Privacy Policy

Personal information that we collect may include your name, contact details (phone numbers, email address and addresses), your date of birth, job, course information, your personal interests, credit card or billing information, shopping selections and data about the pages you visit and your other activity on our site, as well as any other personal information relating to you that you supply to us.

Some of our sites may also collect other information that you supply to us, such as information relating to your education, skills or job experience, where relevant in the context of the site or the services provided through the site. Except where stated otherwise on the site at the time such personal information is submitted, it is only processed for the purposes for which you have submitted it to us.

We collect your information in two ways:

1. Personal information you choose to disclose. You may, for example, provide us with your information when you post something on our site, when you register for any features on our site that require registration, when you contact us (online or offline) or when you order goods or services from us.
2. Information collected by us when you interact with our site, or when you open our email communications. We use cookies (a small piece of computer code that we store for a period of time on your computer or mobile device) and other similar technologies to collect this information. To find out more, please visit our Cookie Policy page.

We will inform you prior to collecting your personal information if it is requested on a voluntary basis and the consequences of not providing voluntary personal information.

In a separate automatic operation the web server will collect your IP address and browser type and details of the website, application or email communication you came from before entering our site. This information is used to:

• work out how many times our site has been visited
• record which parts of our site have been visited so we can improve the content and layout of the site
• understand the effectiveness of our email communications

We may from time to time supply this data to third parties in an anonymised form for uses in connection with our site.

We and our group companies use your personal information for a variety of business purposes which are in our legitimate interests (“Business Purposes”), and/or in order to enter into or perform a contract with you (“Contractual”), and/or with your consent (“Consent”), and/or compliance with our legal obligations (“Legal Reasons”). For example, we may use your personal information:

• to provide you with the relevant services through our applicable site, for Contractual Reasons
• to process your online purchases, for Contractual Reasons
• to inform you about and provide more information on products and services offered by us and our group companies, for our Business Purposes or with your Consent
• to invite you to participate in surveys, discussions and prize draws and ask for your views on our services via online surveys and discussion forums, for our Business Purposes and/or with your Consent
• to improve the products and services offered to you for our Business Purposes
• for marketing for our Business Purposes and/or with your Consent
• for statistical or analytical purposes for our Business Purposes
• to detect, prevent or investigate security breaches or fraud for our Business Purposes and/or Legal Reasons
• to otherwise to better meet the needs and preferences of our customers for our Business Purposes

We will not allow unrelated third parties to use your personal information for marketing without your consent. Where we rely on your consent, you have the right to withdraw it at any time.

We also use personal information to identify types of user, audit how our sites are used, and to help with the strategic development of our sites. When doing so, we remove any direct identifiers.

Participation in surveys and discussion forums is entirely voluntary. You may unsubscribe from being contacted for these purposes at any time. Survey information will be used for market research with the aim of improving our services.

We will show your username on any content you submit or post on our sites (including discussions, bulletin boards and forums).

We will keep your personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we are processing your personal information unless the law permits or requires longer. For example, we might need to keep your personal data for quality assurance of the service we have provided, or we might need to keep it to defend future legal claims.

We will not send you marketing emails if you have opted out of receiving them. Any marketing emails we send you will include an unsubscribe link at the end of the email.

Some Pearson sites also provide contact details you may use if you want to contact us by email, post or telephone in order to unsubscribe. In addition, some Pearson sites have a “My Account” page where you can choose whether or not to receive marketing communications from us.

We seek to protect the safety of all your personal information by implementing appropriate technical and organisational measures. For example, provided your browser accepts HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) Secure encryption, we seek to protect your payment information against unauthorised access through a secure server. Where we use third parties to process personal information, we require them to ensure the safety of your information.

Any personal information that you voluntarily post on a public area of our site, such as a bulletin board or discussion forum, or an interactive area requiring registration and/or subscription, may be collected and used by others. Please be careful what personal information you disclose in this way. You understand that we cannot control the actions of other users.

We will never sell your personal information. We may disclose and share your personal information:

• with our group companies
• any entity which acquires any part of our business
• our service providers (including, for example, credit reference agencies and payment processors, distributors/agents of our products, suppliers who develop or host our sites)
• third-party search engines that may index user profile pages and usernames as part of the URL of the user profile page by default if required or permitted by law
• relevant third parties (such as your employer, your school, your internet service provider, law enforcement agencies) if we reasonably believe you may be in breach of the law (for example, if you have posted defamatory content on our sites) or if required to do so in accordance with applicable law
• other third parties with your consent

We may transfer your personal information to other countries around the world, including countries outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), which may not have the same data protection laws as those of the country where you access our sites. Where we transfer your personal information to countries outside of the EEA we will take appropriate steps to ensure your personal information is afforded the same level of protection as described in this Privacy Notice.

We have entered into an intercompany data processing agreement using the European Commission standard contractual clauses (in the absence of an adequacy decision) for data transfers to our group companies located outside of the EEA. We rely on adequacy decisions or any adequate data transfer mechanisms adopted by the European Commission or a supervisory authority from time to time for transfers to third parties located in countries outside of the UK or the EEA.

In some regions, such as the EEA (European Economic Area), you may have certain rights in relation to your personal information, including the right to:

• request access to and obtain a copy of your personal information
• rectification of your personal information if it is no longer accurate or erasure of your personal information if our retention is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected
• restrict or object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
• data portability (if applicable)

If you wish to exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal information please send your request to us using the details set out in the “Contacting Pearson” section below. We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

You may also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner (if you are in the UK) or to your local data protection supervisory authority if you are unhappy with our privacy practices notified under this Privacy Notice.

If you are under 16, please be sure to read this Privacy Notice with your parent or guardian and ask them questions about anything you don’t understand.

Any improper collection or misuse of personal information is in violation of this Privacy Notice and of our Legal Notice or terms of use. Please report it by emailing dataprivacy@pearson.com.

You agree not to misuse any personal information available on our sites or to gather it or use robots or other automated scripts, codes or functionalities to do so.

We may immediately suspend or terminate your access to our site without notice if we become aware that you are in breach of applicable terms and conditions of use or of this Privacy Notice.

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. We will always include the date of a new version so that you know when there has been a change.

If you have any questions about our Privacy Notice, please do not hesitate to contact us at:

Data Protection Officer
Pearson
80 Strand
London
WC2R 0RL
United Kingdom

You may also email us at dataprivacy@pearson.com.

This Privacy Notice is provided on behalf of Pearson plc and its group companies. This means all companies owned or controlled by Pearson plc (registered office 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, United Kingdom, registered number 53723).