Privacy Policy

kingacademic > Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy was last updated on July 28, 2024.

Thank you for joining Kingacademic. At Kingacademic (“Kingacademic”, “we”, “us”), we value your privacy and want you to be informed about how we collect, use, and share your data. This Privacy Policy explains our data collection practices and outlines your rights concerning your personal information.

Unless we provide a link to a different policy or specify otherwise, this Privacy Policy applies when you visit or use Kingacademic websites, mobile apps, or related services (the “Services”). It also pertains to potential customers of our business and enterprise products.

By using the Services, you accept the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy or any other agreement governing your use of the Services, you should not use the Services.

Table of Contents

What Data We Get
How We Get Data About You
What We Use Your Data For
Who We Share Your Data With
Security
Your Rights
Jurisdiction-Specific Rules
Updates & Contact Info

Data Collection

We gather certain data from you directly, such as information you enter yourself, details about your content consumption, and data from third-party platforms linked with Kingacademic. Additionally, we automatically collect data such as information about your device and which parts of our Services you interact with or spend time on. All data mentioned in this section is subject to various processing activities, including collecting, recording, structuring, storing, altering, retrieving, encrypting, pseudonymizing, erasing, combining, and transmitting.

1.1 Data You Provide to Us

The data we collect from or about you varies depending on how you use the Services. Here are some examples to help you understand the types of data we gather:

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

Category of Personal Data	Description	Legal Basis for Processing
Account Data	To use specific features (such as accessing content), you must create a user account. This process involves collecting and storing your email address, password, and account settings. Additionally, when using certain features on the site, you may be asked to provide more information, such as your occupation, date of birth, race/ethnicity, skill interests, and phone number. When you create your account, we assign you a unique identification number.	Performance of contract Legitimate interests (service provisioning, identity verification, fraud prevention and security, communication)
Profile Data	You also have the option to provide profile information such as a photo, headline, biography, position, language, website link, social media profiles, country, or other details. Your Profile Data will be publicly visible to others.	Performance of contract Legitimate interests (enhanced platform functionality, convey content source information)
Shared Content	Certain features of the Services allow you to interact with other users or share content publicly. This includes uploading courses and other educational materials, posting reviews, asking or answering questions, sending messages to students or instructors, and sharing photos or other work you upload. Depending on where this content is posted, it may be publicly visible to others.	Performance of contract Legitimate interests (service provisioning, enhanced platform functionality)
Learning Data	When you access content, we collect various data, including the courses, assignments, labs, workspaces, and quizzes you’ve started and completed. We also track your content and subscription purchases, credits, subscriptions, completion certificates, interactions with instructors, teaching assistants, and other students, as well as essays, answers to questions, and other submissions required for courses and related content.	Performance of contract Legitimate interests (service provisioning, enhanced platform functionality)
Student Payment Data	When you make purchases, we collect specific data necessary to process your order, such as your name, country, billing address, phone number, email, and ZIP code. This information may be optionally saved to facilitate future orders. You must provide certain payment and billing details, including your name, credit card information, billing address, and ZIP code, directly to our payment service providers. We may also receive limited information from these providers, such as notification of a new card and the last four digits of that card, to assist with payments. For security reasons, Kingacademic does not collect or store sensitive cardholder data, like full credit card numbers or card authentication information.	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, Payoneer, or another payment account to the Services to receive payments. When you do this, we collect and use certain information, such as your payment account email address, account ID, physical address, and other data necessary to send payments to your account. In some cases, we may collect ACH or wire transfer information to facilitate payments. To comply with applicable laws, we also collaborate with trusted third parties who collect tax information as required by law. This tax information may include residency details, tax identification numbers, biographical data, and other personal information necessary for taxation purposes. For security reasons, Kingacademic does not collect or store sensitive bank account information. The collection, use, and disclosure of your payment, billing, and taxation data are governed by 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	We may acquire certain information through your social media or other online accounts if they are connected to your Kingacademic account. When you log in to Kingacademic via Facebook or another third-party platform or service, we request permission to access specific information from that account. Depending on the platform or service, we may collect details such as 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. These platforms and services provide information to us through their APIs, and the information we receive depends on your privacy settings and the platform or service’s policies. 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 governed by the privacy policies and other agreements of that third party.	Legitimate interests (identity verification, user experience improvement)
Sweepstakes, Promotions, and Surveys	We may invite you to complete a survey or participate in a promotion (such as a contest, sweepstakes, or challenge) through the Services or a third-party platform. If you choose to participate, we will collect and store the information you provide, such as your name, email address, postal address, date of birth, or phone number. Unless otherwise specified in the official promotion rules or another privacy policy, this data is subject to this Privacy Policy. The collected data will be used to manage the promotion or survey, including notifying winners and distributing rewards. To receive a reward, you might be required to permit us to post some of your information publicly (for example, on a winner’s page). If a third-party platform is used to administer the survey or promotion, the third party’s privacy policy will apply.	Performance of contract Legitimate interests (promotions administration, prize delivery, compliance)
Communications and Support	If you contact us for support or to report a problem or concern (regardless of whether you have an account), we collect and store your contact information, messages, and other details such as your name, email address, location, Kingacademic user ID, refund transaction IDs, and any other data you provide or that we collect automatically (as described below). We use this data to respond to your inquiry and investigate your issue, in accordance with this Privacy Policy.	Legitimate interests (customer and technical support)

