Last Update: March 24, 2024

1.Introduction

LinCademy, as a unique gamified online learning marketplace, provides professionals with a comprehensive learning experience that encompasses self-branding, networking, and connection-building alongside skill development.

LinCademy is committed to be transparent regarding the data collected about or from you, so this privacy policy details LinCademy’s policies and procedures on how your data is collected, used and disclosed when you use LinCademy’s services. You will also find information about your privacy rights.

Our Members may provide their personal information for professional purposes such as learning or branding themselves to improve their skills or find economic opportunities. They may do this during building their profiles, posting profile or group updates, taking courses, uploading instructional content for course publishing, or buying our Services. Some contents and information on Our Services are accessible by Visitors.

1.1. Interpretation

The words of which the initial letter is capitalized have meanings defined under the following conditions. The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.

1.2. Definitions

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy:

• Account means a unique account created for You to access our Service or parts of our Service.
• Lincademy Approved Instructor: Members who are allowed to use LinCademy Course Publishing tools to author, publish, sell, and deliver courses to other LinCademy members on a revenue-sharing agreement between them and LinCademy.
• Company (referred to as either “the Company”, “We”, “Us” or “Our” in this Agreement) refers to LinCademy Ltd., London, United Kingdom.
• Cookies are small files that are placed on Your computer, mobile Device, or any other Device by a website, containing the details of Your browsing history on that website among its many uses.
• Device means any device that can access the service such as a computer, a cellphone, or a digital tablet.
• Member refers to the User who access Our Services using an Account registered in Our Website.
• Personal Data is any data that relates to an identified or identifiable individual.
• Service means LinCademy’s services provided on LinCademy website and its mobile Apps.
• Service Provider means any natural or legal person who processes the data on behalf of the Company. It refers to third-party companies or individuals employed by the Company to facilitate the Service, to provide the Service on behalf of the Company, to perform services related to the Service, or to assist the Company in analyzing how the Service is used.
• Usage Data refers to data collected automatically, either generated by the use of the Service  or from the Service infrastructure itself (for example, the duration of a page visit).
• Visitor refers to the User who accesses Our Services without registering an Account.
• Website refers to LinCademy Ltd. , accessible from www.LinCademy.com
• You (Your/Yours) means the individual accessing or using the Service, or the company, or other legal entity on behalf of which such individual is accessing or using the Service, as applicable. It also can be referred to by the “User”.

1.3. Data Controllers and Contracting Parties

LinCademy Ltd. (registered in England and Wales) is the data controller of Your personal data (as a Member of a Visitor) collected by or for, provided to, or processed by or for Us for the purposes covered in this Privacy Policy and its future updates.

This privacy policy, any documents referenced in it and future updates cover collection, use and sharing of the personal data of You as a Member or a Visitor using Our Services.

1.4. Changes to this Privacy Policy

For future improvement to Our services that may include updating current or adding new features, which may affect our ways of collecting data or require collection of new data types, We may update Our Privacy Policy. We will notify You of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.

We will let You know via email and/or a prominent notice on Our Service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the “Last Update” date at the top of this Privacy Policy.

You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective from the “Last Update” date.

2. Data Collected

Our Services allow people to network and communicate for professional purposes. In addition, people can improve their skills by taking learning courses delivered by Instructors (not LinCademy employees) on our Service. Also, people can network and communicate for professional purposes. Not only this, but also professionals can market themselves. These services require a big deal of shared information, messaging, and uploaded or posted content that may be seen by others based on your privacy settings.

You should know that it is not mandatory to provide personal data except for those necessary to identify You and necessary to register Your account, and our Services are designed in a way that respects Your privacy, so you have visibility control choices, which we always respect, for almost every content You post or upload, and You can block Members if You think You don’t want to see their posted content, be visible to them or receive messages from them anymore. It is important to know that the more information You post, share and upload within Our Services and the less visibility restrictions You set, the more benefits You will get from Our Services.

Below You will find more details about personal data that You or others provide to Us or share within Our Services.

