Last Updated on: March 20, 2023

PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY IN ITS ENTIRETY PRIOR TO VIEWING AND/OR USING THIS SITE.

DEFINITIONS

The website www.discoveringdistance.com (“Site”) and its Content herein are owned by Discovering Distance, Inc. (“Company,” “we”, “us”, or “our”).  

The term “you” shall refer to the user and/or viewer of this Site.  

The term “Content” shall refer to any and all written, visual, video and/or audio information or material contained on the Site, including but not limited to all emails received from the Company, written material, blog posts, messages, graphics, memes, photos, images, forms, documents, templates, and the like.  

The term “personal information” may include but is not limited to: your name; mailing and email address; telephone number; social media account information; billing and payment information; and your communications sent to us.

The term “non-personal information” may include but is not limited to: your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address; the time, date and length of your visit; traffic data; the referring website; browsing and navigation patterns; and log files. 

INTRODUCTION

As the owner of this Site, we understand that your privacy is of critical importance.  We are committed to using your personal and non-personal information in a reasonable and responsible manner.  The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to inform you about how we collect, use, protect and/or distribute your personal and non-personal information. 

We will not collect, use or disclose your personal and non-personal information for any purpose other than as set forth in this Privacy Policy.  Additionally, we will not collect more information than is necessary to accomplish those purposes set forth in this Privacy Policy, and will not retain said information longer than is necessary to fulfill said purposes. 

This Privacy Policy applies to the personal and non-personal information that we collect related to our:

• Site;
• products and/or services;
• social media platforms;
• business operations;
• marketing and business development activities; 
• customer service; and
• communications.

PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY IN ITS ENTIRETY.  BY USING THIS SITE, YOU VOLUNTARILY AGREE AND ACKNOWLEDGE TO BE BOUND BY THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND YOU CONFIRM THAT YOU HAVE READ, UNDERSTAND AND CONSENT TO THE TERMS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY.   IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND THE TERMS HEREIN, THEN EXIT THIS SITE AND DO NOT ACCESS OR USE OUR SITE OR CONTENT. 

WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT & USE

We collect your information in two ways: 1) personal information that you have voluntarily provided to us; and 2) non-personal information that is automatically collected using data collection technology.      

1. Personal Information Provided by You:

We collect personal information that you have provided to us voluntarily based on your activity on our Site.  We promise to use your personal information only for the purposes for which it was provided.  Examples include the following: 

Your Interaction with Us: you may voluntarily provide your personal information to us in various ways, including but not limited to when you: opt in to receive free resources and information; to receive downloads; subscribe to our newsletter/email list, purchase a product or service; register for a free or paid event/webinar, course, class, or the like; contact us with an inquiry; provide comments; browse our Site; enter a promotion; fill out a form and/or request to receive other products or services from us.  

We use this information to provide you with the requested information, materials, content, newsletters, promotions/special offers, the product/service you purchased, the email we promised, and to improve the performance of our Site.  

Communication with Us: If you communicate with us via email, phone, mail, chat, through social media, our contact form on our Site or other form of communication, we will collect your personal information.

We use this information to facilitate communication with you, to respond to inquiries, to provide you with support and to maintain the Company’s records of said communications. We will only use your personal information for such consumer-related services.

Payment Information.  Personal information provided by you to purchase products or services from the Company, such as payment and billing information, is collected and processed to fulfill your order and will not be retained any longer than necessary.  We use this information to run and manage our Site and business, including but not limited to billing disputes and processing financial information.  We use third-party data processors to collect and complete payment transactions.  We do not retain nor have access to your payment information. 

If you are browsing the Site, you are not required to provide personal information to do so. 

By voluntarily providing your personal information to us, however, you are providing consent for us to use, collect and process said information. Please note that if you provide your personal information in a public setting, where said information is viewable by others, (e.g. commenting on a blog or social media) you acknowledge and accept that the Company is not responsible for others’ use of that information.  

You may have additional rights depending on where you live, please refer to sections below regarding “Territories”. 

2. Non-Personal Information Collected Using Data Collection Technology:

Our Site automatically collects non-personal information regarding your activity on our Site. 

This information, if collected, is collected using computer code sent to your computer known as “cookies” and/or is collected using computer code sent to your browser, known as “pixels”.  We use this information to maintain and improve our Site, enhance your user experience and for marketing purposes. We will not use your IP address to personally identify you. 

