issues, securing our services, and preventing fraud and abuse.

  • Verify the identity of instructors.

  • Solicit feedback from users.

  • Market our products and services: We market products, services, surveys, and promotions to you.

  • Learn more about you: We link your data with additional data through third-party data providers and/or analyze the data with the help of analytics service providers to learn more about you.

  • Identify unique users across devices: We identify unique users across devices to improve our services and develop new products, services, and features.

  • Tailor advertisements across devices: We tailor advertisements across devices to provide you with more relevant ads.

  • Analyze trends and traffic: We analyze trends and traffic to improve our services and develop new products, services, and features.

  • Advertise our services on third-party websites and applications.

  • As required or permitted by law.

  • As necessary to ensure the safety or integrity of our users, employees, third parties, the public, or our services.

We keep your data for as long as it is needed to serve the purposes for which it was collected.


3.1. Who has access to your data?

We share some of the data we collect about you with others, including:

  • Instructors: We share data about you (except your email address) with instructors or teaching assistants for educational content you access or request information about. This helps them improve their content for you and other students.

  • Other students: Depending on your settings, your shared content and profile data may be publicly viewable, including to other students and instructors.

  • Service providers: We share your data with companies that help us provide the Services, such as payment processing, fraud prevention, data analysis, marketing and advertising, email and hosting, and customer service.

  • UpSky Academy affiliates: We may share your data with our corporate family of companies.

  • Business partners: We have agreements with other websites and platforms to distribute our Services and drive traffic to UpSky Academy. We may share your data with these trusted partners.

  • Credit-granting organizations: If you take a course to fulfill a continuing professional education requirement, we may share that information with the organization that grants the continuing education credit.

  • Analytics and data enrichment services: We share some contact information or de-identified data with third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics and data enrichment services like ZoomInfo. This helps us communicate with you in a more effective and customized manner.

  • Social media providers: The social media features in the Services (like the Facebook Like button) may allow the third-party social media provider to collect things like your IP address and which page of the Services you’re visiting.

  • Companies that help us run promotions and surveys: We may share your data with companies that help us administer, market, or sponsor promotions and surveys that you choose to participate in.

  • Advertising companies: We may use and share some System Data and Usage Data with third-party advertisers to show general demographic and preference information among our users.

We may also disclose your data to third parties if we:

  • Believe the disclosure is required by law or legal process.

  • Need to enforce our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, or other legal agreements.

  • Need to detect, prevent, or address fraud, abuse, or security issues.

  • Believe the disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of UpSky Academy, our users, employees, members of the public, or our Services.

  • Are undergoing a business transaction like a merger, acquisition, corporate divestiture, or dissolution (including bankruptcy).

  • Have your permission.

We may also disclose or use aggregated or de-identified data for any purpose.

4. Security

**UpSky Academy uses appropriate security measures to protect your personal data from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These measures vary based on the type and sensitivity of the data. However, no system is 100% secure, so there is always a risk of unauthorized access.

Your password is an important part of our security system, and it is your responsibility to protect it. Do not share your password with anyone, and change it immediately if you believe it has been compromised.**

Here are some specific security measures that UpSky Academy takes:

  • We use encryption to protect your data at rest and in transit.

  • We have firewalls and intrusion detection systems in place to protect our servers from attack.

  • We regularly back up our data and test our security measures.

We also have a team of security experts who monitor our systems for threats and respond to any incidents that do occur.

5. Your Rights

You have certain rights over your data, such as:

  • Opting out of promotional emails, cookies, and data collection by certain third parties.

  • Updating or terminating your account.

  • Contacting us to make individual rights requests about your personal data.

Parents who believe we have unintentionally collected personal data about their underage child should contact us to have it deleted.

6. How you can control your data

**You can choose not to provide us with certain data, but you may not be able to use certain features of the Services.

To stop receiving promotional emails from us, you can unsubscribe using the link in the email or by changing your email preferences in your account. We will still send you important messages about your account, such as order confirmations and updates about the Services.

If you are in the European Economic Area, you can opt out of certain data collection tools by clicking the "Cookie settings" link at the bottom of any page.

You can also control cookies and other data storage on your browser or device. To learn more, visit https://cookiepedia.co.uk/how-to-manage-cookies. You can also control whether your device collects and shares location and other data.

To opt out of tailored advertising from participating companies, visit the Network Advertising Initiative, Digital Advertising Alliance, or Your Online Choices websites. To opt out of Google's display advertising or customize Google Display Network ads, visit the Google Ads Settings page. To opt out of Taboola's targeted ads, see the Opt-out Link in their Cookie Policy.

To opt out of allowing Google Analytics, Mixpanel, ZoomInfo, or Clearbit to use your data for analytics or enrichment, see the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, Mixpanel Opt-Out Cookie, ZoomInfo's policy, and Clearbit data claiming mechanism.

Apple iOS, Android OS, and Microsoft Windows each provide instructions on how to control in-app tailored advertising. For other devices and operating systems, review your privacy settings on that platform.

If you have any questions about your data, our use of it, or your rights, contact us at privacy@UpSky Academy.com.**


6.1 Accessing, Updating, and Deleting Your Personal Data

  • UpSky Academy allows you to access and update your personal data that it collects and maintains. You can update the data you provide directly by logging into your account and updating your account at any time. If you wish to terminate your account, please follow the steps detailed in the profile settings page if you are a student, or follow the steps detailed for instructors. If you have any issues terminating your account, please contact UpSky Academy’s Support Team.