The data mentioned above is stored by us and linked to your account. Kingacademic’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs, such as instructor-uploaded content, will comply with the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

1.2 Data We Collect through Automated Means

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

Category of Personal Data	Description	Legal Basis for Processing
System Data	Technical data about your computer or device, such as your IP address, device type, operating system type and version, unique device identifiers, browser type, browser language, domain, and other system data, as well as platform types.	Performance of contract Legitimate interests (service provisioning, customer and technical support, fraud prevention and security, communication, product improvement)
Usage Data	Usage statistics about your interactions with the Services, including the content accessed, time spent on pages or the Service, pages visited, features used, search queries, click data, date and time of access, referrer, and other data related to your use of the Services.	Legitimate interests (service provisioning, user experience improvement, product improvement)
Approximate Geographic Data	An approximate geographic location, including details such as country, city, and geographic coordinates, determined based on your IP address.	Legitimate interests (user experience improvement, fraud prevention and security, compliance)

We gather the technical data mentioned above using server log files and tracking technologies, as detailed in the “Cookies and Data Collection Tools” section below. This data is stored by us and linked to your account.

1.3 Data From Third Parties

If you are a Kingacademic Business enterprise or corporate prospect, we may also collect certain business contact information from third-party commercial sources, in addition to the information you submit to us.

2. How We Get Data About You

We use tools such as cookies, web beacons, and similar tracking technologies to collect the data listed above. Some of these tools allow you to opt out of data collection.

2.1 Cookies and Data Collection Tools

We use cookies, which are small text files stored by your browser, to collect, store, and share information about your activities across websites, including on Kingacademic. Cookies help us remember details about your visits to Kingacademic, such as your preferred language, making the site easier to use. For more information about cookies, visit Cookiepedia. Additionally, we may use clear pixels in emails to track deliverability and open rates.

Kingacademic and service providers acting on our behalf (such as Google Analytics and third-party advertisers) use server log files and automated data collection tools like cookies, tags, scripts, customized links, device or browser fingerprints, and web beacons (collectively, “Data Collection Tools”) when you access and use the Services. These tools automatically track and collect certain System Data and Usage Data (as detailed in Section 1). In some instances, we link data gathered through these tools to other data we collect as described in this Privacy Policy.

2.2 Why We Use Data Collection Tools

Kingacademic employs the following types of Data Collection Tools for various purposes:

Strictly Necessary: These tools allow you to access the site, provide basic functionality (such as logging in or accessing content), secure the site, prevent fraudulent logins, and detect and prevent abuse or unauthorized use of your account. These are essential for the Services to function correctly; if you disable them, parts of the site may not work or be unavailable.
Functional: These tools remember information about your browser and preferences, offer additional site functionality, customize content to be more relevant to you, and remember settings that affect the appearance and behavior of the Services (such as your preferred language or video playback volume level).
Performance: These Data Collection Tools help measure and enhance the Services by providing data on usage and performance, visit counts, traffic sources, and where an application was downloaded from. They assist us in testing different versions of Kingacademic to determine which features or content users prefer and identify which email messages are opened.
Advertising: These Data Collection Tools are used to display relevant ads (on the site and/or other sites) based on your Usage and System Data (as detailed in Section 1) and data collected by ad service providers through their tracking mechanisms. The ads may be tailored to your recent activity or activity over time across different sites and services. To deliver customized advertising, we may provide these service providers with a hashed, anonymized version of your email address (in a non-human-readable form) and publicly shared content from the Services.
Social Media:These Data Collection Tools enable social media functionalities, such as sharing content with friends and networks. They may track a user or device across other sites and build a profile of user interests for targeted advertising.

