Introduction and organizational info

Lypad Academy LLC ("Lypad Academy," "we," "us," or "our") respects your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, retain, and protect personal information when you visit www.lypadacademy.com, create an account, purchase or use our courses or services, participate in the Lypad Community or Creator Leverage Guild, communicate with us, or apply to be considered as a virtual-assistant candidate for a Lypad Academy customer.

This Privacy Policy is a notice of our data practices. It is not part of the Lypad Academy Terms of Use. Where applicable law requires consent for a particular activity, we will request that consent separately.

1. Scope and Our Role

This Privacy Policy applies to personal information relating to Website visitors, account holders, customers, community members, prospective customers, business contacts, affiliates, and virtual-assistant applicants or candidates.

For most information collected directly through our Website, accounts, courses, customer intake, and candidate process, Lypad Academy acts as the business or controller responsible for determining why and how the information is processed. After we provide candidate information to a customer for evaluation or engagement, that customer may independently determine how it uses and retains the information and may act as a separate business or controller. Customers are subject to the candidate-information obligations in our Terms of Use and their own applicable privacy obligations.

Our Website and Services are intended only for individuals who are at least eighteen (18) years old.

2. Personal Information We Collect

The information we collect depends on how you interact with us. It may include the following categories:

2.1 Website and Device Information

·    Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, device type, operating system, language, approximate location derived from an IP address, and technical device identifiers;

·    Pages viewed, links clicked, referring pages, visit dates and times, session activity, error logs, and other interaction information;

·    Cookie choices and similar tracking-technology information; and

·    Security, fraud-prevention, and authentication information.

2.2 Account, Contact, and Customer Information

·    Name, email address, telephone number, username, account credentials, and communication preferences;

·    Business name, state of formation, principal business address, billing address, primary contact address, and whether you are purchasing for yourself or another entity;

·    The state or jurisdiction where a service will be used, the candidate or VA location when known, and the expected location where services will be performed;

·    Customer intake responses, requested job duties, candidate criteria, cohort selection, scheduling information, and related service preferences; and

·    Support requests, survey responses, feedback, and other information you choose to provide.

2.3 Transaction, Contract, and Service Records

·    Products or services purchased, purchase date, amount, discounts, transaction identifiers, billing status, refunds, chargebacks, and warranty requests;

·    Payment-related information processed by our payment providers. We generally do not receive or store full payment-card numbers;

·    The version of the Terms of Use presented at checkout, acceptance date and time, account or transaction identifiers, and related technical records used to document electronic acceptance;

·    Course access, lesson-viewing and progress records, downloads, Guild-trial activation, community access, and account status;

·    Candidate presentation, interview scheduling, customer feedback, contract-execution status, training progress, Graduation Date, replacement requests, and service communications; and

·    Records used to administer refunds, enforce our agreements, prevent fraud, resolve disputes, and comply with legal or accounting obligations.

2.4 Community and User-Submitted Information

·    Profile information, posts, comments, messages, uploaded materials, reactions, and other content submitted through the Lypad Community or Creator Leverage Guild;

·    Moderation, rule-enforcement, safety, and complaint records; and

·    Feedback, suggestions, reviews, and testimonials. We obtain separate affirmative permission before using a customer's name, likeness, business name, or testimonial in paid or promotional marketing when required by our Terms of Use or applicable law.

2.5 Marketing and Communications Information

·    Email and SMS subscription status, campaign interactions, message delivery information, and unsubscribe requests;

·    Affiliate or referral information; and

·    Records of calls, emails, forms, chats, and other communications with us.

3. VA Applicant and Candidate Information

We collect information from individuals who submit an application to be considered as potential independent contractor candidates for Lypad Academy customers or, where separately disclosed, for an engagement directly with Lypad Academy.

3.1 Information Collected from Applicants

·    Name, contact information, location, time zone, work availability, and preferred role;

·    Resume, work history, education, skills, portfolio or work samples, references, interview responses, and application materials;

·    Personality, aptitude, IQ, or skills-assessment responses or results that an applicant provides to us through a candidate-sourcing or communication platform, email, or another approved channel, together with related evaluator notes;

·    Computer, hardware, software, workspace, internet-speed, connectivity, and technical-readiness information;

·    Identity, tax, payment, or contract information if an applicant progresses to training or engagement, where applicable; and

·    Training attendance, performance, work product, feedback, and completion information.

