Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Knowledge World Education ("Knowledge World," "we," "us," "our"), a tutoring business based in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, collects, uses, shares, and protects personal information through knowledgeworld.ca (the "Site") and our tutoring services. We are the organization responsible for the personal information described here. It applies to visitors, parents and guardians submitting information on behalf of a child, students, and registered account holders.

We follow Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). Because we also serve families outside Canada, this Policy also describes the rights that people in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom have under the GDPR (Section 10).

When you submit a consultation request or the subject-matching quiz, we collect: your name, email address, and phone number; your child's grade (or your own grade or level, if you are an adult learner, for example IELTS preparation); what you are looking for help with; your postal code, used only to determine whether in-person tutoring is available in your area; your preferred contact method; the tutoring format you would like (in-person, online, or hybrid); and, if you tell us, who referred you and which enrollment offer you are interested in. We also keep an internal record of whether a submission came from the quiz, because that is the only flow eligible for the quiz's introductory discount.

When you request a callback on our offer page, we collect your phone number and email address, and, if you choose to give them, your name and a short note about your child. We also record the date and time you agreed to our Offer Terms & Cancellation Policy and which version of those terms you agreed to, so we can show what you agreed to.

When you ask for our "5 Questions" guide, we collect your email address and use it to email you a link to the guide.

When you create an account, we collect: your first and last name, a chosen username, and email address; a password, which is stored using one-way hashing, so we cannot see or recover your actual password; your grade, if you are registering as a student; and a short bio, if applicable (for example, for tutor accounts).

When your family is enrolled, we keep the records needed to provide tutoring: student and family names and contact details; session schedules and attendance; grades, assignments, and progress reports; files you or your tutor upload (such as worksheets or school documents); and a record of credits and balances. Payment itself currently happens outside this Site (for example, by e-transfer), and we do not collect or store payment card numbers on the Site.

When you visit the Site, our systems and our hosting providers automatically handle technical information such as your IP address and browser type. We use your IP address in a short-lived way to limit how many forms a single visitor can submit, so that automated spam does not overwhelm our staff.

Our tutoring services are primarily for K-12 students, so much of the information above is submitted by a parent or legal guardian on behalf of their child, not by the child directly. By submitting a form on this Site on behalf of a minor, you confirm you are that child's parent or legal guardian and have the authority to share their information with us for the purpose of arranging tutoring services. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from a child without a parent or guardian's involvement in the submission.

We use the information we collect to: respond to consultation and callback requests and match students with an appropriate tutor and format; decide whether in-person tutoring is available where you live; confirm eligibility for promotional and referral offers; create and manage your account and your family's tutoring records; send you service messages about your request, sessions, or account; and understand how the Site is used so we can improve it.

Under PIPEDA, we rely on your consent. When you submit a form, create an account, or tick the terms checkbox, you consent to our using your information for the purposes described in this Policy, and you can withdraw that consent (Section 9). For people in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, our legal bases under the GDPR are: your consent (for example, when you submit a form or ask for our guide); performing a contract with you or taking steps at your request before a contract (arranging and delivering tutoring); and our legitimate interests in running, securing, and improving our business, where those interests are not overridden by your rights (for example, spam prevention and basic site analytics).

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you.

Our staff and tutors, who need it to follow up on requests, manage bookings, and deliver tutoring.

Service providers who process information on our behalf, only to provide their service to us: Railway (hosts our application server and database); Cloudflare (delivers and protects the Site, and stores uploaded files); Postmark (sends our emails, including staff notifications and the emails we send you, so it handles the relevant contact details and message content); and Google (website analytics and measuring our advertising, see Section 11).

Law enforcement or other parties, only where we are required to by a valid legal process (such as a court order), or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Knowledge World, our students, or others.

A successor business, if Knowledge World is ever involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. Your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, and this Policy would continue to apply unless you are notified of a change.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with any other third party for their own advertising or marketing purposes.

