Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy covers our data collection practices and describes your rights regarding your personal data.

Unless we link to a different policy or state otherwise, this Privacy Policy applies when you visit or use whek.au websites, mobile applications, APIs, or related services. It also applies to prospective customers of our business and enterprise products.

By using the Services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. You may not use the Services if you don’t agree with this Privacy Policy or any other agreement that governs your use of the Services.

What Data We Get

We collect certain data from you directly, like information you enter yourself, data about your consumption of content, and data from third-party platforms you connect with whek.au. We also collect some data automatically, like information about your device and what parts of our Services you interact with or spend time using. All data listed in this section is subject to the following processing activities: collecting, recording, structuring, storing, altering, retrieving, encrypting, pseudonymizing, erasing, combining, and transmitting.

Data You Provide to Us
We may collect different data from or about you depending on how you use the Services. Below are some examples to help you better understand the data we collect.

When you create an account and use the Services, including through a third-party platform, we collect any data you provide directly, including:

Account Data

In order to use certain features like accessing content, you need to create a user account, which requires us to collect and store your email address, password, and account settings. To create an instructor (course creator) account, we collect and store your name, email address, password, and account settings. As you use certain features on the site, you may be prompted to submit additional information. For example, you may choose to provide your phone number for promotional messaging and authentication purposes or information relevant to your learning interests, including occupation and skill interests. If you apply to become an instructor (course creator), we may collect government ID information, verification photo, date of birth, race/ethnicity, and phone number.

Reasons for processing include: Performance of contract. Legitimate interests (service provisioning, identity verification, fraud prevention and security, communication, marketing and advertising). Consent (for promotional messaging).

Profile Data

You can also choose to provide profile information like a photo, headline, biography, language, website link, social media profiles, country, or other data. Your Profile Data will be publicly viewable by others.

Reasons for processing include: Performance of the contract. Legitimate interests (enhanced platform functionality, convey content source information).

Shared Content

Parts of the Services let you interact with other users or share content publicly, including by uploading courses and other content, posting reviews about content, asking or answering questions, sending messages to students or instructors, or posting photos or other work you upload. Such shared content may be publicly viewable by others and may be shared in accordance with the Terms of Use: whek.au Rights to Content You Post.

Reasons for processing include: Performance of contract. Legitimate interests (service provisioning, enhanced platform functionality, marketing).

Learning Data

When you access content, we collect certain data, including which courses, assignments, labs, workspaces, and quizzes you’ve started and completed; content and subscription purchases and credits; subscriptions; completion certificates; badges; your exchanges with instructors, teaching assistants, and other students; and essays, answers to questions, and other items submitted to satisfy course and related content requirements.

Reasons for processing include: Performance of contract. Legitimate interests (service provisioning, enhanced platform functionality, fraud prevention and security, marketing and advertising).

Student Payment Data

If you make purchases, we collect certain data about your purchase (such as your name, billing address, and postcode) as necessary to process your order and which may optionally be saved to process future orders. You must provide certain payment and billing data directly to our payment service providers, including your name, credit card information, billing address, and postcode. We may also receive limited information, like the fact that you have a new card and the last four digits of that card, from payment service providers to facilitate payments. For security, whek.au does not collect or store sensitive cardholder data, such as full credit card numbers or card authentication data.

Reasons for processing include: Performance of contract. Legal obligation. Legitimate interests (payment facilitation, fraud prevention and security, compliance).

Instructor Payment Data

If you are an instructor, you can link your PayPal or other payment account to the Services to receive payments. When you set up a payment account, we collect and use certain information, including your payment account email address, account ID, physical address, or other data necessary for us to send payments to your account. In some instances, we may collect ACH or wire information to send payments to your account. In order to comply with applicable laws, we also work with trusted third parties who collect tax information as legally required. This tax information may include residency information, tax identification numbers, biographical information, and other personal information necessary for taxation purposes. For security, whek.au does not collect or store sensitive bank account information. The collection, use, and disclosure of your payment, billing, and taxation data are subject to the privacy policy and other terms of your payment account provider.

Reasons for processing include: Performance of contract. Legal obligation. Legitimate interests (service provisioning, payment facilitation, fraud prevention and security, compliance).

