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Britannica Education Privacy Policy
Updated Effective December 26, 2022
Please know, our data collection practices have not changed, just the way we describe them to you.
In this updated Privacy Policy, we have tried to make it easier for you to understand your rights.
Table of Contents
EU Representative and Data Protection Officer
Information that You Provide to Us
How We Use Information that You Provide to Us
Purposes of Processing the Information that You Provide to Us
Links to Other Websites
Information Collected Automatically-Opt Out & Cookie Policy
Children’s Privacy & Student Data
Security of Your Information
Data Storage and Retention
Consent to Processing and Transfer of Information about You
Correcting, Updating, or Removing Personal Information; Account Deletion
Your California Privacy Rights
EU Data Subject Rights
Copyright
Business Transfers
Acceptance of Privacy Policy Terms and Conditions
Questions, Comments or Complaints
Introduction
Your privacy is important to us. We understand that you are aware of and care about your own personal privacy interests, and we take that seriously. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. (Britannica) provides this Britannica Education Privacy Policy to describe our and certain of our subsidiaries’ policies and practices regarding the collection and use of your personal data through our Britannica Education websites, mobile applications or online services that link to this Privacy Policy (and any software provided on or in connection with these Britannica services) (collectively, the Services, and each a Service), and sets forth your privacy rights. In connection with the Britannica Education Services:
- We only collect such personal information or student data that is necessary to provide the subscribed-to Services to our institutional customers and their authorized users.
- We only use student data for the educational purposes for which it was collected.
- We only share personal information and student data with third-party vendors who help us operate and support the Services.
- The Services do not contain any third-party advertising or targeted advertising.
We recognize that information privacy is an ongoing responsibility, and so we may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to our personal data practices or our business. If we make any material changes to this Privacy Policy that impact your privacy rights, we will notify you by email (sent to the email address in your account) and by a notice on the Services prior to the effective date of such changes with an opportunity for you to review the same, unless otherwise required by applicable law. This Privacy Policy replaces our former privacy policy dated February 14, 2020. You can request a copy of our former privacy policy by sending an email to [email protected].
EU Representative and Data Protection Officer
Britannica is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois USA. Britannica has appointed an EU representative and data protection officer for you to contact if you have any questions or concerns about Britannica’s personal data policies or practices.
Our EU representative’s name and contact information are:
Unity Wharf, 13 Mill Street
London SE1 2BH UNITED KINGDOM
[email protected]
Our data protection officer’s name and contact information are:
Encyclopaedia Britannica Data Protection Officer
325 N. LaSalle Street, Suite 200
Chicago, IL USA 60654
[email protected]
Information that You Provide to Us
Britannica protects the identity of visitors to the Services by limiting the collection of personal information. Personal information provided by you to us will not be posted or published by us, and will be shared with third parties only as provided herein. You can enjoy many of our Services and their special features without giving us your personal information.
Please see Children’s Privacy & Student Data below for specific information about children’s privacy and our Services.
Subscription Services
When you or an institution on your behalf subscribes to one of our subscription-based, advertisement-free Britannica Education Services, such as Britannica School, Britannica ImageQuest or Britannica LaunchPacks (among others), we may collect information about you (in accordance with applicable data protection and child privacy laws), when you submit it voluntarily. Categories of information we collect include: (1) identity data, which includes your name, email address or other similar identifiers; (2) contact data, which includes postal or physical address, email address or telephone number; and (3) financial data, which includes credit card and other payment information.
In addition, we may also collect certain other types of information that, along with identity data, contact data and financial data, may be considered personal information in certain jurisdictions, such as: (1) technical data, which includes general and precise location information, your internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider, referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our Services, search terms, type of device, device or advertising identifiers, statistical identifiers, operating system, and date/time stamp; (2) usage data, which includes your interaction with our Services, such as movement; and (3) marketing and communications data, which includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us.
Provision of your personal information is voluntary. However, when we need to collect your personal information in accordance with applicable law or under the terms of a contract and you fail to provide that information, we may not be able to provide you with access to our Services.
Subscribers may edit their information at any time to change, add or remove certain personal information by sending a request to [email protected]. We process your personal information to administer and manage your subscription, deliver subscriber benefits to you, inform you of prizes and other benefits or opportunities associated with your subscription and respond to your information requests. We may also use this information for legitimate business purposes that help us analyze the demographic of our subscribers and understand our users’ needs and interests to better tailor our products and services to meet user needs and deliver additional services to our users.
