Waterford Institute, LLC
Attn: Data Privacy Agent
PO Box 250
West Jordan, Utah 84084 USA
Waterford Research Institute, Romania
Attn: Data Privacy Agent
96 Memorandului Street
Timisoara, Timis County
Romania
Waterford Research Institute, LLC (Waterford, we, our, or us) has prepared this notice (Privacy Policy) for you (you or your) to explain the privacy practices of Waterford, which apply to your use of all Waterford websites, software applications (including hosted software), and mobile apps that we provide or provided on our behalf that link to this privacy policy, including without limitation Waterford Reading Academy, Waterford Early Learning, Classroom Advantage, SmartStart, Curriculet, and UPSTART, our mobile apps MyBackpack and Mentor, and our websites: www.waterford.org; www.waterfordupstart.org; and our Waterford Teacher Training Hub at https://waterford.digitalchalk.com/dc/guest/login (collectively, Digital Media).
Please note the following sections that include important disclosures related to our websites and services:
Tracking Technologies and Cookies: To learn more about how our Digital Media uses of cookies and related technologies (including from third parties), see Tracking Technologies and Cookies below.
Your Choices Disclosures: To learn more about your choices concerning your information, see Your Choices With Respect To Your Personal Data below.
If you are a resident of certain states or countries, you may be entitled to additional rights. Please see the following quick-links below for easy access to additional information for such residents
CA Residents: If you are a resident of California, please see our California Privacy Notice below.
European Residents: If you are a resident of Europe, including a member state of the European Union or the United Kingdom, please see our European Resident Disclosure below.
Changes to this Privacy Policy. We review this Privacy Policy regularly and may update it from time to time. Any and all changes will be reflected on this page, and as may be appropriate provided in person or by another electronic method, including to Educational Providers. The date of the last update is stated at the top of this Privacy Policy. You should regularly check this page for any changes to this Privacy Policy.
BACKGROUND
Waterford provides advanced educational software blending the best aspects of high quality educational content, learning science, mentoring relationships, and innovative technologies to form community, school, and home programs that deliver excellence and equity for all learners.
Waterford has specific programs that range from complete home-centered kindergarten readiness, to educational tools for parents of school children, to classroom curriculum and online programs operated by teachers within their school. Our learning science enables individuals to learn at their own pace and tailoring for individual capability and learning styles.
Waterford supports its educational software with related services, including personalized curriculum recommendations, research-based learning solutions, automated tracking of student progress, and reports for the parent, teacher, or learning facilitator who is overseeing student learning.
Waterford may provide the above services on behalf of business customers, which are generally educational institutions that utilize our Digital Media in connection with their educational program (Educational Providers). When we process information on behalf of Educational Providers, we do so under contractual obligations with such Educational Providers and in accordance with applicable laws, including the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Where you or your child is accessing the Digital Media through the program of an Educational Provider, we process such information on their behalf and share information with them as disclosed to you.
PERSONAL DATA THAT WE COLLECT
We collect and process the personal data of individuals in connection with our services provided to Educational Providers, including: students, parents, guardians, teachers, educators, personnel and representatives of educational institutions, representatives of entities, and individuals identified during registration, whom abstain access to our Digital Media on behalf of our Educational Providers.
