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Privacy Policy

START School of Real Estate - Privacy Notice

Last Updated: August 1, 2023

 

START School of Real Estate (“Brand,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) is a leading provider of exam preparation, continuing education, and licensure training courses.

 

This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) describes the types of personal information we may collect about you, how we collect, use, process, and disclose your personal information, and the choices you can make about how we collect, use, process, and disclose your personal information. This Notice applies to personal information collected through our website, mobile applications, the products, and services we offer, from third parties, and anywhere else this Notice is posted.

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Please read this Notice carefully. If you do not want your personal information processed in accordance with this Notice, then you should not use our products and services or engage with us.

For further information regarding this Privacy Notice or related policies and procedures, please contact us at Staff@STARTSchoolNC.com.

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Personal Information We Collect and How We Use It

We collect, use, process, and disclose your information for a variety of reasons, including to fulfill product and service orders, customize and improve the advertising and content we offer, offer suggestions for products and services based on your content or use of our website, deliver marketing communications and promotional materials that you may be interested in, contact you and provide customer service or technical support, protect the security or integrity of our databases or websites, detect fraud or illegal activity, take precautions against liability, detect misuse of our sites, develop and improve our products and services, for internal operational purposes, and as identified in the chart below. This information may be collected directly from you, indirectly from you through your device or browser when you visit our site, or from third parties.

 

The following describes what categories of personal information we may collect, the business purposes for which we generally use such information, and which types of third-party service providers we may share that information with.

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Payment Information – such as order details, credit card information, checks, billing, and shipping addresses

Purpose:

  • Process your payments.

  • Deliver our products and services to you.

  • Detect security incidents and protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity

Service Providers:

  • Payment processors

  • Back-office service providers

  • Data security providers

  • Government, law enforcement, and/or regulatory authorities

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Education Information – such as academic records, education renewal date, student identification codes, background checks, and disciplinary information

Purpose:

  • Market, sell, and deliver our products and services to you

  • Maintain and service your account

  • Provide customer service and technical support

  • Legal and regulatory compliance

Service Providers:

  • Payment processors

  • Back-office service providers

  • Data security providers

  • Government, law enforcement, and/or regulatory authorities

 

Internet or Electronic Network Activity Information and Geolocation Information  – such as marketing consents, IP address, location, cookies, website browsing and interaction activity, other device, or browser identifiers

Purpose:

  • Enhance your user experience.

  • Authentication as a security control

  • Analytics to improve our products and services and our website experience.

  • Personalize our website experience to your preferences.

  • Market and sell our products and services to you.

  • Detect security incidents and protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity

Service Providers:

  • Marketing service providers

  • Back-office service providers

  • Website performance and analytics providers

  • Data security providers

  • Government, law enforcement, and/or regulatory authorities

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Inferences about Customer Preferences and Characteristics – such as a profile reflecting preferences, characteristics, predispositions

Purpose:

  • Enhance your user experience.

  • Analytics to improve our products and services and our website experience.

  • Personalize our website experience to your preferences.

  • Market, sell, and deliver our products and services to you

Service Providers:

  • Marketing service providers

  • Website performance and analytics providers

  • Government, law enforcement, and/or regulatory authorities

 

In addition to any personal information that you might provide as described above, we may also have access to other information about you from relevant publicly available sources if you interact with our brand via social media or in certain other situations.

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Social Media
If you interact with content on our social media profiles (for example, if you “like” or share a post from one of our accounts, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or others), those social media sites may share information about you with us, including your public profile, e-mail address, and friend list. If you choose to “like” or share content, information about you may be publicly displayed on the social network, depending on your privacy settings. You should review the privacy notice of that social media site and check your privacy settings through that site. If you post information on social media or another third-party service that references our brand or our products and services (e.g., via an Instagram hashtag), we may publish or republish your post on our social media accounts or websites.

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Employment 
In addition to information collected from our customers and prospective customers, we and our service providers also collect certain information from candidates who apply for a job with us. We may contact you about your application to help us evaluate your qualifications for the position, including your name, phone number, e-mail address, postal address, education information, and employment information.

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Further Information About How We Share Your Personal Information

We may share personal information in the following situations.

