Privacy Policy: January 2020

Welcome to The Great Courses and to thegreatcourses.com website (“Website”). The Teaching Company Sales, LLC d/b/a The Great Courses (“The Great Courses”), its subsidiaries and affiliates value your business and loyalty. We are committed to the protection of customer privacy. The Great Courses has created this Privacy Policy in order to demonstrate its commitment to the privacy and protection of your personal information. To better protect your privacy, The Great Courses provides this policy explaining our information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used in connection with our The Great Courses products and services.

By using the Website, you confirm that you accept our Terms and Conditions and our use of Cookies as set out in our Cookies Policy, and that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a material change to the way in which we collect, use, and/or disclose your personal information, we will post a notice on the Website and/or send an email to users who have provided an email address.

Information about Us

Our products and service, and this Website, are operated by The Teaching Company Sales, LLC, 4840 Westfields Blvd., Suite 500, Chantilly, VA 20151-2299 (under the trading name of “The Great Courses”). Click here if you would like more information on how to contact us.

Privacy Officer

Our Company Privacy Officer is our General Counsel, who can be reached at The Teaching Company Sales, LLC, 4840 Westfields Blvd., Suite 500, Chantilly, Virginia 20151, Attn: General Counsel. Our Privacy Officer can also be reached at legal@teachco.com.





I. How We Collect Information from or about You

The Great Courses may collect information relating to you or which can reasonably be used to identify you. At other times, The Great Courses may collect information from you or about your use of our services that cannot reasonably be used to directly identify you. We may collect these types of information from you in several different areas on the Website, including, without limitation, those described below:

Registration. You may be asked to complete a registration form to set up an account and provide Personal Information. You may be asked to choose a user ID and password in order to access your account, as well as to take advantage of certain features on the Website. You will have the opportunity to decide whether or not to disclose Personal Information to us and what communications you would like to receive. Please be advised that access to certain products and services available on the Website require registration and if you elect not to provide such information, you will not be able to take advantage of those products and services.

Contests or Sweepstakes. We may operate contests and sweepstakes through the Website and messaging services connected to contests and sweepstakes that will require registration or the submission of Personal Information. This Personal Information may be used to contact you for winner notification, prize delivery confirmation or other related purposes (see the rules of each contest for details about how your Personal Information will be used, including postings to the Website).

Surveys. From time-to-time we may request Personal Information from you in conjunction with a customer survey. Participation is voluntary, and you will have the opportunity to decide whether or not to disclose Personal Information to the Website.

Transaction Information. If you conduct a financial transaction on the Website, such as ordering The Great Courses products/services offered on the Website, we will ask you to complete an order form that will request certain personal information from you, including name, address and contact information, demographic information, credit card and other financial information. Even though the collection form may have the look and feel of thegreatcourses.com, please be aware you will be giving your personal information to us, to our authorized payment processors (such as credit card service processors) and to third party Service Providers (defined below). In some instances the Privacy Policies of those third party Service Providers will govern the collection of your personal information. Please refer to the privacy policies of such third parties, as directed, for any privacy related concerns.

Contacting Customer Care. If you contact us by email, telephone or any other means to report a problem with the Website or our services, or you request information from us, we may record your personal information, as well as the content of your communication, for account management, training, and monitoring purposes. Calls may be monitored or recorded for training purposes.

Electronic Communications. When you engage in email, SMS or MMS communications with us, we may log and store such information, as necessary, or for training and monitoring purposes.

We may also keep records of various communications regarding the types of products and services that you indicate are of interest to you via your response to email, text or social media messaging.

You have the option to opt-out of our marketing communications when you complete your purchase check out process on the Website or by clicking “unsubscribe” in our emails or replying “STOP” to our text messages.

While we take all reasonable steps to protect the privacy of our Website visitors, we cannot promise that the current limitations of our online applications programming will address every browser setting or honor every personal browser preference. In particular, we have not implemented the necessary program changes to honor “Do Not Track” or “DNT” browser signals. As our online applications programming is refined, we will take all reasonable steps to honor such requests in the future. Please return to this Privacy Policy for further updates on this topic.

Our online Service Providers or business partners may implement technologies that allow for the collection of personally identifiable information over time and across third party websites. We recommend that you review each privacy policy posted on the websites that you visit to better understand privacy practices on those websites.

