Privacy Policy

Last Updated Oct. 1, 2019

The team at Treehouse Island, Inc. (“Treehouse,” “Company,” “we,” “us,” “our”) knows that you care about how your information is collected, used and shared, and we take your privacy seriously. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to learn more about our privacy practices.

Treehouse complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information transferred from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States. Treehouse has certified to the Department of Commerce that it adheres to the Privacy Shield Principles. If there is any conflict between the terms in this privacy policy and the Privacy Shield Principles, the Privacy Shield Principles shall govern. To learn more about the Privacy Shield program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/

What does this Privacy Policy Cover?

This Privacy Policy applies to https://teamtreehouse.com/. This Privacy Policy does not apply to websites, applications or other services that provide their own separate privacy statements or policies. Our Website may contain links to other sites but Treehouse is not responsible for the privacy policies and/or practices of these other sites. Visitors to and users of our Website and participants in our education programs are referred to individually as “User” and collectively as “Users.” Any User that creates an account to receive training is referred to as a “Learner.”

Any capitalized terms used herein without definition shall have the meaning given to them in the Treehouse Terms of Service which can be found at https://teamtreehouse.com/terms. By visiting or using our Website, you expressly consent to the information handling practices described in this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy covers what information we gather when you are accessing or using our Website, how we use that information and how we protect it. Your use of our Website and information you provide on our Website is subject to the terms of this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service.

Children's Privacy

Our service is not directed at children under the age of 13 and we do not knowingly collect or maintain information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are under the age of 13, please do not use or access our Website. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under the age of 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you have more questions about this policy or believe we have obtained information from a child under the age of 13, please email us at help@teamtreehouse.com.

Where we collect information of children between 13 to 15 years of age, parents or guardians of these individuals will be required to consent to our collection and use of this information in order for us to deliver services to the individual. For more information about the confirmation process, or how to access your child’s personal data, please contact help@teamtreehouse.com. Other than as noted, our use of personal information applies to anyone using our services regardless of age. If you are a parent or guardian of an individual under 16, please be sure to read this Privacy Policy thoroughly.

Collection and Use of Information

We gather various types of information from our users and visitors to our site, as explained more fully below. Some of this information is provided directly by you and other information may be gathered by observing how you interact with our Website and Services. We use this information to personalize and improve our services, to allow our users to set up a user account and profile, to contact users, to fulfill your requests for certain products and services, to analyze how users utilize our Website, and as otherwise set forth in this Privacy Policy.

Information You Provide

We receive and store any information provided directly by you. For example, we collect personal information such as name, email address, physical address, birth date, zip code, location, and details of transactions including a credit card number, when provided to us through our Website or when you email our support team directly. We may also receive your information through our relationships with a workforce investment board or other similar third-party, as you expressly request. Any account created through this third-party relationship will be required to confirm their account before it is activated.

While you can choose not to provide certain information to us, please know that this may result in our being unable to register you or you may be unable to take advantage of some of our features and services.

We display a user profile which includes your name, a profile picture if you uploaded one, and how long you have been a member.

To remove or update any personal information, please log into your account settings and remove or modify your personal information in the appropriate fields.

Information Collected Automatically from You

Whenever you interact with our Website, we automatically receive and record certain information. This information may include server logs from your browser including your IP address, browser type, internet service provider, referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, “cookie” information, and the page you requested.

Technologies such as cookies, beacons, tags and scripts are used by us and our partners, affiliates, analytics or service providers. These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering our Website, tracking users’ movements around our Website and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis. “Cookies” are small text files stored on a user’s computer or mobile device that allow us to recognize your browser or mobile device and tell us how and when pages on our Website are visited and by how many people. You may be able to change the preferences on your browser or mobile device to prevent or limit your computer or device’s acceptance of cookies, but this may limit you from taking advantage of some of our Website’s features.

