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Privacy Policy

University of Fashion

Privacy Policy

Effective April 22, 2019

University of Fashion, Inc. (UoF) has created this Privacy Policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to protecting your privacy when visiting and using universityoffashion.com and such other URLs as may be designated as representing the University of Fashion® in the future (“Sites”). Please read the following privacy policy so that you are informed about:

  1. The types of information we will gather about you when you visit and use our Sites,
  2. How we will use that information,
  3. How you can learn what information we possess that might identify you,
  4. How you can arrange to have your private information deleted from our system and
  5. Whether and how we may disclose your information to third parties.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to any information about you that we obtain through sources outside of our website or via third-party sites that you may choose to access through hyperlinks on our Site.

BY USING OUR SITES, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE TERMS, DO NOT ACCESS OR USE OUR SITES.

Plain English Summary

We keep a record of your private contact information in a database stored on hard drive on a computer server. However, we do not save any of your financial information (e.g. credit card and PayPal information) in this database.

We never sell the information we obtain from our customers to anyone else.

We do not store our customers’ passwords in our customer database. However, we may write down and store any password you explicitly asked us to associate with your account, or that we had to create for you in order to solve a service problem. Regardless, you can change even the passwords we have created for you at any time on our Membership Management page (Just login and look on the left side of the page) and, if you do so, we will, again, have no idea what your password is.

All customer website interactions with us are accomplished over encrypted HTTPS. While our customer database isn’t encrypted, the server environment(s) we use to store our customer database is/are protected in various ways that we do not disclose for security reasons. Regardless of our efforts to protect your private information, you should assume that our database, like most other websites in the world, does not offer 100% protection from the efforts of hackers determined to steal your private information or to do damage in various ways to you and others.

We use your private contact and financial information to program our Sites to give you access to our full-length lessons and the other resources and programs we offer. We use your private information to create accounts associated with the name and username you chose for yourself, as well as the email address you provided to us when registering or ordering. If you paid us for access rights to the lessons on our Sites, these accounts tell our system what access rights you have, when you asked for those rights, how many times you’ve accessed our site and, if applicable, where we can find your financial records on the PayPal website. We send newsletters to our Free Members and Subscribers using their email addresses on file.

If you order a subscription from us, we don’t store your credit card number in our system. We send that information immediately to our financial partner, PayPal. Only PayPal keeps a record of the financial information that you give us. Like us, the PayPal website (Paypal.com) enables you to access and read their privacy policy. We urge you to read their policy so that you understand their privacy commitments.

If you ever want to know what private information we have on you or if you want us to delete any of your private information in our active database, just ask us by clicking the Contact menu at www.UniversityofFashion.com and sending us your request. Upon your request, we will delete the personal information you want us to delete from our currently active database, even if that means we need to cancel your Free Membership or paid subscription access to our lessons and other content. However, even when we delete your private information from our active database, that information will still exist, and not be deleted, in any old, archival (backup), inactive databases we maintain but do not routinely access.

You can contact PayPal directly via their website at www.paypal.com to ask them to remove the private financial information you gave us in the past to purchase a UoF subscription. PayPal has a written contract with us that promises to protect the private information they receive and store from our customers and to provide or delete our customers’ private information upon request.

We maintain three types of accounts containing our customers’ private information, i.e. accounts that define you as a:

  1. Free Member (which gives you access to 3 free, full-length lessons and other benefits)
  2. Yearly Subscriber (which gives you access to all full-length lessons and other benefits)
  3. Monthly Subscriber (which gives you access to all full-length lessons and other benefits)

Whenever a Yearly or Monthly Subscriber cancels his/her account or when it ceases to provide access to our full-length lessons for any other reason, such as when his/her subscription term expires, we automatically change that customer’s account to a Free Member account. We keep all customer personal information in all our accounts forever, unless the customer asks us to delete their private information in our currently active database.

There is nothing about our Sites’ content that would be inappropriate for children and we keep no private information on our younger customers that would identify them as children.

The above is only a summary of our privacy policy. Read the rest of our privacy policy, below, to learn its full details.

 The Services we Provide (Services)

We offer three primary services to our customers (Services).

  1. Those that register to become a UoF Free Member get the right to access 3 free, full-length lessons on the home page of our website, to download our collection of fashion croquis, to receive our newsletter via email and other benefits.
  2. Those that register to become a UoF individual subscriber (Individual) pay us for either monthly or yearly access to UoF’s full-length fashion design lessons, to download our collection of fashion croquis, to receive our newsletter via email and other benefits.
  3. Those that register as a potential Group subscriber provide their name, their organization’s name and their email address to us so that we can get in touch with them to discuss the possibility of their offering some or all UoF Services to the members of their organization, e.g. the students in a school, the members of a sewing club or the patrons of a library (each member classification, a Group).

