F E A T H E R C A P

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Privacy Principles

Effective: April 6, 2020

If you read nothing else, please read this:

  • The most fundamental privacy principle we follow is that by default, anything you post to Feathercap is private to your community. That is, viewing videos, content, files, quizzes and messages and content shared within a specific community requires authentication as a member of that community.
  • Feathercap is the custodian of data on behalf of the communities and users that use Feathercap. We don’t own community communication data. Users own their data. They like it that way and so do we.
  • At Feathercap we believe that more transparency is better than less. We try to make our product easy to use, with settings and options that are easy to find and understand. This is good for privacy, good for the product, and good for Feathercap customers and users.
  • We think that having more information be easily accessible and searchable wherever you go, whatever device you have, is better than having less. So this is how we built Feathercap.
  • Privacy goes hand in glove with security and confidentiality. We see these things being the three legs that keep the stool balanced and upright. Each is as important as the other and if one is missing the stool won’t stand. They are all very important to us and we take them very seriously.

Feathercap Privacy Policy

Updated: April 6, 2020

This privacy policy is here to help you understand what information we collect at Feathercap, how we use it, and what choices you have. When we talk about Feathercap in this policy, we are talking about Feathercap, Inc., the company, Feathercap, the web based application, and the Feathercap website https://www.feathercap.net. Feathercap is available for use via a web browser.

This policy describes how Feathercap treats your information, not how other organizations treat your information. If you are using Feathercap in a workplace or on a device or account issued to you by your employer or another organization, that company or organization likely has its own policies regarding storage, access, modification, deletion, and retention of communications and content which may apply to your use of Feathercap. Content that would otherwise be considered private to you or to a limited group of people may, in some cases, be accessible by your Feathercap Community. Please check with your employer, Feathercap Administrator about the policies it has in place regarding your communications and related content on Feathercap. More on this below.

In this policy we talk about various roles within a Feathercap community and the privileges that come with each. It’s helpful to understand these roles and the relationships between them. Here’s the breakdown: Administrator > Instructor > Learner. Primary Administrators have the most control over their Feathercap Community’s settings, followed by Instructors then Learners. The person who establishes the Feathercap community is considered by default an Administrator with the most control over the community (which is why it’s not a good idea for this person to be a contractor or temp employee). Instructors and users can have more than one Administrator. Multiple administrators can be added or transferred after the community is created (see prior note about temp workers and flaky people).

Information we collect and receive

We collect different kinds of information. Some of it is personally identifiable and some is non-identifying or aggregated. Here are the types of information we collect or receive:

  • Community information. When you create a community on Feathercap, we collect your email address (as the Administrator), your community name, Feathercap domain (ex: your-community-name.Feathercap.net), your user name that appears in your Feathercap community, and password. Any further community you create will use this same email and password. Optionally, you can provide the community domain to allow people on that domain to sign up for your community without an invitation or individually add email addresses for people you’d like to invite to your Feathercap community.
  • Account and profile information. The information we require to create your Feathercap account is an email address, First name, Last name, desired community name  and password. Your community administrator(s) may request you to provide additional information about yourself in your profile, and Feathercap has no control over such additional information collected. Any information you add to your profile is visible to other people on your community as described on your profile management page.
  • Billing information. As a Feathercap community administrator, signing up to a paid plan or if you elect to enable e-commerce, our third party payment processor, Stripe – https://stripe.com/ will collect and store your billing address and credit card information.
  • Log data. When you use Feathercap, our servers automatically record information, including information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website or your mobile app sends when you’re using it. This log data may include your Internet Protocol address, the address of the web page you visited before coming to Feathercap, your browser type and settings, the date and time of your request, information about your browser configuration and plug-ins, language preferences, and cookie data. Log data does not contain message content and is not routinely deleted.
  • Device information. In addition to log data, we may also collect information about the device you’re using Feathercap on, including what type of device it is, what operating system you’re using, device settings, unique device identifiers, and crash data. Whether we collect some or all of this information often depends on what type of device you’re using and its settings.
  • Geo-location information. Precise GPS from mobile devices is collected only with your permission. WiFi and IP addresses received from your browser or device may be used to determine approximate location.
  • Feathercap usage information. This is information about which communities, administrators, instructors, Learners, features, content, and links you interact with within Feathercap.
  • Communication content/ courses that you send and receive within Feathercap. This includes:
    • The course content itself. This content can include messages, pictures, files and video among other types of files.
    • When messages or files were sent and by whom, when or if they were seen by you, and where you received them (in a channel or direct message, for example).
  • Information from partners or other 3rd parties. Feathercap may receive information from partners or others that we could use to make our own information better or more useful. This might be aggregate level information about which IP addresses go with which zip codes or it might be more specific information about how well an online marketing or email campaign performed.