You can configure your web browser to notify you when cookies are being placed on your computer, limit the types of cookies you accept, or refuse cookies entirely. However, if you do so, you may be unable to use some or all features of the Services, and your experience may be different or less functional. For more information on managing Data Collection Tools, refer to Section 6.1 (Your Choices About the Use of Your Data) below.

What We Use Your Data For

We use your data for various purposes, including providing our Services, communicating with you, resolving issues, preventing fraud and abuse, enhancing and updating our Services, analyzing usage patterns, serving personalized ads, and complying with legal requirements or ensuring safety and integrity. We retain your data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected.

We use the data we collect through your use of the Services to:

Provide and manage the Services, including facilitating participation in educational content, issuing completion certificates, displaying customized content, and enabling communication with other users (Account Data; Shared Content; Learning Data; System Data; Usage Data; Approximate Geographic Data);
Process payments to instructors and other third parties (Student Payment Data; Instructor Payment Data);
Handle your requests and orders for educational content, products, specific services, information, or features (Account Data; Learning Data; Student Payment Data; System Data; Communications and Support);
Communicate with you about your account (Account Data; Shared Content; Learning Data; Sweepstakes, Promotions, and Surveys; System Data; Communications and Support);
- Responding to your questions and concerns;
- Sending you administrative messages and information, including messages from instructors, students, and teaching assistants, notifications about changes to our Service, and updates to our agreements;
- Sending you information, such as via email or text messages, about your course progress, rewards programs, new services, new features, promotions, newsletters, and other available instructor-created content (which you can opt out of at any time);
- Sending push notifications to your wireless device to provide updates and other relevant messages (which you can manage from the “options” or “settings” page of the mobile app);
Manage your account and preferences, and personalize your experience (Account Data; Learning Data; Student Payment Data; Instructor Payment Data; System Data; Usage Data; Cookie Data);
Facilitate the technical functioning of the Services, including troubleshooting and resolving issues, securing the Services, and preventing fraud and abuse (Account Data; Student Payment Data; Instructor Payment Data; Communications and Support; System Data; Approximate Geographic Location);
Verify the identity of instructors (Account Data; Instructor Payment Data);
Solicit feedback from users (Account Data; Communications and Support);
Market products, services, surveys, and promotions (Account Data; Learning Data; Sweepstakes, Promotions, and Surveys; Usage Data; Cookie Data);
Market Subscription Plans to prospective customers (Account Data; Learning Data; Cookie Data);
Learn more about you by linking your data with additional data from third-party data providers and/or analyzing the data with the help of analytics service providers (Account Data; Data About Your Accounts on Other Services; Usage Data; Cookie Data);
Identify unique users across devices (Account Data; System Data; Cookie Data);
Tailor advertisements across devices (Cookie Data);
Improve our Services and develop new products, services, and features (all data categories);
Analyze trends and traffic, track purchases, and monitor usage data (Account Data; Learning Data; Student Payment Data; Communications and Support; System Data; Usage Data; Approximate Geographic Data; Cookie Data);
Advertise the Services on third-party websites and applications (Account Data; Cookie Data);
Comply with legal requirements or as permitted by law (all data categories) or.
As we, at our sole discretion, determine necessary to ensure the safety or integrity of our users, employees, third parties, the public, or our Services (all data categories).