Cookies and Tracking Technology. We may use a number of tools to collect personal information about you, your computer access points, and the web browser that you use to connect to our Website. For example, “cookies” are tiny text files that we place on your computer’s hard drive when you visit our Website. We may use cookies as detailed in our Cookies Policy to personalize your Website experience, improve our services and assist us in targeted marketing.

The Great Courses may also collect additional information from your web browser each time you visit our Website. This information may be anonymized/aggregated (Non-Personal Information) or may identify you when combined with the Personal Information you have given us. This information will include:

Information about your visit, including the pages that you visit, “click stream” data to, through and from the Website (including date and time), products you viewed and searched for, length of visits to certain pages including video content, page response times, download errors, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), the promotions or advertisements that you click on, the courses you watch, and other actions that you take while using our Website; and

Technical Information, including your login information, your IP address, the type of browser, the time that your browser was used to access our Website, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and the referring website address.Our Service Providers (defined below) and supporting service platform providers may also use other standard web-based technologies to analyze your movements while accessing our Website. The technologies may include analytic solutions, web “beacons,” “pixel tags,” and “clear gifs.” These technologies help us ascertain the effectiveness of our product and service campaigns and marketing programs, allow us to customize the services offered on or through our Website, and help determine the best use for Website content, and product and service offerings. Some of this information, including the IP address, may be stored on our Service Providers’ server logs, and may be available for extended periods of time. Please see our Cookies Policy for further details.

II. What Information Is Collected From or About You

We may collect the following types of information from or about you, including during the previous twelve months:

Identifiers, such as your name, telephone number, email address, date of birth, home or business mailing address, your IP address, demographic information, credit card and account information, and, if you register with us, your username and password. These elements may also qualify as “personal information” under Cal. Civ. Code 1798.80;

Characteristics of protected classifications, we may collect such information that you may provide to us in surveys such as race, color, religion/creed, national origin or ancestry, sex, age, physical/mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, citizenship, occupation, marital status, income and/or employment status.

Commercial information, such as information about your purchases, mode of payment (e.g., credit/debit card or account information), types of products and services you have indicated interest in, your marketing preferences, your survey responses, and your electronic correspondence with us (e-mails, SMS, and MMS communications).

Internet activity information, such as information about your visit, including information collected through the use of cookies, the pages visited, “click stream” data to, through and from the Website, the promotions you click on, the courses you watch, your movement across the Website, and other actions that you take while using our Website, as well as technical information, including browser type, the time that your browser was used to access our Website, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and the referring website address.

Geolocation data.

Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information, such as your customer support calls (which may be recorded for training purposes).

Professional or employment-related information, such as your occupation, and/or your professional status, which may also be collected in survey responses.

Inferences drawn about you, such as your purchasing habits and patterns, and/or your purchasing and product preferences.

III. How Your Information Is Used

The Great Courses and its business partners may use your information for the following purposes:

Confirm your purchase(s) and distribute and deliver purchased products and services to you;

Carry out obligations arising from any contract entered into between you and us and to provide you with information, products and services;

Determine your general geographic location and internet service provider to enable us to quickly and efficiently respond to inquiries and requests;

Complete financial or other transactions that you have requested;

Communicate with you about your account or transactions with us, including order confirmation from us or your designated payment processor;

Send you information regarding changes to our policies;

Personalize content and experiences on our Websites;

Provide you with advertising based on your activity on our Websites and applications and on third party sites and applications;

Send you articles of interest on the subjects covered by our courses;

Send you e-mail surveys to vote for the courses you want us to make, to rate the quality of our service or individual course titles, and to tell us what improvements to make to our services;

Optimize or improve our products, services and operations;

Detect, investigate and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be illegal; and

Send you offers and promotions for The Great Courses products and services, or third-party products and services if you have specifically consented to this.

We may also use your IP address to help protect us and our Service Providers from fraud. Additional uses of your information will allow us to tailor products and services specific to your needs, to help organize and manage your customer relationship and our business, to conduct business, to provide you with customer and member support, to perform functions that are described to you at the time of collection, and to enforce our Website's Terms of Use.

We may also use aggregate information to improve our Website. For example, our Service Providers may report to us that there were a particular number of visitors to a certain area of our Website, or that a certain number of men or a certain number of women completed our registration form in particular areas of our Website. Such information may also be used to analyze the effectiveness of our business and advertising models.



Back



IV. Shared Information

A. How And When We Share Your Information

In the course of providing services to us, each of the categories of information listed in the section What Information Is Collected From Or About You are shared with Service Providers for a business purpose.

