This Privacy Policy was last updated on January 1, 2024.
Thank you for joining Smart Online Trends. We at Smart Online Trends (“Smart Online Trends”, “we”, “us”) respect your privacy and want you to understand how we collect, use, and share data about you. This Privacy Policy covers our data collection practices and describes your rights regarding your personal data.
Unless we link to a different policy or state otherwise, this Privacy Policy applies when you visit or use Smart Online Trends websites, APIs, or related services (the “Services”). It also applies to prospective customers of our business and enterprise products.
We collect certain data from you directly, like information you enter yourself, data about your consumption of content, and data from third-party platforms you connect with Smart Online Trends. We also collect some data automatically, like information about your device and what parts of our Services you interact with or spend time using. All data listed in this section is subject to the following processing activities: collecting, recording, structuring, storing, altering, retrieving, encrypting, pseudonymizing, erasing, combining, and transmitting.
We use tools like cookies, web beacons, and similar tracking technologies to gather the data. Some of these tools offer you the ability to opt out of data collection.
We use cookies, which are small text files stored by your browser, to collect, store, and share data about your activities across websites, including on Smart Online Trends. They allow us to remember things about your visits to Smart Online Trends, like your preferred language, and to make the site easier to use. Smart Online Trends and service providers acting on our behalf use server log files and automated data collection tools like cookies, tags, scripts, customized links, device or browser fingerprints, and web beacons (together, “Data Collection Tools”) when you access and use the Services.
Smart Online Trends uses the following types of Data Collection Tools for the purposes described:
Strictly Necessary: These Data Collection Tools enable you to access the site, provide basic functionality (like logging in or accessing content), 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 Data Collection 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 Data Collection 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 Smart Online Trends to see which features or content users prefer and determine which email messages are opened.
Advertising: These Data Collection 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 Data Collection 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.
We use your data to do things like provide our Services, communicate with you, troubleshoot issues, secure against fraud and abuse, improve and update our Services, analyze how people use our Services, serve personalized advertising, and as required by law or necessary for safety and integrity. We retain your data for as long as it is needed to serve the purposes for which it was collected.
We share certain data about you with instructors, other students, companies performing services for us, our business partners, analytics and data enrichment providers, your social media providers, companies helping us run promotions and surveys, and advertising companies who help us promote our Services. We may also share your data as needed for security, legal compliance, or as part of a corporate restructuring. Lastly, we can share data in other ways if it is aggregated or de-identified or if we get your consent.
We may share your data with third parties under the following circumstances or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy:
– With Your Instructors: We share data that we have about you (except your email address) with instructors or teaching assistants for educational content you access or request information about, so they can improve their content for you and other students. This data may include things like your state, browser language, operating system, device settings, the site that brought you to Smart Online Trends, and certain activities on Smart Online Trends, like enrolled courses and course reviews.
– With Service Providers, Contractors, and Agents: We share your data with third-party companies who perform services on our behalf, like payment processing, fraud and abuse prevention, data analysis, marketing and advertising services (including retargeted advertising), email and hosting services, and customer services and support. These service providers may access your personal data and are required to use it solely as we direct, to provide our requested service. (All data categories)
– With Business Partners: We have agreements with other websites and platforms to distribute our Services and drive traffic to Smart Online Trends. Depending on your location, we may share your data with these trusted partners.
– For Advertising: If we decide to use an advertising-supported revenue model in the future, we may use and share certain System Data and Usage Data with third-party advertisers and networks to show general demographic and preference information among our users. We may also allow advertisers to collect System Data through Data Collection Tools, to use this data to offer you targeted ad delivery to personalize your user experience (through behavioral advertising) and to undertake web analytics. Advertisers may also share with us the data they collect about you. To learn more or opt out from participating ad networks’ behavioral advertising. Note that if you opt out, you’ll continue to be served generic ads.
– For Security and Legal Compliance: We may disclose your data (all data categories) to third parties if we (in our sole discretion) have a good faith belief that the disclosure is:
– Requested as part of a judicial, governmental, or legal inquiry, order, or proceeding;
– Reasonably necessary as part of a valid summon, warrant, or other legally-valid request;
– Reasonably necessary to enforce our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and other legal agreements;
– Required to detect, prevent, or address fraud, abuse, misuse, potential violations of law (or rule or regulation), or security or technical issues;
– Reasonably necessary in our discretion to protect against imminent harm to the rights, property, or safety of Smart Online Trends, our users, employees, members of the public, or our Services;
– We may also disclose data about you to our auditors and legal advisors in order to assess our disclosure obligations and rights under this Privacy Policy; or
– Required or permitted by law.
– During a Change in Control: If Smart Online Trends undergoes a business transaction like a merger, acquisition, corporate divestiture, or dissolution (including bankruptcy), or a sale of all or some of its assets, we may share, disclose, or transfer all of your data to the successor organization during such transition or in contemplation of a transition (including during due diligence).
– After Aggregation/De-identification: We may disclose or use aggregated or de-identified data for any purpose.
– With Your Permission: With your consent, we may share data to third parties outside the scope of this Privacy Policy.
We use appropriate security based on the type and sensitivity of data being stored. As with any internet-enabled system, there is always a risk of unauthorized access, so it’s important to protect your password and to contact us if you suspect any unauthorized access to your account.
Smart Online Trends takes appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction of your personal data that we collect and store. These measures vary based on the type and sensitivity of the data. Unfortunately, however, no system can be 100% secured, so we cannot guarantee that communications between you and Smart Online Trends, the Services, or any information provided to us in connection with the data we collect through the Services will be free from unauthorized access by third parties. Your password is an important part of our security system, and it is your responsibility to protect it. You should not share your password with any third party, and if you believe your password or account has been compromised, you should change it immediately and contact our Support Team with any concerns.
You have certain rights around the use of your data, including the ability to opt out of promotional emails, cookies, and collection of your data by certain third parties. You can update or terminate your account from within our Services, and can also contact us for individual rights requests about your personal data. Parents who believe we’ve unintentionally collected personal data about their underage child should contact us for help deleting that information.
When we make a material change to this policy, we’ll notify users via email, in-product notice, or another mechanism required by law. Changes become effective the day they’re posted. Please contact us via email or postal mail with any questions, concerns, or disputes.
From time to time, we may update this Privacy Policy. If we make any material change to it, we will notify you via email, through a notification posted on the Services, or as required by applicable law. We will also include a summary of the key changes. Unless stated otherwise, modifications will become effective on the day they are posted. As permitted by applicable law, if you continue to use the Services after the effective date of any change, then your access and/or use will be deemed an acceptance of (and agreement to follow and be bound by) the revised Privacy Policy. The revised Privacy Policy supersedes all previous Privacy Policies.
Any capitalized terms not defined in this policy are defined as specified in Smart Online Trends’s Terms of Use. Any version of this Privacy Policy in a language other than English will be provided at convenience. If there occurs any conflict with a non-English version, you agree that the English language version will control.