Privacy Policy

At Americares, we are committed to respecting and protecting your privacy.

Please read this policy carefully to understand how we collect, use and store your personal data.

Americares believes strongly in protecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal information. We acknowledge that you may have privacy and security concerns with respect to the information we collect, use, and disclose to third parties for the purposes of allowing us to offer and provide our platform, products, and services to you. This Privacy Policy sets out how we will process your personal data. It also explains the types of cookies we use on our website. By continuing to use our website, you consent to the use of those cookies.

Why do we collect and process personal information?

Americares processes personal information for the legitimate interest of furthering its charitable purpose and fulfilling its mission of enabling people around the world to prepare for and respond to crises in their own countries.

We may use your personal information to:

  • facilitate effective access to Americares learning platform and the courses hosted on the platform;
  • carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
  • seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
  • notify you of changes to our services; and
  • send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about the Americares activities and promotion of our other platforms, products, and services.

You agree that any information you provide to us about yourself upon registration or at any time is true. See the Terms and Conditions of Use for more information.

How do we collect your personal information?

Registering for courses

When you register on our learning platform, you will be asked to provide us with personal and employment information such as name, age (as a range), email address, country location, the organization you work for and other similar information. We will use this information to allow you to use the platform, including to register for courses.

If you express interest in, or register for, a course, we will record details related to that course including whether you start and/or complete the course, the scores you achieve in assessments, certificates and badges you earn, your responses to evaluation and feedback surveys, and other information relating to your participation in learning. We will use this information for the management and provision of courses.

As well as the information you provide when registering, you will have the opportunity to provide additional data such as interests, profile picture, or additional contact details through your profile. Contributions made through the site, for example through chat sessions or discussion forums, may be stored on the site (and visible by other users).

The information you submit is available to other branches of Americares which may be based in countries that are part of the European Union whose laws may not provide the same level of data protection.

We use this information on the basis of your consent. Please note that you can withdraw that consent at any time in the manner set out below.

Information about use of our website

We also obtain information about how people use our website so we can improve it. This information will identify you individually only where it is necessary to do so. In particular, if you visit our website we may record information about:

  • the areas of the website you visit
  • the amount of time you spend on the site
  • whether you are new to the site, or have visited it before
  • how you came to our website – for example, through an email link or a search engine
  • the type of device and browser you use.

This information is recorded within our platform. Some of this information may also be recorded by using cookies, which are described in more detail later on in our Privacy Policy.

We may analyze your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information relevant to you.

Who may have access to your personal information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes

Disclosure of information to third parties: course participation

If you register on our learning platform, your chosen name will be visible to all other users of the learning platform through any in-course discussions. Only those who are taking the same courses as you will be able to see any personal details.

If you access an online course through our platform that was created by a third party provider, we may share data with that provider in anonymized, aggregated form (e.g. the total number of people who started and/or completed the course over a given time). This anonymized, aggregated data may include aggregate information about the gender, age or location of the people who start and/or complete the course.

If you join an instructor-led training (e.g. face-to-face or webinar) given by a third party organization, you agree we can provide the third party organization with your personal information so that they can provide that course (which may require them to contact you), as well as any additional data you provide when you join that course.

As part of a course given by a third party provider, you may be asked to provide personal information about yourself. If you provide that information, you agree that we can provide that information to the third party provider to provide the course.

If you join a course that is administered by a third party, you agree to provide the third party organization with direct access to your personal information so that they can provide that course (which may require them to contact you), as well as any additional data you provide when you join that course.

If you join our learning platform through a third party organizations’ portal, they will be able to access your personal information and learning history and will also be able to assign specific courses to you for your completion. You can join a portal by either using the third party organization’s branded login page, through the organization’s Single-Sign-On Solution (SSO), or on request to a portal administrator.

Please note that some third party providers may be based in countries that are part of the European Union whose laws may not provide the same level of data protection.

We may also need to disclose your information if required to do so by law, a regulator or in the course of legal proceedings.