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL AND NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION

We use your personal and non-personal information as follows:

• To operate our Site;
• To conduct general business operations; 
• To learn how you navigate within the Site;
• To know how many unique users visit the Site;
• To obtain research and analytical information for Site improvements;
• To tailor content and/or offerings to your interests;
• To tailor our marketing efforts; 
• To fulfill our contractual obligations to you;
• To enforce our Terms of Use;
• To enforce our Terms & Conditions; 
• To enforce contractual obligations/agreements and/or seek remedies/damages; 
• To process our legitimate business interests;
• To provide exceptional customer service and communicate with you;  
• To personalize your experience on our Site;
• To improve and develop our Site;
• To improve and develop new products or services; 
• To provide our products and services to you; 
• To process your purchases and/or downloads; 
• To process your requests;
• To comply with legal requirements; 
• To protect legal rights and prevent misuse; and
• To detect any illegal or unauthorized activities. 

We will also automatically enroll you to our email list to receive free additional email messages from the Company any time that you provide your personal information to us. However, you can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe button located at the bottom of every email from the Company.  The opt-out list, also known as a suppression list, will be maintained for compliance purposes. 

Overall, we only use your personal information to manage our relationship with you.  

You may have additional rights depending on where you live, please refer to sections below regarding “Territories”. 

WHO HAS ACCESS TO YOUR DATA

We will collect, use, share and otherwise process your personal and non-personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.  We may internally share and process your personal and non-personal information within our Company.  The Company’s personnel may have access to such information to provide and operate our products or services or Site in the normal course of business.  

We will not sell, trade, share or otherwise disclose your personal information to unrelated third-parties without your prior written consent or another valid basis as permitted by law.  

At our discretion, we may offer third-party products, services, material, information or website links to other websites on our Site.  We have no responsibility or liability for the content or privacy policies associated with these third-parties, who may or may not have their own privacy policies. If we become aware that our third-party providers are using or improperly disclosing your personal or non-personal information, we will take all commercially reasonable steps to cease or correct the improper use and disclosure. 

Although we conduct a majority of the data collection, we do engage certain third-party service providers to assist us in providing our products or services to you and for no other purpose.  The following providers, which we use, may have access to your personal information:

• An email delivery service; 
• An online webinar/course provider;
• An online shop;
• A cloud service provider;
• A gateway/payment provider; 
• A hosting service provider; and
• A website analytics provider.

We may also disclose aggregated, non-personal information received from third-party providers without restriction. 

You may have additional rights depending on where you live, please refer to sections below regarding “Territories”. 

ANALYTICS INFORMATION

We use Google Analytics to analyze the usage of our Site and the traffic thereto.  It helps us understand how you use and interact with our Site. Google Analytics gathers this information about you and your use of our Site by the use of cookies (for more information please refer to the below section entitled “Cookies Policy”).  This information is then gathered as it relates to our Site and is used to create reports about users’ interaction with our Site and to understand how traffic is driven to our Site. Additional information about how Google uses data received from its partners, like us, is available at: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/. 

We may also use Google Ads and/or Facebook Ads to measure performance and provide advertising campaigns that report back insights into how you and others saw and/or interacted with the ad(s).  We may also use remarketing and/or retargeting ads for marketing purposes and to market our products and/or service and/or Site with other third-party companies, such as Instagram/Facebook/Google, based on your past history of visiting our Site.  This may be accomplished via pixels, cookies or other similar automatic data collection technology.

The Company reserves the right to use tracking pixels, which collects data on visitors to our Site from social media platforms such as Facebook.  This helps us track conversions from targeted ads, track user behavior, collect web traffic, optimize ad performance, and build a targeted audience for remarketing and future marketing purposes, similar to a cookie. 

COOKIES POLICY

A cookie is a text file that contains an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server and kept by the browser. Each time the browser requests a page from the server, the identification is delivered back to the server. Cookies are classified as “persistent” or “session” cookies. A persistent cookie will be saved by a web browser and will remain valid until it is destroyed by the user before the expiry date; on the other hand, a session cookie will expire when the web browser is closed at the conclusion of the user session. Cookies do not usually contain information that can be used to personally identify a user, but the personal information that we store about you may be linked to information stored or obtained from cookies. 

We use cookies for the following purposes:

• authentication – we use cookies to identify you when you visit our Site and as you browse and/or navigate our Site;
• active status – we use cookies to help us to determine if you are logged into our Site and/or to remember and process items in your cart;
• security – we use cookies as a security protocol to protect your account, including preventing fraudulent use of login credentials, and to protect our Site and services generally;
• advertising – we use cookies to tailor our advertisements to be relevant to you; and
• analysis – we use cookies to help us to analyze the use and performance of our Site and services.