3.2 How We Use Applicant Information

·    To receive and administer applications;

·    To screen, interview, assess, and evaluate potential candidates;

·    To compare candidates with customer-provided role requirements;

·    To present selected candidates to prospective or actual customers for evaluation, interview, contract consideration, onboarding, and related purposes;

·    To administer candidate training and related payments, contracts, communications, or records where applicable;

·    To consider an applicant for future opportunities when the applicant has agreed to or reasonably expects that consideration; and

·    To prevent fraud, protect applicants and customers, resolve disputes, comply with law, and maintain appropriate business records.

3.3 Assessments and Human Review

We may ask applicants to complete personality, aptitude, IQ, skills, technical, hardware, or internet-speed evaluations as part of candidate screening. We do not currently operate a separate automated assessment platform. Applicants generally provide responses or results through a third-party candidate-sourcing or communication platform or by email. Assessment information may influence whether a candidate is advanced or presented to a customer. Lypad Academy does not rely solely on automated processing to make a decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects concerning an applicant without meaningful human review.

3.4 Sharing Applicant Information

We may share applicant or candidate information with prospective and actual customers for candidate evaluation, interviewing, contract consideration, onboarding, and related purposes. Information shared may include contact information, resumes, application materials, assessment results, interview notes or summaries, technical-readiness information, and training information reasonably relevant to the customer’s evaluation.

We may also share applicant information with candidate-sourcing, interviewing, training, cloud-storage, communication, contract, payment, and other providers that assist us. We do not sell VA applicant data in exchange for money.

Customers receive candidate information subject to the confidentiality, limited-use, security, deletion, and incident-notification requirements in our Terms of Use. However, once a customer receives information, the customer may independently control its own processing. Applicants should review any privacy notice provided directly by the customer before providing additional information to that customer.

4. Sources of Personal Information

We may collect personal information from:

·    You directly, including through forms, applications, checkout, accounts, surveys, interviews, assessments, communications, and community participation;

·    Your organization, authorized purchaser, colleague, or representative;

·    Customers who provide candidate criteria, interview feedback, contract-execution information, or service records;

·    Candidate-sourcing and communication platforms, referrals, affiliates, public professional sources, and service providers;

·    Payment processors, course and community platforms, email and communication providers, and other technology providers; and

·    Publicly available sources and information we lawfully infer from the information described above.

5. How We Use Personal Information

We may use personal information to:

·    Operate, maintain, secure, personalize, and improve the Website and Services;

·    Create and administer accounts, courses, community access, complimentary trials, and customer support;

·    Process orders, payments, taxes, refunds, discounts, fraud checks, chargebacks, and accounting records;

·    Document contract formation and electronic acceptance;

·    Collect customer intake information, evaluate service availability and jurisdictional considerations, schedule cohorts, and provide candidate-identification and training support;

·    Administer candidate applications, screening, interviews, assessments, presentations, training, and replacement-warranty processes;

·    Communicate about transactions, service updates, security, policy changes, customer requests, and administrative matters;

·    Send marketing communications where permitted and manage preferences and opt-outs;

·    Troubleshoot, conduct internal business analysis, and develop or improve products and services;

·    Moderate communities, enforce rules and agreements, investigate complaints, prevent abuse, and protect rights, safety, and property;

·    Comply with legal, tax, accounting, regulatory, and recordkeeping obligations and establish, exercise, or defend legal claims; and

·    Carry out other purposes disclosed at collection or with your consent where required.

6. Legal Bases Where Applicable

Where a law requires us to identify a legal basis for processing, we may rely on one or more of the following, as applicable: performance of a contract or steps requested before entering a contract; our legitimate interests in operating, securing, improving, and protecting our business and Services; compliance with legal obligations; consent; and the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims. The applicable basis depends on the context and jurisdiction.

7. How We Disclose Personal Information

We may disclose personal information to the following categories of recipients:

·    Service providers and contractors that support hosting, security, CRM, course delivery, communications, community hosting, payment processing, accounting, electronic signatures, cloud storage, candidate sourcing, interviewing, training, customer support, and related operations;

·    Prospective and actual customers, as described in Section 3, for candidate evaluation and potential engagement;

·    Professional advisers, including attorneys, accountants, auditors, insurers, and consultants;

·    Government authorities, law enforcement, courts, regulators, or other parties when we reasonably believe disclosure is required or permitted by law, necessary to protect rights or safety, or appropriate to investigate fraud or misconduct;

·    A buyer, investor, lender, successor, or other participant in a merger, financing, reorganization, sale, bankruptcy, or transfer involving all or part of our business or assets; and

·    Other recipients at your direction, with your consent, or as otherwise disclosed when information is collected.

