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At VerifyEd Ltd we take your privacy seriously and we are committed to protecting it.
This Privacy Notice explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how this information is used, and the conditions under which it may be disclosed to others and how it is kept secure. This Notice applies to all of the products, services and sites (including via the web and mobile applications) (together the “Services”) offered by VerifyEd Ltd.
This Notice may change from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes.
VerifyEd Ltd’s registered office is at Towngate House, 2-8 Parkstone Road, Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom, BH15 2PW and our registration number is 12034346.
Unless otherwise stated in this Notice, VerifyEd Ltd is the data ‘controller’ in relation to the processing activities described below. Being a data controller means we decide why and how your personal information is processed. If we are not acting as data controller, we would be acting as data processor, which means we collect and hold your personal information either on your behalf, or on behalf of a third party as described in 2 c) below
When you use our Services, the categories of information that we may collect about you are as follows:
a) Personal information you give to us: This is information about you that you give to us by entering information via our sites, mobile applications, social media platforms and corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. This includes information provided at the time of signing up for a VerifyEd account, subscribing to the services we provide through our site, requesting further services, managing your account online (including accessing documentation and engaging in correspondence with us by phone, email or otherwise). We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our sites or services. If you complete any surveys, we will collect information in such circumstances as well. The information you give us may include your name, address, email address, phone number, payment details, enquiry details, details of your awarding body, institution and/or employer, your role at the relevant institution, your professor or teacher, your course subject, and records of any correspondence and responses to any surveys. When you post material about yourself in your profile, this personal information is processed by us as data processor on your behalf.
b) Personal information we collect about you: We may automatically collect the following information:
i. Details of transactions you carry out through our sites and the content that you have purchased or accessed;
ii. Details of your visits to our sites, including, but not limited to, traffic data, clickstream to, through and from the website, page response times, download errors, length of visits, page interaction, methods used to browse away from the page, location data (where enabled), web logs, some activity such as the actions you perform in the product (e.g. registering interest in a feature) through Mixpanel, other communication data, and the resources you access;
iii. Technical information, including, but not limited to, anonymous data collected by the hosting server for statistical purposes, the device IMEI, the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer or device to the Internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; and
iv. Personal information that you allow to be shared that is part of your public profile or third party social network.
c) Personal information we may receive from other sources: We may obtain certain personal information about you from sources outside our business which may include third party companies or affiliates, including universities, schools, organisations working with universities and schools, official student funding bodies, awarding bodies, professional associations, and recruitment agencies. We offer some of our Services on or through other websites and the personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent to us in order to deliver the Service. The personal information we receive from third party sources, such as your professional body, university, or school or any organisation working with your institution, may include your name, email address, the course you are enrolled on and the names of the modules/courses you are studying, the module leader or teacher and other relevant information that the institution, university or school may send to us.
The purposes for which we use your information and the legal basis under data protection laws on which we rely to do this are as follows:
a) We may use and process your personal information where you have consented for us to do so for the purpose of contacting you via email, and/or push notification with marketing information about our products and services. You may withdraw your consent for us to use your information in any of these ways at any time. Please contact us at hello@verifyed.io to do so.
b) We may use and process your personal information where it is necessary to fulfil our agreement with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into such an agreement. This will include information that we process in order to enable you to make use of our Services, including processing orders submitted on our sites and managing your VerifyEd account in accordance with the terms and conditions applying to your use of the Services.
c) We may use and process your personal information where it is necessary for us to pursue our legitimate interests as a business for the following purposes:
i. Where we have an agreement in place with your professional body, university or school to collect certain information about your use of our Services and sharing information with them on your engagement with certificates on our sites paid for or provided by your professional body, university or school – they will use this for their own statistical and analysis purposes.
ii. For marketing activities (other than where we rely on your consent to contact you with information about our products and services or share your details with third parties to do the same);
iii. For analysis to inform our product development and marketing strategy, and to enhance and personalise your user experience (including to improve our Services and the recommendations we make to you through our communications with you, on our sites and through our applications);
iv. To assess and improve our Services to users through recordings of any calls with our contact centres;
v. To verify the accuracy of data that we hold about you and create a better understanding of you as a user;
vi. For network and information security in order for us to take steps to protect your information against loss or damage, theft or unauthorised access;
vii. To comply with a request from you in connection with the exercise of your rights (for example where you have asked us not to contact you for marketing purposes, we will keep a record of this on our suppression lists in order to be able to comply with your request);
viii. To correspond or communicate with you;
ix. For prevention of fraud and other criminal activities and to prevent, investigate and pursue suspected or actual infringements of publisher copyright and other intellectual property rights accessible on our site;
x. For the management of queries, complaints, or claims; and
xi. For the establishment and defence of our legal rights.
d) We will use your personal information to comply with our legal obligations: (i) owed to any public authority or criminal investigation body; (ii) to identify you when you contact us; and (iii) to verify the accuracy of data we hold about you.
