Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://blue.academy.

Introduction

This amended privacy policy (this "Privacy Policy"), including GDPR compliance, sets out how Blue Startups ("Blue Startups", "us", or "we") collects, processes and holds your personal data if you visit our website(s) or otherwise provide personal data to us. Blue Startups is the data controller of your personal data.

At Blue Startups, nothing to us is more important than the success of our students and website users and the protection of their personal data. With users in nearly every country in the world, we adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR expands the privacy rights granted to individuals in the European Union (EU) and requires certain companies that collect and process personal data of these individuals to comply with a new set of privacy regulations.

GDPR

In 2016, the EU approved a new privacy regulation called the General Data Protection Regulation commonly known as the GDPR. It applies to all companies that collect personal data and information on individuals in the EU and meet certain territorial requirements. The GDPR is designed to strengthen the security and protection of personal data of individuals in the EU, as well as provide businesses with a structured framework on how to collect, process, use, and share such personal data.

This policy affects your legal rights and obligations, so please read it carefully. If you have any questions, please contact us at admin@bluestartups.com.

Personal data we collect

Blue Startups collects and uses your personal data to operate its website(s) and deliver the services you have requested.

Blue Startups may also use your personal data to inform you of other products or services available from Blue Startups. Blue Startups may also contact you via surveys to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered.

We collect, process, store and use personal data, including your name, email address, physical address, phone number and educational and/or employment background, when you fill out our forms for more information.

When enrolling as a student with Blue Startups, additional personal data will be collected and retained, including your photograph, dates of attendance, grade level, enrollment status (e.g., undergraduate or graduate, full-time or part time), credentials, honors and awards received, class rosters within the classroom, and the most recent educational agency or institution you attended.

When you contact us by email or post, we may keep a record of the correspondence and may also record any telephone conversation we have with you.

All personal data that you provide to us must be true, complete and accurate. If you provide us with inaccurate or false data, and we suspect or identify fraud, we will record this.

Data we automatically collect

When you visit our website(s), we, or third parties on our behalf, automatically collect and store information about your device and your activities. This information could include (a) your computer or other device's unique ID number; (b) technical information about your device such as type of device, web browser or operating system; (c) your preferences and settings such as time zone and language; and (d) statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns. We collect this information using cookies in accordance with the Cookie section of this Privacy Policy and we use the information we collect on an anonymous basis to improve our website experience, our events and the services we provide, as well as for analytical and research purposes.

Marketing Communications

If you opt in to receive marketing communications from us, you consent to the processing of your data to send you such communications, which may include newsletters, blog posts, surveys and information about new events. We retain a record of your consent.

You can choose to no longer receive marketing communications by contacting us at admin@bluestartups.com or clicking unsubscribe from a marketing email. If you do unsubscribe to marketing communications, it may take up to five (5) business days for your new preferences to take effect.

Lawful processing of your personal data

We collect and use your personal data for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy on the basis of our legitimate interests (for example, providing educational offerings and evaluating your performance, conducting admissions research, or for website analytics); to process transactions requested by you and meet our contractual obligations (for example, registering you for an online education course, processing your application for admission, and to register you for events you wish to attend or contact you with requested information relating to the school); or on the basis of your consent, where applicable.

Who do we share your data with?

Blue Startups does not sell, rent or lease to third-parties any personal data it collects.

Blue Startups may share personal data with our third-party vendors to help perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, or provide you with customer support. We may also share your personal data with third-party service providers, sub-contractors, and agents that we appoint to perform services on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions, including (but not limited to) payment providers, email communication providers, IT service providers, accountants, auditors and lawyers. All such third-parties are prohibited from using your personal data except to provide their contracted services to Blue Startups, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your personal data.

Under certain circumstances we may have to disclose your personal data if required under applicable laws and/or regulations, or to protect a third-party's rights, property, or safety.

Where we hold and process your personal data

Some or all of your personal data may be stored outside of the European Union (the EU), including for example, if our email server is located in a country outside the EU or if any of our service providers or their servers are based outside of the EU. We shall only transfer your personal data to organizations that have provided adequate safeguards with respect to your personal data.

Your rights

You have the right to obtain from us a copy of the personal data we collect in an easily accessible format, and to require us to correct or update the personal data if it is inaccurate or incomplete. You also have the right, at any time, to require that we delete your personal data. To exercise these rights, or any other rights you may have under applicable laws, please contact us at admin@bluestartups.com.

If you withdraw your consent to the use or sharing of your personal data for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, you may not have access to all (or any) of the related services, and we might not be able to provide you all (or any) of the services. Please note that, in certain cases, we may continue to process your personal data after you have withdrawn consent and requested that we delete your personal data, if we have a legal basis to do so.

