1. Introduction
1.1 We understand that the privacy of your personal details, and the security of your transactions with us, is of paramount importance to you. We have therefore adopted data protection policies with respect to your privacy and security. Our' Privacy Policy sets out the rules we will abide by when dealing with personal information we collect from individuals in the course of our business. We have based our policy upon the Internet Industry of Australia's (IIA) draft Privacy Code of Practice, which adopts internationally recognised Privacy protection standards (such as the 'Safe Harbour' principles required by most European countries). The IIA Code also covers the requirements of the new Australian Privacy legislation.
1.2 In order to ensure that we meet and maintain our Privacy standards, we have appointed a privacy officer. Should you wish to contact us in relation to Privacy, please email us.
1.3 We may make alterations or additions to this policy from time to time. Should we do so, we will update the policy on our web site. We require that all our customers agree to abide by our Privacy Policy as part of our terms of trade. This policy also applies to users of our web site who are not our customers.
1.4 Please note that we cannot and do not assume any responsibility for the privacy or security practices of any other web sites which you may be able to access through our site, or for our customers' level of compliance with our code.
2. What Information Do We Collect?
We collect different information about you at different times. There are four broad categories of information that we collect from you:
2.1 Information we require to supply our services.
(a) When you first sign up or contract for our products or services, or when you make an inquiry about our services, we request information such as your name, address, telephone number, domain name, email details of your primary and secondary contacts, and type of business you are in. We may also ask for your age and gender.
(b) We may also monitor and/or record telephone conversations with you from time to time in order to train staff and to improve our service to you.
2.2 Non personally identifying information.
(a) In addition to the information you specifically provide above, we may operate statistics gathering software on its web site to collect information about the number of visitors coming to the site. No identifying information is collected by this software. The software records the IP address of the visitor only. We use this information to improve our own technical structure and performance, and to determine which areas of our web site are most popular.
(b) We also sometimes may use 'cookies'. Cookies are pieces of information that a web site can transfer to an individual's computer in order to allow that web site to store information about user preferences. We use cookies which expire once the visitor leaves our web site. Cookies are used to collect session ID's. It is possible to adjust your internet browser to refuse cookies, but you may find that this reduces the functionality of this site.
2.3 Other demographic information.
If you respond voluntarily to our surveys or other interactive communications, we collect the responses and use the information to improve the quality and range of ACS' products and services.
2.4 Personal information stored on a web site which we host.
We may have personal information stored on our servers due to the fact that we host web sites of other organisations. Any information that is submitted to or collected by these organisations will be physically located on our server and / or workstation. This information, whether voluntarily provided or not, will be protected by all reasonable industry measures, and not be used or released by us in any manner, and it will be kept strictly confidential, unless we are required to release the information by law.
3. How Do We Use Personal Information We Have Collected?
3.1 We collect and use your personal information to operate our web site and deliver our services to you. We will use your personal information to provide you with:
- technical support
- billing and credit control
- sales support
- product upgrades and
- information.
3.2 You may stop the delivery of future promotional email from us by following the specific instructions in the email you receive. These instructions will tell you how to remove your name from our promotional email list. These instructions will appear at the BOTTOM of your email. If you experience technical difficulties with removing yourself from a list, you may email us at [email protected] asking to be removed.
3.3 We may use your personal information to:
(a) contact you in relation to upgrading your use of our services, special offers (from us, or on behalf of third parties), with newsletters, surveys, and individual service audits. We may give extracts of our customer lists containing personal information to third parties specifically to contact you on our behalf. We require third parties to agree to the same privacy conditions that we abide by.
(b) identify the source of new customers;
(c) monitor and address complaints, other feedback, and to resolve disputes;
(e) in the case of business identification data, to verify your identity;
(g) maintain a technical and account history of your dealings with us, and to re-establish your account with us where you rejoin as a customer within six months after having terminated your account;
(h) monitor your compliance with our 'Terms and Conditions' Policy and other terms and conditions of supply;
(i) comply with our reporting and other obligations to third party licensors (such as reporting to software suppliers the number and identity of software licenses we have issued as part of our products).
3.4 We will treat all information we collect from you as strictly confidential. We do not rent or lease its customer lists to third parties. We will not reveal, disclose, sell, distribute, rent, licence, share or pass onto any third party (other than those who are contracted or supply services to us) any personal information that you may have provided to us unless we have your express consent to do so, other than in the circumstances set out in the next paragraph.
3.5 We will disclose your personal information, without notice or your consent, only if:
(a) we are required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to conform with the laws, applicable code of conduct or legal process served on us in relation to our business or web site;
(b) to protect and defend our rights or property;
(c) if we consider it necessary to do so in order to enforce or apply the terms of any of our agreements with you;
(d) if we sell our business or part of it; and
(e) in extreme circumstances, to protect the personal safety of users of our services, its web site, our staff or the public.
4. Security
4.1 We have implemented security features in our database to protect your personal information from unauthorised access. We maintain our servers in a controlled, secured environment. Only staff who need to have access to your personal information in order to perform their job function are authorised to access the database. Constant changes to the internet and technology mean that we cannot guarantee that data transmission will be 100% secure, or safe from attack by unauthorised intruders.
5. Other Disclosure By You
5.1 You might provide personal information through your participation in chat sessions, message boards, email exchanges or newsgroups accessed via our organisation, or another service provided by us. This information is public and immediately available to anyone who has access to such a site; it is not private. We urge you to enter only information that you are comfortable to share with the public at large in this public domain. This Privacy Policy does not apply to such information.