Data About Your Accounts on Other Services

We may obtain certain information through your social media or other online accounts if they are connected to your whek.au account. If you login to whek.au via third-party platforms or services, those platforms and services make information available to us through their APIs. The information we receive depends on what information you (via your privacy settings) or the platform or service decides to give us and usually consists of your first and last name, user identification number, and email address. If you access or use our Services through a third-party platform or service, your data will also be subject to the privacy policies and other agreements of that third party.

Reasons for processing include: Legitimate interests (identity verification, user experience improvement).

Promotions and Surveys

We may invite you to complete a survey or participate in a promotion (like a contest, sweepstakes, or challenge), either through the Services or a third-party platform. If you participate, we will collect and store the data you provide as part of participating, such as your name, email address, postal address, date of birth, or phone number. That data is subject to this Privacy Policy unless otherwise stated in the official rules of the promotion or in another privacy policy. The data collected will be used to administer the promotion or survey, including for notifying winners and distributing rewards. To receive a reward, you may be required to allow us to post some of your information publicly (like on a winner’s page). Where we use a third-party platform to administer a survey or promotion, the third party’s privacy policy will apply.

Reasons for processing include: Performance of contract. Legitimate interests (promotions administration, prize delivery, compliance).

Communications and Support

If you contact us for support or to report a problem or concern (regardless of whether you have created an account), including through our AI virtual assistant, we collect and store your contact information, messages, and other data about you like your name, email address, location, whek.au user ID, refund transaction IDs, and any other data you provide or that we collect through automated means. We use this data to respond to you and research your question or concern.

Reasons for processing include: Legitimate interests (customer and technical support, fraud prevention and security).

The data listed above is stored by us and associated with your account. whek.au’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs, like instructor uploaded content, will adhere to Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Data We Collect through Automated Means

When you access the Services (including browsing content), we collect certain data by automated means.

System Data

Technical data about your computer or device, like your IP address, device type, operating system type and version; unique device identifiers, including mobile advertising identifiers; browser; browser language; domain and other systems data; and platform types.

Reasons for processing include: Performance of contract. Legitimate interests (service provisioning, customer and technical support, fraud prevention and security, communication, product improvement, marketing and advertising).

Usage Data

Usage statistics about your interactions with the Services, including content accessed, time spent on pages or the Service, pages visited, features used, your search queries, click data, date and time, referrer, and other data regarding your use of the Services.

Reasons for processing include: Legitimate interests (service provisioning, user experience improvement, product improvement, fraud prevention and security, marketing and advertising)

Approximate Geographic Data

An approximate geographic location, including information like country, city, and geographic coordinates, is calculated based on your IP address.

Reasons for processing include: Legitimate interests (user experience improvement, fraud prevention and security, compliance, marketing and advertising).

How We Get Data About You

We use tools like cookies, web beacons, and similar tracking technologies to gather the data listed above. Some of these tools offer you the ability to opt out of data collection.

Cookies and Data Collection Tools

We use cookies, which are small text files stored by your browser, to collect, store, and share data about your activities across websites, including on whek.au. They allow us to remember things about your visits to whek.au, like your preferred language, and to make the site easier to use. whek.au and service providers acting on our behalf (like Google Analytics and third-party advertisers) use server log files and automated data collection tools like cookies, tags, scripts, customised links, device or browser fingerprints, and web beacons when you access and use the Services. These Data Collection Tools automatically track and collect certain System Data, Usage Data, and Approximate Geographic Data when you use the Services. In some cases, we tie data gathered through those Data Collection Tools to other data that we collect as described in this Privacy Policy.

Why We Use Data Collection Tools

whek.au uses the following types of Data Collection Tools for the purposes described:

Strictly Necessary – These Data Collection Tools enable you to access the site, provide basic functionality (like logging in or accessing content), secure the site, protect against fraudulent logins, and detect and prevent abuse or unauthorised use of your account. These are required for the Services to work properly, so if you disable them, parts of the site will break or be unavailable.

Functional – These Data Collection Tools remember data about your browser and your preferences, provide additional site functionality, customise content to be more relevant to you, and remember settings affecting the appearance and behaviour of the Services, like your preferred language or volume level for video playback.