7.1 Technology and Service Provider Categories

We may disclose personal information to third parties that help us operate our business and provide the Services, including the following categories of providers:

·         Website, funnel, course-hosting, security, and customer-management providers;

·         Payment processors, payout providers, and fraud-prevention services;

·         Email, messaging, scheduling, and customer-support providers;

·         Community-hosting platforms;

·         Cloud-storage, document-management, and electronic-signature providers;

·         Candidate-sourcing and professional-networking platforms through which potential VA candidates may communicate with us;

·         Contractors and service providers assisting with candidate identification, screening, interviewing, training, and customer support;

·         Accounting, legal, insurance, compliance, and other professional advisers; and

·         Analytics, performance-measurement, advertising, and conversion-measurement providers.

These providers may process personal information only for the purposes of providing services to us or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy, subject to their own legal obligations and privacy policies. Where appropriate or legally required, we use contractual confidentiality, security, data-processing, or use restrictions.

We may provide additional information about particular providers upon request where required by applicable law. We separately describe sharing of potential-candidate information with prospective and actual customers in Section 3 because those customers may independently determine how they use candidate information after receiving it.

8. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We and our service providers may use cookies, local storage, pixels, tags, logs, and similar technologies to operate and secure the Website, process transactions, maintain sessions, remember privacy choices, provide requested functionality, understand Website traffic and usage, identify errors, measure performance, and improve our Website and Services. These technologies may collect or generate information such as IP address, device and browser information, approximate location derived from IP address, referring pages, pages viewed, interactions, session information, timestamps, and technical performance data. We do not intentionally use ordinary website analytics to collect directly identifying information such as names, email addresses, telephone numbers, resumes, or application responses.

Our cookie banner currently provides an “Accept All” option and an “Accept Essential” option. Selecting “Accept Essential” is intended to decline optional cookies and similar technologies controlled through the banner while allowing technologies needed for security, account access, transactions, requested features, and storage of the cookie choice. Where prior consent is required by applicable law, optional analytics, advertising, or similar technologies controlled through the banner will not be activated unless the user selects “Accept All.” Certain service providers may also create limited operational logs or aggregate service metrics as part of providing hosting, security, payment, or other requested services.

We may use analytics, performance-measurement, conversion-measurement, or advertising technologies as our Website and marketing practices evolve. Where applicable law requires additional notice, consent, rejection, preference-management, or opt-out controls for a particular technology or purpose, we will implement those measures. Additional information about browser- and device-level technologies is available in our Cookie Policy.

You may also use browser or device controls to manage cookies. Blocking essential technologies may prevent portions of the Website or Services from functioning. For more information, please review our Cookie Policy at https://www.lypadacademy.com/cookie-policy.

9. Marketing Communications

We may send product, service, promotional, affiliate, or educational communications as permitted by law. Where consent is required, we will request it separately. You may unsubscribe from marketing emails by using the unsubscribe link in the message. You may opt out of marketing text messages by following the instructions in the message. We may still send nonmarketing communications about transactions, accounts, security, purchases, services, or legal matters.

10. International Data Transfers

Lypad Academy is located in the United States, and our customers, applicants, service providers, and technology systems may be located in the United States, the Philippines, and other countries. Accordingly, personal information may be transferred to, stored in, or accessed from countries that may have different privacy laws from the country where the information was collected.

Where required by applicable law, we use contractual, organizational, technical, consent-based, or other legally recognized safeguards for international transfers. No transfer mechanism can eliminate all risk, and the legal protections available in another country may differ from those in your location.

11. Data Retention

We retain personal information only for a defined business, service, safety, recordkeeping, legal, or dispute-related purpose. The periods below are maximum standard retention periods, not minimum promises. We may delete information sooner when it is no longer reasonably necessary. We may retain a limited record longer when required by law, necessary to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims, needed to complete an active transaction or warranty, subject to a preservation request or legal hold, or maintained in a backup pending routine deletion.