Retention

We will retain your personal data for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy unless a longer period is required under applicable law, or is needed to resolve disputes or protect our legal rights or otherwise to comply with legal obligations.

CCPA

Blue Startups (1) does not have annual gross revenues in excess of twenty-five million dollars, (2) does not buy, receive, sell, or share for commercial purposes, alone or in combination, the personal information of 50,000 or more California consumers, households, or devices, and (3) does not derive fifty percent or more of its annual revenues from selling California consumers' personal information. As such, Blue Startups and this website are not subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 ("CCPA").

FERPA

Blue Startups adheres to the regulations and guidelines outlined in the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 ("FERPA" or the "Act") which protects the privacy of student education records. Under FERPA, school officials may not disclose student education records, nor permit inspection of student education records, without written permission from the student (unless disclosure is allowed under certain exceptions covered in the Act), and students are permitted to inspect their education records.

Under FERPA, education records are defined as records, files, documents, and other materials that contain information directly related to a student and are maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a person acting for such agency or institution. The following are examples of student education records:

• Letters of recommendation (Note: students do not have the right to inspect these letters unless the author of the recommendation has granted such a waiver.)
• Student enrollment, registration, and course completion data, including course assignments and final grades
• Student applications forms
• Transcripts from student's previously attended institutions, including high school and other colleges and universities
• Directory Information – such as a student's name, address, telephone listing, date and place of birth, major field of study, participation in officially recognized activities and sports, registration status, enrollment status, dates of attendance, credentials and awards received, and the most recent previous educational agency or institution attended by the student.

Access to Education Records:

Under FERPA, students have the right to inspect and review their educational records within 45 days of Blue Startups receiving a request for such an inspection. Students also have the right to request an amendment to their educational records if they are believed to be inaccurate or misleading, and the right to consent or revoke the disclosure of all or part of their education records, including directory information.

Cookies

What Are Cookies

This website uses cookies as is common practice with almost all websites. Cookies are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information cookies gather, how we use them and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored; however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of this website's functionality.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this website. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disable Cookies

You can disable cookies by adjusting the settings on your web browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in disabling certain functionality and features of this website. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics, which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web, to help us understand how you use the website and ways in which can improve your user experience. These cookies may track things, such as how long you spend on the website and the pages that you visit, so we can continue to produce engaging content.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by our third-party vendors. We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this website that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work, the following social media websites including; Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Vimeo, YouTube, will set cookies through our website which may be used to enhance your profile on their website or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor's IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Analytics

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Plugins

We do track user data via our plugins and we securely store this information in your user profile on our encrypted server. We do store data fetched by our plugins on our servers, neither we share that data with any third party. Our plugins run absolutely on our site and store the data is in the database of our website.

We only collect your public profile data only from your consent that you grant before initiating Social Login, from the social network used to login at our website. This data may includes your first name, last name, email address, link to your social media profile, unique identifier, link to social profile avatar. This data is used to create your user profile at our website. You can revoke this consent at any time by sending us an email.

Google

The Site uses Google (Google Workspace, Google Tag Manager, Google Fonts, Google Analytics) and YouTube Data API.

Learn more about YouTube's Terms of Service (https://www.youtube.com/t/terms), Google Policies & Terms (https://policies.google.com/), and Google Privacy Policy (http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/).

Linkedin

If you are using social sharing feature of our plugins and you have enabled Linkedin Share official button, you can add following in the privacy policy of your website:

We use a Linkedin Share widget at our website to allow you to share our pages on Linkedin. These requests may track your IP address in accordance with their data privacy policy (https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy).

Paypal

If you are using PayPal Standard or PayPal Reference transactions please see the PayPal Privacy Policy (https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full) for more details.

Stripe

By making payments on this site, you may be storing personal data or sharing data with an external service such as Stripe. Learn more about Stripe's Global Privacy Policy (https://stripe.com/gb/privacy).

Security

We shall process your personal data in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorized or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organizational measures. All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Any payment transactions are encrypted using SSL technology.

Where we have given, or you have chosen a password, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential.

You acknowledge that no system can be completely secure. Therefore, although we take these steps to secure your personal data, we do not represent or warrant that your personal data will always remain completely secure.

More Information

If any provision of this Privacy Policy is held by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid or unenforceable, then such provision shall be construed, as closely as possible, to reflect the intentions of the parties and all other provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

We may update and change the terms of this Privacy Policy from time to time without notice. You are responsible for regularly reviewing this Privacy Policy, so that you are aware of any updates or changes. By using our website(s), you are deemed to have accepted the Privacy Policy in effect at the time of your use.

Contact Information

Blue Startups welcomes your questions or comments regarding this Privacy Policy.

Please contact us at:

Blue Startups
55 Merchant St, Honolulu, HI 96813
Email: admin@bluestartups.com