Our Cookie Policy

Feathercap uses cookies, or similar technologies like single-pixel gifs and web beacons, to record log data. We use both session-based and persistent cookies.

Cookies are small text files sent by us to your computer and from your computer to us, each time you visit our website. They are unique to your Feathercap account or your browser. Session-based cookies last only while your browser is open and are automatically deleted when you close your browser. Persistent cookies last until you or your browser delete them or until they expire.

Some cookies are associated with your Feathercap account and personal information in order to remember that you are logged in and which community you are logged into. Other cookies are not tied to your Feathercap account but are unique and allow us to do site analytics and customization, among other similar things. If you access Feathercap through your browser, you can manage your cookie settings there but if you disable all cookies you may not be able to use Feathercap.

Feathercap sets and accesses our own cookies on our company-owned domains. In addition, we use 3rd parties like Google Analytics, Intercom for website analytics. You may opt-out of third party cookies from Google Analytics on its respective website. We do not currently recognize or respond to browser-initiated Do Not Track signals as there is no consistent industry standard for compliance.

How we use your information

We use your information for the following:

  • Providing the Feathercap service. We use information you provide to authenticate you and deliver message content to you and from you
  • Understanding and improving our products. To make the product better we have to understand how users are using it. We have a fair bit of data about usage and we intend to use it many different ways to improve our products, including research. This policy is not intended to place any limits on what we do with usage data that is aggregated or de-identified so it is no longer tied to a Feathercap user.
  • Investigating and preventing bad stuff from happening. We work hard to keep Feathercap secure and to prevent abuse and fraud.
  • Communicating with you
    • Solving your problems and responding to your requests. If you contact us with a problem or question, we will use your information to respond to that request and address your problems or concerns.
    • Email messages. We may send you service and administrative emails, such as when we notice that you are nearing an active user limit. We may also contact you to inform you about changes in our services, our service offerings and important service related notices, such as changes to this policy or security and fraud notices. These messages are considered part of the service and you may not opt-out of them. In addition, we sometimes send emails to Feathercap users about new product features or other news about Feathercap. You can opt-out of these at any time.

Your choices

When you use Feathercap, you have control over a number of things with respect to your own privacy and choices about how your content is visible to others or not. If you are a Feathercap administrator, you have additional choices that impact your community’s privacy. Feathercap instructors and Learners will not have access to all of the same choices that their administrator(s) do. That is because Feathercap is set up to be community-oriented, and provides administrators with the maximum ability to control their communities.

Content Retention Settings

  • Content Retention Settings
    • Content retention does not vary by Feathercap user plans. The default is that all content is retained for as long as the community exists unless they are deleted by the community administrator(s).

Choices for Community Administrators

  • If you are an administrator of a community, you may delete/ deactivate that community. You may also deactivate any members of that community of an account.
  • You can delete your content if you are the author of the content.
  • While you cannot completely delete a profile once it is created, you can update your profile information at any time and modify your email settings. You can also change your user name from time to time.
  • When you create a course and populate it with uploaded video, audio, PDF or other document or a file on Feathercap, you can decide where to share it and with whom. You can also share these courses with your community or other communities or only to those you invite to see it. You can also share them by utilizing the URL of the course if you choose. Feathercap courses are not subject to message retention settings but can be deleted at any time by the author who uploaded the content.

