Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 21 July 2022

Summary of Our Privacy Policy

Our privacy commitment: DOT Academy will never give or sell your information to someone else for advertising, or make money by showing you other people’s ads and we never will. This policy tells you what information we collect from you , what we do with it, who can access it and what you can do about it.

Part I – Information DOT Academy collects and controls

We only collect the information we actually need. Some of that information is what you actually give us when you sign up for an account, register for an event, ask for customer support, or buy something from us. We store your name and contact information, but we don;t store credit card numbers (except with your permission and in one of our secured payment gateways).

When you visit our website, we may automatically log some basic information like how you got to the site, where you navigated within it and what features or settings you use. We use this information to improve our website and services.

What we do with your information

We use your information to provide the services you’ve requested, and to create and maintain your membership subscription account. We also use to to communicate with you about any aspect of your membership subscription, your customer support requests, newsletters, events you may like to attend, chances for you to give us feedback and policy updates.

We are required to have a lawful basis for collecting and processing your information. In most cases, we either have your consent or need the information to provide services you’ve requested from us. When this is not the case, we must demonstrate that we have another lawful basis, such as our legitimate business interests.

You can decline certain types of information use either by not providing the information in the first place, or by opting out at a later date. You can also disable cookies to prevent your browser from giving us information, but if you do so, certain website features may not work properly or as expected.

We limit access to your personal information to our employees and contractors who have a legitimate need to use it.
We keep your personal information for as long as it is required for the purposes stated in the Privacy Policy. When we no longer have a legitimate need to process your information, we will delete, anonymise, or isolate your information, whichever is appropriate.

Part II – General

There are some limitation to the privacy we can promise you. We will disclose personal information only if it’s necessary and to comply with a lawful obligation, prevent fraud, enforce and agreement, or to protect our members’ safety. We do not currently honour Do Not Track signals from internet browsers; when a universal standard for processing them emerges, we will follow them.

Third party websites and social media widgets have their own separate privacy policies. A;ways check the relevant privacy policy before sharing information with third parties.

We will contact you or inform you via an announcement on our website, to let you know of any major changes to our privacy policy, or in the unlikely event that we decide to sell our business.

Part I – Information DOT Academy collects and controls

What information DOT Academy collects

We collect information about you only if we need the information for some legitimate purpose. DOT Academy will have information about you only if (a) you have provided the information yourself, (b) DOT Academy automatically collected the information, or (c) DOT Academy has obtained the information from a third party. Below we describe the various scenarios that fall under each of these three categories and the information collected in each one.

Information that you provide us

  1. Account sign-up: When you sign up for a membership subscription account to access one or more of our services, we ask for information like your name, contact number, email address and country to complete the account sign-up process. You’ll also be required to choose a unique username and a password for accessing the created account. You may also provide us with more information such as your photo, time zone and language, but we don;t require that information to sign up for an account.

  2. Event registrations and other form submissions: We record information that you submit when you (i) sign-up for any event, including webinars, seminars and training classes, (ii) subscribe to our newsletter or any other mailing list, (iii) submit a form in order to download any product, whitepaper or other materials (iv) participate in contests or respond to surveys, (v) submit a form request or email for customer support, or contact DOT Academy for any other purpose.

  3. Payment processing: When you buy something from us, we ask you to provide your name, contact information and credit (debit) card information or other payment account information. When you submit your card information, this is done through a payment gateway provided by our third-party and as such we do not require to store any credit card or billing information as this is handled solely by the payment gateway provider.

  4. Testimonials: When you authorise us to post testimonials about our products or services, which can appear on our website and printed materials, we may include your name and other personal information in the testimonial. You will be given the opportunity to review and approve the testimonial before you publish it. If you wish to update or delete the testimonial, you can contact us using the contact information provided on our website.

  5. Interaction with DOT Academy: We may record, analyse and use your interactions with us, including email, telephone and chat conversations with our staff, for improving our interactions with you and other customers.

Information we collect automatically

  1. Information from browsers, devices and servers: When you visit our website we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices and servers make available, such as the internet protocol (IP) address, browser type, language preference, time zone, referring URL, date and time of access, operating system, mobile device manufacture and mobile network information.

  2. Information from cookies and tracking technologies: We use temporary and permanent cookies to identify users of our services and to enhance user experience. We embed unique identifiers in our downloadable products to track usage of the products. We also use cookies, beacons, tags, scripts and other similar technology to identify visitors, track website navigation, gather demographic information about visitors and users, understand email campaign effectiveness and for targetted visitor and user engagement by tracking your activities on our website. We mostly use first party cookies and do not use third party cookies or other third party tracking technologies on our website for non-essential or intrusive tracking. We do not use annoying pop-ups for you to accept use of these cookies, but your continued use of our website is your agreement that you accept the use of these cookies in the manner described in this Privacy Policy.

