Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 1, 2023

This Privacy Policy explains how we at Ko Education LLC ("Ko", "we", "us", "our") collect and process your personal data that results from your use of our website ("Services"). By using or accessing Ko Services in any manner, you agree to the kit and use of data in accordance with this policy.

Your use of our Services is governed by our Terms of Service, which includes this Privacy Policy. Any terms we use in this Privacy Policy without defining them have the definitions given to them in the Terms of Service.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so - for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect this information from two sources: if and when you provide data to us, and automatically through operating our Services.

Information you provide to us

We collect data that you knowingly provide to us. Here are some examples:

  • Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a Ko account to provide an email address, along with a name - and that’s it. We don’t require any other information from you to create a Ko account.
  • Public profile information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a Ko account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, like a photo or an “Intro” description. Your public profile information is just that - public - so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to provide.
  • Payment and contact information: If you buy something from us or earn revenue through your site, we’ll collect information to process those payments and contact you. If you pay subscription fees to a person or business through their Ko account, you’ll provide additional personal and payment information like your name, credit card information, and contact information. We also keep a record of the purchases you’ve made and the payment methods you've used. If you enable payments on your account, you’ll have to create a Stripe account or connect an existing account.
  • Content information: You might provide us with information about you in private and public content, such as a post that includes biographic information about you, or any media or files you upload.
  • Communications with us: You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, ask a support question, post a question in our public forums, or sign up for a newsletter. When you communicate with us via form, email, comment, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications.

Information automatically collected

We also collect some information automatically:

  • Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services — for example, when you create or make changes to your Ko account.
  • Usage information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that users perform on their accounts - in other words, who did what and when (e.g., [Ko username] deleted “[title of resource]” at [time/date]). We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, performance metrics, and interactions with features of our Services) along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, get insights on how people use our Services so we can make our Services better, and understand and make predictions about user retention.
  • Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.

Usage of Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you for various purposes:

  • To provide our Services. For example, to set up and maintain your account, host our network of educators, provide customer service, process payments and orders, and verify user information.
  • To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services. For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of our Services. Or, for example, by monitoring and analyzing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will help them create and manage websites more efficiently or make our Services easier to use.
  • To protect our Services, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of Automattic and others, which may result in us, for example, declining a transaction or terminating Services.
  • To fix problems with our Services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
  • To customize the user experience. For example, to personalize your experience by serving you relevant notifications for our Services.
  • To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on Ko. If you don’t want to hear from us, you can opt out of marketing communications at any time. (If you opt out, we’ll still send you important updates relating to your account.)

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that: (1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or (2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or (3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or (4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalize your experience.

Sharing Information

How we share information

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy.

  • Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For example, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services.
  • Subsidiaries and independent contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries and independent contractors who need the information to help us provide our Services or process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.
  • Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. For example, we may use a Third Party Payment Processor to receive and process your credit card transactions for us, such as Stripe. Any payment card information you use to make a purchase on the Services is collected and processed directly by our payment processor, Stripe, and we never physically receive or store your full payment card information. Stripe commits to complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) and using industry standard security. Stripe may use your Payment Information in accordance with its own Privacy Policy here: https://stripe.com/privacy.
  • Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
  • Protection of Ko and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Ko, third parties, or the public at large.
  • Business transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Ko goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
  • With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is disclosed publicly. That means information like your public profile, resources, and other content that you make public on your account are all available to others. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share publicly.

Retention of Information

We generally discard information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it and we’re not legally required to keep it.

Security of Information

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Transfer of Information

Because Ko's Services are offered worldwide, your 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 from those of your jurisdiction. If you are located outside United States and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the data to United States and process it there.

We will take all the 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 organisation or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your data and other personal information.

Your Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

  • Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose to not provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services, for example, paid subscriptions to other users, may not be accessible.
  • Limit access to information on your mobile device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the option to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile apps. If you choose to limit this, you may not be able to use certain features, like geotagging for photographs.
  • Opt out of marketing communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
  • Set your browser to reject cookies: At this time, Ko does not respond to Do Not Track ("DNT") browser signals. You can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Ko's website, with the drawback that certain features of Ko's website may not function properly without the aid of cookies. For more information on DNT settings, please visit https://allaboutdnt.com.
  • Delete your account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, you can delete your account if you no longer want to use our Services. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above — for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including California and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

  • Request access to your personal data;
  • Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
  • Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
  • Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
  • Request portability of your personal data.

You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it. The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:

  • Identifiers (such as your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
  • Commercial information (such as your billing information and purchase history);
  • Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us);
  • Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services);
  • Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
  • Audio, electronic, visual or similar information (such as your profile picture, if you uploaded one);
  • Professional or employment-related information (such as employment information you decide to include in your bio); and
  • Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:

  • Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
  • Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
  • Opt out of any sale of personal information; and
  • Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.

Contacting Us About These Rights

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings and tools that we offer, but if you aren’t able to or you’d like to contact us about one of the other rights, you can send an email to privacy@ko.xyz. When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

Children's Privacy

Our Services are not intended for use by children under the age of 13 (“Children”).

We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from Children under 13. If you become aware that a Child has provided us with Personal Data, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Data from Children without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.

Privacy Policy Changes

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. 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 “last updated” at the top of this Privacy Policy. You are encouraged to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please email us at support@ko.xyz.

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