Privacy Policy

EF is committed to protecting the privacy of our customers. The EF privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy”) applies to all personal information collected by us, or submitted to us, whether offline or online, including personal information collected or submitted through our websites (our “Websites”) and any mobile sites, applications, widgets, and other mobile interactive features (collectively, our “Apps”), through our official social media pages that we control (our “Social Media Pages”) as well as through HTML-formatted email messages that we send to you (collectively, including the Social Media Pages, Apps and Websites, the “Sites”). If you do not agree with any of the terms of this Privacy Policy, please do not use the sites or submit any Personal Information to EF.

What personal information do we collect?

“Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual, such as:

• Name
• User name
• Postal address (including billing and shipping addresses)
• Telephone number (including home and mobile phone numbers)
• Email address
• Credit and debit card number
• Profile picture
• Social media account ID
• Country of residence
• School name and address
• Company name and address
• Preferred educational courses
• Preferences
• Browser and device information
• Server log file information
• Information collected through cookies, pixel tags and other technologies
• App usage data
• Demographic information and other information provided by you
• Location information
• Other information you provide during a phone-or video call or a chat, and recordings and/or transcripts of such calls or chats.

How do we collect personal information?

We and our service providers may collect Personal Information in a variety of ways, including:

• Through the Sites: We may collect Personal Information through the Sites, e.g., when you sign up for a newsletter, use our chatbot or make a purchase.
• Offline: We may collect Personal Information from you offline, such as when you contact customer service or during a phone or video call.
• From Other Sources: We may receive your Personal Information from other sources, such as public databases; joint marketing partners; social media platforms; from people with whom you are friends or otherwise connected on social media platforms, as well as from other third parties. For example, if you elect to connect your social media account to your Website account, certain Personal Information from your social media account will be shared with us, which may include Personal Information that is part of your profile or your friends’ profiles.
• Through your browser or device: Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device. We use this information for statistical purposes as well as to ensure that the Sites function properly.
• Through server log files: Your “IP Address” is a number that is automatically assigned to the computer or device that you are using by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). An IP Address is identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user visits the Sites, along with the time of the visit and the page(s) that were visited.
• Using cookies: Cookies allow a web server to transfer data to a computer or device for recordkeeping and other purposes. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to decline the use of cookies. For detailed information about the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them, please see our cookies policy. Your continued use of this website indicates your acceptance of and consent to our use of cookies.
• Through your use of an App. When you download and use an App, we and our service providers may track and collect App usage data, such as the date and time the App on your device accesses our servers and what information and files have been downloaded to the App based on your device number.
• From you: Information such as date of birth, gender and zip code, as well as other information, such as your preferred means of communication, may be collected when you voluntarily provide this information.
• Physical Location: We may collect the physical location of your device.

In some cases, we may use a third party payment service to process purchases and/or collect donations made through the Sites. In these cases, your Personal Information may be collected by this third party and not by us, and will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, this third party’s use or disclosure of your Personal Information.

How do we use personal information?

We may use Personal Information:

• To respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests, such as to send you newsletters or to respond to your questions and comments.
• To send administrative information to you, for example, information regarding the Sites and changes to our terms, conditions, and policies. Because this information may be important to your use of the Sites, you may not opt-out of receiving these communications.
• To complete and fulfill your purchase and/or your donation, for example, to process your payments, have your order delivered to you, communicate with you regarding your purchase and provide you with related customer service.
• To provide you with updates and announcements concerning our products, promotions and programs and to send you invitations to participate in special programs.
• To allow you to contact and be contacted by other users through the Sites, as permitted by the applicable Site.
• To permit you to participate on message boards, chat, profile pages and blogs and other services to which you are able to post information and materials (including our Social Media Pages).
• For our business purposes, such as analysing and managing our businesses, market research, audits, developing new products, enhancing our Sites, improving our services and products, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, tailoring the Sites experience and content based on your past activities on the Sites, and gauging customer satisfaction and providing customer service (including troubleshooting in connection with customer issues).
• We use information collected by browsers or your device for statistical purposes as well as to ensure that the Sites function properly.
• For detailed information about the purposes for which we use cookies, please see our cookies policy.
• We may use your device’s physical location to provide you with personalized location-based services and content. We may also share your device’s physical location, combined with information about what advertisements you viewed and other information we collect, with our marketing partners to enable them to provide you with more personalized content and to study the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
• As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence including but not limited to sanctions laws; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
• Your personal data will be processed by EF both within and outside the EU/EEA/Switzerland, primarily for the purpose of completing your booking, providing you with the products and services that you have ordered (including travel insurance coverage), and for customer service and marketing activities. Because our servers are located in the US, our sales teams are based in local offices globally, our head office is in Switzerland, and the schools where the students chooses to take the classes are in local offices globally, we may share your personal data with our corporate affiliates, claims handlers and business partners both within and outside the EU/EEA/Switzerland. The business partners that we share information with are only such that need access to the Personal Information to process the order that you have placed on the Sites, such as transportation assistance, accommodation, or schools, and they will only receive the information necessary for that purpose. No business partner will receive your Personal Information for their own marketing purposes. Where we offer the use of a chatbot on the Sites through the latest AI technology, the questions that you ask the chatbot will be transferred to and temporarily stored by the AI technology provider, but will not be used to train or improve their AI models. No personal data will be transferred, unless you include personal data in your questions, You can read more here: https://openai.com/policies/api-data-usage-policies. The chat conversation and the personal data submitted in the designated fields of the chat will be stored by EF in our customer relations management system for the purpose of marketing or customer service purposes. EF processes your personal data in compliance with applicable privacy and data protection legislation. If you have questions about EF’s processing of your personal data, or would like to have a copy of the information EF holds about you, or have inaccurate personal data rectified or erased, please contact us.

