Apperson, Inc. (“Apperson”), as a company dedicated to providing schools and youth-serving organizations with educational services, understands that privacy and data security are vital concerns to schools, youth-serving organizations, teachers, parents and students. Apperson shares these concerns. We are committed to protecting your personal information and satisfying the spirit as well as the letter of all applicable legal requirements through our compliance with this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy describes, in plain English:

  1. The types of information we collect when you visit the Apperson website or subscribe to or otherwise use the Apperson services, both free and paid (collectively, our “Services”).
  2. Our practices for using, maintaining, protecting and disclosing the information collected.
  3. How our Privacy Policy complies with our legal obligations regarding information we collect and how we help ensure that schools and teachers meet their legal obligations to parents and students (see How Do We Comply with Legal Obligations? below).

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will handle it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use our Services. By accessing or using our Services, you agree to this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy may change from time to time, as described in How May We Change Our Privacy Policy? below. Your continued use of our Services after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check this Privacy Policy periodically for updates.

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Services. This information includes the following:

Information You Provide Directly to Us. The information we collect on or through our Services may include the following:

  • If you are a school or program administrator or teacher, information you provide when you complete our online forms and register for our Services. This information includes the name of your school, your name and email address, and the student ID numbers and demographic information of students who will be registered to use the Services, and may also include your phone number and physical address. If you are subscribing to fee-paid Services, we will also collect credit card and other billing/payment information.
  • Records and copies of your correspondence, including email address, if you contact us for any reason.
  • Details of any transactions you carry out through our Services and the fulfillment of your orders for our Services.

Information You Provide Via the Services. Depending upon the particular Services you subscribe to, the Service may allow you to post online assignments, assessments, comments and other information, documents, videos and links (collectively, “User Content”). Students may be granted authorization to post certain types of User Content directly, such as self-assessments and responses to teacher assignments.

Information We Collect Automatically. As you navigate through and interact with our Services, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions and usage patterns, including:

  • Details of your visits to our Services, including the resources that you access and use on the Services.
  • Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system and browser type.
  • Responses to our email communications to you.

We also may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services, known as behavioral tracking. See below for information on how you can opt out of behavioral tracking on this website and how we respond to web browser signals and other mechanisms that enable consumers to exercise choice about behavioral tracking.

The information we collect automatically is statistical data. This data helps us to improve our Services and to deliver better and more personalized features to you, including by enabling us to:

  • Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
  • Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Services according to your individual interests.
  • Speed up your searches.
  • Recognize you when you return to our Services.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection include browser cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting, you may be unable to access certain parts of our Services. Unless you have adjusted your browser settings so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Services.

How Do We Use Your Information?

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:

  • To present our Services and their contents to you.
  • To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us.
  • To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide your information.
  • To provide you with notices about your account, including expiration and renewal notices.
  • To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any agreements entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection.
  • To notify you about changes to our Services or any additional products or services we offer or provide.
  • To allow you to participate in interactive features on our Services.
  • For the purpose of aggregated statistical analysis of how you and others use our Services, unless prohibited by the terms of our license agreement with you.
  • For any other purpose with your consent.

We may also use information we collect to contact schools and teachers – but never students – about our own and third parties’ goods and services that we believe may be of interest. If you do not want us to use your information in this way, please send us an email at [email protected]. For more information, see What Are Your Choices About How We Use and Share Your Information? below.

We will not use or share student personal information for purposes of creating a personal profile of a student, other than for purposes of providing the Services or with the consent of the student or the student’s parent (as authorized by law).

We will not access your User Content except for purposes of:

  • Providing requested diagnostic reports and other statistical feedback;
  • Maintaining, providing and improving the Services;
  • As reasonably necessary to provide requested technical support;
  • As required (in Apperson’s sole discretion) to meet any legal or regulatory obligations, including cooperation with law enforcement agencies.

In all other cases, Apperson will request your explicit permission to access or use any of your User Content.

How Is Your Information Shared?

We may disclose aggregated information about users of our Services, and information that does not identify any individual, unless prohibited by the terms of our license agreement with you.

We may disclose personal information that we collect or that you provide as described in this Privacy Policy:

  • To contractors, service providers and other third parties we use to support our business and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
  • To a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution or other sale or transfer of some or all of Apperson’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of a bankruptcy, liquidation or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Apperson about our users is among the assets transferred, provided the buyer or other successor is subject to the same commitments to protect the collected information as is Apperson.
  • To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it.
  • With your consent, including pursuant to the terms of any agreement between us.

We may also disclose personal information:

  • To comply with any court order, law or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.
  • To enforce our agreements, including for billing and collection purposes.
  • If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Apperson, our customers or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Other than as described above, we will never provide your information to anyone for any purpose under any circumstances, including for targeted advertising or marketing purposes. See How Do We Comply with Our Legal Obligations? below for additional commitments we make to protect your privacy.

