Privacy Policy <p>This privacy policy explains how Vocabulary.com ("Vocabulary.com", "We", or "Us") collects and uses personal information that you ("you" or "your") provide on the Vocabulary.com website and on the Vocabulary.com App (collectively "Vocabulary.com").
This privacy policy was last updated on January 24th, 2016.</p> Guiding Principles <p>Our privacy policy is guided by the following principles:</p>
<ol>
<li>We’re committed to creating a safe and secure online environment for you.</li>
<li>We do not sell your personal information to third parties.</li>
<li>We collect very little personally identifiable information about you, and what we do collect we store securely.
</li>
<li>We believe that ultimately, you own your data, and that, whenever possible, you get to decide whether to take it with you, even if your account was provided by someone else, such as your school.
</li>
<li>We believe that improving your vocabulary is a worthwhile lifelong pursuit.
Therefore, unless you tell us otherwise, we will keep your learning history so that we can continue to personalize your experience over time.
</li>
</ol> How we collect data <p>Vocabulary.com collects the following information about you and your use of Vocabulary.com:</p> Personal Information <p>When you register for Vocabulary.com, you provide to us personal information (such as your full name, email address, grade level and school affiliation) that could be used to identify you.
For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, we call this “Personal Information”.
Your Nickname is used to identify you on to other users on Vocabulary.com.
If you do not want to be identified, do not use any part of your real name as your nickname.</p>
<p>If you provide your school affiliation to Vocabulary.com, or if you elect to join a Class created by an Educator, we may share some of your personal information (including your learning history), with the creator of the Class, other members of that Class, or with Administrators at your school or school district.
If you do not wish to share this information, do not join a class or do not provide your school affiliation.</p>
<p>The table below outlines what information about you is visible to others on Vocabulary.com:</p> Who can see your Personal Information on Vocabulary.com Personal Information Your Teachers 1 School Admins Admins Your Classmates 2 Other Users / Public Nickname Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes First &.
Last Name Yes Yes Yes Yes No Email Address Yes Yes Yes No No School Affiliation Yes Yes Yes Yes Educators Only 3 Grade Level Yes Yes Yes No No Points &.
Achievements Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Learning History Yes Yes Yes No No <sup>1</sup> Only Teachers of classes that you join will have access to the information indicated in the chart.
<sup>2</sup> Only other members of classes that you join will have access to the information indicated in the chart.
<sup>3</sup> If you identify yourself as an educator and provide your school affiliation, we may make that information public.
If you identify yourself as a student, we will never make your school affiliation public.
Information from Third Party Authentication Providers like Facebook or Google <p>If you decide to register through or otherwise grant access to a third-party authentication provider (“Authentication Provider”), such as Facebook Connect or Google, Vocabulary.com may also collect Personal Information that is already associated with your Authentication Provider account.
You may also have the option of sharing additional information with Vocabulary.com through an Authentication Provider.
If you choose to provide such information, during registration or otherwise, you are giving Vocabulary.com the permission to use, share, and store it in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy.</p> Information Provided by Your School or District <p>We may collect information about you from your school or district.
This may include Personal Information, such as your full name, grade, and email address.</p> Information about Your Use of Vocabulary.com <p>We collect usage information about certain features of Vocabulary.com, such as the questions you’ve answered, the words mastered, and the amount of time you’ve spent on Vocabulary.com.
</p> Location information <p>We may collect and use information about your location (such as your country) to provide you with a better experience on Vocabulary.com, but we don’t collect the precise location of you or your device.
</p> Information you Provide as Part of Your User Profile <p>Users have a public profile page on Vocabulary.com.
This page presents information that you provide such as your nickname, your state, or your favorite word.
The profile page may also show information about your use of Vocabulary.com such as achievements earned, lists created, or your level, as well as any comments that you’ve made on the Vocabulary.com.
Child Users have a more limited number of options for their profile page.
We ask that you or your child do not provide any personally identifiable information as part of the child’s profile.
In particular, choose a nickname that is not identifiable as the child’s real name.</p>
<p> You can change information that appears on your public profile page from the My Account page .
You can also view what information is public from clicking on the “View My Public Profile” link on the My Account Page.
</p> Information You Provide while Using Vocabulary.com <p>Users of Vocabulary.com can create various types of content ("User Content") that may be displayed publicly on Vocabulary.com.
User Content includes information such as vocabulary lists, comments, and other types of material that is shared with the community.</p>
<p>Any User Content, along with your nickname or username and any image or photo, become public and may be used by us.
Your public activities may also be read and collected by other users of the public activity areas on Vocabulary.com.
We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you provide in these forums.</p> Information Necessary to Fulfill Orders <p> If you purchase a product or service from us, we request certain Personal Information from you on our order form.