We collect the following categories of personal data:
Contact information, including name, mailing address, physical address, telephone, and email address
Other individual identifiers and demographic information for Digital Media users, including student ID, grade, class, as well as such optional identification information such as gender, email address, physical address, birthday, ethnicity, primary language, disability, special programs, and photograph
Geographical location information for Digital Media users (i.e., the users location down to the city level) in order to map Digital Media usage trends
Individual profile information for Digital Media users: student progress, student reports, testing results, student learning difficulties and impairments, and other information relevant to learning advancement such as language, culture, age and other characteristics
Device information, including your operating system, browser, network, and device type (desktop, tablet, or mobile phone) in order to optimize our Digital Media and your user experience
Device ID, including your IP address or similar device identifiers used to determine the frequency with which our visitors look at various parts of our sites and to administer our Digital Media. The IP address is also used to gather demographic information such as geographic distribution of our visitors and may be used to allow us to provide goods and services appropriate to your location of residence
Digital Media service information, including purchasing history and orders
Digital Media usage and performance data, including Waterford Assessment Data scores, curriculum progress, usage time, activity start and end time, historical sessions, and time to load. Waterford Assessment Data are obtained from periodic testing of students using the Digital Media, to assess changes and improvements in such students performance. Waterford Assessment Data does not include students names, which are de-identified, but does include individual test scores
Internet use information
Regulatory information (to satisfy regulatory obligations such as tax and other reporting obligations)
Communications content, such as any messages you send to us such as feedback and questions to customer support, information you publicly post on our websites or other websites (such as product reviews or blog comments), e-mail messages, and recordings of telephone calls with customer service or other Company representatives, and interactions with us on our social media channels
Additionally, to set up our Digital Media you may need to add districts, schools, and classes, teachers, and administrators, and create student profiles. In these cases, you may be asked to provide the following information:
School Information, such as district, school, class, administrator, and teacher names and contact information;
Account and security information, such as usernames, passwords, and security questions;
Student profile information, such as name, unique student ID, grade, and class, gender, contact email, birthday, ethnicity, primary language, disability, special programs, and a student picture (some information may be required for specific programs or to comply with requirements established by the funding source or local regulations).
HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA
General. We collect personal data when you or your school, parent, guardian, employer, or organization register an account with us, when you visit our website, when you use our Digital Media or other services or products, participate in a feature of our website that requests or requires your personal data, and when you or Educational Providers otherwise transact business with or communicate with Waterford.
Directly from You. We collect information directly from you when you enter your information on our Digital Media, such as create account information, update your profile, or engage in communications directly with us.
Information Collected Automatically. When you visit our website(s), information about your electronic device is automatically collected, including your IP address, browser type, domain name, access times, geographic location, referring website address and other technical information. For more information about how we collect this information through the use of cookies and related technologies, see the Tracking Technologies and Cookies section below.
Information Collected from Third Parties. We may also collect additional personal data about you from our third-party services providers (e.g., the Apple App Store or the Google PlayTM store) who provide us with e-commerce and/or technical related services/support associated with the functionality and purposes of the Digital Media. Where the Digital Media is available as a mobile application, the application is downloaded from Apples App Store or Google Play and may be subject to the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions of Apple and Google respectively.
We may also collect information from third parties including analytic providers for fraud protection purposes, credit checks, address verification, account authentication and verification, and other business and commercial purposes.
When an Educational Provider enters into an agreement with Waterford for a subscription to our Digital Media, we also collect and process the Educational Providers and the Digital Media users personal data as described and consented to in that agreement, which may be called a Terms of Service, Terms of Service/ToS, or Subscription Agreement (collectively, the Terms of Service). The current Terms of Service may be viewed at this link.
We use analytics providers, including Google Analytics, and other tracking technologies and cookies to collect information. Tracking technologies are used to collect information from your web browser through our servers or filtering systems when you visit any of our sites.
Cookies. Cookies store small text files onto a users computer hard drive with the user's browser, containing the session ID and other data. Cookies enable a web site to track a user's activities on the website for the following purposes: (1) enable essential features; (2) provide analytics to improve website performance and effectiveness; (3) store user preferences; and (4) facilitate relevant targeted advertising on advertising platforms or networks. Users are free to change their web browsers to prevent the acceptance of cookies. Cookies may also be set within emails in order to track how often our emails are opened.
GIF/Pixel. A clear GIF or pixel is a small or transparent graphic image placed on a website. The use of clear GIFs allows us to monitor your actions when you open a web page and makes it easier for us to follow and record the activities of recognized browsers. Clear GIFs are used in combination with cookies to obtain information on how visitors interact with our websites.