Also, if you click on a link to a third party website, such third party, for example marketing partners or analytics service providers, may also transmit cookies to you. This Privacy Policy does not cover the use of cookies by any third parties. These cookies are used to analyze trends and remarket/retarget advertisements to non-converted visitors. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis.

We employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs), that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We do not tie the information gathered by clear gifs to our customers’ personally identifiable information.

We use Local Storage Objects (“LSOs”) such as HTML5 to store content information and preferences. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs.

When we collect usage information (such as the numbers and frequency of visitors to the Website, the length of stay on the Website, the types of pages visited and other general information), we only use this data in aggregate form, and not in a manner that would identify you personally. For example, this aggregate data tells us how often users use parts of the Website, so that we can make the Website appealing to as many users as possible. We may also provide this aggregate anonymous information to our partners; our partners may use such information to understand how often and in what ways people use our Website, so that they, too, can provide you with an optimal experience.

When you download and use our Services, we automatically collect information on the type of device you use, operating system version, and the device identifier (or "UDID"). We do not ask for, access or track any location based information from your mobile device at any time while downloading or using our Mobile Apps or Services.

Blogs, Forums and Testimonials

Our Website offers publicly accessible blogs or community forums. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your information from our blog or community forum, please contact us at help@teamtreehouse.com. In some cases, we may not be able to remove personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.

We display personal testimonials of satisfied customers on our site in addition to other endorsements. With your consent we may post your testimonial along with your name. If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, you can contact us at help@teamtreehouse.com.

Anytime you post on our blog please be aware that you are posting to a third party application and we have no access or control over this information. To request removal of your personal information from our blog, you can either directly log into the third party application and remove your comment or you can contact the appropriate third party application. Your interaction with these sites or applications is governed by the privacy policy of the company providing the site or application.

Social Media and Widgets

Our Website includes social media features, such as the Facebook button and widgets, such as the Share button or interactive mini-programs that run on our site. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our Website, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it. You can log in to our site using sign-in services such as Gravatar or an OpenID provider. These services will authenticate your identity and provide you the option to share certain personal information with us such as your name and email address to pre-populate our sign up form. Services like these give you the option to post information about your activities on this Website to your profile page to share with others within your network.

Email and Other Communications

We may contact you, by email or other means as you have indicated, to send you information about our products and services, including updates, enhancements, or other related information or to communicate with you about your use of our Website. In addition, where you have agreed, we may send you promotional offers on behalf of other businesses. If you do not want to receive email or other mail from us, please indicate your preference within the account notifications page at https://teamtreehouse.com/account/notifications. To Opt Out of receiving any marketing materials you can email us at the following address: help@teamtreehouse.com

Will Treehouse Share My Personal Information?

We neither rent, sell nor share your personal information with anyone other than as set forth in this Policy.

In certain situations, businesses or third parties we are affiliated with may sell items or provide services to you through our Website (either alone or jointly with us). You can recognize when an affiliated business is associated with such a transaction or service, and we will share your Personal Information with that affiliated business only to the extent that it is related to such transaction or service.

Treehouse works with workforce investment boards or other government agencies to provide job training. If you are participating in one of those programs (for example our Code USA initiatives), we may be required, through our agreement with these partners to share some of your personal information and learning activity with them and their affiliated workforce retraining centers as a condition of our continued partnership with them.

We employ third parties (other companies and people) to perform certain tasks on our behalf. These may include use of a payment processor or hosting provider. This may require that we share your information with them in order for us to provide products or services you request. Unless we tell you differently, our agents do not have any right to use the personal information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us.

We may access, read, preserve, and disclose any information that we reasonably believe is necessary to comply with applicable law or court order; to enforce our rights or conditions of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Treehouse, our employees, our users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Business Transfers

We may choose to buy or sell assets. In these types of transactions, customer information is typically one of the business assets that is transferred. Also, if we (or substantially all of our assets) are acquired, or if we go out of business, enter bankruptcy, or go through some other change of control, personal information would be one of the assets transferred to or acquired by a third party. You will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our Website of any change in ownership or use of your personal information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information.