You must provide contact information (such as name and email) and financial information (such as billing address, credit card number, expiration date).
This information is used solely for billing purposes by our PCI-certified payment provider, Stripe.Your credit card information is encrypted and transmitted to Stripe securely via HTTPS.
You can learn more about Stripe's security practices here.
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<p>Your credit card details are never stored on Vocabulary.com systems, and no one at Vocabulary.com can access them.
A few privileged members of the Vocabulary.com team have access to the last 4 digits of your credit card and its expiration date in order to validate your identity in the case that you need to contact us regarding your payment details.</p> What we will <strong>NOT</strong> do with your Personal Information <p>Vocabulary.com will <strong>NOT</strong> sell Personal Information provided by you or by your School or District (except in connection of a merger or acquisition).</p>
<p>Vocabulary.com will <strong>NOT</strong> use Personal Information provided by you or by your School or District:</p>
<ul>
<li>To engage in targeted advertising</li>
<li>To build a profile about students other than for enhancing their experience on Vocabulary.com.</li>
</ul> How we use Data <p>Vocabulary.com uses collected Personal Information in the following ways:</p> To Enhance Your Experience on Vocabulary.com <p>Vocabulary.com uses the information you provide or that we collect to enhance our relationship with you and to operate, maintain, enhance, and provide all of the features and services found on Vocabulary.com.
Vocabulary.com, for instance, stores your responses to the questions you’ve answered and the words you’ve had trouble with so we can provide you with the right question at the right time to improve your vocabulary.
We may use your Personal Information to provide you with information about Vocabulary.com’s features, services and other offerings that may be of interest to you.
Under certain circumstances and if we obtain your consent (for example, if you submit a testimonial and agree to make it public), we may post your Personal Information on Vocabulary.com.</p> To Understand How You and Others Use Vocabulary.com <p>Vocabulary.com uses all of the information that you provide or that we collect from other users to understand and analyze the usage trends, learning behaviors, and preferences of our users, to improve the way Vocabulary.com work and look, and to create new features and functionality.
For more information, please see the “Technologies” section, below.</p> When We Share Data <p>Vocabulary.com will disclose User Information only as described below:</p> If you want information shared with other users, we’ll share it for you.
<p>Vocabulary.com has a number of features that allow you to share information with other Users or the public at large.
For example, you can create a profile, where you list your name, your location, and a short bio.
Or you may create and name a word list.
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Whenever you share information with other Users of our Vocabulary.com, any Personal Information that you choose to include in, or is associated with, such User Postings will be accessible by such Users.
As with most online services, once you make your Personal Information available to others in any of these ways, it may be collected and used by the recipients without restriction.</p> We share your achievements.
<p>We will share certain achievements through our leaderboards and your personal profile.
When interacting with Vocabulary.com, you will receive points, achieve particular levels, earn badges for various achievements, and master words (“Achievments”).
In certain cases, we will make these Achievements public accompanied by your nickname in a leaderboard, on your Profile page, or elsewhere on Vocabulary.com.
Achievements each have leaderboards, and when you earn one, your nickname may appear on that leaderboard, and if you have a profile, your nickname will link back to that profile.
In certain cases, leaderboards may be in the form of a map.
In this case, your nickname and your Achievement will be associated with a location determined based on your IP address, or information that you or your school has provided us.</p> We will share data when required by law.
<p> We may access, preserve and disclose account information and User Content if required to do so by law or in a good faith belief that such access preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (i) comply with legal process.
(ii) enforce our Terms of Use .
(iii) respond to claims that any User Content violates the rights of third parties.
(iv) provide support relating to Vocabulary.com.
or (v) protect the rights, property or personal safety of the company, its users and the public.
</p> We share data with educators if you join a class.
<p>We also may disclose Personal Information to an educator, and to authorized personnel from the school or district that the educator belongs to, if you join a class owned by that educator.
In this case, we may provide your full name and your performance on particular activities on Vocabulary.com, so that the educator can better help you with your vocabulary learning.</p> We share data with schools and districts if you associate yourself with the school.
<p>If you register as an educator and choose a school, we may share your Personal Information with administrators from the chosen school and the district.
We may also list your name, and various collective achievements of your students, in reports provided to the school or district.
We also may provide the school or district with individual information about your students’ performance, and also Personal Information such as the students first and last name.</p> We may share data in the context of a change in business, including a merger or acquisition.
<p>We transfer information about you if we are acquired by or merged with another company.
In this event, we will notify you of any such change in ownership or control of your information.</p> Social Media Widgets <p>Vocabulary.com includes Social Media Features and widgets, such as the "Share This" button.
These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on Vocabulary.com, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly.
Social Media Features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on Vocabulary.com.
Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing them.</p> Advertising on Vocabulary.com <p> We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit Vocabulary.com.
These companies may use information (not including your name, email address, school or any information provided directly to Vocabulary.com) about your visits to this and other websites or apps in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.
If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
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<p> We use Google's DoubleClick cookie to serve ads.
You may choose to opt out of the DoubleClick cookie at any time.
Vocabulary.com does not provide any personally-identifying information to advertisers.
</p> Advertising is not shown to Users Properly Associated with School or District Accounts <p>If you join a class owned by a teacher who is part of a Vocabulary.com site license, or you use a registered authentication provider that is linked to a Vocabulary.com site license, we will not serve ads to you on Vocabulary.com.</p> Data Security <p>Data security is important to us.</p> We try to ensure that Vocabulary.com and the information sent to us are safe, but no security measures are perfect.
<p>Vocabulary.com uses certain physical, managerial, and technical safeguards designed to preserve the integrity and security of your Personal Information and other information we maintain in connection with Vocabulary.com.
For example, all data is secured and protected at all times, stored on servers located in the US, and only employees with a business need to access this Personal Information are able to do so.
We cannot, however, ensure or warrant the security of any or all of the information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk.
Once we receive your transmission of information, we makes commercially reasonable efforts to ensure the security of our systems.
We encrypt the transmission of all data using secure socket layer technology (SSL) or similar technologies.
However, please note that this is not a guarantee that such information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards.</p> We will notify you electronically or via the website if Vocabulary.com experiences a data security incident that could affect you.
<p>If we learn of a data security incident that compromises or appears to compromise your Personal Information, then we will attempt to notify you electronically so that you can take appropriate protective steps.
If you are a paid School or District customer, we will notify you electronically of any data security incident that affects your students.
We may also post a notice on Vocabulary.com if a data security incident occurs.</p> Data Retention <p>Unless we receive a deletion request from you or your parent or are contractually required to delete your account due to our business relationship with your school or district, we will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as is reasonably useful for operational or educational purposes.</p>
<p> If you are a School or District that has a Vocabulary.com premium subscription, and you’d like to request that we delete student information that you have provided us, please contact our support team.
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<p> If you are a parent, eligible customer, or school official, and Personal Information is incorrect and you’d like to have it amended, please contact our support team.
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<p> If you have an account provided by a School or District, and would like to transfer the information to a personal account, please contact our support team.
</p> Technical Information <p>To provide a personalized learning and high-quality experience, we may use various technologies that automatically record certain technical information from your browser or device, including standard log files, web beacons, or pixel tags.
This technical information may include your Internet Protocol (IP) address, device or browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring or exit pages, clickstream data, operating system, and the dates and times that you visit Vocabulary.com.
We do this to better understand how you are using Vocabulary.com so we can improve functionality and the services we offer you.</p>
<p>Like most websites, whether or not you are a registered member, we may send one or more cookies – small text files containing a string of alphanumeric characters – to your computer.
Cookies remember information about your activities on a website and enable us to provide you with a more personalized learning experience.
Vocabulary.com may use both session cookies and persistent cookies.
A session cookie disappears automatically after you close your browser.
A persistent cookie remains after you close your browser and may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to Vocabulary.com.
You can, however, remove a persistent cookie at any time.
Please review your web browser “Help” file to learn the proper way to modify your cookie settings.
However, without cookies you will not have access to certain services and features on Vocabulary.com.</p>
<p>Vocabulary.com uses a variety of third-party service providers, such as Google Analytics to understand usage.
We may allow third-party service providers to place and read their own cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to collect information through Vocabulary.com.
This information is collected directly and automatically by these third parties, and Vocabulary.com does not participate in these data transmissions.
Vocabulary.com will, wherever feasible, contractually obligate our third-party service providers to abide by the terms of this Privacy Notice.</p>
<p>Vocabulary.com also uses Local Storage Objects (LSOs) such as HTML5 to store content information and preferences.
Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on Vocabulary.com may use LSOs such as HTML5 to collect and store information.
Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs.
Please consult your browser’s “Help” function to learn more.</p> Children Vocabulary.com is committed to children’s privacy.
<p> For this reason, we provide a limited feature set to Children under 13 (“Child Users”).
We do not knowingly let children under 13 register directly to Vocabulary.com.
If you are a parent who discovers that your child has registered to Vocabulary.com without your consent, please contact us at support@vocabulary.com, and request that we delete the child’s personal information from our systems.
</p> How Child Users May Register and Use Vocabulary.com <p>All Child Users who sign up must provide a parent's email address.
The parent is then notified that the child has signed up to use Vocabulary.com.
We ask that children chose a username that is not their real name.