Information collected from these technologies may include but is not limited to your browser type, your operating system, your language preference, any referring web page you were visiting before you came to our site, the date and time of each visitor request, and information you search for on our sites. We can also track the path of page visits on a website and monitor aggregate usage and web traffic routing on our sites. We collect this information to better understand how you use and interact with our sites in order to improve your experience. We also collect this information to better understand what services and marketing promotions may be more relevant to you. We may also share this information with our employees, service providers, business partners and affiliates.
You can change your web browser settings to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the sites you visit. If you do not accept cookies, however, you may not be able to use some sections or functions of our sites.
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org.
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
For more information about your choices related to these technologies, see Your Choices With Respect To Your Personal Data section below.
Processing of personal data includes collecting, recording, organizing, structuring, storing, altering or modifying, retrieving, transmitting, disclosing or otherwise making available to third parties, deleting, and otherwise using or dealing with your personal data. We may process your personal data with or without automatic means, including collection, recording, organization, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure, or destruction of your personal data. Please note we may combine the personal data that you give us with publicly available information and information we receive from, or cross-reference with, our technical analysts, data analysts, administrators, education providers, and others.
Digital Media Subscriptions. As noted above, when an Educational Provider enters into an agreement with Waterford for a subscription to our Digital Media, we also use and process the Educational Providers and the Digital Media users personal data as described and consented to in our Terms of Service. We process personal data for purposes related to our Digital Media, including providing subscriptions to and operating our hosted software apps and other products, consultation for student education progress, training, communication, customer service, system monitoring and data security.
Donations and Funding. We also process personal data in order to expand access to our products and services, including communication with organization representatives for funding and potential expansion opportunities, creating opportunities to donate to Waterford, and processing donations received from individuals and entities.
Waterfords Internal Business Purposes. We process personal data for our internal business purposes, including research, analytics, auditing, system troubleshooting, products and service improvement, security monitoring, business operations and administration, tax, and other regulatory requirements.
De-Identification of Data. Waterford may de-identify, anonymize, and/or aggregate personal data of users of its Digital Media, as well as Digital Media usage and performance data that is not identifiable as to any person (collectively De-Identified Data).
Waterfords website and Digital Media do not currently display third-party advertisements. Waterford does not use personal data collected by it for any targeted advertisements displayed on our website or online, or share personal data with third parties for their use in marketing or advertising their products or services.
We do not sell or rent personal data to third parties. However, certain of our online tracking technologies may be considered a sale or a share of your information to third parties under the California CCPA or other applicable privacy laws. Visitors to our website can opt out of being tracked by these technologies by following the instructions above under Tracking Technologies and Cookies or by contacting us as described below.
Waterfords practice is not to share your personal data with any of its business partners or other third parties except in the limited circumstances outlined below. If there is a material change in our sharing of personal data or the third parties with which we share such data, we will update this privacy policy accordingly and will notify Educational Providers of the change.
We share your personal data with other parties in the following circumstances:
Service providers providing services on our behalf. We may disclose or share your information with certain non-affiliated third parties to facilitate your access and use of our Digital Media, and to provide us with certain business functions, including but not limited to sharing your information with brand partners, internet service providers, data analytics providers, governmental entities, operating systems and platforms, and other service providers who provide us a service (e.g., customer service, auditing, marketing, debugging to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality on our Digital Media, and/or protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity).
Educational Providers, and their Teachers, and Learning Facilitators. Our Digital Media and other learning programs are administered by individuals who oversee the learning of the student. Depending on the program, this may be a teacher, or other learning facilitator assigned to administer the program for a group of students within a community. We may share student data, including both raw personal data and De-identified Data, with their schools and school districts that have contracted with Waterford.
Parents, Guardians. Parents and guardians will be provided information, including upon their request. We may share student data, including both raw personal data and De-identified Data, with a parent or guardian as it relates to their child or minor.
De-identified Data. We may disclose De-identified Data to third parties, such as aggregated Digital Media user statistics (e.g., 45% of our users are educators or 5,000 members indicate an interest in science lessons) and anonymous usage data, in order to describe our services to prospective partners, licensees, advertisers, and other third parties. De-identified Data also is used for our valuable research and may be included in publications.