The Great Courses uses the services of independent companies to provide certain services to you, including, without limitation, website hosting services, cloud hosting service providers (such as Amazon Web Services), course content distribution services, credit and debit card processing, mobile application providers (such as Google and Apple), order fulfilment, and internet connectivity services ("Service Providers"). We may share your information with these third parties to the extent necessary to carry out obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.

We also share information with analytics and audience and traffic measurement service providers (such as Google Analytics). Traffic measurement services analyze the traffic on the Website and measure the use of our Services. Audience and traffic measurement services allow us to collect anonymous traffic and behavior information from the Website by monitoring anonymous visitor activity. These services may set and access their own cookies on your computer.

We may also disclose your personal information as is necessary to:

comply with a subpoena or court order; cooperate with law enforcement or other government agencies; establish or exercise our legal rights; protect the property or safety of our company and employees, contractors, vendors, and suppliers; defend against legal claims; help with internal and external investigations; or as otherwise required by law or permitted by law.

We may disclose your information in connection with the sale or merger of The Great Courses or any transaction that involves the sale or assignment of some or all of our assets.

We work with Facebook, other social network sites, YouTube, on-line marketing platforms and programmatic advertising services to display interest-based The Great Courses ads to you in various on-line settings. We may share hashed/encrypted email addresses or phone numbers with these social media and on-line platforms to enable them to identify which users purchase our products, visit our web sites, or express interest in our Company or services. If you do not want to receive interest-based ads on these sites, you can adjust your ad preferences through your settings on those sites.

We also use third-party network ad serving services to serve the advertisements on the Website. Network advertisers are third parties that display advertisements based on your visits to this Website and other websites you have visited. Third-party ad serving enables us to target advertisements to you for products or websites you might be interested in. The Website's advertisers, sponsors may themselves set and access their own cookies on your computer.

Cookies allow third-party advertisers to show you advertisements or content you might be interested in. Third party vendors may also pool the information that they collect from the Website with other sources of information, which other sources of information may include your name and mailing address, for purposes of determining whether you might be interested in receiving direct mail. Note that any images (or any other parts of a web page) served by third parties in association with third-party cookies may serve as web beacons, which enable third parties to carry out the previously described activities. Please see our Cookies Policy for further details.

You have the option to provide or withhold your consent when you complete your registration on the Website. Thereafter, if you would like to withdraw your consent, please contact us at ContactUs@thegreatcourses.com, or write to us at The Great Courses, 4840 Westfields Blvd., Suite 500, Chantilly, VA, 20151-2299, Attn: Customer Care or by contacting the third party who has contacted you.

B. Categories Of Information Shared



As described above, we share the following categories of personal information for a business purpose, as we have in the preceding twelve (12) months:

Identifiers, such as your name, telephone number, email address, date of birth, home or business mailing address, your IP address, demographic information, credit card and account information, and, if you register with us, your username and password. These elements may also qualify as “personal information” under Cal. Civ. Code 1798.80;

Characteristics of protected classifications, , we may collect such information that you may provide to us in surveys such as race, color, religion/creed, national origin or ancestry, sex, age, physical/mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, citizenship, occupation, marital status, income and/or employment status.

Commercial information, such as information about your purchases, mode of payment (e.g., credit/debit card or account information), types of products and services you have indicated interest in, your marketing preferences, your survey responses, and your electronic correspondence with us (e-mails, SMS, and MMS communications).

Internet activity information, such as information about your visit, including information collected through the use of cookies, the pages visited, “click stream” data to, through and from the Website, the promotions you click on, the courses you watch, your movement across the Website, and other actions that you take while using our Website, as well as technical information, including browser type, the time that your browser was used to access our Website, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and the referring website address.

Geolocation data.

Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information, such as your customer support calls (which may be recorded for training purposes).

Professional or employment-related information, such as your occupation, and/or your professional status, which may also be collected in survey responses.

Inferences drawn about you, such as your purchasing habits and patterns, your purchasing and product preferences.

C. Sales of Personal Information

We share names and addresses and purchasing behaviors with trusted partners who make this information available to catalog publications, subscription publications and not for profit companies so that they can market to you.

We allow other companies to use cookies and tracking technologies on our site. These technologies allow those companies to collect information about your website activity and use that information to target advertisements when you visit other sites online. You can exercise control over these technologies. See Cookies Policy section in the Privacy Policy.

