Privacy policy Convergein

Introduction

We are a communication and collaboration platform for students and teachers/ educators. People use our Services to collaborate and find information. Our Privacy Policy applies to any Member or Visitor to our Services

Our registered users ("Members") share their professional identities, engage with their network, exchange knowledge in posts and Q&A form, and view relevant content, learn about the latest news relevant to students. Content and data on some of our Services is viewable to non-members ("Visitors"). 

  1. Data we Collect

  2. Data You Provide To Us

Registration

To create an account, you need to provide data including your first and last name, email address, and password. 

Profile

The key information on your profile, such as your school/ college, class/ course, and subjects are necessary to complete the sign-up process. This information will help us to serve you better and ensure you get the maximum benefit from using our services. It’s your choice whether to include sensitive information on your profile and we will not make your sensitive information public.

1.2 Data From Others

You and others may post content that includes information about you (as part of posts or comments) on our Services. We also may collect public information about you (such as notes and Q&A) and make it available as part of our Services, including, as permitted by your settings, in notifications to others of mentions in the news.

1.3 Service Use

We log usage data when you visit or otherwise use our Services, including our sites, app, and platform technology, such as when you view or click on content (e.g., notes) or ads (on our sites and apps), perform a search, install or update one of our mobile apps.

1.4 Messages

We collect information about you when you send, receive, or engage with messages in connection with our Services. For example, if you get a Converge-in connection request, we track whether you have acted on it and will send you reminders. We may also use automatic scanning technology on messages to support and protect our site. For example, we may technology to suggest possible responses to messages and to manage or block content that violates our Terms of Service or Professional Community Policies from our Services.

1.5 Other

Our Services are dynamic, and we often introduce new features, which may require the collection of new information. If we collect materially different personal data or materially change how we collect, use or share your data, we will notify you and may also modify this Privacy Policy. 

  • How We Use Your Data

How we use your personal data will depend on which Services you use, how you use those Services, and the choices you make in your settings. We use the data that we have about you to provide and personalize our Services, including with the help of automated systems and inferences we make, so that our Services (including ads) can be more relevant and useful to you and others.

2.1 Services

Stay Connected

Our Services allow you to stay in touch with fellow students and teachers/ educators. To do so, you can "connect" with the student/ teachers/ educators who you choose, and who also wish to "connect" with you. Subject to your and their settings, when you connect with other Members, you will be able to search each others’ connections to exchange notes/ news/ calendar events.

We use data about you (such as your profile or profiles you have viewed) to help others find your profile, suggest connections for you and others (e.g. Members who share your contacts or are from the same school or show the same interest), and enable you to invite others to become a Member and connect with you.

It is your choice whether to invite someone to our Services, send a connection request, or allow another Member to become your connection. When you invite someone to connect with you, your invitation will include your network and basic profile information (such as name, profile photo, school name). We will send invitation reminders to the person you invited. You can choose whether or not to share your own list of connections with your connections.

Stay Informed

Our Services allow you to stay informed about news, events, and ideas related to what you are studying/ teaching or interests. We use the data we have about you (e.g., data you provide, data we collect from your engagement with our Services, and inferences we make from the data we have about you), to personalize our Services for you, such as by recommending relevant content and news or study groups on our Services. If you let us know that you are interested in new subjects/ topics, we will use this information to personalize content in your feed, suggest that you follow certain members on our site, or suggest related notes or Q&A or news or calendar events content to help you to gain more information. We use your content, activity and other data, including your name and photo, to provide notices to your network and others. For example, subject to your settings, we may notify others that you have updated your profile, posted content, used a feature, or made new connections 

2.4 Advertising

We may serve you tailored ads both on and off our Services. We offer you choices regarding personalized ads, but you cannot opt-out of seeing other ads.

We may target (and measure the performance of) ads to Members, Visitors, and others both on and off our Services directly, using the following data, whether separately or combined:

  • Member-provided information (e.g., profile);
  • Data from your use of our Services (e.g., search history, feed, content you read, who you follow or is following you, connections, groups participation, page visits, videos you watch, clicking on an ad, etc.), including as described in Section 1.3;
  • Information inferred from data described above (e.g. using your feed activity to infer your interests; or using device data to recognize you as a Member).

We may show you ads called sponsored content which look similar to non-sponsored content, except that they are labeled as advertising (e.g., as "ad" or "sponsored"). If you take a social action (such as like, comment or share) on these ads, your action is associated with your name and viewable by others, including the advertiser. Subject to your settings, if you take a social action on the Converge-in Services, that action may be mentioned with related ads.

Ad Choices

We adhere to self-regulatory principles for interest-based advertising and participate in industry opt-outs from such ads. This does not opt you out of receiving advertising; you will continue to get other ads by advertisers not listed with these self-regulatory tools. You can also opt-out specifically from our uses of certain categories of data to show you more relevant ads.

2.5 Marketing

In addition to advertising our Services, we use Members’ data and content for invitations and communications promoting membership and network growth, engagement, and our Services, such as by showing your connections that you have used a feature on our Services.

2.6 Developing Services and Research

Service Development

We use data, including public feedback, to conduct research and development for our Services in order to provide you and others with a better, more intuitive, and personalized experience, drive membership growth and engagement on our Services, and help connect professionals to each other and to economic opportunity.