Disclosure of information to third parties: site management and analytics

Americares contracts various third parties to provide site management or data analysis services that help ensure the platform provides a high-quality experience. These third parties are:

Learning Templates, Montreal, Canada – maintenance and development of the platform

All of Americares third party suppliers are contractually obliged to abide by US law in the processing and storage of your data, which includes compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union.

Americares also makes use of tracking and analysis tools from Google (http://analytics.google.com) as described below.

Retention of your personal information

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity or as long as is set out in any relevant agreement you enter into with Americares (including, but not limited to, any Terms and Conditions of Use for a website).

Protection of your personal information

We take appropriate physical, electronic and managerial measures to ensure that we keep your information secure, accurate and up to date, and that we only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary.

Although we use appropriate security measures once we have received your personal information, the transmission of information over the internet is never completely secure. We do our best to protect personal information, but we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted to our website, so any transmission is at the user’s own risk.

Your credit card information

If you use your credit card to donate to us, buy something or make a booking online, we pass your credit card details securely to our payment processing partner as part of the payment process. We do this in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Security Standard, and don’t store the details on our website.

Sending information by email

Emails aren’t always secure, and they may be intercepted or changed after they have been sent. Americares does not accept liability for any damage or loss caused or suffered in connection with any such communications. The contents of emails reflect their author’s views and not necessarily those of Americares.

Please do not send Americares any confidential information, financial or other sensitive personal data through email.

The information in emails is confidential, so if you’ve received one by mistake, please delete it without copying, using, or telling anyone about its contents.

Your rights and choices

Data protection laws provide you with various rights. In particular, you have a right to:

  • Be removed from our marketing mailing lists, or to change your marketing preferences
  • Request a copy of the information we hold about you, for which we may charge a small fee
  • Ask that we update the information we hold for you, or correct information you think is incorrect or incomplete
  • Ask that we delete the information we hold about you
  • Withdraw consent to our processing of your information (to the extent such processing is based on consent) or otherwise object to our processing of your information

18 or under

When you register with us, you are stating that you are over 18 years of age. If you are aged 18 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Other websites

We are not responsible for the privacy of data collected by websites not owned or managed by Americares, including those linked through our website.

Changes to this privacy policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our platform, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small files, typically of letters and numbers, downloaded on to a device when you access certain websites or emails, including the Americares website. Cookies allow a website to recognize your device and provide the user with a more tailored experience within the website.

For more information, see: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/

Do we use cookies?

Yes. We use cookies to improve the users’ experience whilst visiting Americares and all subsites.

Types of cookies we use

We use strictly necessary, performance, functionality and targeting cookies on our website. We have assessed our cookies based on the International Chamber of Commerce Cookie Guide (http://www.iccwbo.uk/pages/privacy).

Website statistics analytics

We use Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, as well as other appropriate systems, to understand how people use our website so we can make it more effective. Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google does not receive any personal, identifying information from Americares. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

In email

Although not through cookies, we do measure the success of the emails we send – so we know what subject lines and stories people liked the most. We receive this information anonymously; we don’t share this information.

Online registration

If you register for a course or purchase any products or services through an Americares website, we will use cookies to remember the items you have selected until you check out and buy them (if applicable). We also use cookies to remember the information you type into our forms, until you finish and submit the form.

Third party cookies

You may notice some cookies that are not related to Americares whilst visiting our sites. Some of our pages contain embedded content such as YouTube video, Twitter feed, Facebook likes or LinkedIn share, and you may receive cookies delivered from these websites. Americares does not govern the publication of third party cookies. Details of our use of Google Analytics is set out above. To understand more about their cookies and privacy statements, please visit the relevant sites.

If you do not want cookies to be stored on your PC it is possible to disable this function, though this may limit your experience of using the site.

How do I disable cookies?

Other browsers have similar cookie management abilities in their preferences settings, please refer to your browser’s ‘Help’ facility.