Customers whose paid Individual (not Group) subscriptions expire or are canceled or are terminated for any other reason automatically become Free Members.

Types of information UoF collects about you
Personal Information

Personal Information is information that we collect from you that, in the hands of other people or companies, might be able to identify you as an Individual or an organization (Group).

Personal information that you provide directly to us

UoF website’s Free Member registration, Group registration and Individual subscription forms enable customers to provide their personal information to us so that we can register them for one of our Services. We may collect a customer’s name, address, city, state, postal code, telephone number, email address, credit card and PayPal details (Financial Information), purchase order numbers, agreement to our legal Terms of Use and Privacy policy and/or other information, depending on the type of account a customer wants (Contact Information). We use this information to administer our customers’ accounts, respond to customer questions or initiate contact with our customers regarding their Free Member, Group or Individual subscription accounts. We also use the latter information to program our website to enable our Free Members and subscribers to enjoy the special privileges they’ve requested or paid for, such as enabling Free Members to download free croquis or enabling subscribers to see our full-length video lessons, or to provide a Group organization’s representatives’ email address(es) to our employees or independent contractors responsible for Group sales. New customers can elect to receive informational and promotional communications from us. All UoF customers may opt out of receiving future commercial communications from us at any time (see “Anti-Spam Policy/Opt-out Choice” below).

Personal information that you provide to others, i.e. not directly to UoF

UoF uses various means, including paper flyers, social media or other companies’ websites, to advertise UoF Services and to ask people to voluntarily provide their Contact Information so that we can then either contact them or seek to sign them up for our Services.

How long we retain our customers’ private information

We keep our customers’ Personal Information in our active database forever, except for when customers ask us to delete their accounts entirely from that database. When customers ask us to delete their Personal Information from our active database, we do not delete that information in our old, archival (backup) databases.

How we handle customers’ Financial Information

UoF does not store any customer Financial Information on its own servers. After filling out one of our order forms, a customer’s Financial Information is sent to our financial intermediary, PayPal, who then confirms whether the customer’s credit card or PayPal account has sufficient funds in it for the requested purchase. PayPal then informs UoF of its verdict, and we then create the requested subscription account, or not. PayPal then initiates all future charges on the customer’s credit card provided or from the customer’s PayPal account, without any UoF involvement. Once we send a customer’s credit card information to PayPal, we can only see it on PayPal’s own website, and only then if we provide PayPal with our proper PayPal login credentials.

PayPal has a contract with UoF that promises to protect the private information they store from UoF customers and to provide or delete our customers’ private/personal information upon request.

How you can access the Personal Information we have on you

If you have an account with us, you can review and update much of the Personal Information we store in our active customer database, online, by logging into your account then clicking “Edit Profile” under Membership Management. You can also ask us to update your Personal Information by clicking the Contact menu at www.UniversityofFashion.com and writing us your request.

Non-Personal Information

Non-Personal Information is information that we collect that, by itself, cannot identify you personally. This type of information may include how many times you’ve logged in to your account, demographic information such as your age, gender, income, education, profession, area code, zip code, items or files that you send us or that other services, such as Google Analytics, provide us, and/or technical information, including, the type(s) of browser(s) you use, your operating system(s), your IP address(es), information that you provide us through your use of the Sites such as the terms you enter into the search functions of the Sites and websites that you access before and after you access our Sites.

We use Google Analytics (GA) to better understand our customers. We’ve enabled all available GA Advertising features. GA reads cookies on your computer to identify you and to track your online behavior. GA doesn’t provide your name, street address or other contact information to UoF. Rather GA tells us where you went on our site and how long you spent on the site so that we can understand your and our other customers’ behaviors and our business better. GA also provides general details about you (if these are known to Google), e.g. your gender, age, interests, the country where you live and other information that doesn’t identify you definitively.

IP Address, Cookies, UTM Parameters and Web Beacons

We use your internet protocol (IP) address to help diagnose problems with our server and to better manage our website.

The UoF website may place “cookies” on your computer’s hard drive through your web browser. “Cookies” can allow the UoF website to recognize your computer when you access the website as a return user. If you would like to prevent the placement of cookies on your computer, or to remove cookies from your computer, please access the “Help” feature on your particular brand of browser to learn how you can disallow it from accepting cookies and/or contact your browser provider if additional instructions are required. Please be advised that if you block or remove cookies from your computer, the quality of your user experience with the UoF site may decrease.