  3. Information from application logs and mobile analytics: We collect information about the use of our products and services from application logs and usage analytic tools and use it to understand how your use and your needs can improve our products. This information includes clicks, scrolls, features accessed, access time and frequency, errors generated, performance data, storage utilised, user settings and configurations, devices used to access and their locations.

Information we collect from third parties

  1. Referrals: If someone has referred any of our products or services to you through any of our referral programs, that person may have provided us your name, email address and other personal information. You may contact us, using the contact information available on our website, to request that we remove your information from our database. If you provide us information about another person, or if another person gives us your information, we will only use that information for the specific reason for which it was provided to us.

  2. Information from our partners and service providers: If you contact any of our partners, or otherwise express interest in any of our products or services to them, the reselling partner may pass you name, email address, company name, and other information to DOT Academy. If you register or attend an event that is sponsored by DOT Academy, the event organiser may share your information with us. DOT Academy may also receive information about you from review sites if you comment on any review of our products and services and from any other third party service providers that we engage with for marketing our products and services.

  3. Information from social media sites and other publicly viewable sources: When you provide feedback or reviews about our products or services, interact, or engage with us on marketplaces, review sites or social media sites, through posts, comments, questions and other interactions, we may collect such publicly available information, including profile information, to allow us to connect with you, improve our products and services, better understand user reactions and issues, or to reproduce and publish your feedback on our website. We must tell you that once collected, this information may remain with us even if you delete it from these sites. DOT Academy may also add and update information about you  from other publicly available sources.

Purposes for using information

In addition to the purposes mentioned above, we may use your information for the following purposes:

    • To communicate with you (such as through email) about products you have downloaded or services that you have signed up for, changes to this Privacy Policy, changes to the Terms of Service (Terms and Conditions), or important notices;
 
    • To keep you posted on new products and services, upcoming events, offers, promotions and other information that we think may be of interest to you;
 
    • To ask you to participate in surveys, or to solicit feedback on our products and services;
 
    • To set up and maintain your account and to do all other things required for providing our services.
 
    • To understand how users uses our products and services, to monitor and prevent problems and to improve our products and services;
 
    • To provide customer support and to analyse and improve our interactions with customers;
 
    • To detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other unlawful activities, to report spam and to protect the rights and interests of DOT Academy, DOT Academy’s users (members), third parties and the public;
 
    • To update, expand and analyse our records, identify new customers and provide products and services that may be of interest to you;
 
    • To analyse trends, administer our website and track visitor navigations on our website to understand what visitors are looking for and to better help them;
 
  • To monitor and improve marketing campaigns and make suggestions relevant to the user.

Your choice in information use

Opt out of non-essential electronic communications: You may opt out of receiving newsletters and other non-essential messages by using the ‘unsubscribe’ function includes in all such messages. However, you will continue to receive essential notices and emails such as account notification emails (passwords change, renewal reminders, etc.), security incident alerts, security and privacy update notifications, and essential transactional and payment related emails.

Disable cookies: You can disable browser cookies before visiting our website. However, if you do so, you may not be able to use certain features of the website properly.

Optional information: You can choose not to provide optional profile information such as your photo. You can also delete or change your optional profile information You can always choose not to fill non-mandatory fields when you submit any form linked to our websites.

Who we share your information with

We do not sell any personal information. We share your information only in the ways that are described in this privacy policy and only with parties who adopt appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

Employees and independent contractors: Employees and independent contractors of relevant DOT Academy group entities have access to the information covered in Part I on a need-to-know basis. We require all employees and independent contractors of DOT Academy to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information we share with them.

Third-party service providers: We may need to share your personal information and aggregated or de-identified information with third-party service providers that we engage, such as marketing and advertising partners, event organisers, web analytics providers and payment processors. These service providers are authorised to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us.

Other cases: Other scenarios in which we may share the same information covered under Parts I and II are described in Part III.

Your rights with respect to information we hold about you as a controller

You have the following rights with respect to information DOT Academy holds about you:

Right to access: You have the right to access (and obtain a copy of, if required) the categories of personal information we hold about you, including the information’s source, purpose and period of processing and the people to whom the information is shared.

Right to rectification: You have the right to update the information we hold about you or to rectify any inaccuracies.

Right to erasure: You have the right to request that we delete your personal information in certain circumstances, such as when it is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was originally collected.

Right to restriction of processing: You may also have to right to request to restrict the use of your information in certain circumstances, such as when you have objected to the use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Right to object: You have the right to object to the use of your information in certain circumstances, such as the use of your personal information for direct marketing.