Choices for Administrators

  • Administrators have the ability to manage and change most of the community settings, including message/ email settings, and can modify whether community users are “Instructors” – they can assign and create courses or “Learners” – they can view courses only.
  • Administrators can also deactivate users in their community as well as activate users.
  • Only an administrator can deactivate or delete a community.
  • For more about these privileges, choices, and permissions, see our Help Center.

Other Choices

  • The browser you use may provide you with the ability to control cookies or other types of local data storage.
  • Your mobile device may provide you with choices around how and whether location or other data is shared with us.
  • Feathercap does not control these choices, or default settings, which are offered by makers of your browser or mobile device.

Sharing and Disclosure

There are times when communications and related content and other user information may be shared by Feathercap. This section discusses only how Feathercap may share user information. Organizations that use Feathercap may have their own policies for sharing and disclosure of information they can access through Feathercap. Feathercap may share information:

  • With consent, to comply with legal process, or to protect Feathercap and our users. When we have your consent or if we believe that disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation or legal request; to protect the safety, rights, or property of the public, any person, or Feathercap; or to detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues. If we receive a law enforcement or other third party request for information we will provide prior notice to the subject of the request where we are legally permitted to do so.
  • With third party service providers and agents. We may employ third party companies or individuals to process personal information on our behalf based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy. For example, we may share data with a security consultant to help us get better at preventing unauthorized access or with an email vendor to send messages on our behalf. We may also share data with hosting providers, payment processors, marketing vendors, and other consultants who work on our behalf.

About you with your organization or Community Administrator(s).

    • We may share your email address and community name with your organization. If the email address under which you’ve registered your account belongs to or is controlled by an organization (to be clear, we’re not talking about free web-based email providers like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail) we may disclose that email address and associated community names to that organization in order to help it understand who associated with that organization uses Feathercap, and to assist the organization with its enterprise accounts. Please do not use a work email address for our services unless you are authorized to do so, and are therefore comfortable with this kind of sharing.
    • In addition, there may be times when you contact Feathercap to help resolve an issue specific to a community you are a member of. In order to help resolve the issue, we may need to share your concern with your administrator. When possible, we will try to mask or remove any identifying information before sharing these communications.
    • As described above in the Message Retention Settings and Export Option section, Community Owners and Administrators have certain rights to export their community’s messages and files.
    • If we engage in a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, sale of some or all of Feathercap’s assets financing, acquisition of all or a portion of our business, or similar transaction or proceeding that involves the transfer of the information described in this Privacy Policy.
  • For Business and Research Purposes.
    • We may also share aggregated or de-identified information with our partners or others for business or research purposes. For example, we may tell a prospective Feathercap customer the average number of courses viewed within a Feathercap community in a day or may partner with research firm or academics to explore interesting questions about workplace learning. Again, this policy is not intended to prohibit the disclosure and use of aggregated or de-identified data.

Security

Feathercap takes reasonable steps to protect information you provide to us as part of your use of the Feathercap service from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access or disclosure. These steps take into account the sensitivity of the information we collect, process and store and the current state of technology. When you enter sensitive information (such as sign-in credentials) we encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). We follow generally accepted standards to protect the personal data submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, no electronic or email transmission or digital storage mechanism is ever fully secure or error free.

Children’s information

Feathercap is not directed to children under 13. If you learn that a minor child has provided us with personal information without your consent, please contact us.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change this policy from time to time, and if we do we’ll post any changes on this page. If you continue to use Feathercap after those changes are in effect, you agree to the revised policy. If the changes are material, we may provide more prominent notice or seek your consent to the new policy.

Contacting Feathercap

Please also feel free to contact us if you have any questions about Feathercap’s Privacy Policy or practices. You may contact us or at our mailing address below:

Feathercap, Inc.
156 2nd Street
San Francisco, CA
94105

Copyright © 2023 Feathercap Inc.