Who We Share Your Data With

We share certain data about you with instructors, other students, companies providing services for us, Kingacademic affiliates, our business partners, analytics and data enrichment providers, marketing automation software providers, your social media providers, companies assisting with promotions and surveys, and advertising companies that help promote our Services. We may also share your data as required for security, legal compliance, or during a corporate restructuring. Additionally, we can share data in other ways if it is aggregated or de-identified, or with 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 about you (excluding your email address) with instructors or teaching assistants for the educational content you access or request information about. This helps them improve their content for you and other students. The data shared may include your country, browser language, operating system, device settings, the site that referred you to Kingacademic, and your activities on Kingacademic, such as enrolled courses and course reviews. We do not share your email address with instructors or teaching assistants (Account Data; System Data; Usage Data; Approximate Geographic Data).
With Other Students and Instructors: Depending on your settings, your shared content and profile data may be publicly visible to other students and instructors. If you ask a question to an instructor or teaching assistant, your information (including your name) may also be publicly visible (Account Data; Profile Data; Shared Content).
With Service Providers, Contractors, and Agents: We share your data with third-party companies that perform services on our behalf, such as payment processing, fraud and abuse prevention, data analysis, marketing and advertising services (including retargeted advertising), email, marketing automation and hosting services, and customer support. These service providers may access your personal data and are required to use it solely as directed by us to provide the requested service (All data categories).
With Kingacademic Affiliates: We may share your data with companies within our corporate family that are related by common ownership or control, to enable or support the provision of our Services (All data categories).
With Business Partners: We have agreements with other websites and platforms to distribute our Services and drive traffic to Kingacademic. Depending on your location, we may share your data with these trusted partners. (Account Data; Learning Data; Communications and Support; System Data)
With Credit-Granting Organizations for Continuing Education: If you take a course to fulfill a continuing professional education requirement, we may share that information with the organization granting the continuing education credit upon their request (Account Data; Learning Data).
With Analytics and Data Enrichment Services: We share certain contact information or de-identified data with third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics and data enrichment services like ZoomInfo. De-identified data means data where we’ve removed personal identifiers like your name and email address and replaced them with a token ID. This enables these providers to offer analytics services or match your data with publicly available database information (including contact and social information from other sources). We do this to communicate with you more effectively and in a customized manner (Account Data; System Data; Usage Data; Cookie Data).
To Power Social Media Features: Social media features in the Services (such as the Facebook Like button) may allow third-party social media providers to collect data like your IP address and which page of the Services you are visiting, and to set a cookie to enable the feature. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the respective third-party company (System Data; Usage Data; Cookie Data).
To Administer Promotions and Surveys: We may share your data as needed to manage, market, or sponsor promotions and surveys you participate in, as required by applicable law (such as providing a winners list or making necessary filings), or in accordance with the rules of the promotion or survey (Account Data; Sweepstakes, Promotions, and Surveys).
For Advertising: If we adopt 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 provide general demographic and preference information about our users. We may also allow advertisers to collect System Data through Data Collection Tools (as detailed in Section 2.1) to offer you targeted ads and enhance your user experience through behavioral advertising and web analytics. Advertisers may also share with us the data they collect about you. To learn more or opt out of participating in ad networks’ behavioral advertising, see Section 6.1 (Your Choices About the Use of Your Data) below. Note that if you opt out, you will still receive generic ads (System Data).
For Security and Legal Compliance: We may disclose your data (all data categories) to third parties if we, at 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 subpoena, 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 Kingacademic, 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 Kingacademic 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). (All data categories)
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. (All data categories)

Security

We implement appropriate security measures based on the type and sensitivity of data being stored. However, as with any internet-enabled system, there is always a risk of unauthorized access. It is important to protect your password and contact us if you suspect any unauthorized access to your account. Kingacademic takes necessary security precautions to safeguard your personal data from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These precautions vary depending on the data’s type and sensitivity. Despite our efforts, no system can be completely secure, so we cannot guarantee that communications between you and Kingacademic, the Services, or any information provided to us will be entirely free from unauthorized access by third parties. Your password is a crucial part of our security measures, and you are responsible for protecting it. Do not share your password with anyone, and if you believe your password or account has been compromised, change it immediately and contact us with any concerns.

Your Rights

You have certain rights regarding the use of your data, such as opting out of promotional emails, cookies, and data collection by specific third parties. You can update or terminate your account through our Services and contact us for individual rights requests concerning your personal data. Parents who believe we have unintentionally collected personal data about their underage child should contact us for assistance in deleting that information.

6.1 Your Choices About the Use of Your Data

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

To stop receiving promotional communications from us, you can opt out by using the unsubscribe mechanism in the promotional communication you receive or by emailing us at [email protected]. Please note that regardless of your email preference settings, we will still send you transactional and relationship messages related to the Services, such as administrative confirmations, order confirmations, important updates about the Services, and notices about our policies.
If you’re located 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.
The browser or device you use may enable you to control cookies and other types of local data storage. To learn more about managing cookies, visit https://cookiepedia.co.uk/how-to-manage-cookies. Your wireless device may also allow you to control whether location or other data is collected and shared.
To get information and control cookies used for tailored advertising from participating companies, visit the consumer opt-out pages for the Network Advertising Initiativeand Digital Advertising Alliance, or if you’re located in the European Economic Area, visit the Your Online Choices If you’re located in Japan, visit the Digital Advertising Consortium. 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 Control of Facebook ad, see the setting 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 their own instructions on how to control in-app tailored advertising. For other devices and operating systems, you should 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 [email protected].

