Privacy Policy

At Upskilling Academy, we are fully committed to protecting and respecting your online privacy. This policy explains how we collect, use, store, and safeguard your personal data when you visit our website, register for an account, or enroll in our training courses.

By interacting with our platform, you agree to the practices outlined in this policy.

1. Information We Collect

To provide a seamless educational experience, we collect certain personal information when you use our platform. This typically includes:

• Identity Data: Your first name, last name, and chosen username.
• Contact Data: Your email address, billing address, and phone number.
• Transaction Data: Details regarding the courses, certificates, or study materials you have purchased. (Note: We do not store your raw credit or debit card numbers on our servers; these are processed securely by our trusted third-party payment providers).
• Technical & Usage Data: Your IP address, browser type, time zone setting, login data, and information on how you navigate our website and consume course content.

2. How We Collect Your Data

We gather information through a few distinct channels:

• Direct Interactions: Information you provide voluntarily when creating an account, filling out contact forms, purchasing a course, or subscribing to our newsletter.
• Automated Technologies: As you browse Upskilling Academy, our system automatically collects basic technical data about your equipment and browsing patterns using cookies and similar tracking technologies.

3. How We Use Your Information

We only use your personal data when legally permitted. Most commonly, we use your data to:

• Fulfill Our Contract: To register you as a student, grant you access to purchased course materials, and track your learning progress.
• Provide Support: To respond to your inquiries, troubleshoot technical issues, and notify you of important course updates.
• Improve Our Platform: To analyze user behavior and web traffic, helping us optimize our website design and enhance our educational offerings.
• Send Marketing Communications: To occasionally email you about new courses or special promotions, provided you have opted in. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time.

4. Your Data Rights (UK GDPR)

As a user operating under UK data protection laws, you retain several important rights regarding your personal information:

• Right to Access: You may request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Right to Rectification: You may ask us to correct any incomplete or inaccurate data.
• Right to Erasure: You may request that we delete your personal data when there is no longer a legitimate reason for us to keep it.
• Right to Restrict Processing: You may ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data under certain scenarios.
• Right to Withdraw Consent: If you have provided consent for marketing, you can withdraw it at any time.

5. Sharing Your Information

We value your trust and do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties. We only share necessary data with trusted service providers who help us run our platform securely:

• Essential Partners: Payment gateways (such as Stripe or PayPal), website hosting providers, and our Learning Management System (LMS) infrastructure.
• Legal Compliance: We may disclose your data if strictly required by law, or if we believe it is necessary to protect our legal rights or the safety of our users.

6. Data Security

We have implemented robust security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, altered, or accessed by unauthorized individuals.

• All personal and payment data is encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology before transmission over the internet.
• Access to your personal data is restricted to employees and authorized contractors who have a strict business need to know, and they are bound by confidentiality agreements.

7. Cookies Policy

Cookies are small text files placed on your device to improve your browsing experience.

At Upskilling Academy, we use cookies to keep you securely logged in, remember your site preferences, and track your progress through our course modules. You can set your browser to refuse all or some cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. However, please be aware that disabling cookies may cause certain features of your student dashboard to malfunction.

8. Contact Us

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your data rights, or need assistance updating your account details, please reach out to our team:

• Email: [email protected]
• Support Hours: Monday – Friday, 09:00 – 17:00 GMT