Augustine Institute Privacy Policy

Last Updated: November 16, 2023

Augustine Institute, Inc. ("Company" or "We") respects your privacy and is committed to protecting it through our compliance with this Privacy Policy (the “Policy”).

This Policy describes the types of personal information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit the websites or applications that link to this Policy (each a "Website" or “Application”, and together the “Services”) and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information.

1.    When this Policy Applies

This Policy applies to information we collect:

  • On the Services, such as the Amen Application, Catholic Market, Short Courses, Word of Life, or other pages on the Website AugustineInstitute.org.
  • In email, text, and other electronic messages between you and the Services.
  • Through mobile and desktop applications you download from the Services, which provide dedicated non-browser-based interaction between you and our Website.
  • When you interact with our advertising and applications on third-party websites and services.
  • When you visit Websites that we operate with a joint venture partner, for example: Heroic Men is a joint venture with the Catholic Men’s Leadership Alliance and Eucharistic Revival is a joint venture with USCCB. The applicable joint venture partner for those Websites will have access to your personal information and behavior on those Websites, excluding payment information. Please see each respective party’s websites for more information: Catholic Men’s Leadership Alliance and USCCB (collectively the “Joint Venture Partners”)

This Policy does not apply to information collected by:

  • Our online store and content platform Formed and Formed en Español. For more information see the Formed Privacy Policy.
  • Us offline, through your courses or interactions with our instructors or staff, or through any other means, including on any other website operated by the Company that does not link to this Policy, or any third-party website; or
  • Any third party, including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from or on the Website, whose website(s) bears a link to a separate privacy policy.

Please read this Policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your personal information. If you do not agree with this Policy, do not use the Service. By accessing or using a Service, you agree to this Policy. This Policy may change from time to time (see Changes to Our Privacy Policy below); we will update the “Last Updated” date after any changes. Your continued use of the Service after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check this Policy periodically for updates.

2.  Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It

We collect several types of personal information from and about users of a Website, including information:

  • “Personal information” as used in this Policy means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household, and as further defined by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, as amended from time to time (the “CCPA”);
  • That is about you but individually does not identify you; and/or
  • About your internet connection, the equipment you use to access the Service, and usage details.

We collect this information:

  • Directly from you when you provide it to us.
  • From third parties and Service Providers.
  • Automatically as you navigate through the Services. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies.

Personal Information You Provide to Us

‍The information we collect on or through our Website may include:

  • If you create an account on a Service (an “Account”), we collect “Contact Information” such as name, physical and email addresses, phone number, items purchased, and similar information.
  • If you sign up for a free trial, purchase a subscription, or make a purchase on the Service, we collect “Transaction Information”, such as payment method, billing address, and tax ID where required by applicable law. We do not store your card numbers under any circumstances.
  • If you apply for our school or courses, we may collect Contact Information, Payment Information, and information related to your educational history, including any additional personal information you include (“Application Information”).
  • If you apply for employment through our Website, we collect Contact Information and personal information related to past employment (“Employment Information”).
  • If you create an Account on Word of Life or attend our courses (collectively “Education Information”):
  • As a parent, catechist, or teacher on Word of Life, you may submit Contact Information, send messages to your students, and information about your child or student, such as grade, user credentials, school or parish, and class information.
  • As a student on Word of Life, we will collect information on your interactions and submissions, such as exercises you complete, scores, and grades.
  • As a regular student, we will use your Application Information, along with any information you submit during your courses, to provide the Services you request and to improve our products and Services.
  • When you interact with our Service using an Account, we will record those interactions, including for example videos watched, audio listened to, products purchased, courses completed, searches performed, and donations made (“Activity Information”).
  • If you donate on our Service, we collect name, address, contact information like phone and email address, and financial information (“Donation Information”).
  • In general, if you fill in forms on our Service, comment on content, answer surveys, request help, report a problem, interact with other users, create an avatar, correspond with us, or request further services, these types of information, if linkable with your Account are “User Contributions”. Your User Contributions are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. Although we limit access to certain pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users of the Website with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions.