Promotions and other special features
For certain promotions and to access certain features available throughout our Services, we collect information voluntarily submitted by you to us to deliver the requested feature (such as ‘My Britannica’) that may include (but not be limited to) your name, email address, city, state and age. You may edit this information at any time to change, add or remove it from our Services by sending a request to [email protected]. We process your personal information to deliver the requested feature to you and to inform you of other benefits or opportunities associated with our Services. We may also use this information for legitimate business purposes that help us understand our users’ needs and interests to better tailor our products and services to meet your needs.
Payment card information
You may choose to purchase goods or services from Britannica using a payment card. Typically, payment card information is provided directly by a User, via the Services, into the PCI/DSS-compliant payment processing service to which Britannica subscribes, and Britannica does not, itself, process or store your card information.
How We Use Information that You Provide to Us
Subscriber Communications
As a benefit of membership, Britannica subscribers may receive the following communications from us:- Communications related to subscription maintenance activities. These communications may include, without limitation, notices regarding material changes to Britannica Service policies, service updates, service enhancements, and account management procedures. Since these communications are necessary to ensure Britannica provides its subscribers with the highest quality of services, our subscribers are not permitted to opt out from receipt of these communications.
- Newsletter Communications. As a benefit of a Britannica subscription, we may send Britannica subscribers our exclusive Britannica newsletters. To unsubscribe to a newsletter, a User can either (i) follow the instructions at the bottom of any newsletter or (ii) send an email to [email protected].
- Communications containing information about Britannica products and services. We may send promotional emails and other outbound communications to Britannica site subscribers regarding products and services from Britannica. Any Britannica site subscriber that does not wish to receive such product and service communications can choose to remove his or her contact information from our contact list at any time by (i) following the instructions at the bottom of any promotional email or (ii) sending an email to [email protected].
Authorized service providers
For legitimate business interests, we may share your personal information with third-party service providers that perform certain services on our behalf, such as processing credit card payments, providing cloud storage solutions, performing business and sales analysis, and supporting our Services’ functionality.Surveys
We may occasionally conduct on-line surveys. All surveys are voluntary and you may decline to participate.Law enforcement
We also may disclose your information: In response to a subpoena or as otherwise required by law. When we believe disclosure is appropriate in connection with efforts to investigate, prevent, or take other action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud or other wrongdoing; to protect and defend the rights, property or safety of Britannica, our Users, our employees, or others; to comply with applicable law or cooperate with law enforcement; or to enforce our Service Terms and Conditions or other agreements or policies.Purposes of Processing the Information That You Provide to Us
As explained above, Britannica processes your data to provide you with the subscribed-to Services. Sometimes we use third-party service providers to facilitate the delivery of the services described above, and these third-party service providers may be supplied with or have access to your personal information for the sole purpose of providing services to you on our behalf.
We also use your data for legitimate business purposes that enable us to refine our products and services to better tailor them to your needs and communicate with you about other products and services offered by Britannica. In addition, we may disclose your personal information in special legal circumstances. For instance, such information may be used where it is necessary to protect our copyright or intellectual property rights, or if the law requires us to do so.
You can update your personal information and change your marketing preferences at any time by sending an email to [email protected].
Links to Other Websites
This Privacy Policy only governs information collected on the Britannica Education Services by Britannica. The Services also contain links to websites or content operated and maintained by third parties, over which we have no control. We encourage you to review the privacy policy of a third-party website before disclosing any personal information to the website. Do not supply Personal Information to these sites unless you have verified their security and privacy policies.
Information Collected Automatically-Opt Out & Cookie Policy
Britannica Activities & Opting Out
Like other commercial websites, Britannica and our authorized third-party service providers may use cookies (small files transferred from a website to its visitors’ hard drives or browsers for record-keeping purposes), including essential, functional and analytical cookies, and other similar information gathering technologies throughout our Services to collect certain information automatically and store it in log files for a variety of legitimate business interests and purposes. This information may include (but is not limited to) internet protocol (IP) addresses, mobile device identifiers, the region or general location where your computer or device is accessing the internet, browser type, operating system and other usage information about your use of our Services, including a history of the pages you view.
Web beacons, tags and scripts may be used on our Services or in email or other electronic communications we send to you. These assist us in delivering cookies, counting visits to our Websites, understanding usage and campaign effectiveness and determining whether an email has been opened and acted upon. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by our third-party service providers on an individual and aggregated basis.
Britannica and its authorized third-party Service providers may use cookies, beacons and other similar technologies on our Services for legitimate business interests that enable us to allow you to navigate our websites, use our Services and access secure areas of our Services. We also use these technologies for statistical purposes and to analyze and improve the use of our Services and prepare aggregated usage reports.
We may also use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website, analyze trends, track visitor movements, and gather broad demographic information that assists us in identifying visitor preferences.
You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Services. For more information about cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org.