What Are Your Choices About How We Use and Share Your Information?

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the information you provide to us. We have created mechanisms to give you the following controls over your information:

Tracking Technologies and Advertising. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of our Services may be inaccessible or not function properly.

Promotional Offers from Apperson. If you do not wish to have your contact information used by Apperson to promote our products or services, you can opt-out by sending us an email stating your request to [email protected] If we have sent you a promotional email, the email will have an “unsubscribe” feature that will allow you to opt-out of receiving future email distributions. Please note that we do not and will not promote any products or services to students.

How Can You Access and Correct Your Information?

You may edit much of your personal information in your account settings within the Services. For information that cannot be edited by you or an account administrator, the account administrator may send us an e-mail at [email protected] to request access to, correct or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. If you are a teacher or school administrator, we will facilitate your access to and correction of any factually inaccurate student information promptly upon your request.

We cannot delete all of your personal information except by also deleting your user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

If you delete your User Content from the Services, copies of your User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages, or might have been copied or stored by other authorized users of the Services. Except as otherwise agreed with you, we are not responsible or liable for the removal or deletion of (or failure to remove or delete) any of your User Content. Access to and use of information provided via the Services, including User Content, is governed by the terms of our license agreement with you.

How Is Your Information Kept Secure?

We have implemented and maintain a comprehensive security program that is reasonably designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration and disclosure through the use of administrative, technological and physical safeguards. All information you provide to us is stored on secure servers behind firewalls and will be backed up on a regular basis. Any online payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology. We will not store your information, or any information associated with your Apperson account, outside the continental United States without your prior written permission.

Immediately upon becoming aware of any unauthorized disclosure, access, alteration or use of your information or any student information associated with your Apperson account, or of circumstances that could have resulted in unauthorized access to or disclosure or use of such information, we will notify you or the relevant school authorities, as appropriate, fully investigate the incident, and cooperate fully with any investigation of and response to the incident. Except as otherwise required by law, we will not provide notice of the incident directly to other individuals whose Information was involved, regulatory agencies, or other entities without prior written permission from you or the relevant school authorities, as appropriate.

The safety and security of your information also depends on you. We urge you to be careful about giving out information in any public areas of the Services such as the message boards or forums. The information you share in public areas may be viewed by other authorized users of the Services.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our Services. Except as otherwise agreed in our license agreement with you, we are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained within the Services.

How Do We Comply with Our Legal Obligations?

Personal information we collect through the Services may be subject to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and/or the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”). This section of the Privacy Policy describes the steps we take specifically to ensure our and your compliance with these important laws.

COPPA Compliance. COPPA requires that operators of websites and online services that collect the personal information of children under 13 years of age (i) inform parents and legal guardians about their practices for collecting, using and disclosing such personal information and (ii) obtain verifiable consent from parents and legal guardians for doing so. We only collect personal information through the Services from a child under 13 if that student’s school, school district or teacher has agreed to obtain parental consent for that child to use the Services and disclose personal information to us for purposes of providing the Services, or we have directly obtained such parental consent.

If you are a student under 13, please do not send any personal information about yourself to us if your school, school district or teacher has not obtained this prior consent from your parent or guardian, or we have not obtained such consent, and please do not send any personal information other than what we request from you in connection with the Services. If we learn we have collected personal information from a student under 13 without parental consent having been obtained, or if we learn a student under 13 has provided us personal information beyond what we request from him or her, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a student under 13 may have provided us with personal information in violation of this Privacy Policy, please contact us at  [email protected].

FERPA Compliance. FERPA protects personally identifiable information contained in students’ education records from unauthorized disclosure. Consistent with FERPA, we will only use education records, as defined under FERPA, for the purpose of providing agreed services to a school, school district or teacher. We will never share or sell FERPA-protected information, or use it for any other purposes, except as otherwise directed or permitted by the school, school district or teacher. If a parent or eligible student requests access to education records that are hosted on our servers, we will help facilitate such access. Our license agreement with you will describe additional commitments we make to assist you to comply with your FERPA obligations.

How May We Change Our Privacy Policy?

We post any changes we make to our Privacy Policy on this page. If we make material changes regarding how we treat your personal information, we will notify you by e-mail to the e-mail address specified in your account, if you have one. The date the Privacy Policy was last updated is identified at the bottom of this page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date, active and deliverable e-mail address for you and for periodically visiting this Privacy Policy to check for any changes.

What If You Have Questions or Comments?

To ask questions or comment about this Privacy Policy and our privacy practices, you may contact us at  [email protected].

Updated: January 6th, 2020