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept and/or delete cookies. The methods for doing so vary from browser to browser, and from version to version.  However, you can obtain updated information regarding blocking and deleting cookies via the following:

• Google Chrome;
• Firefox;
• Opera;
• Microsoft Internet Explorer;
• Safari; and
• Microsoft Edge.

Please note that the blocking or disabling of certain cookies may have a negative impact on the functions or features of our Site.  That is, some features of our Site may not be available to you if you choose to block or disable certain cookies.

RETENTION & PROTECTION

We will only keep your personal information for as long as you want to stay connected with us.  As this time will vary, there is no precise duration to provide.  As a general rule, however, we will continue to send you email messages and newsletters via our email subscription (which you either signed up for or were automatically enrolled via other activities on our Site) until you opt out of these emails. 

For payment and sensitive credit/debit card information, we use a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate (technically a Transport Layer Security aka “TLS certificate”), which is an encryption security protocol to protect this information. The SSL/TLS certificate encrypts this data and ensures that anyone who intercepts the data can only see a scrambled set of characters and the information is safe and only visible to the website in which it was entered.  We do not store or process this information personally on our server, but instead use a third-party service provider.

We use safeguards that are commercially responsible and accepted in the industry to protect your personal information. You acknowledge that we cannot prevent all misuse and unauthorized access to your personal information and hold us harmless should your personal information be tampered and/or intercepted without your or our consent.  This includes a release of all claims associated with the unauthorized third-parties’ use of said information. 

Should a data breach occur, we will promptly notify you within 10 business days of the known breach, which requires notices of a serious data breach within 72 hours after we become aware of said breach. 

You may have additional rights depending on where you live, please refer to sections below regarding “Territories”. 

PASSWORD USE & PROTECTION

You may be required to create an account with a username and/or password to login and access certain features and/or content on our Site, or to use certain products or services.   You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account’s login credentials (i.e. username and password).  Additionally, you are solely responsible for any activities, by you or others, that may occur through your account and accessed via your login credentials.

We are not liable for any unauthorized use of your account or security information or breaches of your account due to the unauthorized use of your login credentials.  We highly recommend that you log out of your account after each session ends to prevent unauthorized use or access. 

You are not authorized to share your account or login credentials with anyone other than yourself so that others may not gain unauthorized access to our Site or Content via your account and/or login credentials. 

You may have additional rights depending on where you live, please refer to sections below regarding “Territories”. 

YOU ARE IN CONTROL

If you want to see if we have your personal information and what we have about you, if you want to rectify or update your information, or if you want us to delete your personal information, please contact us at the email below.  Note, we reserve the right to refuse your request should we believe the requested changes to be false, incorrect or fraudulent in nature. 

Additionally, if you want to unsubscribe from our email list, simply click on the unsubscribe button on the bottom of our emails and follow the instructions.  Please note that if you have subscribed to more than one list, then you will need to unsubscribe from each and your opting out may not guarantee that you have been removed from each list.  If you experience any issues unsubscribing, please contact us for prompt removal at the email below. 

TERRITORIES

Depending on where you reside, you may be entitled to additional rights as follows:

GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION (“GDPR”)

If you live in the European Union (“EU”) or the European Economic Area (“EEA”), then your personal information may fall under the GDPR.

We will only process and/or collect your personal information as follows:

• Consent: you will NOT be automatically enrolled in our email list to receive messages and/or newsletters unless you affirmatively consent to the same.  You can also opt out of any data collection technology by activating the “Do Not Track” setting in your browser and/or declining the cookies feature and unsubscribing from our emails; 
• Retention: we will not keep your personal information for any longer than is necessary.  You have the right to access, update or delete your personal information from our records and can contact us at the email below;
• Date breaches:  we will notify you of any data breaches within 72 hours;
• Legitimate interests: we will only process your personal information to engage in legitimate business interests, such as entering into a contract with us or for the performance and/or enforcement of a contract, communicating with you, providing our products and/or services to you and your interaction with our Site. 

If you have concerns, questions or requests about how we process personal data, write to us at the email address below. If we are not able to adequately address your concerns, you can address them to the data protection Supervisory Authority in your country, pursuant to Article 77 GDPR.

UNITED KINGDOM’S GDPR (“UK GDPR”)

If you live in the UK, then your personal information may fall under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act of 2018 (“DPA 2018”).  

The DPA 2018 sets out the personal information data protection framework for UK residents and replaces the Data Protection Act of 1998, coming into effect on May 25, 2018.  Note, it was amended on January 1, 2021 to reflect the UK’s status as outside of the EU. It supplements the UK GDPR, by providing exemptions, extending data protection to national security and defense and sets out the Information Commissioner’s powers/functions.   