2.1. Data You Provide

2.1.1. Registration 

When You register an Account in LinCademy, You provide necessary personal data about You. This data includes certain personally identifiable data that includes email address, first name, and last name. You also provide data related to Your payment information that includes credit or debit card number, 3-digit CVC code and expiration date when You buy any of LinCademy’s services.

• Your Personal Page

Your Personal page on LinCademy has a number of subpages where You can provide more personal information. Information that may be provided in Your Personal is shown as follows:

• Your Profile

Your profile subpage helps You create an online professional image where others can find the information You provided during registration and more organized field sets related to Your education, work, experience, training topics You are interested in, and more.

Only Your first name and last name, that You add during registration, are public. Your nickname is added automatically using a combination from your first and last name plus a number (if your full name exists), and can be modified after signing in.

All the other profile fields have visibility options to control who can see them and are optional to fill out. However, Your complete profile information allows you to achieve maximum benefit from Our Service; the more information You provide the more benefit You can get from Our Services. For example, Your complete profile helps recruiters find You, helps instructors send You relevant offers about training courses you are looking for and helps like-minded Members send You connection requests so that you have quality network.

• Profile Updates

You may choose to post profile updates (posts) which can be started from and posted in Your Activity Subpage of Your Personal Page and from LinCademy Site-wide Activity Feeds. Also, You may choose to add a comment or reply on one of Your or other Members’ profile updates (posts).

• Media Folders

Within Your Personal Page, You have three media subpages Photos (where You can upload and share photos and organize groups of photos or videos in albums) Videos (where You can upload and share videos) and Documents (where You can upload and share Your professional documents).

• Testimonials

For establishing credibility and reliability, You may choose to post a testimonial to or source a testimonial from one of the Members. When this testimonial is posted to that Person’s profile, it will be publicly visible.

2.1.3. Your Groups

LinCademy has three types of groups based on where they are listed – Career Discussions Groups, Promotions Groups (These types are listed in LinCademy Group Directory and in the Member’s Personal Page) and Personal Groups (This type is listed in the Member Personal Page only). Also, LinCademy Groups has three types based on the visibility and joining roles – Public, Private and hidden.

Besides the details of the group (Title and Description), Your group has six other places where You can post or upload information – Group Feed where You can post group updates and comments; Photos, Videos, Albums and Documents where You can upload, share and organize Groups’ media files; and Forum where You can post forum discussion topics or add discussion replies.

2.1.4. Learning and Teaching

When you take LinCademy learning course, You may be required, based on Your course design, to add quiz answers, upload learning related materials such as essays, or leave a course or topic comment, start a forum discussion or post reply.

If You sign up and get approved as an instructor on LinCademy, You will need to upload course assets (Instructional Content) such as videos and learning assessment tools (if applicable). Your course content will be accessed by LinCademy specialized agents for course review before publishing and when you update your content. We may also collect data about Your published courses such as the course name, description, objectives, etc. Please, the Instructor Agreement for more information.

2.1.5. Others

For Service improving purposes, We may ask you to respond to a survey We post or any other form collecting feedback.

2.2. Data Others Provide

Other Members may post content such as posts, comments, testimonials, and videos on Our services which may include data about you. Also, your profile or content you have posted may be reported to Us by other Members for inappropriate profile or content.

2.3. Usage Data

Usage data is collected automatically when using the Service in LinCademy website and LinCademy branded Apps. Usage data may include information such as Your Device’s Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of Our Service that You visit, the time and date of Your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique Device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

When You access Our Service by or through a mobile device, We may collect certain information automatically, including, but not limited to, the type of mobile Device You use, Your mobile Device unique ID, the IP address of Your mobile device, Your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser, unique Device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

In the learning service of LinCademy, We store Your course progress, including, quiz scores, completion status, progress state (where You stopped), the time and date of completion, assignments and essay submissions (if applicable).

Also, for LinCademy Rewarding system, we log information about each event in which You have been rewarded tokens (Linckies).