Web beacons (also known as pixels, tags and tracking code) are unique identifiers, similar in function to cookies, that are used to track the online movements of web users or to access cookies. Unlike cookies which are stored on the user’s computer hard drive, web beacons are embedded invisibly on the Sites’ web pages. Web beacons may be used to deliver or communicate with cookies, to count users who have visited certain pages, to tell us when and whether any of the visitors to our Sites have visited a certain web page, e.g. a “success page” where people who have successfully bought a paid subscription from us end up, and to understand our customers’ usage patterns. We also may receive an anonymous identification number if you come to our site from an online advertisement displayed on a third-party website.

When we run ads on our Sites or other websites, we may add Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters at the end of the Sites’ URL’s that we link to those ads so that we can later assess the effectiveness of each ad, e.g. how many people clicked or interacted with the ad. These parameters uniquely identify each individual ad, but do not identity the Personal Information of the people who click or interact with each ad.

How we use the information we collect

We do not rent or sell our customers’ Personal Information to other companies and generally restrict access to our customers’ Private Information to UoF owners, directors, officers, employees, contractors, service providers and agents who have a legitimate need to know such information. These entities are often bound by formal confidentiality agreements with UoF to further protect your Personal Information. Should any of these individuals violate those confidentiality obligations, they may be subject to discipline (including termination) and criminal prosecution.

We use third party businesses, for example, our website developer and our email service provider, to assist us in providing services to you that may require our sharing your Personal Information.  We require those businesses to only use your Personal Information to provide a particular service or product, e.g. emailing our newsletter to our Free Members, Individual Subscribers and Group contacts. These organizations are not authorized to use your Personal Information for any other purpose.

Before hiring third parties to receive and act on your Personal Information, we check to assess as best as we can that they maintain satisfactory standards of security.

We may disclose your Personal Information or your Financial Information if required to do so by law or a court of competent jurisdiction or in the good-faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to comply with an order of a court or government authority, or a subpoena, to investigate, defend and enforce UoF rights and your obligations, to protect UoF assets, to apply our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and other licenses, to assist law enforcement, to any companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and reducing credit risks, as required by necessary professional standards, and as otherwise set forth in this Privacy Policy.

We may collect information on the services and products viewed by you on the website. We may use this information to customize your experience and to suggest and offer you products according to your preferences. We may use this information to identify demographic information patterns and trends of use, but will only use, release or publish any such information in a manner that preserves your anonymity.

UoF may transfer your Personal and non-personal information to individual(s) or company(ies), without asking for your prior permission, in the case of a merger or acquisition, purchase by UoF of other businesses, bankruptcy, or other sales of all or a portion of UoF assets or stock.

UoF reserves the right to use, disclose, license, assign or otherwise transfer information which is not personal information in UoF’s sole discretion as UoF deems appropriate.

NOTICE TO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS – CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

We do not have any information on you that is defined by the State of California as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). PII information includes an individual’s name along with one or more of the following:

  • Social Security Number
  • Driver's license or identification number
  • Financial account numbers or credit/debit card numbers with security or access codes or passwords
  • Medical information
  • Health insurance information
  • A username or email address in combination with a password or security question and answer which would permit access to an online account
  • A signature
  • One’s physical characteristics
  • Street address
  • Passport or insurance policy numbers
  • One’s educational credentials or employment history
Links to Other Sites

This website contains links to other companies’ websites. UoF is not responsible for and has no control over the privacy practices, security practices or the content of such websites.  When using a link on UoF Site to another website, you should check the applicable privacy policy of the other website.

Site Intended for Use by Adults

This website is intended for use by adults and not children or minors. UoF does not knowingly collect or publish any information personally identifying any child or minor as a child or minor. Children and minors should not access this website unless they have their parents’ permission. Children and minors do not have UoF permission to post any information personally identifying themselves as children or minors anywhere on our Sites or our affiliated chat rooms, forums, message boards and/or news groups, if any.

Security

The security of this website and your information is of great importance to UoF.

We do not store your account password in our active customer database. Thus, hackers trying to steal your Private Information will not be able to steal your password from our computers. However, we may write down and store notes on any password you explicitly ask us to associate with your account, or that we created for you in order to solve a service problem. Regardless, you can change even the passwords we create for you at any time on our Membership Management page, eliminating, again, any record of your password in our active database.

Our current, main website (https://www.UniversityofFashion.com) was created using WordPress. We keep our customers’ private information in files created by WordPress. WordPress offers built-in security as summarized in this link: https://wordpress.org/about/security/. In addition to WordPress built-in security, we’ve added additional programming designed to further improve our current website’s security.