Information We Collect Automatically

‍As you navigate through and interact with our Website, we use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

  • Details of your visits to our Service, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Website.
  • Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.

We also use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services.

The information we collect automatically includes personal information, we may maintain it or associate it with personal information we collect in other ways or receive from third parties. This is collectively, “System Information”. System Information helps us to improve our Services and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to:

  • Estimate our audience size and usage patterns;
  • Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Service according to your individual interests;
  • Speed up your searches;
  • Secure our Service and protect it;
  • Suggest content to you;
  • Recognize you when you return to our Service.

3. Cookies and Other Technologies

The technologies we use for automatic data collection may include:

  • Cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive or storage of your device.
  • Flash Cookies. Certain features of our Website may use local stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from, and on our Website.
  • Web Beacons. Pages of our Service and our e-mails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Company, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related Website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain Website content and verifying system and server integrity).

We generally use usage cookies and web beacons as follows:

·       for “essential” or “functional” purposes, such as to enable various features of the Services like remembering passwords or staying logged in during your session;

·       for social media integration e.g., via third-party social media cookies, when you share information using a social media sharing button or “like” button on our Services, or you engage with our content on or through a social networking website such as Facebook;

·       for analytics purposes, consistent with our legitimate interests in how our Services are used or perform, how users engage with and navigate through the Services, what sites users visit before visiting our Website, how often they visit our Website, whether an email was received or opened, and other similar information; and

·       subject to any consent required by law, for the purpose of displaying advertisements via retargeting to those users who have visited our Website, or for targeting advertising to visitors to our Service.

Targeted/Behavioral Advertising and Opting Out

We use your personal information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you.

We also use behavioral advertising; some content or Applications, including advertisements, on or off the Website are served by third parties, including advertisers, ad networks, servers, content providers, and application providers based on your behavior on our Website. These third parties may use cookies to collect information about you when you use our Website. The information they collect may be associated with your personal information or they may collect information, including personal information, about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. They may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioral) advertising.

We do not control these third parties' tracking technologies or how they may be used. However, if you would like to remove or disable cookies via your browser, refer to your browser’s configuration documentation to do this since the steps for doing so are usually browser specific. This might adversely impact your ability to use our services effectively.

Most advertising networks offer you a way to opt out of interest-based advertising. If you wish to limit third parties’ collection of information about your use of our Website, you can opt-out of such at the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US or the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada in Canada. PLEASE NOTE THAT OPTING-OUT OF BEHAVIORAL ADVERTISING DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE ADVERTISING WHILE USING THE WEBSITE.  IT WILL, HOWEVER, EXCLUDE YOU FROM INTEREST-BASED ADVERTISING CONDUCTED THROUGH PARTICIPATING NETWORKS, AS PROVIDED BY THEIR POLICIES AND CHOICE MECHANISMS.

You can limit the use of your information for purposes of targeted advertising using a number of methods:

4. How We Use Your Information

  • To Provide Our Products and Services. This could include fulfilling your requests for products or services. It could also include processing purchases or other transactions.  We also save your personal information to facilitate new product or service orders.
  • To Improve Our Products and Services.  We use personal information to understand and analyze the usage trends and preferences of our users to make our Services better, diagnose technical issues, prevent fraud, refine our product and services offerings, and develop new features and functionality.
  • To Understand Your Interests.  We use your personal information to personalize your experience on the Services and to deliver information about products and services relevant to your interests.
  • To Respond to Your Requests or Questions.  We use personal information to provide you with support and to respond to your requests for customer support, including to investigate and address your concerns and monitor and improve our responses.  This may also include responding to your feedback.
  • To Determine Your Eligibility and Set Up Your Account.  We may use your personal information, including information about you gathered from third party sources, to verify your identity or determine your eligibility for some services, such as admission or courses. If you set up an Account, we will use the Contact Information you provide in relation to that Account creation to create, maintain, customize, and secure your Account.
  • To Market Products or Services.  We use your personal information to provide you with information about our products, services, or promotions.
  • To Secure the Services.  We use personal information to maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our Services, databases and other technology assets, business, and other users.
  • To Communicate with You.  We communicate with you about your Account or our relationship with you.  We may also contact you about this Policy or any other agreement we have with you.
  • As Required by Law.  We use personal information to respond to requests from law enforcement and as required by applicable law, court order, or government investigation.