Analytics & usage data
For our legitimate business interests, we may process your personal information for analytic purposes on all of our Services as described in this section.
Together with Google Analytics, we use cookies and software logs to monitor the use of the Services and to gather non-personal information about visitors to the Services. These monitoring systems allow us to track general information about our visitors, such as the type of browsers (for example, Firefox or Internet Explorer), the operating systems (for instance, Windows or Macintosh), or the Internet providers (for instance, Comcast) they use. This information is used for statistical and market research purposes to tailor content to usage patterns and to provide services requested by our customers.
We also have implemented Google Analytics Demographics and Interest reporting, which is a Google Analytics Advertiser feature. This tool uses cookies to collect and store standard Internet log and visitor information on our behalf, including information about what pages you visit, how long you are on the Services, how you got here, and what you click on during your visit. This Google Analytics data is not tied to personal information, so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. We use the data provided by Google Analytics Demographics and Interest reports to develop our services and content around our User demographics, interests, and behavior on our Services. You can opt out of this Google Analytics Advertiser feature using the Ads Settings located at https://www.google.com/settings/ads. In addition, you can use the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on to disable tracking by Google Analytics. To delete these cookies, please see your browser’s privacy settings or follow the above instructions.
Children’s Privacy & Student Data
A note to minors: If you are under the age of 16, please get permission from your parent/legal guardian or school before using the Services. If we discover that we have collected any personal information from a child under the age of 16 without the proper consent required by law, we will suspend the associated account or remove that information from our database as soon as possible.
Britannica does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from or about children under 16, except as permitted by law, contract or otherwise provided herein. If we discover we have received any personal information from a child under 16 in violation of this policy, we will delete that information immediately. If you believe Britannica has any personal information from or about anyone under 16, please contact us at [email protected].
Student Data
If you are a student with access to our Services through an Institutional Subscription License Agreement between your academic institution and us, your student service data is processed in a way that is COPPA- and FERPA-compliant. As you use the Services, you will enter student data or interact with student data that has already been entered. Under the terms of our contracts with academic institutions, we agree to act as a “School Official” as defined by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), meaning that we:
- Perform an institutional service or function for which the school or district would otherwise use its own employees;
- Have been determined to meet the criteria set forth in the school’s or district’s annual notification of FERPA rights for being a School Official with a legitimate educational interest in the education records;
- Are under the direct control of the school or district regarding the use and maintenance of education records; and
- Use education records only for authorized purposes and will not re-disclose from education records to other parties (unless we have specific authorization from the school or district to do so and it is otherwise permitted by FERPA).
However, FERPA requires limitations on disclosure of those records and implementation of appropriate security measures to protect those records. To help your school district comply with FERPA, we have adopted certain practices, and require that educators using this site fulfill certain responsibilities to safeguard student data.
The following statement explains our practices and your responsibilities regarding the student data processed by Britannica in connection with subscribed-to Services.
Student Data Security & Confidentiality Statement
Purposes of Data Entry
You control what student data is entered on this site and you always retain ownership of the student data. Student data entered on this site should be limited to information that is relevant to the legitimate educational purpose of improving student performance. We will not ask you to enter, and you are instructed not to enter, data about students that is not relevant to this legitimate educational purpose.
Therefore, only a minimum amount of personally identifiable student data required for the setup of the subscribed-to Service’s system is requested. Additional data, not specific to the student, may also be required to complete the subscribed-to Service’s system setup, including the teacher’s first and last name, class name, grade level, and school name.
Use, Disclosure, and Storage
We will use the student data to provide the subscribed-to Services to your academic institution. We will not keep the student data after you or the school district instructs us to delete it.
We will only disclose student data to authorized employees or representatives of the school institution and will not knowingly disclose the student data to any third person without express written authorization. When, at the request of the school institution, we acquire assessment or other information, including personally identifiable student data, from a third-party source we treat that information with the same confidentiality and security safeguards as though it were provided directly by the school institution. Additional agreements may be required by the third party to authorize transmission of data to us.
Your academic institution may from time-to-time request that we provide student data to third parties of its choosing. We will do so with written authorization, which acknowledges that we are providing that data as the requesting institution’s agent and that once the data is received by the third party, we no longer have any control over the use or disposition of the data.
We may also use aggregated data in our research, product development, and marketing. That aggregated, non-personally identifiable data (e.g., summary or statistical data) may be shared with third parties. However, we do not use personal information or student data to market any products or services directly to students or their parents.
If we wish, from time to time, to release aggregated data that identifies a school or school district by name, we will enter into a separate agreement with the institution to authorize release and publication.
