Beast Academy Privacy Policy

Beast Academy, operated by AoPS Incorporated, is dedicated to sharing our love of math and puzzles to inspire the next generation of Math Beasts! As an educational service provider used by schools, children, and families, Beast Academy takes the privacy of our users very seriously. This policy has been adopted to address the collection and use of information from all Beast Academy websites, including Beast Academy Online. We collect and use information from users in order to efficiently and effectively provide our services. We will never sell or rent users’ personal information to third-parties. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about our privacy practices.

COPPA Compliance

Children under the age of 13 (“children” or “child”) may access BeastAcademy.com. Therefore, Beast Academy’s information practices comply with the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”). COPPA requires that we inform you of our practices with regards to our collection, use, or disclosure of personal information from children under the age of 13, and to obtain verifiable parental consent prior to collecting, using, or disclosing any such information.

If we discover we have collected information from a child in a manner inconsistent with COPPA’s requirements, we will either seek the parent’s consent for that collection or delete the information. We won’t require a child to disclose more information than is reasonably necessary to participate in an activity.

Verifiable Parental Consent:In order for a child to access certain Beast Academy services, either (a) a parent or legal guardian (“Parent”) must provide verifiable parental consent; or (b) a teacher or other authorized school administrator must provide consent on behalf of the Parent.

Beast Academy generally obtains verifiable parental consent prior to collecting, using, or disclosing any personal information from children. There are limited instances where we may collect information without parental consent in compliance with COPPA, including:

1. To protect the security or integrity of our sites, applications, and other technology;
2. A username may be selected by the child; however, this username is only used for signing in and cannot be used to contact the child unless and until we receive verifiable parental consent; and
3. We may collect contact information in order to respond to a specific request from a student on a one-time basis.

Participation in Beast Academy:Some Beast Academy services do not collect personal information from students and are designed to prevent students from accidentally providing personal information to us. These services are available without requiring verifiable parental consent.

What Information Does Beast Academy Collect?

Information Users Provide

Beast Academy collects different types of information from Students; from Parents; and from teachers, school administrators, and other educators (“Educators”).