  • Please note that even after your account is terminated, some or all of your data may still be visible to others. This includes any data that has been copied, stored, or disseminated by other users (including comments on content), shared or disseminated by you or others (including in your shared content), or posted to a third-party platform. UpSky Academy retains your data for as long as it has a legitimate purpose to do so (and in accordance with applicable law), including to assist with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce its agreements. UpSky Academy may retain and disclose such data pursuant to its Privacy Policy after your account has been terminated.

  • If you wish to request access, correction, or deletion of your personal data, please use UpSky Academy’s online form here. Alternatively, you can submit these requests by emailing privacy@UpSky Academy.com or writing to UpSky Academy at 600 Harrison Street, 3rd floor, San Francisco CA 94107. Please allow up to 30 days for a response. For your protection, UpSky Academy may require that the request be sent through the email address associated with your account and may need to verify your identity before implementing your request.

  • Please note that UpSky Academy retains certain data where it has a lawful basis to do so, including for mandatory record-keeping and to complete transactions.

 

7. Jurisdiction-Specific Rules

If you live in California, you have certain rights related to accessing and deleting your data, as well as learning who we share your data with. If you live in Australia, you have the right to make a formal complaint with the appropriate government agency. Users outside of the United States should note that we transfer data to the US and other areas outside of the European Economic Area.

7.1 Users in California

Users who are California residents have certain rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, (“CCPA”). If you are an eligible California user, included in these rights are:

  • “Right to Know” — You have the right to request to know more about the categories and specific pieces of personal information that we have collected about you and access a copy of your personal information.

  • “Right to Correction” — You have the right to have inaccurate personal information about you corrected.

  • “Right to Deletion” — You have the right to request deletion of personal information that we have collected about you.

  • “Right to Non-Discrimination” — If you choose to exercise any of your rights under CCPA, UpSky Academy will treat you like all other users. In other words, there is no penalty for exercising your rights under CCPA.

  • “Right to Opt-Out” - You have the right to opt out of the sale of your personal information.

UpSky Academy does not sell your personal information or the personal information of any of our users in the traditional sense. However, we do use cookies that make non-personally identifiable information available to select third-parties. CCPA has a specific definition of a “sale,” and to opt out of such a “sale,” click on the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link at the bottom of this page.


If you wish to exercise any of your rights under CCPA, please email privacy@UpSky Academy.com or write to us at UpSky Academy, Attn: Legal Team, 6886 139th Ln NW Ramsey, MN 55303 CCPA allows you to designate an authorized agent to make these requests on your behalf. For your protection, we may require that the request be sent through the email address associated with your account, and we may need to verify you and/or your agent’s identity before fulfilling your request. Additionally, for more information about the personal information we collect and how we collect it, please see the sections above entitled “What Data We Get” and “How We Get Data About You.”

To learn about the business and commercial purposes for which your personal information is collected and the categories of service providers who have access to your personal information, please see the sections above entitled “What We Use Your Data For” and “Who We Share Your Data With.”

As a California resident, you also have the right to request certain details about what personal information we share with third parties for those third parties’ direct marketing purposes. To submit your request, send an email to privacy@UpSky Academy.com with the phrase “California Shine the Light” and include your mailing address, state of residence, and email address.

Since there is no widely accepted standard for the browser-initiated Do Not Track signal, we do not currently recognize or respond to Do Not Track signals.

7.2 Users in Nevada

UpSky Academy does not sell its users’ personal information or personal data. Nonetheless, Nevada residents have the right to submit a request that we do not sell your covered personal information, which you can do by emailing privacy@UpSky Academy.com or writing to us at UpSky Academy, Attn: Privacy/Legal Team, 600 Harrison Street, 3rd floor, San Francisco CA 94107.

7.3 Users in Australia

If you are an Australia resident and you have a complaint, you may refer it to the office of the Australian Information Commissioner (“OAIC”). You can contact OAIC by visiting www.oaic.gov.au; forwarding an email to enquiries@oaic.gov.au; telephoning 1300 363 992; or writing to OAIC at GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001. You may contact our privacy team at privacy@UpSky Academy.com to make a complaint about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles which will be responded to within 30 days.

7.4 Users in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) and United Kingdom (“UK”)

If you are located in the EEA or UK, you have the right to request access to your data in a portable format and to request the rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, or objection to processing of your personal data. You also have the right to obtain a free copy of the Standard Contractual Clauses referenced in Section 7.5. You may use the information in Section 6.2 to submit your request. Additionally, if you are located in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority.

Personal data is also processed outside of the UK, Switzerland, and the EEA by our UpSky Academy group companies, or our service providers, including to process transactions, facilitate payments, and provide support services as described in Section 4. We use the Controller-to-Processor Standard Contractual Clauses adopted by the European Commission to facilitate transfers of personal data from the EEA to third countries and have entered into data processing agreements with our service providers and UpSky Academy group companies to restrict and regulate their processing of your data. By submitting your data or using our Services, you consent to this transfer, storage, and processing by UpSky Academy and its processors.

7.5 Users Outside of the U.S.

To provide our services to you, we need to transfer your data to the United States and process it there. If you are using our services from outside the United States, you consent to the transfer, storage, and processing of your data in and to the United States or other countries.

8. Modifications to This Privacy Policy

**We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any significant changes, we will notify you via email, through a notification posted on the Services, or as required by law. We will also include a summary of the key changes. Unless stated otherwise, changes will take effect on the day they are posted.

If you continue to use the Services after the effective date of any change, you agree to the revised Privacy Policy. The revised Privacy Policy supersedes all previous Privacy Policies. **

8.1 Questions

  • If you have any questions, concerns, or disputes about our Privacy Policy, please contact us at privacy@UpSky Academy.com. You can also send postal mail to us at UpSky Academy, Attn: Legal, 6886 139th Ln NW Ramsey, MN 55303