Surveys

Polls and surveys are conducted by us and others through our Services. You are not obligated to respond to polls or surveys, and you have choices about the information you provide.

2.7 Customer Support

We use data (which can include your communications) to investigate, respond to and resolve complaints and for Service issues (e.g., bugs).

2.8 Insights That Do Not Identify You

We use your data to produce and share insights that do not identify you. For example, we may use your data to generate statistics about our members, their school/ college, or class, to calculate ad impressions served or clicked on, or to publish visitor demographics for a Service, or create demographic workforce insights.

2.9 Security and Investigations

We use your data (including your communications) for security purposes or to prevent or investigate possible fraud or other violations of our User Agreement and/or attempts to harm our Members, Visitors, or others.

  • How we share your information 

3.1 Our Services

Any data that you include on your profile and any content you post or social action (such as likes, follows, comments, shares) you take on our Services will be seen by others, consistent with your settings.

Profile

Your profile is fully visible to all Members and customers of our Services. Subject to your settings, it can also be visible to others on or off of our Services (e.g., Visitors to our Services or users of third- party search engines). 

Posts, Thanks, Follows, Comments, Share

Our Services allow viewing and sharing information including through posts, thanks, share, follows, and comments.

  • When you share a post (e.g., an update, image, video) publicly it can be viewed by everyone and re-shared anywhere. Members, Visitors, and others will be able to find and see your publicly-shared content, including your name (and photo if you have provided one).
  • In a group, posts are visible to others in the group. Your membership in groups is public and part of your profile.
  • When you follow/ connect a person, you are visible to others and that "page owner" as a follower/ connection.
  • When you thanks or re-share or comment on another’s content (including ads), others will be able to view these "social actions" and associate it with you (e.g., your name, profile and photo if you provided it).

3.2 Related Services

We will share your personal data with our affiliates to provide and develop our Services. We may combine information internally across the different Services covered by this Privacy Policy to help our Services be more relevant and useful to you and others. For example, we may personalize your feed based on your social actions on our Service

3.3 Service Providers

We use others to help us provide our Services (e.g., maintenance, analysis, audit, payments, fraud detection, marketing, and development). They will have access to your information as reasonably necessary to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for other purposes.

3.4 Legal Disclosures

It is possible that we will need to disclose information about you when required by law, subpoena, or other legal process or if we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (1) investigate, prevent or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities or to assist government enforcement agencies; (2) enforce our agreements with you; (3) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations; (4) protect the security or integrity of our Services (such as by sharing with companies facing similar threats); or (5) exercise or protect the rights and safety of Converge-in, our Members, personnel or others. We attempt to notify Members about legal demands for their personal data when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. We may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague, or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand. 

3.5 Change in Control or Sale

We may share your data when our business is sold to others, but it must continue to be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We can also share your personal data as part of a sale, merger, or change in control, or in preparation for any of these events. Any other entity which buys us or part of our business will have the right to continue to use your data, but only in the manner set out in this Privacy Policy unless you agree otherwise.

  • Your Choices & Obligations

4.1 Data Retention

We generally retain your personal data as long as you keep your account open or as needed to provide you Services. This includes data you or others provided to us and data generated or inferred from your use of our Services. In some cases, we choose to retain certain information (e.g., insights about Services use) in a depersonalized or aggregated form.

4.2 Rights to Access and Control Your Personal Data

You can access or delete your personal data. You can edit some of your personal data through your account. You can ask us to stop using all or some of your personal data (e.g., if we have no legal right to keep using it) or to limit our use of it (e.g., if your personal data is inaccurate or unlawfully held).

4.3 Account Closure

If you choose to close your Converge-in account, your personal data will generally stop being visible to others on our Services within 24 hours. We generally delete closed account information within 30 days of account closure, except as noted below.

We retain your personal data even after you have closed your account if reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations (including law enforcement requests), meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, maintain security, prevent fraud and abuse (e.g., if we have restricted your account for breach of our Professional Community Policies), enforce our User Agreement, or fulfill your request to "unsubscribe" from further messages from us. We will retain de-personalized information after your account has been closed.

  • Other Important Information

5.1. Security

We monitor for and try to prevent security breaches. Please use the security features available through our Services.

We implement security safeguards designed to protect your data, such as HTTPS. We regularly monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. However, we cannot warrant the security of any information that you send us. There is no guarantee that data may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. 

5.2. Cross-Border Data Transfers

We process data both inside and outside of Singapore and rely on legally-provided mechanisms to lawfully transfer data across borders. Countries where we process data may have laws that are different from, and potentially not as protective as, the laws of your own country.

5.3 Lawful Bases for Processing

We will only collect and process personal data about you where we have lawful bases. Lawful bases include consent (where you have given consent), contract (where processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you (e.g., to deliver the Converge-in Services you have requested), and "legitimate interests." 

Where we rely on your consent to process personal data, you have the right to withdraw or decline your consent at any time and where we rely on legitimate interests, you have the right to object. If you have any questions about the lawful bases upon which we collect and use your personal data, please contact us.

5.4. Direct Marketing 

We currently do not share personal data with third parties for their direct marketing purposes without your permission.

5.5. Contact Information

You can contact us or use other options to resolve any complaints. If you have questions or complaints regarding this Policy, you may contact us at contact@convergein.com.