Britannica uses third-party vendors to help us provide the Services. For example, Amazon Web Services provides our cloud hosting facilities. These vendors can only use your personal information or student data to provide the contracted services, not for their own commercial purposes, and are subject to written security, confidentiality and non-disclosure obligations. If you are a Britannica institutional customer or user and would like more information on the vendors used to help provide the Services to you, please send an email to [email protected] requesting more information. We do not subcontract the provision of the Services to, or share your personal information or student data with, any other third parties.
Security of Your Information
Britannica is committed to keeping your personal information and student data safe and secure. Any personal information collected through the Services is stored on limited-access servers. We maintain a comprehensive information security program and seek to use commercially reasonable organizational, physical, technical and administrative safeguards to protect these servers and the information they store from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, loss or modification. Our security measures include (among others): encryption of data; security controls that protect the entirety of Britannica’s IT infrastructure from external attack and unauthorized access; and internal policies setting out our data security approach and training for employees, including a Data Breach Notification Policy. We update and test our security technology on an ongoing basis. We strive to restrict access to your personal information to those employees who need to know that information to provide benefits or services to you. In addition, we strive to ensure that all our employees are aware of the importance of confidentiality and maintaining the privacy and security of your information.
If there is an unauthorized disclosure of personal information or student data in Britannica’s possession or control, we will take steps in accordance with our written Incident Response Policy to investigate and mitigate the impact of the breach and notify affected institutional customers in the manner required by applicable laws or our contracts with the affected institutional customers. In addition, we will cooperate with our institutional customers in notifying affected students or their parents/legal guardians and in taking any other legally required actions.
Data Storage and Retention
Your personal information and student data is stored by us using Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage solutions in the AWS Cloud – U.S. East (N. Virginia) Region, with backups in the AWS Cloud – Asia Pacific (Singapore) Region and Brazil (Sao Paulo) Region. We retain your information for the duration of your business relationship with us and as long as necessary to permit us to use it for the legitimate business purposes that we have communicated to you and comply with applicable law or regulations. For more information on where and how long your personal data is stored, and for more information on your rights of erasure and portability, please contact the Britannica’s data protection officer at [email protected].
Consent to Processing and Transfer of Information about You
Britannica’s headquarters are in the United States. Information we collect from you will be processed in the United States and may be stored, transferred to, and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage third-party service providers. These countries may be outside your country of residence, including the United States, and may have different data protection laws than your country.
If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), Britannica collects and transfers personal data out of the EEA only: with your consent; to perform a contract with you; or to fulfill a compelling legitimate interest of Britannica in a manner that does not outweigh your rights and freedoms. Britannica endeavors to apply suitable safeguards to protect the privacy and security of your personal data and to use it only consistent with your relationship with us and the practices described in this Privacy Policy.
Correcting, Updating, or Removing Personal Information; Account Deletion
Users may opt out of certain Services or correct, update, or remove certain personal information that Britannica has collected about them through any of the means listed below. Please be sure to include the following information in your correspondence:
Your first and last name
Your mailing address (street, city, state, zip code, and country)
The name of the Britannica Service to which the request applies
Email us at:
[email protected]Call us at:
(800) 323-1229 (within the United States), or(312) 347-7159 (outside the United States)
Monday – Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (U.S. Central Time).
Write us at:
Britannica Customer Service, Attn: Removal from Mailing List325 North LaSalle Street, Suite 200
Chicago, IL 60654-2682
Please allow up to six (6) weeks for mailed-in or faxed opt-out requests to be processed.
Account Deletion:
If you no longer wish to have a registered account, you may terminate your account by sending an email to [email protected]. Because of the way we maintain the Britannica Services, such deletion may not be immediate, and residual copies of your profile information or posts may remain on backup media for up to ninety (90) days.
Your California Privacy Rights
If you are a California resident, you are entitled to prevent sharing of your personal information with third parties for their own marketing purposes through a cost-free means. If you send a request to the address above, Britannica will provide you with a California Customer Choice Notice that you may use to opt-out of such information sharing. To receive this notice, submit a written request to [email protected], specifying that you seek your “California Customer Choice Notice.” Please allow at least thirty (30) days for a response.
EU Data Subject Rights
The EU GDPR and other countries’ privacy laws provide certain rights for data subjects. A good explanation of them (in English) is available on the website of the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office.
If you wish to confirm that Britannica is processing your personal data, or to have access to the personal data Britannica may have about you, please contact us at [email protected].
Copyright
All of the content on the Services is copyrighted by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Incorporated, 354 N. LaSalle St., Suite 200, Chicago, Illinois 60654, or its licensors, and it cannot be redistributed or used for commercial purposes. More detailed information about Britannica’s copyrights and trademarks is available on our Copyright Notice page.