2.4. Tracking Technologies and Cookies

We use Cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on Our Service and store certain information. Tracking technologies used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze Our Service. For more information about the cookies, we use and your choices regarding cookies, please visit our Cookies Policy.

3. Use of Your Personal Data

Using Your personal data depends on the specific service you use, the way you use this service and the options you change in your Account Settings.

3.1. Network and Communicate

LinCademy helps You, brand yourself, network, communicate and stay connected with other Members. Building a quality professional network of colleagues, likeminded persons, previous classmates who are living in a specific country or working in specific company.

This requires Us to use Your profile information such as Your title, the country You live in, universities you studied in and make these data available for Member directory search. Also, We show Your profile Visitors Your connections and the mutual connections between You and the Member visiting Your profile. This will help You build up quality network. For instance, when you add a colleague from a previous company, it will help you know his connections and the mutual connections between You and him or her who probably are the other colleagues from the same company and send them connection requests too.

Also, We use the date of joining the Website or adding Your groups, Your connectivity status whether You are online or offline, when You last were online to improve networking and communication within LinCademy. For example, You may not prefer to connect with a Member who was last online 10 months ago.

3.2. Stay Informed

It is an important part of Our Service to allow You to stay informed about popular posts, popular people (people with high number of followers and connections or with high number of profile visits), popular groups that may have beneficial content to You, or the people visiting Your profile.

We use the public data about You, the connections You have, the content You post or share in Our platform including the engagement of other Members with Your profile, content You post or share and Your groups in order for personalizing our Services for you. For example, in LinCademy Site-wide Activity Feeds, You only see relevant content coming from Your circle of connections. Another example is when You see information about the most visited profiles or popular groups.

Also, We use Your activity such as Your profile updates, uploaded photos videos and documents and other data, including your name and your photo, to provide notifications to your connections and maybe Global LinCademy’s Member directory. This respects your privacy status you choose for each activity or uploaded content. For example, if you upload a document and set the privacy of this document to be visible to Your connections, We will notify your connections of that document You posted.

3.3. Learning

Using Our Services, You as a learner can improve current or learn new skills. You can explore courses from different instructors and choose what you need and get enrolled in it. All paid courses can be partially purchased using the user collected reward tokens (Linckies). Also, based on Your profile information, You may receive personalized training promotions from LinCademy Approved Instructors for specific training course You mentioned in Your profile as interested training topic.

When you get approved as an instructor, You can author e-courses from Your account and publish them as free or paid services. You can use LinCademy advanced features such as communication with any Member using private messages to promote Your courses. We may access, copy, record, and use your instructional content (in whole or in part) for quality control purposes and for delivering, promoting, marketing, operating, or demonstrating the Services. We may use your name, recorded voice, image, and likeness in connection with delivering, offering, promoting, marketing, selling, and demonstrating the Services, LinCademy’s content, or your Instructional Content. Please read the Instructor Agreement for more information.

3.4. Improve Your Career

LinCademy feature-rich groups that are enhanced by advanced forums, photos, videos and documents directories allow You to create public, private or hidden groups with other interested Members so that You can have professional discussions and share professional contents that help improve Your career. Our premium members can and have live conferencing sessions within their administrated groups and list these groups in LinCademy Group Directory for other members to join.

Also, you can improve your career by searching LinCademy Videos , LinCademy Photos and LinCademy Documents for contents relating to your career.

3.5. Get More Productive

Our Services allow for many features that enhance productivity. Our feature-rich groups can be used for marketing purposes by listing your group in LinCademy Group Directory (Under the type Promotions). Moreover, professional networking and communication features such as advanced profile, group messaging, advanced search that can be used to find prospective customers, clients and partners allow Members to network and collaborate in a productive way.

You can use Your testimonials which work as recommendations to market your business or yourself by establishing credibility and reliability. For example, if any member, who you work/worked with, work/worked for, or had him or her done some work to you, writes you a positive testimonial about this professional experience, this will recognize your work and will be considered a showcase about your work.