Performance – These Data Collection Tools help measure and improve the Services by providing usage and performance data, visit counts, traffic sources, or where an application was downloaded from. These tools can help us test different versions of whek.au to see which features or content users prefer and determine which email messages are opened.

Advertising – These Data Collection Tools are used to deliver relevant ads (on the site and/or other sites) based on things we know about you like your Usage and System Data and things that the ad service providers know about you based on their tracking data. The ads can be based on your recent activity or activity over time and across other sites and services.

Social Media – These Data Collection Tools enable social media functionality, like sharing content with friends and networks. These cookies may track a user or device across other sites and build a profile of user interests for targeted advertising purposes.

You can set your web browser to alert you about attempts to place cookies on your computer, limit the types of cookies you allow, or refuse cookies altogether. If you do, you may not be able to use some or all features of the Services, and your experience may be different or less functional. To learn more about managing Data Collection Tools, refer to Your Choices About the Use of Your Data below.

What We Use Your Data For

We use your data to do things like provide our Services, communicate with you, troubleshoot issues, secure against fraud and abuse, improve and update our Services, analyse how people use our Services, serve personalised advertising, and as required by law or necessary for safety and integrity. We retain your data for as long as it is needed to serve the purposes for which it was collected. If you have a whek.au account, we will delete your data following account termination, or longer as required by law or necessary for safety and integrity.

We use the data we collect through your use of the Services to provide and administer the Services, including to facilitate participation in content, issue completion certificates, display customised content, and facilitate communication with other users. Process payments to instructors and other third parties. Process your requests and orders for content, products, specific services, information, or features; confirm delivery; detect fraud or abuse; and enforce whek.au policies. Communicate with you about your account by responding to your questions and concerns. Sending you administrative messages and information, including messages from instructors, students, and teaching assistants; notifications about changes to our Service; and updates to our agreements. Sending you information, such as by email or text messages, about your progress in courses and related content, rewards programs, new services, new features, promotions, newsletters, and other available instructor-created content. Sending push notifications to your wireless device to provide updates and other relevant messages. Manage your account and account preferences and personalise your experience. Facilitate the Services’ technical functioning, including troubleshooting and resolving issues, securing the Services, and preventing fraud and abuse. Verify the identity of instructors. Solicit feedback from users. Market products, services, surveys, and promotions. Learn more about you by linking your data with additional data through third-party data providers and/or analysing the data with the help of analytics service providers. Identify unique users across devices. Display and tailor advertisements shown in the Services, including across devices. Improve our Services and develop new products, services, and features. Analyze trends and traffic, track purchases, and track usage data. Advertise the Services on third-party websites and applications. As required or permitted by law or as we, in our sole discretion, otherwise determine to be necessary to ensure the safety or integrity of our users, employees, third parties, the public, or our Services.

We may process your inputs into our generative artificial intelligence features in order to respond to your question or request, but we do not use your personal data to train or fine tune these models.

Who We Share Your Data With

We share certain data about you with instructors, other students, companies performing services for us, our business partners, analytics and data enrichment providers, your social media providers, companies helping us run promotions and surveys, and advertising companies that help us promote our Services. We may also share your data as needed for security, legal compliance, or as part of a corporate restructuring. Lastly, we can share data in other ways if it is aggregated or de-identified or if we get your consent.

We may share your data with third parties under the following circumstances or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy.

With Your Instructors – We share data that we have about you with instructors or teaching assistants for content you access or request information about, so they can improve their content for you and other students. This data may include things like your country, browser language, operating system, device settings, the site that brought you to whek.au, and certain activities on whek.au, like enrolled courses and course review.

With Other Students and Instructors – Depending on your settings, your Shared Content and profile data may be publicly viewable, including to other students and instructors. If you ask a question to an instructor or teaching assistant, your information (including your name) may also be publicly viewable.

With Service Providers, Contractors, and Agents – We share your data with third-party companies who perform services on our behalf, like payment processing, fraud and abuse prevention, data analysis, marketing and advertising services, email and hosting services, and customer services and support. These service providers may access your personal data and are required to use it solely as we direct, to provide our requested service. We require service providers to protect data at a level consistent with this Privacy Policy.

With Business Partners – We have agreements with other websites and platforms to distribute our Services and drive traffic to whek.au. Depending on your location, we may share your data with these trusted partners.