5. Word of Life

In Word of Life, we use your personal information as follows. For a child-friendly summary of our use of your personal information in Word of Life, click here.

  • Marketing

On Word of Life, we do not serve ads, perform behavioral advertising, or retarget visitors to the Word of Life platform solely because of their visit to Word of Life. If you are of legal age and separately choose to receive email updates from us by providing your email address, we may send you updates on Augustine Institute, information on educational products relevant to you, and other relevant marketing communications. You can unsubscribe from these emails in via the unsubscribe link in the email.

  • Child Signup and Parental Consent

·       We use Contact Information and Education Information to validate and provide support to Accounts in compliance with applicable law, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

·       If a parent or guardian does not complete the Account approval process within 21 days of initial signup, we will delete the information the child provided (unless the parent has separately signed up using that email address for marketing emails or otherwise provided that information on another Service). Never provide any personal information about your child in login credentials.

·       If you believe your child is participating in an online activity with us that collects their information, and neither you nor the child's instructor have received an email providing notice or seeking your consent, please contact us at customer.service@augustineinstitute.org. We will not use any emails provided for parental consent purposes to market to the parent unless the parent has expressly opted-in to email marketing or has separately participated in an activity that allows for such email contact.

·       We use Education Information to place children in the right class, to track student progress, to provide the services your parent or catechist requests, and to improve our Services.

·       We use any User Contributions in Word of Life to:

·       help you learn by giving feedback and enabling your instructor to communicate with you;

·       provide, maintain, develop, and improve Word of Life; and

·       personalize your experience on Word of Life.

·       We may reject any User Contribution deemed inappropriate or containing personal information, or for any other reason, at the time of submission, or at any subsequent time, all in our sole discretion.

·       With regard to school-based activities, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) allows teachers and school administrators to act in the stead of parents to provide consent for the collection of personal information from children. Schools should always notify parents of these activities. For more information on parental rights with respect to a child's educational record under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), please visit the FERPA site.

6. Disclosure of Your Personal Information

We may create, aggregate, disclose anonymized information about our users, e.g., information that does not identify any individual, without restriction. As between you and us, we own all right and title in and to such information and may use it for any legal purpose.
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We may disclose personal information that we collect or that you provide as described in this Policy:

  • As described more specifically in Section 9 below.
  • To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them (“Service Providers”).
  • To a buyer or other successor of ours in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets or stock, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by us about our Service users is among the assets transferred.
  • To third parties to market their products or services to you if you have consented to these disclosures. We contractually require these third parties to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
  • To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it. For example, if you give us an email address to use the “email a friend” feature of our Website, we will transmit the contents of that email and your email address to the recipients.
  • For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
  • With your consent.

We may also disclose your personal information:

  • To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government, law enforcement, or regulatory request.
  • To enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes.
  • If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect our rights, property, or safety, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

7. Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information

We strive to provide you with choices regarding your personal information:

  • Disclosure of Your Information for Advertising. If you do not want us to use your personal information for promotional purposes, you can opt-out by emailing us at customer.service@augustineinstitute.org or by using our cookie banner.
  • Promotional Offers from the Company. If you do not wish to have your Contact Information used by the Company to promote our own or third parties' products or services, you can opt out by emailing us at customer.service@augustineinstitute.org or at any other time by logging into the Website and adjusting your user preferences in your Account profile by checking or unchecking the relevant boxes or by sending us an email stating your request to customer.service@augustineinstitute.org. If we have sent you a promotional email, you may unsubscribe by following the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

    California residents have additional personal information rights and choices. Please see California Privacy Notice section below for more information.

    Nevada residents who wish to exercise their sale opt-out rights under Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 603A may submit a request to this designated address: 6160 S. Syracuse Way, Suite 310 Greenwood Village, Colorado 80111.

8. Accessing and Correcting Your Information

On some of our Websites, you can review and change some or all of your personal information by logging into the Website or visiting your Account profile page.

