Privacy Policy

• Introduction
  • At Curious Readers, we know your privacy is a serious matter. We strive to ensure that our use of your personal data is lawful and reasonable, with the ultimate goal of improving our services and your children’s learning experience.
  • This Privacy Policy describes how your personal data is processed at Curious Readers when you use our website to browse or to access content, including when you are not registered or signed in to our service. Here we also provide some ways for you to exercise control over your personal data, and to contact us if you have questions. The personal data will be processed by Curious Readers in accordance with the requirements of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (“GDPR”) and local Privacy Laws.
  • Independent Learning Proprietary Limited operates subject to laws of the Republic of South Africa. We are located at Unit C Redek Place, Meadowbrook Business Estate, Jacaranda Avenue, Randburg, South Africa. Independent Learning Proprietary Limited is the controller of personal data the processing of which is described in this Privacy Policy. Independent Learning Proprietary Limited is hereinafter referred to as “Curious Readers”.
  • We encourage you to read this policy completely so that you understand how we rely on personal data to create the best possible experience for you. We also use this policy to call your attention to the information about Cookies that help power our offerings from a technical perspective.
  • Should you have any questions regarding the processing of personal data by Curious Readers, you can contact our data protection officer at privacy@curious-readers.com.
  • Unless stated otherwise, defined terms have the meaning given to them in the Curious Readers Terms and Conditions.
• What personal data do we collect?
  • Overview: We may receive and collect personal data about you in several ways, including when you sign up to use Curious Readers; you download, access or make use of any Curious Readers Service or Content (including when you decide on selection of Content), you give us payment details, you contact our support team, you participate in a marketing or promotion activity or you submit your personal data to us for any other reason. We may also receive personal data from third parties that have obtained it from you and that are permitted to share it with us.
  • Categories of personal data when you are signed in to Curious Readers Service: The categories of personal data of signed in users that we collect include:
    • Basic Account and Contact Information: You must provide an email address, cell phone number, and password to create a Curious Readers Account. Curious Readers may also receive basic account information from third party sites, such as when you choose to sign in via a social network account;
    • Payment Methods: In relation to your payments for access to the Curious Readers Service, we collect details of methods of payment, including but not limited to certain information about credit and debit cards. This information is stored in our payment gateways secure vault and never reside on any of our own servers;
    • Preferences, user profile and other information: We also collect and process certain information on your activity on the Curious Readers Service and Curious Readers Website, such as for example course selections, viewing history, content reviews if such option is available, and information about your Curious Readers Account (including information that you provide using your My Account section), settings data and certain data inferred on their basis, in particular taste preferences based on your selection of Courses;
    • Events: We collect certain information about your activities observed when you are accessing and using the Curious Readers Website or when you react to our marketing communications, including details of how, when and for how long you have accessed, viewed or used any of our services as well as details regarding site traffic and usage information (for example navigation behaviour and viewing time and duration);
    • Support services information: We collect certain details of your interactions with the Curious Readers support team (in case we can attribute the conversation to you), such as the date, time and reason for contacting Curious Readers, transcripts of chat, email or other conversations;
    • Cookies: We may also store certain information collected via the use of cookies, web beacons, advertising IDs and other technologies, including ad data. For more information on cookies please refer to the Cookies section of this Privacy Policy;
    • Device and Browser Information: When you access the Curious Readers Website we may also collect information about the device or browser accessing the Curious Readers Services, such as unique device identifiers, IP address, type, model, settings, operating system, system activity and crash reports.your device and browser, such as unique device identifiers, IP addresses, the type of device used to access Curious Readers Service, Curious Readers Website and Curious Readers Account;
    • Location Information: When you access the Curious Readers Website based on your IP address, we may determine the geographical location of a device used to access Curious Readers Service based on your IP address, however, such information determined does not go beyond the level of municipality. In addition, Curious Readers does not use GPS geolocation and does not collect geolocation data;
    • User Research Information: We collect certain details of your interactions with a Curious Readers User Research Surveys (in case you decide to contribute, which is completely voluntary), such as your evaluation of various aspects of the Curious Readers Service, your preferences regarding Curious Readers Service properties and your opinion on certain Curious Readers Service related questions.
  • Categories of data when you are not signed in to Curious Readers Service: The categories of personal data that we may collect when you are browsing the Curious Readers Website without signing in include data referred to in the following sections: on Events, Cookies, Device and Browser Information and Location Information.
  • Childrens’ data: You must be at least 18 years of age or older to create a Curious Readers Account. While individuals under the age of 18 may use the Curious Readers Service, they may do so only under the supervision of a parent or a guardian.
  • Voluntary provision of data: The provision of your personal data is voluntary but necessary to use some of the services offered by Curious Readers. Refusal to provide some of your personal data will make it impossible to use the Curious Readers Service or some of their functionalities, for example its websites, applications, products, platforms and services to browse or to access content, and will prevent Curious Readers from offering and performing such services.