We use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures to protect Personal Information under our control. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or data storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (for example, if you feel that the security of any account you might have with us has been compromised), please immediately notify us of the problem by contacting us in accordance with the “Contact Us” section form.

We give you many choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information for marketing purposes.

• If at any time you wish to stop receiving marketing communications from us, the easiest way to do so would be to use the unsubscribe feature in the marketing communication you received. You may also let us know by emailing, calling or writing to us using the contact information listed below in the “Contact Us” section. In your request, please indicate that you wish to stop receiving marketing communications from us.
• In addition, we will not disclose your Personal Information to third parties, including our subsidiaries, for the third party's direct marketing purposes if we have received and processed a request from you that your Personal Information should not be shared with third parties for that purpose. If you would like to submit such a request, please just let us know by using the “Contact Us” form. Please clearly indicate that you request that we do not disclose your Personal Information to our subsidiaries and/or other third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

Please note that changes may not be effective immediately. We will endeavour to comply with your request(s) as soon as reasonably practicable and in no event later than 30 days after we received your request. Please also note that if you do opt-out of receiving marketing-related messages from us, we may still send you important administrative messages, and you cannot opt-out from receiving administrative messages.

• To review, correct, update, suppress, delete or otherwise limit our use of your Personal Information that has been previously provided to us, please use the “Contact Us” form and clearly describe your request. In your request, please make clear what information you would like to have changed, whether you would like to have your Personal Information suppressed from our database or otherwise let us know what limitations you would like to put on our use of your Personal Information.

We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. Note that despite our efforts, there may be residual information that will remain within our databases and other records, which will not be removed or changed. Further, please note that we may need to retain certain information for recordkeeping purposes and/or to complete any transactions that you began prior to requesting such change or deletion (e.g., when you make a purchase or enter a promotion, you may not be able to change or delete the Personal Information provided until after the completion of such purchase or promotion).

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any site to which EF Sites contain a link. The inclusion of a link on EF Sites does not imply endorsement of the linked site by us or by our affiliates.

Additionally, we may provide you with access to third-party functionality that permits you to post content to your social media account(s). Please note that any information that you provide through use of this functionality is governed by the applicable third party’s privacy policy, and not by this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and shall not be responsible for, any third party’s use of information that you provide through use of this functionality.

We are also not responsible for the collection, usage and disclosure policies and practices (including the data security practices) of other organizations, such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM or any other app developer, app provider, social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider or device manufacturer, including any Personal Information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with the Apps or our Social Media Pages.

We will retain your Personal Information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy.

We offer programs for children for purchase by adults. For the protection of children’s privacy, we require parental consent from users who wish to make a reservation or order a brochure for one of these programs and have not reached the age of majority in their country of residence.

We generally ask that you do not send us, and you do not disclose, any sensitive Personal Information (e.g., information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health or medical condition, criminal background or trade union membership) on or through the Sites or otherwise to us. In specific exceptions, such as insurance requests, we will make clear how you can do this securely.

We may change this Privacy Policy. Please take a look at the “Last Updated” legend at the top of this page to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on a Site. Your use of the Sites following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us by clicking here.