Privacy Statement
UsingEnglish.com Ltd. ("UsingEnglish", "we", "our", or "us") are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy, together with any other documents referred to within, sets out the policies and procedures regarding the collection, use and disclosure of information we receive via our Service (as defined in the Terms of Service) as well as your rights and choices about such use and disclosure. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, capitalised terms used herein have the same meanings as in our Terms of Service.
By using the Service, you consent to our collection, use and disclosure practices, and other activities as described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree and consent, please discontinue use of the Service immediately. This Privacy Policy does not apply to our information collection activities outside of the Service (unless otherwise stated below or at the time of collection).
If you have any questions about our privacy practices, please contact us using the details in the "Contact Us" section below.
Information You Provide
We collect information you provide directly via the Service, including when you:
- Use our Service, including our websites and any of our mobile applications;
- Access our content, including our articles, webinars, and podcasts;
- Register or update an account;
- Request quotes, product demos, support, information, or access to our information products and services;
- Subscribe to newsletters, promotional communications, alerts, sales outreach, updates and other materials;
- Register for webinars or other content offers; or
- Contact us.
The information we collect includes information that identifies you personally (whether alone or in combination). Some examples of information we collect include the following:
- Contact Data. We collect your first and last name (if provided), e-mail address and other similar contact data.
- Credentials. We collect passwords, password hints, username and other information for authentication and account access.
- Demographic Data. We collect demographic information including your country and size of your company.
- Content. We collect the content of communications you send to us, such as feedback, questions, or information you provide to us.
You may choose to voluntarily submit other information to us through the Service that we do not request, and, in such instances, you are solely responsible for such information.
Information We Automatically Collect
When you access the Service via a web browser, mobile applications, newsletter, or other client, we and our third party service providers use a variety of technologies, now and hereafter devised, that automatically collect information about your device and how your device interacts with our Service. Some examples of information we collect include the following:
- Service Use Data. We collect data about your interaction with our Service, the webpage, newsletter, or services feature you were using before you came to our Service, your web or application request, pages of our websites that you visit, information you search for via our Service, access times and dates, and other similar information.
- Device Connectivity and Configuration Data. We collect data about the type of device or browser you use, your device’s operating software, your internet service provider, your device’s regional and language settings, and other similar information. This data also includes IP address, MAC address, device advertising Id (e.g., IDFA or AAID), and other unique identifiers for the particular device you use to access the internet).
- Location Data. We collect data about your device’s location, which can be precise (e.g., latitude/longitude data) or imprecise (e.g., location derived from an IP address or data that indicates a city or postal code level).
We use this information for a variety of purposes (further addressed in "How will we use the information about you?" below), including analysing and enhancing our products and services, and to help personalize our Service for you.
We and our third party service providers automatically collect this information using various methods, including the following methods:
- Log Files. Log information is data about your use of the Service, such as IP address, browser type, internet service provider, referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamps, and related data, which is stored in log files.
- Cookies. A cookie is a small data file transferred to your computer (or other device) when it is used to access our Service. Cookies may be used for many purposes, including to enable certain features of our Service and remember your preferences, to better understand how you interact with our Service, to provide you advertising on and off the Service, and to monitor usage by visitors and online traffic routing. You may be able to instruct your browser, by changing its options, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the online services you visit. If you do not accept cookies, however, you may not be able to use all portions of our Service or all functionality of our Service.
- Web Beacons ("Tracking Pixels"). Web beacons are small graphic images, also known as "internet tags" or "clear gifs", embedded in web pages and e-mail messages. Web beacons are used in combination with cookies for various purposes, including to allow us to count the number of visitors to the Service, to monitor how users navigate the Service, to count content views, and to provide you advertising on and off the Service.
- Embedded Scripts. An embedded script is programming code designed to collect information about your interactions with the Service. It is temporarily downloaded onto your device from our web server or a third party with whom we work, is active only while you are connected to the Service, and deleted or deactivated thereafter.