6.2 Accessing, Updating, and Deleting Your Personal Data

You can access and update your personal data that Kingacademic collects and maintains in the following ways:

To update data you provide directly, log into your account and update your account at any time.
To terminate your account:
If you are a student, please email us at [email protected].
If you are an instructor, please email us at [email protected].
If you have any issues terminating your account, please contact our team at [email protected].
Please note: even after your account is terminated, some or all of your data may still be visible to others, including without limitation any data that has been (a) copied, stored, or disseminated by other users (including comments on content); (b) shared or disseminated by you or others (including in your shared content); or (c) posted to a third-party platform. Even after your account is terminated, we retain your data for as long as we have a legitimate purpose to do so (and in accordance with applicable law), including to assist with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. We may retain and disclose such data pursuant to this Privacy Policy after your account has been terminated.

To request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data, you can email us at [email protected]. Please allow up to 30 days for a response. For your protection, we may require the request to be sent from the email address associated with your account and may need to verify your identity before processing your request. Please note that we retain certain data when we have a lawful basis to do so, including for mandatory record-keeping and transaction completion.

6.3 Our Policy Concerning Children

We respect children’s privacy and encourage parents and guardians to be involved in their children’s online activities. Individuals under 18, but of the minimum age required to consent to online services in their country (e.g., 13 in the US or 16 in Ireland), cannot create an account. Those below the required age are not permitted to use the Services. If we discover that we’ve collected personal data from a child under these ages, we will take steps to delete it. Parents who suspect that Kingacademic may have gathered data from their underage child can request its removal by emailing [email protected].

Jurisdiction-Specific Rules

Users outside the United States should be aware that we transfer data to the US and other regions outside the European Economic Area.

7.1 Users in California

Users who are California residents have certain rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, (“CCPA”).

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” and “sharing” in specific ways. While Kingacademic does not sell personal information in the traditional sense, we use cookies that may share non-personally identifiable information with select third parties for cross-context advertising.

For details on the personal information we collect and how we gather it, refer to the sections “What Data We Get” and “How We Get Data About You.”

To understand the business and commercial purposes for which we collect your personal information and the categories of service providers who access it, see the sections “What We Use Your Data For” and “Who We Share Your Data With.”

Currently, there is no widely accepted standard for browser-initiated Do Not Track signals, so we do not recognize or respond to them.

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

Personal data is also processed outside the UK, Switzerland, and the EEA by Kingacademic or our service providers for tasks such as handling transactions, facilitating payments, and providing support services as detailed in Section 4. We utilize the Controller-to-Processor Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission to permit the transfer of personal data from the EEA to third countries. Additionally, we have data processing agreements in place with our service providers and Kingacademic to manage and regulate the processing of your data. By submitting your data or using our Services, you agree to this transfer, storage, and processing by Kingacademic and its processors.

7.3 Users Outside of the U.S.

In order to provide the Services to you, we must transfer your data to the United States and process it there. If you are using the 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.

Updates & Contact Info

When we make significant changes to this policy, we will notify users through email, in-product notifications, or other methods required by law. The changes will take effect on the day they are posted. If you have any questions, concerns, or disputes, please reach out to us via email or postal mail.

8.1 Modifications to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically. If we make any significant changes, we will notify you via email, a notice on the Services, or as required by law. We will also provide a summary of the key changes. Unless otherwise stated, modifications will take effect on the day they are posted.

As allowed by applicable law, if you continue using the Services after the effective date of any changes, your continued access or use will signify your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy. The updated Privacy Policy will replace all previous versions.

8.2 Interpretation

Any capitalized terms not defined in this Privacy Policy have the meanings assigned to them in Kingacademic’s Terms of Use. Translations of this Privacy Policy into languages other than English are provided for your convenience. In case of any discrepancies between the English version and a translated version, the English version will prevail.

8.3 Questions

If you have any questions, concerns, or disputes regarding our Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact our privacy team at [email protected].