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Service Providers
We use service providers to act on our behalf – for example, to help us fulfill your product and service orders, process your payments, provide customer service, enhance, and personalize your experience with us, deliver our advertisements, perform sales and marketing outreach, conduct market research, or provide back-office services. Our service providers may receive your name and contact information, payment information, information about purchases you have made, cookies and other device identifiers, IP address, and website browsing activity. These service providers are only allowed to use your information in connection with the specific service they provide on our behalf.

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Sponsor Organizations
We may share your personal information with organizations that act on your behalf to sponsor and/or pay for the products and services you access from us – for example, your employer, firm, brokerages, associations, universities, and other sponsoring organizations.

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Professional Advisors
We may share your personal information with professional advisors – for example, lawyers, bankers, strategic consultants, auditors, analysts, and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services they provide to us.

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For Compliance, Fraud Prevention, and Safety
We may share your personal information for compliance, fraud prevention, and safety purposes – for example, to (i) protect our, your, or others’ rights, privacy, safety, or property (including by making and defending legal claims), (ii) enforce the terms and conditions that govern our website and sale of products and services, and/or (iii) protect, investigate, and deter against fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unethical, or illegal activity.

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Business Partners

When you make a purchase of one of our packages or engage in promotions offered by us, either through our Site or otherwise, we may share personal information with the businesses with which we partner to offer you the related products or services. When you elect to engage with an offer, product or service provided through a business partner, or purchase a package on our Site that includes a product or service offered through a business partner, you authorize us to provide your name, email address, and other information to that business partner.

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Regulatory, Law Enforcement, and Other Situations
We may be required to share certain information to respond to a subpoena or similar judicial process – for example, to comply with applicable laws, as may be permitted or required by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) or other regulatory requirements, to protect the security or integrity of our databases or website, to take precautions against liability, in the event of a corporate reorganization or, to the extent required by law, to provide information to law enforcement agencies.

 

Cookies and Similar Technologies

We may use cookies, pixel tags, local storage, and other technologies to automatically collect information. These tracking technologies are small data files downloaded to or stored on your computer, tablet, mobile phone, or other internet-enabled devices that enable us to record certain pieces of information whenever you visit or interact with our email messages, website, applications, tools, and other online services. These technologies allow us to understand who has interacted with us, help us to operate our products and services more efficiently, personalize your experience on our website, improve our content and offerings, enable analytics, and show you advertisements in which you may be interested.

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Cookies. Cookies are small text files that are downloaded onto your computer or other device when you access a website. Cookies allow the website to recognize your device and store information about your preferences or past actions.

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Pixel Tags/Web Beacons. A pixel tag (also known as a web beacon) is a piece of code embedded on a website that collects information about your engagement on a web page. The use of a pixel allows us to record, for example, that you have visited a particular web page.

Behavioral-based Advertising. A third party may use technology, such as a cookie on your browser or a web beacon, to identify you so that they can provide advertising about products and services tailored to your interests.

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Analytics. We use Google Analytics and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting to collect information regarding visitor behavior and visitor demographics for some of our products and services and to develop content. This analytics data is not tied to any personal information. You can opt out of Google’s collection and processing of data generated by your use of our products and services by visiting Google Tools.

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Some web browsers and devices permit you to broadcast a preference that you are not “tracked” online. At this time, we do not modify your experiences based on whether such a signal is broadcast.

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Children

Our products and services are intended for an adult audience and are not targeted directly at children. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from children under the age of 16. If we become aware that we have unknowingly collected personal information from a child under the age of 16, and do not have parent or guardian consent on file, we will remove such personal information from our records as soon as practicably possible. If you believe we are incorrectly processing the personal information of a child under the age of 16, we ask that you contact us at Staff@STARTSchoolNC.com.

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Security

We use reasonable security measures, including administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect against loss, accidental, unlawful, or unauthorized access, use, loss, access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction of your personal information.

While we do our best to protect your personal information, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. If you know or have reason to believe that your personal information collected and processed by us has been lost, stolen, misappropriated, or otherwise compromised, we recommend you contact us as at Staff@STARTSchoolNC.com.