- Click-Through URLs. In some cases we may use a "click-through URL" linked to content on our websites. When users click one of these URLs, they pass through a separate web server before arriving at the destination page on our website. We track this click-through data for various purposes, including to help us determine interest in particular topics and measure the effectiveness of our customer communications. If you prefer not to be tracked in this way, you should not click on these text or graphic links (for example, in e-mail messages).
Some information about your use of the Service and certain third party services may be collected using these and other tracking technologies across time and services and used by UsingEnglish.com Ltd. and third parties for purposes such as to associate different devices you use, and deliver relevant ads and/or other content to you on the Service and certain third party services.
De-Identified or Aggregated Information
We may collect, use, transfer, and disclose information that is de-identified or does not identify you without obligation to you except as prohibited by applicable law. To the extent we may combine information that is de-identified or does not identify you with information that does identify you that we collected directly from you on the Service, we will treat the combined information in accordance with the practices described under this Privacy Policy.
We use your information for our legitimate interests, including:
- to manage our Service, including your registration and account;
- to provide you with customer service and support;
- to provide the products and services you use or purchase, respond to your questions, and carry out the transactions you have requested;
- to communicate with you regarding updates, technical notices, orders, security alerts, administrative messages, and information regarding changes to our policies;
- to help authenticate any account you create with us;
- to conduct market research and/or to provide general aggregated statistics regarding use of the Site;
- to protect the rights or property of UsingEnglish.com Ltd, our users, or other third parties, and prevent fraud and other prohibited or illegal activities;
- to protect the security of our products, services and business;
- to enhance and personalise our Service and our marketing efforts;
- to develop and serve advertisements on our Service or through e-mails or other communications; and
- for our internal purposes (such as auditing, data analysis, and research to improve and develop our products, services, content, advertising, and communications).
We also use your information with your consent, including:
- to administer promotions you have entered;
- to serve advertising tailored to your interests on our Service and third party services;
- to send you newsletters and other promotional communications about our and third party products, offers, promotions, rewards, events, and services; and
- Fulfill any other purpose disclosed to you and with your consent.
By using this Site, you agree that we may collect, hold, process and use your information (including personal information) for the purpose of providing you with the Site services and developing our business.
We share your information as follows:
Our Service Providers
We may engage third party companies and individuals to perform services on our behalf (e.g., software maintenance services, advertising serving technologies, e-mail service providers, delivery services, database management, web analytics, payment processing and other services). These third parties have access to your information so that they may perform these tasks on our behalf and they are prohibited by us from using or disclosing your information for any purpose other than to provide this assistance, except to the extent required by law. We may permit our service providers to use aggregate information which does not identify you or de-identified data for other purposes.
Third Parties
We may share your information with third parties for purposes of facilitating your requests and in connection with tailoring advertisements, measuring and improving our Service and advertising effectiveness, and enabling other enhancements.
Compliance with Laws, Legal Process and Authorities
We cooperate with government and law enforcement officials and private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We must disclose your information in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements. We may disclose information to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (including but not limited to subpoenas), to protect the property and rights of us or a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, unethical or legally actionable. We may also disclose information to protect the rights, property, life, health, security and safety of us, the Service or any third party.
Other situations
We may share information about you with suppliers that we engage to help us provide certain services and/or functionality (e.g. online payment processing). We will use reasonable endeavours to control and be responsible for the use of your information by such suppliers. Furthermore, by using the Site, you consent to the transfer of your personal information outside of the European Economic Area (which may not provide the same protection for such information as the European Economic Area provides) in the event that the processing of your information involves such a transfer.
We reserve the right to disclose your personal information to comply with applicable laws and government or regulatory bodies’ lawful requests for information.
We may transfer, sell or assign any of the information described in this policy to third parties as a result of a sale, merger, consolidation, change of control, transfer of assets or reorganisation of our business.