In a Business Transfer or with our Affiliates. We may disclose, share, or make available your information as part of a business transaction, such as a merger or acquisition, joint venture, corporate reorganization, financing, or sale of company assets, or in the unlikely event of insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership, in which such information could be transferred to third parties as a business asset in the transaction. We may also share personal data with Waterfords affiliated companies for our organizations internal business purposes, as described in this policy.
Legal Requirements. We may access and disclose your personal data to regulatory bodies if we have a good-faith belief that doing so is required under regulation or in order to defend and protect our legal rights. This may include submitting personal data required by tax authorities, RFPs, or other requests by government authorities or regulatory bodies in connection with our Digital Media or data processing practices. Additionally, we may disclose your personal data and other information as required by law, including in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including law enforcement and judicial authorities.
We may transfer, process and store personal data collected from our Digital Media in centralized data centers and with service providers in the United States, cloud storage solutions, or on our premises. We implement standard data protection clauses with our third party service providers to ensure adequate protection of personal data transferred from the European Economic Area (EEA). If you are a resident of the EEA, please see the section European Resident Disclosure below.
Our software and mobile apps are cloud based with servers hosted in the USA and in Asia.
PERSONAL DATA SECURITY
We take commercially reasonable steps to protect your personal data in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations, as appropriate to the sensitivity of your information. Waterford uses technical and organizational measures to protect the personal data that we store, transmit, or otherwise process, against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed. Although we are committed to employing reasonable technology in order to protect the security of our website, even with the best technology, no website is 100% secure. In transacting business with us through our website, you assume the risk inherent in transacting business online.
We keep your information for as long as is necessary in accordance with the purpose for which it was collected, our contractual obligations with respective Educational Providers, and our legal and regulatory obligations. If we dispose of your information, we will do so in a way that is secure and appropriate to nature of the information subject to disposal.
A. Account
We rely upon our Educational Providers maintaining the accuracy of the personal data they provide by accessing and updating their account profile. Our Digital Media gives Educational Providers the ability to administer user accounts and to add, edit and delete account contact information. Under certain data protection regulations, including the GDPR, individuals have certain data subject rights regarding their personal data.
B. Communications
Email: For email communication of a marketing nature, an unsubscribe option is provided in the footer of every email. In addition, we may be contacted directly to unsubscribe. Our contact details are provided at the end of this Privacy Policy. Please note that you cannot opt-out of non-promotional emails, such as those about your account, transactions, servicing, or our ongoing business relations.
Phone & SMS Text Messaging: You can opt-out of receiving text messages or calls to your phone number at any time by (i) for text messages, texting STOP in response to any text message you receive from us or contacting us as set out in the Contact Us section below and specifying you want to opt-out of text messages; and (ii) for calls, requesting opt-out during any call you receive from us or contacting us as set out in the Contact Us section below and specifying you want to opt-out of calls.
C. Cookies and Tracking Technologies
The following disclosures relate to your choices in connection with cookies and other tracking technologies:
Do Not Track. Your browser settings may allow you to automatically transmit a Do Not Track signal to online services you visit. We do not currently monitor or take action with respect to Do Not Track signals. For more information on Do Not Track, visit http://www.allaboutdnt.com.
Cookies and Pixels. Most browsers accept cookies by default. You can instruct your browser, by changing its settings, to decline or delete cookies. If you use multiple browsers on your device, you will need to instruct each browser separately. Your ability to limit cookies is subject to your browser settings and limitations.
Mobile Application and Location Technologies. You can stop all collection of information via our mobile application by uninstalling the mobile application. You can also reset your device Ad Id at any time through your device settings, which is designed to allow you to limit the use of information collected about you. You can stop all collection of precise location data through the mobile application by uninstalling the application or withdrawing your consent through your device settings.
Please be aware that if you disable or remove tracking technologies some parts of the Digital Media may not function correctly.