You may also send us an email at customer.service@augustineinstitute.org to request access to, correct or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. We cannot delete your personal information except by also deleting your user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

If you delete your User Contributions from the Website, copies of your User Contributions may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or might have been copied or stored by other Website users. Proper access and use of information provided on the Website, including User Contributions, is governed by our terms of use.

9. California Privacy Notice

If you are a California resident, California law provides you with additional rights regarding our use of your personal information.

California's "Shine the Light" law (Civil Code Section § 1798.83) permits users of our Website that are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to customer.service@augustineinstitute.org or write us at:

6160 S. Syracuse Way, Suite 310
Greenwood Village, Colorado 80111

In the previous 12 months, we have collected and disclosed the following categories of personal information, as that term is defined by the CCPA.

Category of Personal Information

Shared

Sold

Disclosed For Business Purpose

A.       Individual Identifiers (Contact Information, Application Information, Donation Information, User Contributions)

Our Joint Venture partners

N/A

Marketing, IT, eCommerce (for example, Vimeo), HR Service Providers, Development, Donation Management, and Learning Management Service Providers

B.       Customer Records (Application Information)

N/A

N/A

Marketing, IT, Development, eCommerce, Donation Management, and Learning Management Service Providers

C.       Commercial Information (Transaction Information, Activity Information, Donation Information)

Our Joint Venture partners

N/A

Donation Management, Development, and eCommerce Service Providers

D. Internet or other similar network activity (System Information, Activity Information)

Our Joint Venture partners

Google Analytics, Facebook*

Marketing, eCommerce, and Development Service Providers

E. Employment Information

N/A

N/A

eCommerce, HR, Development, and Learning Management Service Providers

F.    Education Information

N/A

N/A

IT, eCommerce, Development, IT, and Learning Management Service Providers

G.    Inferences drawn from Activity Information and other personal information

Our Joint Venture partners

N/A

Marketing, IT, eCommerce, Development, and Learning Management Service Providers

*To the extent that any of our cookies are deemed a “sale” under the CCPA, you may opt out of such by clicking here. One of our eCommerce Service Providers, Vimeo, sells data within the meaning of the CCPA. To opt out of those sales, see Vimeo’s California Privacy Policy here.

Your Rights and Choices

The CCPA provides California residents with specific rights regarding their personal information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.

Access to Specific Information and Data Portability Rights

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (see Exercising Access, Data Portability, and Deletion Rights), we will disclose to you:

  • The categories of personal information we collected about you.
  • The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
  • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
  • The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called a data portability request).
  • If we sold or disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, two separate lists disclosing: sales, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient purchased; and disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient obtained.

Correction Rights

You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate personal information that we hold about you.

Deletion Rights

You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we have retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (see Exercising Access, Data Portability, and Deletion Rights below), we will delete (and direct our Service Providers to delete) your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies.

Exercising Access, Data Portability, Correction, and Deletion Rights

To exercise the access, data portability, and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either:

Emailing: customer.service@augustineinstitute.org

Or calling: 1-866-767-3155

Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child.

You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

·       Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person, or an authorized representative of the person, about whom we collected personal information; and

·       Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you.

Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an Account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

Response Timing and Format

We endeavor to respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to 90 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding the verifiable consumer request’s receipt. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable. For data portability requests, we will select a format to provide your personal information that is readily useable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

10. Data Security

We have implemented measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure.

The safety and security of your information also depends on you. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of our Services, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone. We urge you to be careful about giving out information in public areas of the Service like comment sections. The information you share in public areas may be viewed by any user of the Service.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our Website. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Website.

11. Changes to Our Privacy Policy

The date our Policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date active and deliverable email address for you, and for periodically visiting our Service and this Policy to check for any changes.

12. Contact Information

To ask questions or comment about this Policy and our privacy practices, contact us at:

customer.service@augustineinstitute.org  

or via our toll-free number: 1-866-767-3155

Or via mail at:

Augustine Institute

Attn: Privacy Policy

6160 S. Syracuse Way, Suite 310
Greenwood Village, Colorado 80111

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