• Contact Information:Parents and Educators may choose to provide us with their name, email address, and/or phone number while interacting with our sites and services. For instance, you may provide contact information in order to sign up for an account, sign up for email updates, complete a purchase, or submit a contact form or support request. Students are not asked for their own contact information. If you are a Parent or Educator, we may use your name, email address, and phone number for marketing purposes, but only if you give your express permission to do so, and such permission may be withdrawn at any time by contacting us or through the unsubscribe link in an email. We will share that information with a third party for the purposes of sending these emails, and texts. We will also share that information with third party social media platforms you may use to share updates, information about our services, and marketing information with you on those platforms. We will not otherwise share your contact information with third parties except when required by law. We will never sell or rent your contact information to third parties. Even if you opt out of marketing communication, however, we reserve the right to send you transactional messages, including email and other communications to provide account related information, disclose maintenance, transaction-related matters (e.g., order confirmation, shipping information, account status information, etc.) and other service-related issues.
• Customized Username and Avatar:A username used to uniquely identify each Student may be created during registration. This username may be disclosed on our website, for example in leaderboards or lists of contest winners. The username a Student selects is used as an onscreen name to identify them; it is strongly recommended that it not be their real name, but a pseudonym. Users may also be able to create customizable avatars that will be accessible to other users. We strongly recommend that users do not include any personal information (e.g., their likeness, real name) in their customizable avatar. Parents and Educators can adjust Privacy Settings at any time to remove or limit the visibility of the Student's avatar and username.
• Student Data Provided by a Parent:Parents may provide information about their children to register them for Beast Academy. This information may be shared with any other Parents or Educators who are linked to a Student’s account. A Student’s real name will never be made publicly available on our website by us.
• School Registration:School and district administrators or their designees (hereinafter “School Administrators”) can register with Beast Academy to use Beast Academy’s products and services as part of their instruction to students. A School Administrator may create accounts for other Educators in order to grant access to student information to authorized individuals. In order to register as a school, we collect the School Administrator’s name, school name, school address, contact phone number, email address, and school website URL. We ask for this information to verify that the School Administrator works for a legitimate educational institution or homeschool. We may request other evidence of school affiliation, as necessary, to determine your eligibility to create a school account.
• Student Data Provided by an Educator:Educators may upload certain data about Students as part of integrating Beast Academy into school activities, or connect Beast Academy to a rostering system or LMS to receive data. Beast Academy serves as a school official under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and is able to receive student data as we have legitimate educational interest in the information – it’s needed to provide our academic services. Such data may include student names, classroom rosters, academic data, and more. Educators may enroll students on behalf of their parents into Beast Academy Online. Where a student is under the age of 13, Educators agree that they, or their school, are acting as the students’ parents’ agent in providing consent for the online collection of students’ personal information within the school context. Please note: we will only use children's information we collect with the school's consent for educational purposes.
• Student Performance Data:As Students use Beast Academy, their progress and performance (“Student Performance Data”) may be stored. We use this data in order to fulfill the educational purposes of the product and to analyze and improve Beast Academy. The Parent or Educators linked to a Student’s account can see reports on that Student’s Student Performance Data. Limited Student Performance Data may be publicly available through the Leaderboard, but Parents and Educators can adjust Privacy Settings at any time to remove or limit the disclosure of Student Performance Data.
• Inviting Others and Linking Accounts:A Parent or Educator may invite other Parents or Educators to be linked to a student or class. You may initiate the link by providing us with the email address of the person you want to link or by providing a code from us to the person you want to invite. Any personal information collected for this purpose will be handled in accordance with this privacy policy.
• Communication Tools:Beast Academy may offer communication tools through which students may be able to post messages to our staff, their Parents, or their Educators. Parents and Educators may be able to message their Students and AoPS staff, as well as other Parents and Educators linked to their Students’ accounts. Parents will be able to review any communication with or by their children on the Beast Academy platform (with the exception of AoPS and AoPS-related communications noted below). Educators may be able to send messages to their Students or their Students’ parents through these tools. Additionally, a Parent or Educator may choose to provide contact information (e.g., email, phone, text) to obtain regular updates from us.
• Integration with AoPS and AoPS Academy websites:Portions of the Beast Academy website may be integrated into classes offered by Art of Problem Solving via the AoPS (www.artofproblemsolving.com) and AoPS Academy (www.aopsacademy.org) websites. Students participating in those classes may be able to post through the Beast Academy website to message boards on the www.artofproblemsolving.com and www.aopsacademy.org websites. The Privacy Policy for www.artofproblemsolving.com can be found here, and the Privacy Policy for www.aopsacademy.org can be found here. This external message board integration does not apply to Students unless they are enrolled in AoPS Academy classes or in the Art of Problem Solving Online School.
• Payment Information:Beast Academy offers numerous products and services for purchase online, including engaging math workbooks. Some of our products are purchased through a monthly subscription service. We collect certain information from a customer who is purchasing a product and/or service using our online ordering system. Such information may include name, shipping address, billing address, credit card information, other information related to other forms of payment (e.g., Paypal), email address, and phone number. This information is used to process purchases and to contact you if there is an issue with your purchase. We will share this information with our credit card payment processor. Additionally, your name, shipping address, email address, and/or phone number may be shared with the United States Postal Service or other private carrier, for the purpose of delivering any purchased goods to your shipping address. We will store all of this information on our secure server, except for your credit card information, which is only retained until your payment has been processed and is not stored thereafter; however, this information may be retained by our credit card processor in order to process additional transactions. You will be notified via email of each transaction. We will not use this information for any purpose other than to process your purchase, and will not share this information with any other third party, except as described above, or as may be required by law.

Information Collected Automatically

Device and Use Data:Like most websites, we automatically collect certain technical information from your browser or device when you visit our website. We collect technical information such as your device’s IP address, socket id, web browser version, and operating system. We collect information on which pages users visit and how you use the website. We use this information to optimize your online experience for your device, to diagnose any problems with our server, to improve the performance of our website, and to provide support for our internal operations.

Web Beacons:A "web beacon" is a small image that appears in emails we send to users in order to track whether an email is opened. We use this information in order to analyze trends, improve the content of our emails, and update our mailing lists.

Cookies:A "cookie" is a small piece of data placed on your computer by us. Within your web browser, cookies placed by our website can only be accessed by our website. The data collected using cookies typically includes information such as your IP address or mobile identifier, the type of computer operating system, the web browser, the frequency with which the user visits various parts of our sites or applications, and information regarding the online or mobile service provider. We use cookies to maintain session and preference information and to improve the use of the website. You may set your web browser to decline our cookies; however this will render large portions of our website unusable.

We also allow cookies to be placed on your computer by a third party for the purpose of website analytics. This allows a third party to collect data about your use of our website; however, no personally identifiable information is collected. Our third party service providers may set cookies on a user’s web browser and/or obtain information about the fact that a web browser visited the Beast Academy website from a certain IP address. Third parties cannot collect any other personally identifiable information from Beast Academy’s website unless you provide it to them directly.