• For what purposes do we process personal data?
  • Overview: We use the information we receive and collect generally for the purpose of providing, promoting, maintaining, personalizing and improving our services, to develop new services, and to protect Curious Readers, our platforms, content partners and our users from fraudulent or illegal activity.
  • Purposes: Specific purposes for which we process your data include:
    • processing personal data necessary for the purposes of conclusion and performance of the agreement with you, including:
      • to establish, personalize and maintain your Curious Readers Account, and to authenticate your identity when accessing your Curious Readers account, to provide you educational and other content and to settle payments;
      • to provide customer support services and to communicate with you, including to inform you about any changes to Curious Readers products and services;
    • to provide cross-border portability of Curious Readers online content, including verification of the country of residence in accordance with and based on the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council 2017/1128 on cross-border portability of online content services in the internal market;
    • processing of personal data in order to fulfil obligations resulting from provisions of applicable laws;
    • to fulfil any contractual obligations with our business partners for the purpose of offering Curious Readers services and for the purposes of financial settlements connected there to, which is our legitimate interest for processing personal data;
    • processing of personal data for marketing of the Curious Readers services, including through advertising tailored for individual or group needs and preferences, for example online advertising, which is our legitimate interest for processing personal data;
    • processing for the purposes of research, analytics, development, improvement (including user experience improvement), administration, maintenance, technical support and security of the Curious Readers Service, Curious Readers Website and Curious Readers App, which is our legitimate interest for processing personal data;
    • processing for the purposes of establishment, exercise and defence of legal claims, enforcing or investigating potential violations of our terms of use or any other actual or alleged fraudulent activities, protecting rights, property or safety of Curious Readers, our customers, employees and other third parties, which is our legitimate interest for processing personal data; and
    • processing for the purposes of reorganization of the Curious Readers group, including changes in ownership or control of assets, shares or management of Curious Readers, or that of our affiliates, which is our legitimate interest for processing personal data.
• Who are the recipients of personal data
  • Your personal data may be disclosed to the following categories of recipients:
    • Curious Readers affiliates, which includes our holding companies, subsidiaries and entities that control or are under common control with Curious Readers, in particular when necessary for the ongoing maintenance and continued provision of the services to you;
    • trusted service providers retained by us to enhance or provide services to you, acting at our instruction, including hosting services providers, platform development, support and security services providers, analytics tools and services providers, customer support services providers, payment and reconciliation services providers,;
    • marketing services providers supporting us in promoting the Curious Readers Service, including marketing agencies, email distribution and other marketing tools providers, social media marketing services providers including Facebook and Google, as well as analytics services providers;
    • partners who may offer access to the Curious Readers Service on our behalf;
    • third parties, including governmental bodies, courts or bodies of similar nature, when it is required in order to comply with applicable laws, to enforce or investigate potential violations of our terms of use or any other contract between you and us, to protect our rights, property or safety or that of our customers, employees, and other third parties; and/or
    • third party in relation to reorganization of the Curious Readers group, in particular a third party that acquires (or proposes to acquire) ownership or control of our assets, shares or management, or that of our affiliates by any means, or a third party from whom we acquire, ownership or control of assets, shares or management.
  • Please note that Curious Readers offers services in jurisdictions located outside the European Economic Area and some of the data recipients referred to in clause “Who are the recipients of personal data” may be located outside the European Economic Area, in countries with respect to which the European Commission has not issued an adequacy decision (“Third Country”).
  • Where personal data is transferred to a Third Country, Curious Readers takes legally required steps consistent with applicable European data protection legislation to ensure that the personal data is adequately protected in each such jurisdiction in particular by basing agreements with the relevant data recipients on the standard data protection clauses adopted by the European Commission or adopted by a supervisory authority and approved by the European Commission.
• What are your rights?
  • Your data subject rights. You have the following rights with respect to your personal data processed by Curious Readers:
    • Access: You have the right to access your personal data;
    • Rectification: You can ask us to have inaccurate personal data amended. You can use the My Account section on the Curious Readers Website to change basic information about you;
    • Erasure: You can ask us to erase personal data. Note that we will keep only personal data that are necessary for us to comply with financial and tax regulations and for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims;
    • Object to marketing: You can object to processing your personal data for marketing purposes;
    • Object to other processing: You can object to processing of your personal data based on the legitimate interest of Curious Readers unless we have a valid ground to continue processing the data;
    • Portability: You can ask us to receive your personal data that you provided to Curious Readers in machine-readable format or have such data transmitted to a third party; and
    • Restriction: We may be required to have your data restricted for processing in certain circumstances as defined in article 19 of the GDPR.
