LINGUISTICAONLINE Privacy Policy

This privacy policy explains how personal data will be used by LINGUISTICAONLINE in relation to the language learning products and services that link to this policy.

We are sharing this information to explain how your ‘personal data’ and ‘personally identifiable information’ – that can be used on its own or with other data/information to identify, contact, or locate a person – is being used in connection with our services. Please read this policy carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect and use your ‘personal data’ and ‘personally identifiable information’.

Who are we?

LINGUISTICAONLINE is an online language learning platform developed by ATI Studios SRL and is part of the Pearson group (owned by Pearson plc), referred to as “LINGUISTICAONLINE”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this policy.

You can contact us at:
Data Protection Officer: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL
EU Representative: Pearson Deutschland GmbH, Kaiserstraße 44, 60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
You may also email us at dataprivacy@pearson.com.

When do we collect information?

We collect your information in three key ways:

a) Directly when you (or your parent/guardian) provide information e.g. by registering to use LINGUISTICAONLINE, contact us (online or offline) or purchase a subscription for one of our products and services.
b) Directly when you interact with LINGUISTICAONLINE (including if you record your voice as part of the learning process to practice vocabulary and phrases) or when you engage with our email communications – we use cookies and other technologies to collect this information. To find out more, please visit our Cookie Policy.
c) Indirectly from specified third parties (such as Facebook and Google) if you choose to register via a social media platform.

What personal data do we collect from the people that visit our website or use our apps?

When registering on our website or using any of our products and services, including LINGUISTICAONLINE apps, you may be asked to enter your name, email address, foreign language skills, your interests, and you may provide a profile picture (this might be associated with the photo on your Facebook account if you sign up that way). For some services, a user may register using an alias name (pseudonym) that is not otherwise associated with personal data provided to LINGUISTICAONLINE. Note: some of the apps might also include a leadership board noting username, profile pictures, and points, so an alias name should be provided if you are not comfortable with this being made public to other users.

We also process any other voluntary details that you can save in your profile, and your communication preferences (including if you raise a complaint and/or support query).

We will process your login details: including username, password, and similar credentials.

You may elect to record your voice practicing the language (but this is optional). Further, you may elect to use our virtual reality app to practice languages in realistic dialogues inspired by events (e.g., check-in to a hotel in Paris). This might involve an element of gamification (and multi-player functionality, where your name and the information you have made available in your profile will be available).

Where you upgrade to premium and/or buy a subscription, you will provide financial information (i.e., subscription/purchase information, card details, billing address).

We collect lesson progress and analytics, including information about how you use our services, such as the types of content that you view or engage with, the features you use, the actions you take, the other users you interact with, and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities. As users of the services, learners may also record responses to interactive exercises, scores, grades, or activities completed.

We also collect cookie information (where we have your permission, if required by law), log data, device information, and IP addresses that help us understand which country you are connecting from to provide more personalized content better suited to your needs as a user. Please see our Cookie Policy for more information.

There is a specific LINGUISTICAONLINE KIDS app which we recommend is used by children under the age of 15 to ensure they receive an age-appropriate experience as this app can function with minimal data collection (limited to username, email address only).

What is the purpose for collecting the information?

Ultimately, we collect information for the purpose of bringing you the best possible experience when using our products and services. This could include collecting your information for:

  • registering your account when you create one;
  • fulfilling the service terms when providing you with our products and services, including honoring your purchase with us and tracking purchases and progress, which includes sending periodic emails about lesson reminders and to otherwise make LINGUISTICAONLINE available to you, for example, we need such information for your account ranking, connecting with other users through social media platforms, adjusting the difficulty level of the app for the user, analyzing voice recordings to confirm accuracy of grammar and vocabulary, providing access to content, and capturing progress within the application, etc.;
  • authorize and authenticate users of our services (and prevent and detect fraud and/or security breaches);
  • managing leadership boards where we may publish your username, profile information including language combination, scores, online status, and date of registration as well as any additional information voluntarily provided;
  • personalizing your experience and to allow us to deliver the type of content and product and service offerings in which you are most interested;
  • marketing to you via email, in-app advertisements and/or online marketing. Please note that we do not intentionally send marketing communications to learners aged under 15 unless consent has been provided on behalf of the learners, in which case such consent may be withdrawn at any time. We allow users to unsubscribe at any time by using the link at the bottom of each email or using our preference center, and we honor opt-out/unsubscribe requests as soon as possible;
  • creating a profile of you e.g., we may combine the data that you have provided to us, or that we have collected via analytical cookies (dropped with your consent) with information from third parties in order to better understand your interests. We want to build a profile of you so that we can send relevant communications and market to you more effectively based on customer audience segments we create – this profiling is not considered “automated decision-making” (the process of making a decision with significant consequences by automated means without any human involvement), but we will let you know if that changes;
  • market research purposes e.g., if you respond to a survey or if we conduct data analytics. Participation in surveys and discussion forums is entirely voluntary. You may unsubscribe from being contacted for these purposes at any time;
  • improving our products and services, for example, through website analytics based on application and system logs data which could include data such as your IP address, internet service provider, browser type, type of computer/device, and details of the website, application, or email communication you came from before entering the services. Please note that we may, from time-to-time, supply third parties with aggregated sets of this data for uses in connection with our services;
  • meeting our legal, regulatory, and tax reporting obligations, including to comply with requests from local authorities and government bodies and investigating incidents of potential or suspected breaches of our terms of service or applicable laws. Also to protect and ensure safety of our services and products and our confidential and proprietary information.

Grounds for collecting the information

We require a lawful basis to collect and process your information. This will be:

  • when information is necessary for us to perform a contract with you (when you purchase a subscription, upgrade to premium and/or accept our terms of use);
  • with your consent (e.g., we may ask you for specific consent to use your personal data in a particular way);
  • to comply with our legal obligations (e.g., we might have regulatory obligations to report or share or archive personal data); and/or
  • for a variety of business purposes which are in our legitimate interests as a commercial provider of educational products and services to grow our brand and protect and enhance our products and services.

How long will we use your personal data

We shall be storing your information as long as is reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we are processing your personal data, which may be for the entire duration of your use of our products and services or longer if the law permits or requires – unless you exercise your right to delete certain data where applicable.

In particular, we retain registration, profile, transaction, and other information for as long as a user maintains their account. Users may request deletion of their account at any time. On receipt of a deletion request, we delete data that it is not required to retain for purposes of legal, tax, accounting, reporting, insurance, litigation, or other regulatory requirements which we will retain for 6 years from collection – during which time we may also use it for purposes of security, fraud prevention, and detection. We may be unable to delete a user’s account in certain circumstances, particularly if there is an outstanding credit on the account or an unresolved dispute. Upon resolution of the issue, we will delete the account as described above.

What rights do I have?

Depending on the country you are in, you may have the right to:

(i) request access to and obtain a copy of your personal data and be informed about our processing activities,
(ii) rectify your personal data if it is no longer accurate,
(iii) request the erasure of your personal data if our retention is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected,
(iv) restrict or object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances,
(v) data portability, and
(vi) lodge a complaint with your relevant supervisory authority or regulator (but we ask you to contact us in the first instance).

If you are resident in California, please click this link to find out more information about your specific rights – in particular, we confirm that we don’t sell your personal data.

How do we protect your information?

At LINGUISTICAONLINE, we maintain appropriate technical and organizational measures to maintain the safety of your personal data and take steps to prevent unauthorized or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss, theft, destruction of or damage to personal data. In particular, our website is scanned on a regular basis for security vulnerabilities to improve your safety when using our products and services. Payment information relating to transactions is processed through a gateway provider and is not stored on our servers.