Passwords are never stored in plain text. They are hashed, a one-way scrambling process that means even we cannot see your actual password. Your login session is kept in a cookie set up so it cannot be read by a malicious script running on a webpage. Connections to the Site and our servers are encrypted in transit, and access to family records inside our system is limited by role, so staff, tutors, and families only see what they need to.

No online system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we take reasonable steps to protect the information you share with us. If a breach of our security safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the law requires.

Our application server and database are hosted by Railway in the United States (San Francisco region). Our emails are sent through Postmark, which processes email content in the United States. The Site is delivered through Cloudflare's global network, and uploaded files are stored with Cloudflare. As a result, your personal information is processed and stored outside Canada, in the United States and potentially other countries, where it may be subject to those countries' laws and accessible to their courts and authorities.

Where personal information of people in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom is transferred outside those regions, we rely on safeguards such as standard contractual clauses in our providers' data processing terms.

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy. Generally, that means for the duration of an active tutoring relationship, and for a reasonable period afterward for our records, to resolve questions, and to meet legal and accounting obligations. For a consultation or callback request that does not lead to enrollment, we keep it for a reasonable period and may then delete or anonymize it. We keep the record of when you agreed to our terms, and which version, for as long as we need to show that you agreed.

If you would like your information deleted sooner, contact us using the details in Section 14 and we will act on your request, subject to any legal or contractual retention obligations.

Under PIPEDA, you have the right to: ask what personal information we hold about you or your child and how we use and share it; request corrections to inaccurate information; withdraw your consent for us to hold or use your information, subject to legal or contractual restrictions (withdrawing may mean we can no longer provide some services); ask for a copy of your information in a portable format, where reasonably feasible; and file a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) if you believe we have mishandled your information. We would appreciate the chance to resolve a concern with you first.

To protect your privacy, we may ask you to verify your identity before acting on a request, for example by confirming the email address or account associated with it.

To make a request, contact us at kwedu.edu@gmail.com. We aim to respond within 30 days.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the GDPR also gives you the right to: access your personal data; have inaccurate data corrected; have your data erased in certain circumstances; restrict how we process it; object to processing based on our legitimate interests; receive your data in a portable format; and withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing before you withdrew. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority. Contact us at kwedu.edu@gmail.com to exercise any of these rights.

We use strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in if you have an account. We also use Google Analytics, which sets cookies and measures how visitors use the Site, for example which pages are viewed and which actions are taken (such as submitting a form or watching our video). If you arrive from a Google ad, Google may use these tools to measure how well that ad performed. We do not use your information to sell advertising to others.

We advertise through Google Ads. Our ads are targeted using the search terms and interests you have shown on Google, such as searches related to tutoring, and by general location. This means our ads may appear to you on Google Search and on other Google services, including Gmail and YouTube, based on your past Google activity. This targeting is done by Google using its own data. We do not give Google your name, contact details, or the information you submit in our forms for this purpose.

You can opt out of Google Analytics using Google's Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on (tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout), by adjusting your browser's cookie settings, or by managing your Google ad settings at adssettings.google.com, where you can turn off personalized ads.

Our offer page can show a video hosted on YouTube. The video player loads only after you click play, and when it does, YouTube (Google) may collect information such as your IP address under its own privacy policy.

We send service emails related to your request, account, or sessions, such as verification links, password resets, and session updates. We send promotional email only with your consent, and every promotional email identifies us and includes a way to unsubscribe. You can also withdraw consent for promotional messages at any time by contacting us at kwedu.edu@gmail.com. If you ask us to call you back, we will contact you using the phone number or email you gave us for that purpose.

The Site may link to third-party sites, such as our social media pages and WeChat. Those sites have their own privacy practices, which this Policy does not cover. We encourage you to read their privacy policies before sharing any information with them.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The "Last updated" date above reflects the most recent revision. For a material change, one that meaningfully affects what we collect or how we use it, we will take reasonable steps to bring it to your attention, not just quietly update the date.

Questions about this Policy, or requests about your personal information, can be sent to our privacy contact: Knowledge World Education, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, by email at kwedu.edu@gmail.com or by phone at 519-807-0778.