  • Exercise of your rights. You can exercise your rights and lodge requests to Curious Readers using the My Data section in My Account on the Curious Readers Website.
  • Exercise of your objection to marketing: You may object to direct email/sms marketing, e-mail/sms marketing communications from us by indicating your communications preference in the Marketing Email Preference section in My Account on the Curious Readers Website. You may also unsubscribe using the link included in every direct email marketing communication or using the sms code indicated in direct sms marketing communication, it may take a few days for this request to be processed. You cannot unsubscribe from service administration related e-mails and sms messages. Please also see clause “Cookies”.
  • Withdrawal of consent. In some situations when we may seek your consent for processing. In such case, you will have the right to withdraw consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.
  • Support centre: Should you have any difficulties with exercising any of the rights referred to above using your Curious Readers Account, you may contact us at the customer support email address listed on curious-readers.com/contact for assistance (in such case, for security reasons you may be asked to confirm your request by logging into your Curious Readers account and upon such confirmation your request will be considered to be validly filed).
  • Complaints: You can raise a complaint about our processing with the data protection regulator in your jurisdiction. If you find it difficult to contact the data protection regulator, we will help you.
• How long do we store data?
  • Data Retention Principles: We process your personal data during your subscription and following the end of your subscription to the extent that the data is necessary for the purposes with respect to which we are permitted and/or required to process data, in any event no longer than for the period of expiry of claims, including for the following purposes:
    • compliance with obligations resulting from applicable laws to which Curious Readers is subject;
    • establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims as well as for the purposes any other legal proceedings or compliance with any judgments and/or decisions issued by public authorities;
    • research and analytics;
    • marketing of Curious Readers products and services; and
    • maintaining the Curious Readers Account post service termination.
  • Access to your Curious Readers Account after subscription termination: Following the termination of your subscription, your Curious Readers Account will remain active for a period of five years. If you do not re-subscribe to the Curious Readers Service within that time, we will delete your Curious Readers Account and any related information to the extent that it is not used as set out in clause “Data Retention Principles”.
  • Data retention Principles with respect to consent:  As outlined in clause “Withdrawal of consent” we might be processing your data on the basis of consent. In such event we process data only as long as the consent is valid and to the extent that the data is necessary for the purposes with respect to which we are permitted and/or required to process data.
  • Where appropriate we will encrypt, pseudonymize, anonymize and/or segregate information so that we may make use of it in a manner that avoids unnecessary identification, in the interest of protecting your privacy and enhancing security practices.
• Security
  • Maintaining the security and integrity of your personal data is a high priority and we endeavour to maintain appropriate technical and organisational measures to secure the integrity of information, using accepted technological standards to prevent unauthorized access to or disclosure of your personal data and to protect them from misuse, loss, alteration or destruction.
• Cookies
  • In order to ensure that the Curious Readers Website and Curious Readers Service work properly, to provide you with a personalised experience, we and certain of our third party service providers may set cookies or similar technologies (such as in particular web beacons, pixels and advertising identifiers) on your device, subject to your consent where relevant. A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the website. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as session status, language, font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.
  • The Curious Readers Website uses two basic cookie types: session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies are temporary files stored on the user’s end device until the user logs out, leaves the website or closes the software (web browser). Persistent cookies are stored on the user’s end device for the time specified in the parameters of the cookies or until deleted by the user.
  • In many cases, the default settings of the web browsing software (web browser) enable cookie storage on the user’s end device. You can delete or block cookies from being set in your web browser settings or relevant software. Cookies set by Curious Readers will likely be labelled as first party cookies, and those set by our partners will be labelled third party cookies. Certain parts of the Curious Readers Website or the Curious Readers Service may not work properly if first party cookies are blocked or deleted.
  • The types of cookies and the purposes for which they are used on the Curious Readers Website include:
    • strictly necessary cookies, which enable use of the services available on the Curious Readers Website for example cookies used for authentication of users and cookies that ensure security;
    • performance cookies, which help us collect information about how the Curious Readers Website and the Curious Readers Service are used, so that we can perform analytics and improve their performance;
    • functionality cookies, which remember choices made by the user and personalise the interface and allow enhanced functionality and personalisation of the Curious Readers Website and the Curious Readers Service; and
    • targeting cookies and advertising IDs for delivering adverts more relevant to users and their interests, as well as ad conversion tracking; these cookies are mainly set by our advertising partners.
    • Third parties that engage in online behavioural advertising, or that provide such services to us as service providers, may offer additional control over this practice via a self-regulatory body called the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance. For further details regarding the collection of information by third-party advertising companies or to exercise choices over online behavioural advertising practices, visit https://youronlinechoices.eu/.
• Changes to this Policy and final provisions
  • We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do so, we will post the revised policy on Curious Readers and will inform users of such amendments and of their effective date.

This version of Privacy Policy applies from 27 April 2020.