With Credit-Granting Organisations for Continuing Education – If you take a course to fulfil a continuing professional education requirement, we may share that information upon request of the organisation granting the continuing education credit.

With Analytics and Data Enrichment Services – As part of our use of third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics and data enrichment services, we share certain contact information or de-identified data. De-identified data means data where we’ve removed things like your name and email address and replaced them with a token ID. This allows these providers to provide analytics services or match your data with publicly available database information, including contact and social information from other sources. We do this to communicate with you in a more effective and customised manner and for marketing purposes.

To Power Social Media Features – The social media features in the Services may allow the third-party social media provider to collect things like your IP address and which page of the Services you’re visiting, and to set a cookie to enable the feature. Your interactions with these features are governed by the third-party company’s privacy policy.

To Administer Promotions and Surveys – We may share your data as necessary to administer, market, or sponsor promotions and surveys you choose to participate in, as required by applicable law or in accordance with the rules of the promotion or survey.

For Advertising – We may use and share certain Cookie Data with third-party advertisers and networks to show general demographic and preference information among our users. We may also allow advertisers to collect Cookie Data through Data Collection Tools to use this data to offer you targeted ad delivery to personalise your user experience and to undertake web analytics. Advertisers may also share with us the data they collect about you. To learn more or opt out from participating ad networks’ behavioral advertising, see the Your Choices About the Use of Your Data section below. Note that if you opt out, you’ll continue to be served generic ads.

Google as a Data Controller – Google Ads may use cookies to serve ads based on user profiles from visits to our site and/or other sites on the Internet as well as to measure advertising campaign performance. You can opt out at https://adssettings.google.com.

For Security and Legal Compliance – We may disclose your data (all data categories) to third parties if we (in our sole discretion) have a good faith belief that the disclosure is:

  • Requested as part of a judicial, governmental, or legal inquiry, order, or proceeding.
  • Reasonably necessary as part of a valid subpoena, warrant, or other legally valid request.
  • Reasonably necessary to enforce our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and other legal agreements.
  • Required to detect, prevent, or address fraud, abuse, misuse, potential violations of law, rule or regulation or security or technical issues.
  • Reasonably necessary in our discretion to protect against harm to the rights, property, or safety of whek.au, our users, employees, members of the public, or our Services.
  • We may also disclose data about you to our auditors and legal advisors in order to assess our disclosure obligations and rights under this Privacy Policy.
  • Required or permitted by law.

During a Change in Control – If whek.au undergoes a business transaction like a merger, acquisition, corporate divestiture, or dissolution, including bankruptcy, or a sale of all or some of its assets, we may share, disclose, or transfer all of your data to the successor organisation during such transition or in contemplation of a transition, including during due diligence.

After Aggregation/De-identification – We may disclose or use aggregated or de-identified data for any purpose.

With Your Permission – With your consent, we may share data to third parties outside the scope of this Privacy Policy.

If you click on any links to third-party sites, the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal data is governed by the third-party’s privacy policy.

Security

We use appropriate security based on the type and sensitivity of data being stored. As with any internet-enabled system, there is always a risk of unauthorised access, so it’s important to protect your password and to contact us if you suspect any unauthorised access to your account.

whek.au takes appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction of your personal data that we collect and store. These measures vary based on the type and sensitivity of the data. Unfortunately, however, no system can be 100% secured, so we cannot guarantee that communications between you and whek.au, the Services, or any information provided to us in connection with the data we collect through the Services will be free from unauthorised access by third parties. Your password is an important part of our security system, and it is your responsibility to protect it. You should not share your password with any third party, and if you believe your password or account has been compromised, you should change it immediately.

Your Rights

You may have certain rights around the use of your data, including the ability to opt out of promotional emails, certain types of cookies, and collection of your data by certain third parties. You can update or terminate your account from within our Services and can also contact us for individual rights requests about your personal data. Parents who believe we’ve unintentionally collected personal data about their underage child should contact us for help deleting that information.

Your Choices About the Use of Your Data

You can choose not to provide certain data to us, but you may not be able to use certain features of the Services.

The browser or device you use may allow you to control cookies and other types of local data storage. To learn more about managing cookies, visit https://cookiepedia.co.uk/how-to-manage-cookies. Your device may also allow you to control whether location or other data is collected and shared.