3.6. Our Communications

Via Your provided contact information such as Your phone, email address; and LinCademy website and mobile App notices, messages and push notifications, We will contact You to inform You of Our Service features, promotions from us or from our partners, terms updates, security or of any other service-related information.

 You also get email notifications from Us to inform You of updates in activity feed, new messages You receive, testimonial you get or approved, Your group updates, Your connections updates and recent visits to Your profile. You can control Your email notification preferences in Your account settings.

3.7. Get Rewarded

LinCademy Rewards helps to make LinCademy interested place for You. You are rewarded for Your efforts in learning, building up Your professional network, marketing Yourself, etc. You have a credit balance of tokens called Linckies that increases whenever, for example, You purchase a Learning Course, add a post or comment, upload profile picture or cover, have a popular group, etc. You can also increase Your Linckies using LinCademy Affiliate system or coupons. You can use Your Linckies to partially pay for LinCademy Learning Courses.

3.8. Service Development and Research

We may use Your personal data for research and development purposes, such as data analysis, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and to evaluate and improve our Services, marketing and your experience.

For improving Our Services, We and others through LinCademy’s Services may use data coming from tools of getting feedback such as surveys and pools, to conduct R&D for our Services so that We can provide You and other Members with a better and personalized experience, more economic opportunities and drive business growth.

3.9. Business Transfers

We may use Your data to evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Data held by Us about our Service users is among the assets transferred.

3.10. Customer Support and Moderation

We may use Your data, including your communications and Your published courses (if applicable), for technical support or moderation purposes. This usage may be done, for instance, for checking and trying to resolve a complaint from You or from other Members blocking Your account or reporting inappropriate content posted or inappropriate behavior done by You as well as for checking and resolving technical issues within Our Service.

4. Sharing your Personal Data

Using Your personal data depends on the specific service you use, the way you use this service and the options.

4.1. Our Services

• Your Profile

Regarding Your personal information in Your profile, only Your first name, last name and nickname are visible publicly, and you have full control of the privacy settings of all other profile data. You can modify the visibility options of Your profile information in Your Privacy section in Your account settings.

You also have full control over the visibility privacy of Your profile updates (posts) (Public: visible to Visitors and logged-in Members, All Members: visible to logged-in Members only – My Connections: visible to connections only – Only Me: visible to the post author only), but You cannot control the visibility privacy of Your comments; each comment follows the visibility privacy of the post they belong to.

Also, for each photo video and document you upload, You have full control to make it visible publicly, visible within Your connections or even private where only you who can view it.

• Your Groups

You have full control over the privacy of any group You create (Public, Private and Hidden). Group administrators can control its privacy from Group management (Manage tab). However, group content and activities are visible to all group Members. The visibility of the group content to the group Non-Members follows the group privacy, for example if the group is public, its content is public and activities.

• Learning

When You take a course, your learning activities, posts and comments and the materials You upload in Your course such as assignments and essays are stored on Our Website and shared with the course instructor and co-instructor (if applicable). We may share information about your published courses (if you’re an Approved Instructor) outside the Service for marketing purposes.

4.2. Our Related Services and Affiliates

We may share Your personal information internally across Our Company’s different Services described in this privacy policy for the purpose of service provision and development. Your personal information in one Service may be merged with Your personal information in another Service of LinCademy so that You get more intuitive and useful Services. We also may share Your personal information with Our affiliates, in which case we will require those affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy. Affiliates include any subsidiaries Our Company may have, joint venture partners or other companies that We may control or that are under common control with Us.

4.3. Service Providers

For providing Our Services, We need supportive services (such as payments, auditing, maintenance, marketing, Security tasks) from third-party vendors and partners. In order to accomplish their tasks, they may access or collect your personal information if necessary, and they are under an obligation not to disclose or use this information for other purposes.

4.4. Links to or Embedded Content from other Websites

Our Service may contain shared links of or embedded content from other websites that are not operated by Us. For example, other members may share or embed content from YouTube that will be presented in LinCademy. Also, LinCademy’s learning courses may have learning content embed from other websites.