5.2 You should never reveal your password to third parties. If you lose control of your password, you may lose control over your personal information and may be liable for actions taken on your behalf by third parties using your password and/or personal information. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately change it.
5.3 If you collect personal information which you keep on our servers, as part of our service to you (including email), you alone are responsible for compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 in respect of that information. We take no responsibility for your dealings with personal information you collect.
6. How To Access and Correct Your Personal Information
6.1 From time to time you may need to update your personal information. You may do so by phone, mail or email. You may be required to supply your username and password to authorise the update of information.
6.2 If you contact us via telephone, you may need to answer a few security questions before any personal information is revealed or amended.
7. Children's Privacy
We do not knowingly collect, use or market any information to children without seeking parental or a guardian's consent.
8. Complaints
If you have a complaint about any aspect of our Privacy procedures, please contact our Privacy Officer by email, using the email address listed on this web site. We will deal promptly with your complaint. If we cannot resolve the complaint to your satisfaction within a reasonable time, you or we may refer the complaint to an industry appropriate third party, for arbitration.
To comply with Uk and European law, we will maintain student records for the period of course enrolment. If the student wishes us to delete their records prior to this, they may notify us via phone, live-chat, email or post. In order to ensure we can deal with your request in a timely manner, we would ask that you would email the request to [email protected].
The 'Company' means Academy for Distance Learning. The 'Purchaser' means the person whose order is accepted by the Company. The 'Recipient' means the person who receives the goods from the Company as directed by the Purchaser. The Company is committed to protecting your privacy. We will only use the information that we collect about you in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.
What we will do with your contact information
The Company will never disclose any of your personal details to any third party, unless legally obliged to by UK Government authorities. We will use this information to send you an e-mail newsletter every month to keep you informed of new products and seasonal offers, suggestions and things we believe may interest you in regards to online education or your course of choice.
Opt out
When you register on the site you will be given the opportunity to opt out of receiving any communication from us other than that required to process your registration or subsequent orders. In accordance with the Privacy & Electronic Communications Act passed into law 11 Dec 03, we do not send random marketing emails to personal email addresses (spam).
E-mail reminders and opt in
In order to receive e-mail reminders from Academy for Distance Learning you must opt in to receive communications from us. Should you unsubscribe, via your account page this automatically unsubscribes you from all correspondance. You will always be given the option to "opt-out" of our mailing list (postal or e-mail).
Cookies
What are cookies?
In order to improve the service offered to you, technology may be used to track the patterns of behaviour of visitors to the site and to help personalise the content displayed to each user. This can include using a "cookie" which would be stored on your computer.
Cookies are very small text files used to store small amounts of data on your computer or device and allow web applications to respond to you as an individual and remember preferences and settings.
Why do we use cookies?
Certain cookies on our website are necessary to provide access and enable certain functions. Others help us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system. Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
Cookies Used
Essential Cookies (Strictly Necessary)
The use of certain cookies is essential to provide access and functionality to this website. These cookies are set by us and do not store any personal information about you.
Cookie Duration Use
PHPSESSID Browser Session Access, functionality, settings and security
EUcookies Session / 10 Years Remembering cookie notification and accepance
Analysis Cookies
We use the free Google Analytics tool (see http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/analytics/) to collect and analyse site statistics. Google Analytics uses persistent cookies to track data. These cookies do not collect any personally identifiable information and are only used for the statistical collection of data such as visits and page hits. Google Analytics’ cookies store IP addresses but we cannot link those addresses to any individual or path through the website.
Google uses the cookies to read information and evaluate visitors’ use of the website in the form of statistical reports that we can access. The Google Analytics’ code is incorporated into our site’s code so that our site serves the cookies, but Google has access to the cookies. You can stop being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites by going to Google's site at: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Cookie Duration Use
_utma 2 years This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to your site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure.
_utmb 30 minutes This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session with your site. When a user views a page on your site, the Google Analytics code attempts to update this cookie. If it does not find the cookie, a new one is written and a new session is established.
_utmc Browser Session This cookie is no longer used by the ga.js tracking code to determine session status. Historically, this cookie operated in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user.
_utmz 6 months This cookie stores the type of referral used by the visitor to reach your site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within your own site. The cookie is updated with each page view to your site.
Third Party Cookies
Some of the features on this site are provided by third party providers. Examples of these features are embedded YouTube videos and social media sharing (Facebook and Google etc). These service providers may set cookies on your device to customise and gather information about their application. Due to the nature of how cookies work we are unable to access or control any cookies that are not set by us directly. Please visit any third party websites for more information on how they use cookies.
Advertising Cookies (Targeting Cookies)
Please note that we do not use any third party or targeting advertising on any of our websites.
Cookie Preferences
You can choose to accept or decline some or all cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. Please note however that choosing to disable cookies may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website and accessing certain features.
Security of personal Information
All of the personal information you enter, including your name, address and password, are held securely in our database. This ensures that no unauthorised users can access the data. You are entirely responsible for the safekeeping of your username and password and any orders placed using them. If you become aware of any unauthorised users you must notify us immediately.
Passwords
If you have forgotten your password, you can click on the forgot your password button, which will prompt you to enter your email address. You will then be automatically sent your password.
Credit card transactions
Your card details are transferred directly to our Secure Payment Service Provider Card Save or Paypal, for immediate validation and authorisation they are not recorded or stored in our database, or viewable by any of our staff. Once we have received authorisation from our Payment Service Provider we will confirm your order.