 

Retention

We keep personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, accounting, or reporting requirements and our legitimate interests in maintaining such personal information in our records. We will consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information, and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and applicable legal requirements.

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Third-Party Websites

Any links to third-party websites on our site are provided solely as a convenience to you. We do not endorse or make any representations about these websites or any products, materials, or services. Any personal information you provide on these third-party websites is subject to the privacy practices and policies of those sites. We recommend that you review each website’s privacy practices and make your own conclusions regarding the adequacy of these practices. We do not accept responsibility or liability for the privacy practices or content of any websites or services that are not operated by or for us.

 

Changes to this Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice may be updated periodically, and without prior notice to you, to reflect changes in our privacy practices. For any material changes to this Notice, we will endeavor to let you know by means of a prominent notice on our websites or directly via email or other communication. We indicate at the top of this Notice and certain supplemental sections when it was most recently updated. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.

 

Verification
We will need to verify your identity before processing your request. To verify your identity, we must be able to match certain information you provide us to the information we maintain about you. Certain requests may require us to obtain additional personal information from you. In certain circumstances, we may decline a request to exercise the right to know and/or right to deletion, particularly where we are unable to verify your identity or locate your information in our systems, or as permitted by law.

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Incentives
We may offer financial incentives or other considerations, including payments or discounts to you as compensation, for the collection of personal information. We may also offer a different price or rate to you if that price or difference is directly related to the value provided to us by your personal information.

We may run sweepstakes or contests from time to time. Each contest or sweepstakes has its own terms and conditions that describe how a consumer can opt in, as well as withdraw from the contest or sweepstakes. To enter a sweepstakes or contest, you may be required to provide us (or our service provider) with certain personal information, such as your name and contact information. If you submit your entry in accordance with the applicable promotion rules, you will be entered into the promotion and will get a chance to win a prize. If you ask us to delete your information, you may not be able to participate in the sweepstakes or contest for which the deleted information was required to administer the promotion.

 

Legal Bases for How We Process Your Information
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. The legal bases for processing your information as set out in this Privacy Notice are under the laws of North Carolina and are as follows:

  • Where use of your information is necessary to perform our obligations under a contract with you – for example, to provide the products or services you buy from us;

  • Where use of your information is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of others – for example, to operate our business; for direct marketing purposes, as appropriate; to make and receive payments; to engage in employment relationships; to comply with legal requirements and defend our legal rights; to provide security for our websites, products, software, or applications; and to prevent fraud;

  • Where we have your consent, in accordance with applicable legal requirements, to use your information for a particular purpose, which consent you may withdraw at any time by contacting us;

  • Where we use your information to comply with applicable legal obligations – for example, keeping track of purchases for tax and auditing purposes.

 

Sensitive Personal Information
If you provide us with any sensitive personal information when you use our products or services or otherwise engage with us – for example, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, biometrics or gender characteristics, criminal background, or trade union membership – you must expressly consent to our collection, processing, and use of such sensitive personal information. If you do not expressly consent to our collection, processing, and use of such sensitive personal information, you must not submit such sensitive personal information to us, and/or we will remove such information from our records as soon as practicably possible. If you believe we are incorrectly in possession of your sensitive personal information, we recommend you contact us at Staff@STARTSchoolNC.com.

 

Your Rights
You have the following rights concerning your personal data that we hold and process that you can exercise at any time. You have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information;

  • Edit, correct, and update your personal information;

  • Request erasure of your personal information;

  • Restrict the processing of your personal information;

  • Object to the processing of your personal information; and

  • Data portability.

 

You may submit a request by contacting us at Staff@STARTSchoolNC.com. Information necessary for the purposes of maintaining business records regarding a deleted or canceled account, including records of credit transactions and account ownership, will be retained in accordance with applicable law. We may decline to process requests that are frivolous/vexatious, would jeopardize the privacy of others, are extremely impractical, or for which access is not otherwise required by local law. We may also decline aspects of deletion or access requests if we believe doing so would undermine our legitimate use of data for anti-fraud and security purposes.

If you would like to submit a complaint about our use of your personal information or our response to your requests regarding your personal information, you may contact us or submit a complaint to the North Carolina Real Estate Commission.

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