Beeline Privacy Policy

Effective date: January 1, 2022

Last updated: December 12, 2023

What is this document?

The privacy of your data — and it is your data, not ours! — is a big deal to us. The document explains how Beeline Learn Pty Ltd. (“Beeline,” “we,” or “us”) collects, uses, and discloses information about you. In plain English, we explain: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights to your data.

This Privacy Policy applies when you use our websites, mobile applications, and any other online products and services that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, our “Services”). It also applied when you contact us directly, engage with us on social media, or otherwise interact with us.

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time, if we do make changes, we will notify you by revising the date at the top of this policy and, in some cases, we may provide you with additional notice (such as adding a statement to our website or providing you with a notification). We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy regularly to stay informed about our information practices as well as any choices available to you.

What we collect and why

Identity, Access, and Information You Provide to Us

When you sign up or register for a Beeline, we typically ask for identifying information such as your name, email address, and current role. That’s so you can personalise your new account, and we can send you updates, or other essential information. We also give you the option to add a profile picture that displays in our products, but we do not normally look at or access that picture. We’ll never sell your personal info to third parties, and we won’t use your name or company in marketing statements without your permission either.

If you are joining into an organisation workspace, they may also opt to collect other information that you share with us, for instance, other fields upon signing up (bio and other custom text, link and selector fields) which are there to help enrich your experience on the platform and help them to get to know users in their workspace better - but also when you fill out a form, submit or post content through our Services, purchase a subscription as an organisation, communicate with us via third-party platforms, request customer support, or otherwise communicate with us via email. We do not take any responsibility or liability for custom data collected by you as an organisation, or by the organisation you are joining. Please refer to the Terms of Service for this.

The specific types of personal information we may collect in this manner include your name, username, bio, email address, business information, your content, including your avatar image, photos, posts, comments, cells, and beelines published by you, and any other information you choose to provide.

Website interactions

We also, in some cases, automatically collect certain information - this information includes:

  • Activity Information: We collect information about your activity on our Services, such as your platform activities and interactions, such as buttons clicked, features used, pages visited, actions performed, learning and building progress and history, when you share beelines, links or posts, or engage on the feed and with events, among others of similar nature. On an organisation level, we collect information about when groups are created, users are added, permissions are modified, content is changed, reports and analytics are accessed and used and other admin related activities.
  • Transactional Information: When you purchase a subscription, we collect information about the transaction, such as subscription details, the date of the transaction, and the purchase price.
  • Device and Usage Information: We collect information about the way in which you access our Services, including data about the device and network you use, such as your operating system and version, hardware model, mobile network, IP address, unique device identifiers, browser type, and app version. We also collect information about your activity on our Services, such as pages viewed, access time, questions answered, links clicked, and the page you visited before navigating to our Services.
  • Information Collected by Cookies and Similar Tracking Technologies: We use tracking technologies, including cookies and web beacons, to collect information about you. Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive or in device memory that help us improve your experience with our Services, see which areas and features of our Services are popular, and count visits. Web beacons (also known as “pixel tags” or “clear GIFs”) are electronic images that we use on our Services and in our emails to help deliver cookies, count visits, and understand usage. We also work with third-party analytics providers who use cookies, web beacons, device identifiers, and other technologies to collect information about your use of our Services and other websites and applications, including your IP address, web browser, mobile network information, pages viewed, time spent on pages or in mobile apps, and links clicked. This information may be used by Beeline and others to, among other things, analyse and track data, determine the popularity of certain content, deliver content targeted to your interests on our Services, and better understand your online activity. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, see Your Choices below.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We at times obtain information from third-party sources. For example, we may collect information about you from connected accounts, social networks, and data analytics providers. Additionally, if you create or log into your Beeline account through a third-party platform (such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn or others), we will have access to certain information from that platform, such as your name, lists of friends or followers, birthday, and profile picture, in accordance with the authorization procedures determined by such platform.

Information We Derive

We may derive information or draw inferences about you based on the information we collect. For example, we may make inferences about your location based on your IP address or infer learning goals and persona’s, likely next steps and actions, engagement habits and any platform trends or preferences based on your learning and activity history.

Information we do not collect

We don’t collect any characteristics of protected classifications including race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or physical and mental abilities or disabilities. You may provide these data voluntarily, such as if you include a pronoun preference in your email signature when writing to our Support team. We also do not collect any biometric data. You are given the option to add a picture to your user profile, which could be a real picture of you or a picture of something else that represents you best. We do not extract any information from profile pictures: they are for your use alone.