The UK GDPR is a UK law that became effective on January 1, 2021.  It is based on the EU/EEA GDPR, which used to apply to the UK before January 1, 2021, with some changes.  

If your personal information was collected before January 1, 2021 (referred to as “legacy date”), then it will still be subject to the EU/EEA GDPR as of December 31, 2020 (aka “frozen GDPR”).  As of now, no significant changes exist between the frozen GDPR and UK GDPR and, thus, please refer to the above section entitled “GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION (“GDPR”) for your additional rights prior to January 1, 2021. 

We will only process and/or collect your personal information as follows:

• Consent: you will NOT be automatically enrolled in our email list to receive messages and/or newsletters unless you affirmatively consent to the same.  You can also opt out of any data collection technology by activating the “Do Not Track” setting in your browser and/or declining the cookies feature and unsubscribing from our emails; 
• Retention: we will not keep your personal information for any longer than is necessary.  You have the right to access, update or delete your personal information from our records and can contact us;
• Date breaches: we will notify you of any data breaches within 72 hours;
• Legitimate interests: we will only process your personal information to engage in legitimate business interests, such as entering into a contract with us or for the performance and/or enforcement of a contract, communicating with you, providing our products and/or services to you and your interaction with our Site. 

If you have concerns, questions or requests about how we process personal data, write to us at the email address below. If we are not able to adequately address your concerns, you can address them to the data protection Commissioner in your country.

BRAZIL’S LGPD (“BRAZIL’S GDPR”)

If you live in Brazil, then your personal information may fall under Brazil’s LGPD (Lei Geral de Protecao de Dados Pessoais – often referred to as “Brazil’s GDPR”).  Brazil’s GDPR was signed into law and has been effective since September 18, 2020.  The laws are drafted and based on the EU/EEA’s and UK’s GDPR.  

We will only process and/or collect your personal information as follows:

• Consent: you will NOT be automatically enrolled in our email list to receive messages and/or newsletters unless you affirmatively consent to the same.  You can also opt out of any data collection technology by activating the “Do Not Track” setting in your browser and/or declining the cookies feature and unsubscribing from our emails; 
• Retention: we will not keep your personal information for any longer than is necessary.  You have the right to access, update or delete your personal information from our records and can contact us;
• Date breaches: we will notify you of any data breaches within a reasonable time;
• Legitimate interests: we will only process your personal information to engage in legitimate business interests, such as entering into a contract with us or for the performance and/or enforcement of a contract, communicating with you, providing our products and/or services to you and your interaction with our Site. 

If you have concerns, questions or requests about how we process personal data, write to us at the email address below. If we are not able to adequately address your concerns, you can address them to the Data Protection Officer in your country.

CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

If you reside in California, your personal information entitles you to additional rights and may be governed under the California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA”) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). 

CalOPPA: A “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) is a setting that can be activated on certain browsers to block behavioral tracking from third-party services, such as Google Adwords. Your browser may allow you to automatically transmit a DNT signal to websites that you visit.  Please note, there is no consensus in the industry as to what constitutes a DNT.  Currently, we do not alter our practices if it receives a DNT signal from your and/or a visitor’s browser. To learn more about DNT visit: http://www.allaboutdnt.com. 

CCPA: You have the right to request what we have regarding your personal information and of which has been collected over the last 12 months from the date of your formal request.  Upon receipt, we will disclose: 

• The categories of personal information we collected about you;
• The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you;
• Our business and commercial purposes for collecting that information;
• The categories of third-parties with whom we shared your personal information; 
• The categories of personal information disclosed for a business purpose in the preceding 12 months; and
• The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you.

You also have a right to request that we delete this same information, subject to certain exceptions.  Please contact us at the email address below for such a request. 

CAN-SPAM ACT OF 2003 COMPLIANCE

In compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, all unsolicited commercial emails from the Company will clearly state the sender of the email, a legitimate physical address of the Company, a relevant subject line, that the email is an advertisement or a marketing solicitation and will include a visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism below the message to be honored within 10 business days.

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to change, modify, revise, amend, or otherwise alter in any way this Privacy Policy, our Site, and/or its Content at any time without notice to you.  Should any such changes or revisions occur, the most recent version will be posted on the Site, and will become effective immediately.  By using the Site or Content after the date posted above, you are deemed to have consented to the revised/updated Privacy Policy.  

Should any material changes occur to our Privacy Policy, we will contact you via email or by a prominent message on our Site. 

CONTACTING US:

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, your rights, the practices of this Site, or would like to update/remove your personal information, please contact us as follows: 

• By using our contact form;
• By emailing us directly at: hello@discoveringdistance.com; or
• By mail: PO Box 7067, Houston, TX 77248.