</p>
<p>Alternatively, a child can be registered to use Vocabulary.com through his or her school, or through an Authentication Provider that is supported by the child’s school, or by teachers, tutors and other similar adults who assist in the educational process who have taken steps to obtain parental consent.
Parents always have the option to delete their Child User’s account.</p>
<p>If a school or district has provided this information, both parties agree to uphold their responsibilities under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”), the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (“PPRA”), and the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (“COPPA”).
We provide the Services as an outsourced institutional function under FERPA 34 CFR Part 99.31(a)(1).
The Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (“COPPA”) requires that online service providers obtain clear and verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13.
You represent and warrant that you have received consent from parents, or have the authority to provide consent on behalf of parents, for us to receive Personal Information related to children under 13.
We recommend that all schools provide appropriate disclosures to students and parents regarding their use of service providers such as Vocabulary.com and that they provide a link to our Privacy Policy to parents and guardians.</p> Restrictions on Child Users <p>Children are restricted from certain parts of Vocabulary.com.
For example, children cannot comment on articles.
In addition, we do not collect children's email addresses (unless they are provided by an Authentication Provider or by the child’s school), so all email communication from Vocabulary.com will be sent to the parent's email address.</p>
<p>Some other features of Vocabulary.com, however, may permit a Child User to enter free-form text through which the Child User could enter Personal information that would be visible to other Users.
This may occur, for example, when a child names his or her word list, or enters his or her notes or sentence examples on a word list.
If you are a parent, please advise your child about the risks of posting Personal Information on Vocabulary.com (or any other online service).</p>
<p>If you are a parent, and you agree to let your child use Vocabulary.com, you agree and acknowledge that you permit your child to use Vocabulary.com and all features made available on Vocabulary.com as fully contemplated by us.
As a parent, you understand that any personally identifiable information that your child provides in connection with registration or otherwise may be used by us as provided in this Privacy Policy.
Except where the context indicates otherwise, the remainder of this Privacy Policy (including any discussion of the personally identifiable information that we may collect, use or disclose) shall apply equally to a Child User account and an account for someone over 13.</p>
<p>If you are an educator and you add a student who is under 13 to your class, you acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, including, but not limited to, obtaining parental consent concerning collection of students' personal information used in connection with the provisioning and use of Vocabulary.com.</p> California Children’s Privacy Rights <p> If you are under the age of 18, or the parent of a User under the age of 18, residing in California, you are entitled to request removal of content or information you have posted on Vocabulary.com.
If you would like to request removal of your or your child’s content or information, please email us at support@vocabulary.com for assistance.
Please note that removal of your content or information does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal, as there may be deidentified or recoverable elements of your content or information on our servers in some form.
Additionally, we will not remove content or information that we may be required to retain under applicable federal and state laws.
</p> Communication from Vocabulary.com Customer Service <p>Based upon Personal Information you provide us, we will send you a welcoming email to verify your email address and password.
We will also communicate with you in response to your inquiries, to provide the services you request, and to manage your account.
We will communicate with you by email only.</p> Service-related Announcements <p>We will send you strictly service-related announcements on rare occasions when it is necessary to do so.
For instance, if Vocabulary.com is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send you an email.</p>
<p>Generally, you may not opt-out of these communications, which are not promotional in nature.</p> Weekly Update Emails <p>If you have registered for Vocabulary.com, we may send you a periodic email that includes a personalized vocabulary question, and information about new content on Vocabulary.com.
If you have registered for Vocabulary.com and identified yourself as an educator, we may send you a personalized email that describes your students’ use of Vocabulary.com.
You may opt out of these emails.
(Please see "Choice and Opt-out")</p> Other Emails <p>You may opt in to receive other emails, such as comment notifications or emails when new material comes out on the blog.
You may opt out of these emails.
(Please see "Choice and Opt-out")</p> Special Offers and Updates <p>We will occasionally send you information on products, services, special deals, and promotions.
You may opt out of these emails.
(Please see "Choice and Opt-out")</p> Choice and Opt Out <p> We provide you the opportunity to ‘opt-out’ of having your Personal Information used for certain purposes, when we ask for this information.
For example, if you no longer wish to receive certain communications from us, you may opt-out of receiving them by either changing the email preferences section of the My Account section, or through clicking on the provided link on any communication that we send.
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<p> If you would like to opt out or change the behavior of display advertising based on information collected by Google Analytics, follow this link to customize Google Display Network ads.
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<p> If you would like to opt out of Google Analytics, follow this link.
</p> Changes to this Privacy Statement <p>If we decide to change our privacy practices, we will modify this Privacy Policy so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.</p>
<p>We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, so please review it frequently.</p> Contact Us <p> If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices in general, please contact us through this form.
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