To get information and control cookies used for tailored advertising from participating companies, see the consumer opt-out pages for the following;

Accessing, Updating, and Deleting Your Personal Data

You can access and update your personal data that whek.au collects and maintains as follows:

  • Update or correct your data – To update data you provide directly, log into your account and update your account at any time.
  • Delete your data – To terminate your account. Please note that even after your account is terminated, some or all of your data may still be visible to others, including without limitation any data that has been (a) copied, stored, or disseminated by other users (including comments on content); (b) shared or disseminated by you or others (including in your shared content); or (c) posted to a third-party platform. Even after your account is terminated, we retain your data for as long as we have a legitimate purpose to do so and in accordance with applicable law, including to assist with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. We may retain and disclose such data pursuant to this Privacy Policy after your account has been terminated.

Our Policy Concerning Children

We recognise the privacy interests of children and encourage parents and guardians to take an active role in their children’s online activities and interests. Individuals younger than 18 years of age, but of the required age for consent to use online services where they live (for example, 13 in the US or 16 in Ireland), may not set up an account, but may have a parent or guardian open an account and help them access appropriate content. Individuals younger than the required age for consent to use online services may not use the Services. If we learn that we’ve collected personal data from a child under those ages, we will take reasonable steps to delete it.

Jurisdiction-Specific Rules

If you live in California, you have certain rights related to accessing and deleting your data, as well as learning who we share your data with. If you live in Australia, you have the right to make a formal complaint with the appropriate government agency.

Users in California

Users who are California residents have certain rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, (“CCPA”). If you are an eligible California user, included in these rights are:

  • “Right to Know” – You have the right to request to know more about the categories and specific pieces of personal information that we have collected about you and access a copy of your personal information.
  • “Right to Correction” – You have the right to have inaccurate personal information about you corrected.
  • “Right to Deletion” – You have the right to request deletion of personal information that we have collected about you.
  • “Right to Non-Discrimination” – If you choose to exercise any of your rights under CCPA, whek.au will treat you like all other users. In other words, there is no penalty for exercising your rights under CCPA.
  • “Right to Opt-Out” – You have the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information.

Additionally, for more information about the personal information we collect and how we collect it, please see the sections above entitled “What Data We Get” and “How We Get Data About You.”

To learn about the business and commercial purposes for which your personal information is collected and the categories of service providers who have access to your personal information, please see the sections above entitled “What We Use Your Data For” and “Who We Share Your Data With.”

Users in Nevada

whek.au does not sell its users’ personal information or personal data but Nevada residents have the right to submit a request that we do not sell their covered personal information.

Users in Australia

If you are an Australian resident and you have a complaint, you may refer it to the office of the Australian Information Commissioner (“OAIC”). You can contact OAIC by visiting www.oaic.gov.au; forwarding an email to enquiries@oaic.gov.au; telephoning 1300 363 992; or write to OAIC at GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001.

Users in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) and United Kingdom (“UK”)

If you are located in the EEA or UK, you have the right to request access to your data in a portable format and to request the rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, or objection to processing of your personal data. Additionally, if you are located in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority.

Users Outside of Australia

In order to provide the Services to you, we must transfer your data to Australia and process it there. If you are using the Services from outside of Australia, you consent to the transfer, storage, and processing of your data in and to Australia or other countries.

Updates & Contact Info

When we make a material change to this policy, we’ll notify users via email, in-product notice, or another mechanism required by law. Changes become effective the day they’re posted.

Modifications to This Privacy Policy

From time to time, we may update this Privacy Policy. If we make any material change to it, we will notify you via email, through a notification posted on the Services, or as required by applicable law. Unless stated otherwise, modifications will become effective on the day they are posted.

As permitted by applicable law, if you continue to use the Services after the effective date of any change, then your access and/or use will be deemed an acceptance of and agreement to follow and be bound by the revised Privacy Policy. The revised Privacy Policy supersedes all previous Privacy Policies.

Interpretation

Any capitalised terms not defined in this policy are defined as specified in whek.au’s Terms of Use. Any version of this Privacy Policy in a language other than English is provided for convenience. If there is any conflict with a non-English version, you agree that the English-language version will control.