How we use this information

We use the information we collect to provide, maintain, and improve our platform and our Services, so that we may offer the best experience to you and our other users. Our services now encompass a comprehensive suite of tools designed for organisational efficiency and engagement. We offer private organisation workspaces, which can be made publicly accessible with certain subscriptions. Our platform includes mobile app access, allowing for the effective distribution of content within user groups and workspaces. We provide extensive management capabilities, enabling organisations to add and manage users, groups, and content, as well as to organise events. Our platform facilitates community engagement, alumni management of training programs, and comprehensive assessment tools including assignment submissions and grading. Our services also include advanced AI-enabled features to enhance the learning and training experience. This includes AI support in building and managing content, as well as in engaging with it. Administrators, managers, and facilitators are aided by AI in guiding the learning process and interpreting data and insights. For learners, our platform offers a personal AI coach, trained on the organisation's specific content, to provide tailored guidance and support throughout their learning journey.

We also use the information we collect to support you in various ways on the platform where necessary, which include but are not limited to the following::

  • Create and maintain your Beeline account;
  • Process transactions and send related information, such as confirmations, receipts, and user experience surveys;
  • Send you security alerts, technical updates and notices, support messages, and administrative messages;
  • Respond to your questions, comments, or complaints, and provide customer service;
  • Communicate with you about new content, products, services, and features offered by Beeline and provide other news and information we think will interest you (see Your Choices below for information about how to opt-out of these communications at any time);
  • Monitor and analyze trends, usage statistics, and activities in connection with our Services;
  • Detect, investigate, and prevent security incidents and other deceptive, malicious, fraudulent, and/or illegal activity so as to protect the rights and property of Beeline and others;
  • Debug to identify and repair errors in our Services;
  • Comply with our legal and financial obligations; and
  • Carry out any other purpose described to you at the time the information was collected.

When we share your information

We share certain personal information as described in this policy, or in the following circumstances:

  • We share personal information as outlined in this policy and in specific circumstances related to our Services. For organisation clients and private workspace environments, personal information such as your name, photo, bio, custom onboarding and user data, and other account details, as well as your activities within the workspace (like posts, content, comments, and platform activity), will be visible to workspace admins and managers. Additionally, within your organisation, a member list including custom profile fields added by your organisation may be accessible to users within the groups you are part of.
  • We share personal information with vendors, service providers, and consultants that need access to personal information in order to perform services for us, such as companies that assist us with web hosting, storage, and other infrastructure, analytics, payment processing, fraud prevention and security, customer service, communications, and marketing.
  • We may disclose personal information if we believe that disclosure is in accordance with, or required by, any applicable law or legal process, including lawful requests by public authorities to meet national security or law enforcement requirements. If we are going to disclose your personal information in response to a legal process, we will give you notice beforehand, so that you may challenge it (for example by seeking legal aid or court intervention), we will do this unless we are prohibited by law or believe doing so may endanger others or cause illegal conduct. We will object to legal requests for information about users of our Services that we believe are improper.
  • We may share personal information if we believe that your actions are inconsistent with our rules, user agreements or policies, or else if we believe that you have violated the law, or if we believe it is necessary to protect the rights, property, and safety of Beeline, our users, the public, or others.
  • We share personal information with our lawyers and other professional advisors where necessary to obtain advice or otherwise protect and manage our business interests.
  • We may share personal information in connection with, or during negotiations concerning, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company.
  • Personal information is shared between and among Beeline and our current and future parents, affiliates, subsidiaries and other companies under common control and ownership.
  • We share personal information with your consent or at your direction.
  • We share aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be used to identify you.

Security of your data

Beeline places great importance on ensuring the security of your personal data. We regularly review and implement appropriate and reasonable technical and organisational security measures to keep your personal data safe.

Retention of your data

We store personal data associated with your account for as long as your account remains active. If you close your account, we will delete your account data within 30 days upon request. We store other personal data for as long as necessary to carry out the purposes for which we originally collected it and for other legitimate business purposes, including to meet our legal, regulatory, or other compliance obligations.

Third-Party Embeds

Beeline does not host some of the content displayed on our platform or through our Services. Users have the ability to post content that is actually hosted by a third-party but is only embedded in our pages (referred to as an “Embed”).

When you interact with an Embed, it can send information about your interaction to the hosting third-party, just as if you were visiting the third party’s site directly.