D. Analytics
Google provides tools to allow you to opt out of the use of certain information collected by Google Analytics at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and by Google Analytics for Display Advertising or the Google Display Network at https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/.
E. Legal Requests
Please note that as a non-profit organization, certain regulations, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, do not apply. However, we have a policy of honoring and respecting the requests of all data subjects when it is reasonable and practical to do so and does not place an undue administrative burden on our organization. Therefore, we invite you to submit your requests to us, which we will review and respond to at our discretion. You may also contact us for assistance in modifying or updating your personal data. Our contact details are provided at the end of this Privacy Policy.
If you are a resident in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, please see our European Resident Disclosure below.
Our Digital Media is designed to be accessible and engaging for children. If we process information about children under the age of thirteen (13) or in connection with educational records of an Educational Provider, as applicable, we will only process such information with the appropriate consent and as allowed under applicable laws, including COPPA and FERPA.
Under applicable laws like COPPA and FERPA, we may rely on Educational Providers to obtain and verify for us that the necessary consent from parents or guardians under applicable laws has been obtained.
We encourage parents and guardians to actively participate in their children's online activities and to understand the types of information we may collect. If you believe that we have collected personal information from a child under the age of 13 without the necessary consent, please contact us or the respective Educational Provider immediately. As appropriate, we will promptly take steps to delete such information from our records. Parents and guardians have the right to review their child's personal information, request its deletion, and refuse further collection or use of the child's information. To exercise these rights, please reach out to us using the contact information provided in Contact Information below.
EUROPEAN RESIDENT DISCLOSURE
A. Role and Data Controller Contact Details
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and data protection laws in Europe distinguish between organizations that process personal data for their own purposes (known as controllers) and organizations that process personal data on behalf of other organizations (known as processors).
We act as a controller with respect to personal data collected from you as you engage with our Websites, Offices, Digital Media or via communications with us. If you have questions with respect to our processing of your information as a controller, you can contact us by email at the email address set forth in the section entitled Contact Us below.
B. Lawful Basis for Processing
We base our processing on the necessity to perform our contractual obligations under our Terms of Service with Educational Providers, and our legitimate interests in performing the activities of our organization as a provider of educational software and related services. We also process personal data in compliance with our obligations under applicable law and to exercise our legal rights. Where we process the personal data of minors we require the Educational Providers to obtain the requisite consent from the parent or guardian of the minor.
C. Onward Transfer
If you choose to provide us with your information, you consent to the transfer and storage of that information on our servers located in the United States. The information we collect is subject to state and federal law in the United States. If you are accessing our websites from outside the United States, please be advised that you are transferring your personal data to us in the United States where data protection and privacy laws may be different or less stringent than the laws of your country.
If the GDPR applies and your data is transferred outside the UK or the EEA to the United States or any other country, we will transfer your personal data subject to appropriate safeguards, such as an adequacy decision by the European Commission on the basis of Article 45 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 or Standard Contractual Clauses, as provided from time to time by the European Commission. You can receive additional information about where your personal data is transferred and the appropriate safeguards by contacting us.
D. Your Data Subject Rights
Individuals in the EEA have certain rights which may be subject to limitations and/or restrictions. These rights include the right to: (i) request access to and rectification or erasure of their personal data; (ii) obtain restriction of processing or to object to processing of their personal data; and (iii) ask for a copy of their personal data to be provided to them, or a third party, in a digital format. If you wish to exercise one of the above-mentioned rights, please see the section entitled Exercising Your Legal Rights below.
E. Complaints
If you have a complaint about our use of your personal data or our response to your request(s) regarding your personal data, you may submit a complaint to the Data Protection Supervisory Authority in your jurisdiction. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns before you approach a data protection regulator and welcome you to first direct an inquiry to us.
Inquiries may be made to:
Waterford Institute, LLC
Attn: Data Privacy Agent
PO Box 250
West Jordan, Utah 84084 USA
Waterford Research Institute, Romania
Attn: Data Privacy Agent
96 Memorandului Street
Timisoara, Timis County
Romania