The UoF Sites have reasonable security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of your private information under UoF control. But, we make no assurances about UoF’s ability to prevent any such loss, misuse or alteration and we shall have no liability to you or to any third party from any loss, misuse or alteration. We do not warrant that your access to our Sites is completely secure.  Some states or countries do not allow this limitation and so it may not apply to you.

You should promptly notify UoF if the username, email address and/or password used to purchase UoF subscriptions or that are associated with other types of UoF accounts have been forgotten, lost or stolen. Note: outside of prompting you for your password on the site to log into your account, we will only very rarely ask you for your password through any other means of communication. If you’re not sure if it’s us asking for your password or any other Personal Information, write us by clicking the Contact menu at www.UniversityofFashion.com.

If you would like to change your password and you are an individual Monthly or Yearly subscriber or Free Member (i.e. you are not a member of a Group), log into the UoF website with your current username and password then click the “Edit Profile” link Under Membership Management on your personalized Welcome page. Once you arrive at your “Edit Profile” page, enter your new password on the page.  Then click on the “Save all changes” button on the bottom of the page.

If you have forgotten your password, click Login on our Home page, enter your username and click “Forgot password”.

Contacting UoF

You can write us about any privacy-related matter by clicking the Contact menu at www.UniversityofFashion.com and writing us a message.

BY USING OUR CONTACT FORM, WRITING US EMAILS OR BY ACCESSING THE SITES, YOU HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT UoF, ITS AFFILIATES AND ENTITIES ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INTERCEPTED INFORMATION SENT VIA THE INTERNET, AND YOU HEREBY RELEASE US FROM ANY AND ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE USE OF INTERCEPTED INFORMATION IN ANY UNAUTHORIZED MANNER.

Anti-Spam Policy/Opt-out Choice

UoF is committed to providing users of this website with the choice to receive or to not receive emails and/or other communications from UoF. We strive to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. We always enable our email recipients to opt-out of receiving further emails from us via a link right on the email, itself. However, if you would like to ask us directly to delete you from our marketing email list(s), just write us using our “Contact” menu on the UoF Home page.

Please note that UoF may not include an opt-out link in our non-commercial emails (i.e. emails concerning your orders, our Sites’ Terms and Conditions of Use, etc.). If you have questions or concerns regarding a non-commercial email, please contact us clicking the Contact menu at www.UniversityofFashion.com and writing and sending us a message.

You can set your browser to block Google Analytics from providing UoF information about you or your use of the UoF website. Google Analytics offers an opt-out browser add-on that, when installed, modifies the cookies that it puts on your computer to track your behavior while on UoF Sites. The Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on works on most types of browsers. Search for the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on using your preferred search engine, e.g. Google or Bing, and install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on to block your behavior from Google Analytics and UoF.

Modification of Personal Information and/or Financial Information

If you would like to change your account details, please log onto your account by clicking the “Login” link on the UoF Home page. Look for one or more of the following links under Membership Management on your personalized Welcome page:

  • Edit Profile
    • Allows you to change your name, password, email address, etc.
    • Allows you to opt out of receiving emails from us
  • Upgrade to Monthly or Yearly Subscription
    • If you have a Free Member account or and Monthly subscription, a link will appear which enables you to upgrade to a higher level of subscription
  • Cancel Subscription
    • This allows you to cancel your subscription. Note: you will continue to be able to enjoy access to all UoF content until your already paid-for, current monthly or yearly term ends

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us by clicking the “Contact” menu link on our Site and writing us a note (that we will receive as an email). After receiving a request to change your information, we will make reasonable efforts to ensure that your personal information stored in our actively used databases will be updated, corrected, changed or deleted, as appropriate, as soon as is reasonably practicable. However, we reserve the right to retain in our archival files any information we remove from or change in our active website databases. We may retain such information to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems and enforce our terms and conditions of use.

In addition, it may not be technologically possible or reasonable to remove each and every record of the information you have provided to us, for example, we make regular backups of our customer databases and website’s programming in the form of archival files. A copy of your personal information may exist in these inactive files that would be difficult or impossible for us to locate and selectively delete.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

UoF reserves the right to change or modify this Privacy Policy from time to time in its sole and absolute discretion. Please note that you will are bound by any minor changes to the policy when you use the Sites after those changes have been posted. Substantive revisions to this Privacy Policy shall apply only prospectively. Please check this website regularly for changes.

No Rights of Third Parties

This Privacy Policy does not create rights enforceable by third parties or require disclosure of any Personal Information relating to users of the website.

 

University of Fashion® is a registered trademark owned by University of Fashion, Inc.

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