Last Updated: 11th September, 2023
This Privacy Policy describes how Class Companion, Inc. (“Class Companion,” “us,” “we,” and “our”) handles personal information that we collect through our website, https://classcompanion.com, and the Class Companion platform (collectively, the “Service” or “Services”).
Class Companion respects student data privacy laws. We support schools in complying with FERPA, and we comply with COPPA. For specific questions, please contact privacy@classcompanion.com. If you're an IT Admin, please see our IT Approval Resources.
We promise to collect, use, share, and retain student personal information only for purposes for which we were authorized by the educational institution/agency, teacher or the parent/student. We also promise to:
We handle personal information of our website visitors and users of our platform – which includes both students and teachers. These individuals may provide information about themselves (e.g., teachers and students who sign up to use the platform) as well as about each other (e.g., teachers who provide information about their students).
This information may include:
We and our service providers may automatically log information about you, your computer or mobile device, and your interactions over time with our Services, our communications, and other online services, such as:
We do not rent, sell, or exchange your personal information to any third party. We do not advertise. We do not build personal profiles of students other than for supporting authorized educational/school purposes or as authorized by the parent/student.
We first turn personal information into anonymous data by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to you. Then, we use this de-identify data for research and development purposes. The goal of research and development is to improve our Services. We may further aggregate the de-identified information. We may use de-identified data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes.
We do not rent, sell, or exchange your personal information to any third party. We do not advertise.
Data that you ask us to share. For users who belong to the same educational institution, we share personal information, that you ask us to share, with other authorized users of the Services. For example, teachers can view their own students’ completed assignments and conversations through the AI chatbot.
Approved service providers. We hold approved service providers to the same privacy and security requirements as ourselves. We only share information with third-party companies if it is necessary to deliver our Services (such as cloud hosting, database management, and email delivery). We do not share personally identifiable information with AI service providers. A list of our third-party service providers can be found here.
Government authorities. We may disclose your personal information to law enforcement, government authorities, or private parties in order to comply with the law or a valid legal request.
Business transfers. In the event of an acquisition, merger, or reorganization or sale of assets, or in the event of bankruptcy or dissolution, we may transfer personal information to the new owner. In such a case, we will make reasonable efforts to require the recipient to honor this Privacy Policy. If the recipient changes this Privacy Policy, they will provide the user an opportunity to opt in to the recipient's privacy policy.
Access, update, or delete your account information. You may access or update your personal information in your account by logging in and editing your information or by emailing privacy@classcompanion.com. Parents may inspect and correct information for students. You can request that we delete your account by emailing us at privacy@classcompanion.com. We may retain de-identified data after you delete your account, in order to improve the operation of our Services; this data will not contain your personal information.
Opt out of emails. You may opt out of product update emails by following the opt-out or unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of the email. You may continue to receive critical Service-related emails.
Online tracking opt out. There are a number of ways to limit online tracking, which we have summarized below:
Note that because these opt-out mechanisms are specific to the device or browser on which they are exercised, you will need to opt out on every browser and device that you use.
Do Not Track. Some Internet browsers may be configured to send “Do Not Track” signals to the online services that you visit. We currently do not respond to “Do Not Track” or similar signals. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” please visit https://www.allaboutdnt.com.
We retain your information to deliver our Service, but we do not retain it longer than necessary to support the authorized educational/school purposes, or as authorized by the user.
You can deactivate your account by going to your account settings. When you deactivate an account, you will not be able to access it, there will be no further activity in your account, and other users will no longer see any information connected to your account. For students and teachers, this means your school will no longer be able to access information connected to your account. You may restore the account by contacting privacy@classcompanion.com.
When you deactivate your account, we turn personal information into anonymous data by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to you. We retain this de-identified data to improve our product. You may contact us if you would like your data to be permanently deleted.
In the case of school contracts, the school may request that we deactivate and de-identify accounts, and we will do so, unless there is a regulatory or valid legal need to retain certain information.
Protecting your privacy and security is important to us. We adhere to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. We use strict user access controls, multi-factor authentication, and a combination of technical and procedural safeguards to protect your data. We secure data in transit and at rest using encryption. We have an incident response plan in place and a break notification protocol. Despite these risk mitigation strategies, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable, and we cannot guarantee “perfect security.” Any information you transmit to us you do at your own risk.
Please note that any information you send to us electronically, while using the Services or otherwise interacting with us, may not be secure when it is transmitted to us. We recommend that you do not use unsecure channels to communicate sensitive or confidential information to us.
In accordance with COPPA, we require parental consent for students under the age of 13 (“Child User”). A Child User may use Class Companion only in one of two cases:
If we learn that we have collected personal information through the Services from a Child User without the consent of the parent or guardian, as required by law, we will delete it.
If you use our Service outside of the United States, your data is collected in the country where you are located and then transferred to the United States where our servers are located.
If you are located within the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), or the United Kingdom (UK), you are afforded specific rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the UK GDPR. These rights include the ability to access, rectify, erase, limit the processing of, or oppose the processing of your personal data. Should you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact privacy@classcompanion.com.
Furthermore, as an EU/EEA or UK resident, you possess the right to file a complaint with your local data protection authority regarding our handling of your personal information.
We may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time, in which case we will provide prominent notice to the users and account holders and provide choices before data is used in any manner inconsistent with the original terms. We will not make changes to policies that are inconsistent with our contractual requirements.
Please direct questions or comments about this Policy or our privacy practices to: privacy@classcompanion.com.