For example, when you load a beeline in Learn or Build mode that contains a YouTube video Embed and watch the video, YouTube receives information about your activity, such as your IP address and how much of the video you watch. Beeline does not control what information third parties collect through Embeds or what they do with the information. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information collected through Embeds. The privacy policy belonging to the third party hosting the Embed applies to any information the Embed collects, and we recommend you review that policy before interacting with the Embed.

How we approach mobile app permissions

We offer a mobile app for Beeline. Our philosophy is to ask for the bare minimum of permissions from you to give you a great app experience, with maximum privacy.

By default, we have access to the network to ensure the app can connect to and communicate with the Internet. In most cases, we ask for permission ‘just-in-time’ so that you can decide if you want to grant access to things like contacts, camera, and calendar.

A few exceptions:

  • For our iOS apps, we'll ask for permission to use push notifications upon first sign-in.
  • Android apps do not require permission to send push notifications.
  • On Android, the OS will prompt for permission upon installation to read and write to your device files so that you can select attachments from your device to upload and download files from our apps to your device, so as to enable the offline usage of beelines.

It’s impossible for our apps to try to use a sensitive OS feature without requesting access explicitly from you, so you’ll always know exactly when and what we’re requesting. You will never be required to grant any permission (although a given feature may not work or work well without it).

Marketing Communications and Essential Notifications

Where you have opted-in to receive marketing communications and news, we may share information about our products, services, news and promotions with you. If you have opted-in to receive these marketing communications, you may always opt-out at a later stage by clicking on the “Unsubscribe” option included in every marketing communication sent to you.

Please note that unsubscribing from marketing content will not stop you from receiving important communications in relation to the security or operation of your Beeline account or to our Services.

Your rights with respect to your information

At Beeline, we apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Currently, some of the most privacy-forward regulations in place are the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) in the US and the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act in South Africa. Beeline recognizes all of the rights granted in these regulations, except as limited by applicable law. These rights include:

  • Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy.
  • Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security and processing of that information.
  • Right to Correction. You have the right to request the correction of your personal information.
  • Right to Erasure / “To Be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, all of our service providers. Fulfilment of some data deletion requests may prevent you from using Beelines services because our applications may then no longer work. In such cases, a data deletion request may result in closing your account.
  • Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority. To identify your specific authority or find out more about this right, EU individuals should go to https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.
  • Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request restrictions on how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of the sale of personal information. (We never have and never will sell your personal data.)
  • Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
  • Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
  • Right to not be subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object and prevent any decision that could have a legal, or similarly significant, effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited, however, if the decision is necessary for the performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
  • Right to Non-Discrimination. This right stems from the CCPA. We do not and will not charge you a different amount to use our products, offer you different discounts, or give you a lower level of customer service because you have exercised your data privacy rights. However, the exercise of certain rights (such as the right “to be forgotten”) may, by virtue of your exercising those rights, prevent you from using our Services.

Some of these rights can be exercised by signing in and directly updating your account information, the rest can be done by contacting support. If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at info@beeline.life or at Beeline, 9 Gardenia Road, Cape Town, South Africa.

For requests to delete personal information or know what personal information has been collected, we will first verify your identity using a combination of at least two pieces of information already collected including your user email address. If an authorized agent is corresponding on your behalf, we will first need written consent with a signature from the account holder before proceeding.

If you are in the EU, you can identify your specific authority to file a complaint or find out more about GDPR, at https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.

Questions and complaints

If you have a concern about our processing of personal data that we are not able to resolve, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority where you reside.

If you do not receive timely acknowledgement of your complaint, or if your complaint is not satisfactorily addressed, please visit https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_enhttps://bbbprograms.org/privacy-shield-complaints for more information and to file a complaint. This service is provided at no cost to you. Please do not submit GDPR complaints to BBB EU Privacy Shield.

If your EU-US Privacy Shield complaint cannot be resolved through these described channels, under certain conditions, you may invoke binding arbitration for some residual claims not resolved by other redress mechanisms. To learn more, please view the Privacy Shield Annex 1 at https://www.privacyshield.gov/article?id=ANNEX-I-introduction.

Changes to this document

We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices. You can see the latest document here (the last revision is documented below the title of this page) as well as request a history of the changes to our policies. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will also announce them on our company blog (the ‘Buzz’).

Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at info@beeline.life and we’ll be happy to answer them!