To opt-out of the “sale” of personal information, you can click here: Do Not Sell My Personal Information.

V. Links To Third-party Websites

Links from this Website may allow you to directly access websites operated by third parties, including, without limitation, our service providers or marketing partners. The privacy policies of these third-party websites may differ from ours. These websites may ask you for Personal Information. Please review the privacy policy on third-party websites before submitting information, because we do not have control over the use of information collected on these websites.

You may be able to access this Website or your The Great Courses account information or content through third parties with whom we have marketing relationships. Some of these third-party marketing channels may be "co-branded" with our logo; however, note that these third-party channels are not operated, controlled or maintained by The Great Courses. These channels or links are provided for your convenience only and should be used with your discretion and prudent judgment. Links from our Website to third-party websites do not constitute sponsorship, endorsement, or approval of the content, policies or practices of such third-party websites. The collection and use of your information by such co-branded third party is the responsibility of the co-branding partner, and they may use your personal information for their direct marketing purposes. We are not responsible for any information these websites or digital channels may obtain and we do not oversee their policies or practices. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information provided to or gathered by the third parties that operate them.



Back



VI. International Data Protection, Information Security and Storage

Information that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the United States. It may also be processed by staff operating outside the US who work for us or a third party. This includes staff engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services as listed elsewhere in this Privacy Policy. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

The United States may not have data privacy laws that are deemed to afford an equal level of protection for your Personal Information as those laws legislated at the direction of the European Union or similar geopolitical, national or regional legislative bodies. However, please be assured that The Great Courses will continue to adhere to the principles stated in this Privacy Policy and will make reasonable efforts to comply with applicable international, national, regional, territorial, and provincial laws in connection with any information collected through the Website.

The Great Courses will endeavor to preserve the integrity, confidentiality, and security of personal information and afford such personal information reasonable level of protection.

For those Website users located outside the United States, we advise you that your information may at times be accessible by individuals who are located worldwide including in countries that the European Commission or other geopolitical regions have not been determined to provide the same level of data protection as in your country, province, territory or geopolitical region. By providing us with your Personal Information, you consent to our use of it in accordance with The Great Courses' Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your information across international boundaries to jurisdictions anywhere in the world as permitted by local law.

The Great Courses makes reasonable efforts to ensure that our Service Providers, and any other person to whom we disclose your Personal Information to, have implemented appropriate physical, electronic, and procedural security measures to assist with safeguarding your Personal Information, and to help protect against unauthorized access and disclosure. We use contracts and other measures with our service providers to maintain the confidentiality and security of your Personal Information and to prevent such Personal Information from being used for any other purpose.

Notwithstanding our efforts, the Internet, online services and social media have inherent security risks. The Great Courses cannot promise, and you should not expect, that your Personal Information, personal searches, and other communications will always remain secure. You should take care with regard to how you handle and disclose your Personal Information or any username or password that you are required to use to access services on the Website or online service.



Back



VII. Deleting The Information We Hold About You

We will retain your Personal Information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. You may cancel your account or request that we delete (or restrict the use of) any, or all, of the information we hold about you, unless we need to retain your information as necessary e.g. in order to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. If you would like us to delete your information, please contact us at ContactUs@thegreatcourses.com. Please be advised that if you request deletion of all the information we hold about you, this may result in terminating your ability to continue to access digital downloads and digital streaming versions of our products resident on our servers or platforms.

We may restrict or block the processing of your request to delete information in the following circumstances:

where you have made a request that your information be deleted or you have questioned the accuracy of your information, and your request is being verified; or where we need to retain the data to comply with law, regulation, internal audit requirements, or to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.



Back



VII. Accessing Your Information

If you wish to receive information relating to the information we hold on you, this request should be made to ContactUs@thegreatcourses.com. We will respond to the extent reasonably possible and in accordance with applicable law.



Back



IX. Your Right to Rectification

We take care to keep Personal Information in our records as accurate, complete and up to date as necessary for the purposes for which it is used. However, we also rely on you to tell us when your Personal Information changes. If you believe we hold inaccurate or incomplete Information about you, please contact us at ContactUs@thegreatcourses.com.