Blogs, Social Media and other Public Forums
We may offer blogs, social media profiles, message boards, bulletin boards or similar public forums where you and other users of our Service can post content or otherwise communicate. If you post information on a public forum, we will assume you intend to make that information public. We may use your name to identify you with a posting in a public forum and may use your post on or in connection with our Service (e.g., when using a hashtag associated with UsingEnglish.com in a tweet or status update). Any information you share in a public forum is public information and may be seen or collected by other persons, including third parties that do not adhere to the standards set forth in this Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for events arising from the distribution of any information you choose to publicly post or share through our online services.
In addition, to the extent you interact with social networks or other third party services through the Service (such as "liking" or "sharing" our content or otherwise connecting our Service to a third party service), understand that information collected and stored by third parties through your interaction remains subject to their policies and practices, including whether they continue to share the information with us, the types of information shared, and your choices on what is visible to others. We are not responsible for and make no representations regarding the policies or business practices of any third parties or third party services and encourage you to familiarize yourself with and consult their privacy policies and terms of use.
Third Party Analytics and Advertising Technology
Our Service contains tracking technologies owned and operated by third parties. For example, we use tracking technologies from traffic measurement services, such as Google Analytics, to analyse traffic and for analytics purposes.
We also work with third party ad network providers, advertisers, and other services to serve advertisements on the Service and/or third party services. These third parties may set and access cookies and other technologies on your personal computer and/or device and track certain behavioural information regarding use of your personal computer and/or device. These third party cookies and other technologies are set to, among other things: (a) track your activities across time and services for purposes of associating different devices you use, and delivering relevant ads and/or other content to you on the Service and third party services after you have left the Service ("Interest-based Advertising"); (b) prevent you from seeing the same advertisements too many times; and (c) understand the usefulness to you of the advertisements that have been delivered to you. Note that any images (or any other parts of a web page) served by third parties in association with third party cookies may serve as web beacons, which enable third parties to carry out the previously described activities.
For further information on your choices regarding these third party tracking technologies, please see the sections entitled "What information do we collect about you?" above and "Access to your information and corrections" below.
For information on how Google manages data in its ads products, please see their page on "How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services"
To opt-out of being tracked by other third-party advertisers, click one of the following links: NAI (optout.networkadvertising.org) or DAA (optout.aboutads.info).
Third Party Products and Services
Our Service contains links to, or content from, third party websites and other products and services. The fact that we link to a website or display an advertisement or other third party content is not an endorsement, authorisation or representation of our affiliation with any of those third parties, nor is it an endorsement of their privacy or information security policies or practices.
We do not exercise control over third party websites, products or services, and where they store their information. These other products and services may place their own cookies or other technologies on your computer or other device, collect data, or solicit information from you. Other persons and entities follow different rules regarding the use or disclosure of the information you submit to them or they collect from you. We encourage you to learn about the privacy practices of those third parties.
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, to change your marketing preferences or if have any other queries about this privacy policy, please write to us (including full details of your request) at the address in the Contact Us section below.
We may charge a small administration fee (not exceeding the maximum permitted by law in England) in relation to fulfilling your request.
If you wish to unsubscribe from email newsletters and communications from UsingEnglish.com, please click on the unsubscribe link in your email or amend your email preferences here. Other parts of the site may send you emails including notifications and reminders which you can control by modifying your user options from within your profile control panel here.
Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This information is used to track visitor use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity. For further information visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the above websites tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However in a few cases some of our website features may not function as a result.
You can access detailed information about our use of cookies on our Cookie Policy page.
If we change this privacy policy, we will post the revised privacy policy here with an updated effective date. If we make significant changes to the privacy policy, we may also notify you by other means such as sending an email or posting a notice on our home page.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, including our compliance with Privacy Shield or applicable law, please feel free to contact UsingEnglish.com Ltd. directly:
By e-mail at: info@usingenglish.com
By post at: Privacy Team, UsingEnglish.com Ltd., 266-268 High Street,Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, EN8 7EA, England.