Right to complain: You have the right to complain to the appropriate supervisory authority if you have any grievance against the way we collect, use or share your personal information.

Retention of information

We retain your personal information for as long as it is required for the purposes stated in this Privacy Policy. Sometimes we may retain your information for longer periods as permitted or lawfully required, such as to maintain suppression lists, prevent abuse, if required in connection with a legal claim or proceeding, to enforce our agreements, for tax, accounting, or to comply with other lawful obligations. When we no longer have a legitimate need to process your information, we will delete or anonymise your information from our active databases. We will also securely store the information and isolate it from further processing on backup discs and media until deletion is possible.

Part II – Information that DOT Academy processes on your behalf

Information entrusted to DOT Academy and purpose

Information provided in connection with services: You may entrust information that you or your organisation (“you”) control, to DOT Academy in connection with the use of our services or for requesting technical support for our products. This includes information regarding your customers and your employees (if you are a controller) or data that you hold and use on behalf of another person for a specific purpose, such as a customer whom you provide services (if you are a processor). The data may either be stored on our servers, or transferred or shared to us as part of a request for technical support or other services.

Retention of information

We hold the data in your account as long as you choose to use DOT Academy services. Once you terminate your membership, your data will be deleted.

Part III – General

Childen’s personal information

Our products and services are not directed to individuals under 16 years of age. DOT Academy does not knowingly collect personal information from children who are under 16 years of age for its own purposes. If we become aware that a child under 16 has provided us with personal information, we will take steps to delete such information. If you believe that a child under 16 years has provided personal information to us, please contact us using the contact information available on our website, with the details and we will take the necessary steps to delete the information we hold about that child.

Do Not Track (DNT) requests

Some internet browsers have enabled ‘Do Not Track’ (DNT) features, which send out a signal (called the DNT signal) to the websites that you visit indicating that you do not wish to be tracked. Currently, there is no standard that governs what websites can or should do when they receive these signals. We may not take action in response to these signals.

External links on our website

Some pages on our website may contain links to websites that are not linked to this Privacy Policy. If you submit your personal information to any of these third-party sites your personal information is governed by their privacy policies. As a safety measure, we recommend that you do not share any personal information with these third parties unless you’ve decided to check their privacy policies and assured yourself of their privacy policies.

Blogs and forums

We offer blogs and forums on our website, or via third parties as part of our service. Please be aware that any information you provide on these blogs and forums may be used to contact you with unsolicited messages. We urge you to be cautious in disclosing personal information in these blogs and forums. DOT Academy is not responsible for the personal information you elect to disclose publicly. Your posts and certain profile information may remain even after you terminate your membership account with DOT Academy.

Social media widgets

Our website may contain social media widgets that connect with third party social media services that let you share articles and other information. These widgets may collect information such as your internet protocol (IP) address and the pages you navigate on the website, and may set a cookie to enable the widgets to function properly. Your interaction with these widgets are governed by the privacy policies of the companies providing them.

Disclosures in compliance

We may be lawfully required to preserve or disclose your personal information and data in conjunction with any applicable lawful process or request.

Enforcement of our rights

We may disclose personal information and membership data to a third party if we believe such disclosure is necessary for preventing fraud, spam filtering, investigating any suspected unlawful activity, enforcing our agreements or policies, or protecting the safety of our users.

Business transfers

We do not intend to sell our business. However, in the unlikely event that we sell our business or get acquired or merged, we will ensure that the acquiring entity is lawfully bound to honour our commitments to you. We will notify you through email or through a prominent notice on our website of any change of ownership or in the uses of you personal information and membership data. We will also notify you about any choices you may have regarding your personal information and membership data.

Compliance with the Privacy Policy

We make every effort to, including periodic reviews, to ensure that the personal information you provide is used in conformity with this Privacy Policy. If you have any concerns about our adherence to this Privacy Policy or the manner in which your personal information is used, kindly write to use using the email address provided in the contact information on our website. We’ll contact you and if required, coordinate with the appropriate regulatory authorities to effectively address your concerns.

Notification of changes

We may modify the Privacy Policy at any time, upon notifying you through a service announcement or by sending an email to your primary email address. If we make significant changes to the Privacy Policy that affect your rights, you will be provided with at least 30 days’ advance notice of the changes by email to your primary email address. However, if we do not hold an email address for you or you have not verified your email address, you may miss important information that we send through email. If you think the the updated Privacy Policy affects your rights with respect to the use of our products or services, you may terminate your use through your account management portal on the website, within 30 days. Your continued use after the effective date of changes to the Privacy Policy will be deemed to be your agreement to the modified Privacy Policy. If you are concerned about how your personal information is used, you should check back at https://dotacademy.uk/privacy periodically.