We will share your personal information in the following ways:
a) Your professional body, university, or school and/or organisations that work with them: where your professional body, university or school has set up a VerifyEd account in your name, we receive information about the course and modules you are enrolled on and we will use that information to set up your VerifyEd account. We also receive other information as described earlier in this Notice. We send your professional body, university or school data about their learners’ interaction with the certificates that they have provided to you through our sites; this information may include data on assessments and tests you have taken.
b) Our suppliers and service providers: we may disclose your information to our third-party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other organisations for the purposes of providing services to us or directly to you on our behalf. Such third parties may include cloud service providers (such as hosting and email management), IT maintenance providers, and administrative service providers. When we use third-party service providers, we only disclose to them any personal information that is necessary for them to provide their service and we have a contract in place that adheres to our agreed requirements.
c) Credit/debit card payment processors: when you purchase any products or services online, your credit/debit card payment is processed by a third-party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us using the details at the end of this policy.
d) User satisfaction surveys: as user satisfaction is important to us, we may ask a third-party research company to contact you for the sole purpose of gathering general information and specific information relating to us and our products and services.
e) Other ways we may share your personal information: we may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation. We may also transfer your personal information if we’re under a duty to disclose or share it in order to comply with any legal obligation, to detect or report a crime, to enforce or apply the terms of our contracts or to protect the rights, property or safety of our visitors, users and third-party licensees (including publishers we work with). However, we will always take steps with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected.
f) For network and information security in order for us to take steps to protect your information against loss or damage, theft or unauthorised access;
g) To comply with a request from you in connection with the exercise of your rights (for example where you have asked us not to contact you for marketing purposes, we will keep a record of this on our suppression lists in order to be able to comply with your request).
All information you provide to us is stored on our own and our third-party hosting providers’ secure servers which are located within the European Economic Area (EEA).
Third parties acting on our behalf are located within the EEA.
If you use our services whilst you are outside the EEA, your information may be transferred and/or stored outside the EEA in order for you to receive those services, but this not a transfer controlled by us.
If we collect your personal information, the length of time we retain it is determined by a number of factors, including the purpose for which we use that information and our obligations under applicable laws. We do not retain personal information in an identifiable format for longer than is necessary.
We may need your personal information to establish, bring or defend legal claims. For this purpose, we will always retain your personal information for 7 years after the date you cease to use our Services (which is from the date at which your account becomes inactive or the date on which you ask us to delete your account). The only exceptions to this are where:
a) the law requires us to hold your personal information for a longer period, or delete it sooner;
b) you exercise your right to have the information erased (where it applies) and we do not need to hold it in connection with any of the reasons permitted or required under the law; and
c) in limited cases, the law permits us to keep your personal information indefinitely provided we put certain protections in place.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted to our sites and any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your personal information, we put in place reasonable and appropriate controls to ensure that it remains secure against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, or unauthorised access.
Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access your VerifyEd account, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.
Our sites may contain links to other sites run by other organisations. This notice does not apply to those other websites and apps‚ so we encourage you to read their privacy statements. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites and apps even if you access them using links that we provide. In addition, if you linked to our sites from a third party website, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party website and recommend that you check the policy of that third party website.
Cookies are unique identifiers that we transfer to your device to enable our systems to recognize your device and to provide some of our services. We also use cookies (including Google Analytics cookies) to obtain an overall view of visitor habits and visitor volumes to our sites.
The Help feature on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. Because cookies allow you to take advantage of some of our Services essential features, we recommend that you leave them turned on. Please see our Cookies Declaration for further information on the cookies that we use.
We may collect your preferences to receive marketing information directly from us by email and/or push notification in the following ways:
a) if you register for a VerifyEd account, we will ask you if you would like to provide your consent to receive marketing information directly from us; or
b) if you place an order we may contact you with marketing information in relation to similar products and services, except where you indicate you would prefer otherwise.
We may contact you with marketing information by post or by telephone or with targeted advertising delivered online through social media and platforms operated by other companies by using your personal information or use your personal information to tailor marketing to improve its relevance to you unless you object.