Is My Personal Information Secure?

Treehouse uses reasonable precautions to protect personal information in its possession from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. For users of our Website, communications between Treehouse’s site and a user’s web browser are accomplished using, at a minimum, 128 bit Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) encryption and various third party security certificates to protect information. While we endeavor to protect the privacy of your account and other personal information we hold, no method of transmission over the Internet can guarantee complete security. As a result, we cannot guarantee its absolute security despite using commercially acceptable means to protection your personal information.

Your account is protected by a password for your privacy and security. You are responsible for keeping this information secure in order to prevent unauthorized access to your account and Personal Information. When you provide a credit card number, we encrypt the transmission of that information using SSL.

What Personal Information Can I Access?

Through your account settings, you may access, and, in some cases, edit or delete the following information:

  • name and password;
  • email address;
  • payment information;
  • location;
  • user profile information you provide such as your avatar photo, facebook profile, github profile, school name, etc.; and
  • user preferences.

The information you can view, update, and delete may change as the Website changes. If you have any questions about viewing or updating your information, please contact us at help@teamtreehouse.com. We will respond to your request to access personal information on file with us within a reasonable period of time not greater than 30 days. Please note that you will also be required to authenticate your identity in order to obtain access to any personal information.

What Choices Do I Have?

You can always choose not to disclose personal information to us, but keep in mind some information may be needed to register with us or to take advantage of some of our special features.

You may be able to add, update, or delete information as explained in the Information You Provide section above.

You may request deletion of your account by contacting us at help@teamtreehouse.com. Please note that some information may remain in our systems after you request deletion of the information from your account. We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide services. We will also retain and use personal information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

You may request details of your Personal Information, and where necessary, have it corrected. We reserve the right to charge a reasonable fee to cover our administrative costs for providing you with access to your personal data. For more details, please contact us at help@teamtreehouse.com.

For Users of Our Website From the European Union

Your rights regarding your personal information

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and other data protection laws grant you certain rights in relation to your personal information. Where applicable to you, you can:

  • request access to your personal information and how we process it
  • request correction of the personal information that we hold about you
  • ask us to delete your personal information
  • object to us processing your personal information
  • request the restriction of processing of your personal information
  • request the transfer of your personal information to you or to a third party
  • withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal information.

Note that withdrawing your consent to our processing of your information will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. You should also be aware that if you do withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. Where this is the case, we will let you know at the time you withdraw your consent. Please note that even after you have withdrawn your consent we may be able to continue to process your personal information to the extent required or otherwise permitted by law, in particular in connection with exercising and defending our legal rights or meeting our legal and regulatory obligations. In cases of onward transfer to third parties of data of EU and Swiss individuals received pursuant to the EU-US Privacy Shield and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, Treehouse remains liable.

With respect to EU and Swiss Personal Data received or transferred pursuant to the Privacy Shield framework, Treehouse is subject to the regulatory investigation and enforcement powers of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Please also note that in some cases, as we have previously noted within this Privacy Policy, you are able to access, correct and update your personal information directly. Should you need additional assistance, please contact us at help@teamtreehouse.com.

If you do not receive timely acknowledgement of your complaint, or if your complaint is not satisfactorily addressed, you can also submit your complaint to Privacy Trust, an independent third party we have appointed to help with disputes. Visit https://www.privacytrust.com/drs/treehouse to file a complaint. The services of Privacy Trust are provided at no cost to you. Finally, as a last resort and in limited situations, EU and Swiss individuals may seek redress from the Privacy Shield Panel, a binding arbitration mechanism.

Changes To This Privacy Policy

We may amend or update this Privacy Policy from time to time and any such changes or updates will be posted to this Privacy Policy, our Website or other place we deem appropriate so that you are informed as to what information we collect, how we use that information, and under what circumstances we may share that information. If we make material changes in the way we use Personal Information, we will notify you by posting an announcement on our Website or sending you an email prior to the change becoming effective.