Back



X. Other Social Media Websites, Blogs, Message Boards

The Website and The Great Courses Mobile applications may make chat rooms, forums, commenting and message boards available to you and other users. You are not required to provide any Personal Information when using these areas but you may choose to do so. If you post Personal Information online, it will be publicly available, and you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties. In addition, when you post a comment, the user name with which you registered for the Website and your current location may be made publicly available on the Website and through The Great Courses Mobile applications. By using the commenting features of the Website and The Great Courses Mobile applications, you acknowledge that your user name and location information will be disclosed. We cannot ensure the security of any information you choose to make public in a chat room, forum, or message board. Also, we cannot ensure that parties who have access to such publicly available information will respect your privacy. Please exercise caution when deciding to disclose Personal Information in these areas. To request removal of your Personal Information from our message boards or other community forums, contact us at: ContactUs@thegreatcourses.com. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your Personal Information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.



Back



XI. General Audience Website Not Directed Toward Children

This Website is a general audience Website. Our content is neither directed toward minors nor children who are under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of 13. If The Great Courses or our Service Providers become aware that a minor or a child under the age of 13 has provided us with Personal Information without the parental consent, that information will be deleted from our databases. Parents who have questions about Personal Information that may have been submitted by a child under the age of 13 should email us at: ContactUs@thegreatcourses.com.



Back



XII.Consent to Privacy Policy

By using this Website or purchasing our products or services, you signify that you have read and agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy. When you order and purchase our products and services, you will be asked to consent to certain uses of your Personal Information. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time by contacting us at: ContactUs@thegreatcourses.com.

We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a material change to the way in which we collect, use, and/or share your Personal Information, we will post a notice on the Website and/or send an email to users who have provided an email address. Please note that you should always update your Personal Information and provide us with a current email address.



Back



XIII. Your California Privacy Rights

California residents may request information from us about the information we have collected from and about them and the information we have shared with service providers and other third parties over the past twelve (12) months, including: (1) the categories of personal information we have collected about you, (2) the categories of sources from which the personal information is collected, (3) the business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information, (4) the categories of third parties with whom we have shared your personal information, (5) the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, and (6) the categories of personal information we have sold or disclosed for a business purpose. Requests may be made atCalprivacy@thegreatcourses.com.

California residents may request that we delete information we have collected from or about them, subject to several exceptions, including, but not limited to, if the information is necessary for us or our service provider to: (1)(a) complete your transaction, (b) provide you a good or service, (c) perform a contract between us and you; (2) protect your security and prosecute those responsible for breaching it; (3) fix our system in the case of a bug; (4) protect the free speech rights of your or other users; (5) comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et seq.); (6) engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interests that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws; (7) comply with a legal obligation; or (8) make other internal and lawful uses of the information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it. Requests may also be made at Calprivacy@thegreatcourses.com.

We will use commercially reasonable efforts to respond to a verifiable consumer request for access or deletion within forty-five (45) days of its receipt. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. We will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

Other than as is stated by this Privacy Policy, The Great Courses will not share any personal information about you with outside third-parties for their direct marketing purposes to the extent prohibited by California law, unless you agree otherwise as authorized by your prior written consent.

California residents have the right to request information from The Great Courses regarding the manner that we may share personal information with affiliated companies and third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To find out what and how we share such information, you may send us an e-mail request at: Calprivacy@thegreatcourses.com or mail a request to: Privacy Officer, The Teaching Company Sales, LLC d/b/a The Great Courses, 4840 Westfields Blvd., Suite 500, Chantilly, VA 20151-2299, and receive the following information:

A. The categories of information we disclosed to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year, if any;

B. The names and addresses of the third parties who received information for their direct marketing purposes; and

C. Examples of the products and services subject to the third-parties' direct marketing programs, if the nature of the third parties' business cannot be determined from their names.

You may direct us not to sell your personal information to third parties. If you wish to opt-out of the disclosure of information described for interest based targeting advertising and/or data cooperatives, you can do so here Do Not Sell My Personal Information.



Unless permitted by law, we will not do the following as a result of your pursuing any rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act: (i) deny you goods or services, (ii) charge you a different price or rate for goods or services, (iii) provide you a different level or quality of goods or services, or (iv) suggest that you will receive a different price or level of quality of goods or services.

XIV. Questions About This Privacy Policy

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the privacy practices of this Website, please contact us by email at ContactUs@thegreatcourses.com.

You may also call us at 1-800-832-2412 or send a letter to:

The Teaching Company Sales, LLC

d/b/a The Great Courses

Attn: Customer Care

4840 Westfields Blvd., Suite 500

Chantilly, VA, 20151-2299



Effective Date: January 1, 2020