If you do not complete an order and have not indicated that you would prefer otherwise, we may send a reminder to you about your incomplete order or ask why you did not complete the order so that we may better refine the service we offer.
From time to time, we may ask you to refresh your marketing preferences by asking you to confirm that you consent to continue receiving marketing information from us.
You have the right to opt-out of our use of your personal information to provide marketing to you in any of the ways mentioned above. Please contact us at hello@verifyed.io to do so.
You have a number of rights in relation to your personal information under data protection law. In relation to certain rights, we may ask you for information to confirm your identity and, where applicable, to help us to search for your personal information. Except in rare cases, we will respond to you within one month from either (i) the date that we have confirmed your identity or (ii) where we do not need to do this because we already have this information, from the date we received your request.
a) To be informed about the processing of your information. This is what this Notice sets out to do.
b) Accessing your personal information. You have the right to ask for a copy of the information that we hold about you by emailing or writing to us at the address at the end of this Notice. We may not provide you with a copy of your personal information if this concerns other individuals or we have another lawful reason to withhold that information.
c) Correcting and updating your personal information. The accuracy of your information is important to us and we are working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change your name or address/email address, or you discover that any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please let us know by contacting us on any of the details described at the end of this Notice.
d) Withdrawing your consent. Where we rely on your consent as the legal basis for processing your personal information, as set out in this Notice, you may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us using the details at the end of this Notice or, for marketing communications, you can use our unsubscribe tool in the relevant communication or in your account settings. If you withdraw your consent, our use of your personal information before you withdraw is still lawful.
e) Objecting to our use of your personal information and automated decisions made about you. Where we rely on our legitimate interests as the legal basis for processing your personal information for any purposes, as set out in this Notice, you may object to us using your information for these purposes by emailing or writing to us at the address at the end of this Notice. If we agree that your objection is justified in accordance with your rights under data protection laws, we will permanently stop using your data for those purposes. Otherwise, we will provide you with our justification as to why we need to continue using your data. You may object to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes and we will automatically comply with your request. If you would like to do so, please use our unsubscribe tool, if applicable. You may also contest a decision made about you based on automated processing by emailing or writing to us at the address at the end of this Notice.
f) Erasing your personal information or restricting its processing. In certain circumstances, you may ask for your personal information to be removed from our systems by emailing or writing to us at the address at the end of this Notice. Provided we do not have any continuing lawful reason to continue processing or holding your personal information, we will make reasonable efforts to comply with your request. You may also ask us to restrict processing your personal information where you believe it is unlawful for us to do so, you have objected to its use and our investigation is pending or you require us to keep it in connection with legal proceedings. We may only process your personal information whilst its processing is restricted if we have your consent or are legally permitted to do so, for example for storage purposes, to protect the rights of another individual or company or in connection with legal proceedings. If you request to publish personally identifiable data on associated Blockchain transactions, such records are unchangeable and your acceptance to do so within the user journey will require your active opt-in and confirmation of the permanent nature of doing so.
g) Transferring your personal information in a structured data file. Where we rely on your consent as the legal basis for processing your personal information or need to process it in connection with an agreement we have with you, you may ask us to provide you with a copy of that information in a structured data file. We will provide this to you electronically in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable form, such as a CSV file.
h) You can ask us to send your personal information directly to another service provider, and we will do so if this is technically possible. We may not provide you with a copy of your personal information if this concerns other individuals or we have another lawful reason to withhold that information.
i) Complaining to the UK data protection regulator. If you have concerns about the way we have handled your personal information, we encourage you to contact us and we will seek to resolve any issues or concerns you may have. You will find our contact details at the end of this Notice. You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are concerned about the way we have processed your personal information. Please visit the ICO’s website for further details.
We may review this Notice from time to time and any changes will be notified to you by posting an updated version on our sites and/or by contacting you by email. Any changes will take effect 7 days after the date of our email or the date on which we post the modified Notice on our sites, whichever is the earlier. We recommend you regularly check for changes and review this Notice whenever you visit our sites. If you do not agree with any aspect of the updated Notice you must immediately notify us and cease using our sites and/or services.
Please direct any queries about this Notice or about the way we process your personal information to our Data Protection Champion using the contact details below.
If you wish to write to us, please write to VerifyEd Ltd, Towngate House, 2-8 Parkstone Road, Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom, BH15 2PW. Our email address for data protection queries is hello@verifyed.io.
This Privacy Notice was last updated on 1 June 2021.
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