We generally use the data collected from third-party cookies in the following ways:

• to report, in aggregate, how our visitors find and use our website;
• to understand overall visitor behavior; and
• to inform how we update and improve our website.

For any questions about how we or any third-party uses your data, please do not hesitate to contact us.

How Else May Beast Academy Use Collected Information?

Consistent with the information collection practices outlined above, we share information with service providers if necessary for them to perform a business, professional, or technology support function for us (e.g., billing support, analytics, hosting, marketing, and similar services). All service providers are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information in accordance with applicable law. This includes Beast Academy affiliates (e.g., AoPS Academy), with whom we collaborate to provide services. We may combine the different types of information we collect in order to improve the site, perform analysis, or offer support. Our practices conform with the law and the consent provided on behalf of students and children. We may also disclose a user’s personal information if permitted or required by law, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena.

In the event Beast Academy is involved in a merger, acquisition, sale of business assets involving customer information, or similar transaction, your information may be transferred or shared as part of the transaction. We will work to require the recipient to protect all personal information collected from Beast Academy users in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Security

The security and confidentiality of your personal information is very important to us. We implement commercially reasonable physical, technical, and administrative security methods to protect the information we collect from users. While the security of your personal information is of the utmost importance to us, we cannot absolutely guarantee the security of any information you choose to disclose.

We use the secure HTTPS protocol for all page loads. User data is transmitted over a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection. Passwords are encrypted in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS) and are cryptographically hashed at rest. We maintain internal data management policies and procedures, system monitoring, and incident response plans.

Data Retention

The following describes Beast Academy’s data retention policies for categories of personal information that are collected:

The criteria used to determine our retention periods include:

• The length of time we have an ongoing relationship with you (for example, for as long as you are a customer or prospective customer) and the length of time thereafter during which we may have a legitimate need to reference your personal information to address issues that may arise;
• Whether there is a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, certain laws require us to keep records for a certain period of time before we can delete them); or
• Whether retention is advisable in light of our legal position (such as in regard to applicable statutes of limitations, litigation or regulatory investigations).

Parental and User Rights to Modify Information

A Parent with an individual subscription may access their child’s information at any time by signing into their Parent Account and accessing the Manage Account page. If you have any questions on how to access your child’s information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

A Parent whose child has access to Beast Academy through a School subscription must make any requests to access or change their child’s account through the school first. As some schools integrate Beast Academy into their lesson plans and curricula, we want to ensure our information practices are consistent with school needs and do not impede educational activities. The records we maintain on behalf of schools are student education records under FERPA. Under FERPA, schools are responsible for decisions related to access or modification of these school records. Parents and students will continue to have access to the information they provide from their accounts. We will work cooperatively and diligently with schools when it comes to responding to parent requests.

Notice of Consumer Rights

You may have rights with respect to personal information that has been collected in the last twelve (12) months, including:

• The right to know what personal information a business has about them and what that business does with that information
• The right to know whether their data is sold or disclosed, and to whom
• The right to opt-out (prevent) the sale of their data
• The right to opt-out of sharing personal information for cross-context or targeted behavioral advertising purposes
• The right to correct inaccurate personal information
• The right to restrict the processing of sensitive personal information
• The right to delete their personal information, subject to certain exceptions
• The right to appeal a refusal to take action on a consumer rights request

We will never sell users’ personal information. We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes. For information on what personal information we collect and how it is used, please refer to the “What Information Does Beast Academy Collect?” and “How Else May Beast Academy Use Collected Information?” sections above.

Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a request to know, correct, delete, or appeal related to your personal information. To designate an authorized agent, you must provide a signed, written authorization or a valid power of attorney. You may also make a request on behalf of your child by contacting us through the email associated with the parent account for that child.

To exercise any of these rights, please submit a request by emailing [email protected] with the subject line, "Consumer Rights Request", or mailing your request to the contact address listed in this policy under “Contact Information”. We will need to verify your identity before processing your request, which may require us to request additional personal information from you or require you to log into your account, if you have one. In certain circumstances, we may decline or limit your request, particularly where we are unable to verify your identity or locate your information in our systems, or as permitted by law.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights, including denying you goods or services, charging you different prices or rates for goods or services, or providing you a different level or quality of goods or services.

Contact Information

Questions about this policy or with regards to parental rights provided under COPPA may be sent to:

Disclaimer of Other Sites’ Practices

We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of other sites.

Effective Date

This Privacy Policy is effective 8/31/2023. This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time as necessary.