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Scope
This Privacy Policy describes how we handle your personal information for our
services on the Lingworld website. It applies generally to the Lingworld.com
website and other related websites where this policy appears in the footer of
the page. Some Lingworld-branded websites or websites we operate may be governed
by separate privacy policies. The policy that applies on any of our domains or
subdomains is always the policy that appears in the footer of each website.
You can browse our sites without telling us who you are or revealing any
personal information about yourself. Once you give us your personal information,
you are not anonymous to us. If you choose to provide us with personal
information, you consent to the transfer and storage of that information on our
servers.
We may collect and store the following personal information:
email address, physical contact information;
transactional information based on your activities on the
sites (such as booking classes, taking a language class, teaching, and content
you generate or that relates to your account);
community discussions, chats, dispute resolution,
correspondence through our sites, and correspondence sent to us;
other information from your interaction with our sites,
services, content and advertising, including computer and connection
information, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the sites, ad data,
IP address and standard web log information;
information from other companies, such as demographic and
traffic data; and
other supplemental information from third parties.
Marketing
We don't sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their
marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We may combine your
information with information we collect from other companies and use it to
improve and personalize our services, content and advertising. If you don't wish
to receive marketing communications from us or participate in our
ad-customization programs, simply indicate your preference once you sign-on in Lingworld (or similar account status page) or by following the directions
provided in an email or from a link on the advertisement.
Use
Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with a
safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. You agree that we may use
your personal information to:
provide the services and customer support you request;
resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems;
prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and
enforce our User Agreement;
customize, measure and improve our services, content and
advertising;
tell you about targeted marketing, service updates, and
promotional offers based on your communication preferences; and
compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third
parties.
Our Disclosure of Your Information
We may disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements, enforce
our policies, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the
rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property, or safety.
We may also share your personal information with:
Service providers under contract who help with our business
operations (such as fraud investigations, bill collection, affiliate and rewards
programs and co-branded credit cards).
Other third parties to whom you explicitly ask us to send
your information (or about whom you are otherwise explicitly notified and
consent to when using a specific service).
Law enforcement or other governmental officials, in response
to a verified request relating to a criminal investigation or alleged illegal
activity. In such events, we will disclose information relevant to the
investigation, such as name, city, state, zip code, telephone number, email
address, Username history, IP address, fraud complaints, and bidding and listing
history.
Other business entities, should we plan to merge with or be
acquired by that business entity. (Should such a combination occur, we will
require that the new combined entity follow this privacy policy with respect to
your personal information. If your personal information will be used contrary to
this policy, you will receive prior notice.)
Without limiting the above, in an effort to respect your privacy and our ability
to keep the community free from bad actors, we will not otherwise disclose your
personal information to law enforcement, other government officials, or other
third parties without a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal
procedure, except when we believe in good faith that the disclosure of
information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or
to report suspected illegal activity.
Activity Associated with Usernames
Your Username is displayed throughout Lingworld and is therefore available to
the public. All of your activity on our sites is traceable to your Username.
Other people can see your the classes you have given or taken in the past, your
teaching or student profiles, feedback, ratings and associated comments, and so
on. Notices are sent to other community members regarding suspicious activity
and policy violations on our sites and refer to Usernames and specific items.
Therefore, if you associate your name with your Username, the people to whom you
have revealed your name will be able to personally identify your Lingworld
activities.
Using Information from Lingworld
Lingworld enables you to share personal information to complete classes. We
encourage you to disclose your privacy practices and respect the privacy of
other users. We cannot guarantee the privacy or security of your information and
therefore we encourage you to evaluate the privacy and security policies of your
tuition partner before entering into a transaction and choosing to share your
information. To help protect your privacy, we allow only limited access to other
users' contact. When users are involved in a tuition, they may have access to
each other's name, Username, and Identification in the media used for the class
(Skype, MSN Messenger, Phone, etc...). In all cases, you must give other users a
chance to remove themselves from your database and a chance to review what
information you have collected about them.
You agree to use user information only for:
Lingworld transaction-related purposes that are not
unsolicited commercial messages;
using services offered through Lingworld, or
other purposes that a user expressly chooses.
Cookies
We use "cookies" (small files placed on your hard drive) on certain of our pages
to help analyze our web page flow; customize our services, content and
advertising; measure promotional effectiveness, and promote trust and safety.
A few important things you should know about cookies are that:
We offer certain features that are available only through the use of cookies.
We use cookies to help identify you and maintain your signed-in status.
Most cookies are "session cookies," meaning that they are automatically deleted
from your hard drive at the end of a session.
You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although
doing so may interfere with your use of some of our sites or services.
You may encounter cookies from third parties on certain pages of the sites that
we do not control. (For example, if you view a web page created by another user,
there may be a cookie placed by that web page.)
No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing
We and our users do not tolerate spam. Make sure to set your Lingworld
notification preferences so we communicate to you as you prefer. You are not
licensed to add other Lingworld users, even a user who has purchased an item
from you, to your mailing list (email or physical mail) without their express
consent. To report Lingworld-related spam or spoof emails to Lingworld, please
forward the email to admin@lingworld.com. You may not use our communication
tools to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate our User
Agreement. We automatically scan and may manually filter messages to check for
spam, viruses, phishing attacks and other malicious activity or illegal or
prohibited content, but we do not permanently store messages sent through these
tools. If you send an email to an email address that is not registered in our
community (via Refer-a-Friend or other tools), we do not permanently store that
email or use that email address for any marketing purpose. We do not rent or
sell these email addresses.
Account Protection
Your password is the key to your account. Use unique numbers, letters and
special characters, and do not disclose your Lingworld password to anyone. If
you do share your password or your personal information with others, remember
that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of your account. If
you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your
personal information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your
behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you
should immediately notify Lingworld and change your password.
Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information
You can see, review and change most of your personal information by signing on
to Lingworld. Generally, we will not manually modify your personal information
because it is very difficult to verify your identity remotely. You must promptly
update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a
public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it. Upon your request,
we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as
soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance
with applicable law. We do retain personal information from closed accounts to
comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes,
troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our Lingworld
User Agreement, and take other actions otherwise permitted by law.
Security
Your information is stored on our servers. We treat
data as an asset that must be protected and use lots of tools (encryption,
passwords, physical security, etc.) to protect your personal information against
unauthorized access and disclosure. However, as you probably know, third parties
may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, and
other users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from
the site. Therefore, although we work very hard to protect your privacy, we do
not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or
private communications will always remain private.
Third Parties
Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document
addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. If you
disclose your information to others, whether they are bidders, buyers or sellers
on our sites or other sites throughout the internet, different rules may apply
to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Lingworld
does not control the privacy policies of third parties, and you are subject to
the privacy policies of those third parties where applicable. We encourage you
to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.
General
We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on
this site. All amended terms automatically take effect 30 days after they are
initially posted on the Site. In addition, we will notify you through the
Lingworld internal mail. If your questions are not answered online, you may use
the Contact Us form.
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