When use embedded content from other websites, these websites may collect your personal data as a visitor to their websites, so We strongly advise You to review the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy of every site You visit or access embedded content from beforehand. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third-party sites or services.

5. Disclosure of Your Personal Data

5.1. Business Transactions

If LinCademy is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, Your Personal Data may be transferred. We will provide notice before Your Personal Data is transferred and becomes subject to a different Privacy Policy.

5.2. Law enforcement

Under certain circumstances, the Company may be required to disclose Your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g., a court or a government agency).

5.3. Other legal requirements

The Company may disclose Your Personal Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:

• Comply with a legal obligation
• Protect and defend the rights or property of the Company
• Prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service
• Protect the personal safety of Users of the Service or the public
• Protect the Company against legal liability

5.4. Others

We may disclose Your personal information for any other purpose, but in that case, we will request Your consent.

6. You Rights, Choices and Obligations

6.1. Retention of your Personal Data

We will retain Your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy until You choose to delete Your LinCademy account. However, for some cases (explained below in Closing Your Account section) we will retain some of Your personal data after closure.

6.2. Control Your Personal Data

We provide You with many choices regarding accessing, collecting, deleting, modifying, limiting the use of Your personal data.

In this respect, you can:

• Delete Your Data: You can directly delete the editable data (For example, Your profile info can be edited/deleted from profile editing, and  Your posts and comments can be directly edited/deleted from the post or comment itself) except for the required ones that can be edited but not deleted such as Your First name, last name, nickname and email. You also can contact us here and ask for deleting all or some of Your personal information.
• Modify Your Data: You can directly modify Your data the same way it was explained in “Delete Your Data” above. You also can contact us here and ask for data modification or correction.
• Certain Use of Your Data: You can contact us here and ask us to limit or stop using all or some of Your personal data (For example: if it’s illegal for us to continue using it).
• Take a copy of Your Data: You can contact us and ask for a copy of your data from here.

6.3. Deleting Your Account

If you delete your account, Your personal data will no longer be visible to anyone of LinCademy Members. We will then delete Your personal data and all Your posted or published content within 30 days including images, videos, and documents. If you are an Approved Instructors, please read Section 7 in the Instructor Agreement to know more about what happens to Your submitted courses (Instructional Content) by deleting Your account. This is except for the following cases:

• We will retain and use Your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with Our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, meet some regulatory requirements, maintain security, and enforce our legal agreements and policies such as lifetime course access to Your courses if you are an Approved Instructors.
• The Company will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of Our Service, or We are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.
• The Information you have sent or shared with others will not be deleted if You choose to delete You LinCademy account. This information can be sent or shared through, for example, messages, Profile updates (posts) and comments, forum discussions or group posts and comments, etc. Information copied out of LinCademy by other Members is not under our control.

7. Miscellaneous Terms

7.1. Security of your Personal Data

The security of Your Personal Data is important to Us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While We strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect Your Personal Data, We cannot guarantee it’s absolute security.

7.2. Transfer of your Personal Data

Your information, including Personal Data, is processed at the Company’s operating offices and online servers in any other places where the parties involved in the processing are located. It means that this information may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of Your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from Your jurisdiction. Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by Your submission of such information represents Your agreement to that transfer.

The Company will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that Your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of Your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of Your data and other personal information.

7.3. Lawful Bases for Data Processing

Making use of Our services and therefore sharing Your personal information are Your choice, and from Our side, We provide You with choices to control Your shared personal data regarding visibility, modification, collection or deletion. We will collect Your personal data and process it only on lawful bases which include contract between LinCademy and You (that requires data processing to fulfil its requirements), and consent from You in special cases (if you have given it). Withdrawing or declining your consent is available at any time.

8. Contact Us

For general inquiries, you may contact us from here. For legal notices related to this Privacy Policy, you may contact Our Data Protection Officer via this email: DPO@LinCademy.com.