Vernier’s web-based platform Vernier Connections® (the “Platform”) is designed to deepen students’ understanding of scientific concepts and develop crucial skills, such as inquiry, problem-solving, communication, collaboration, and flexibility. Your use of the Platform is governed by the Vernier Connections® Terms of Use or a Beta Test Agreement as agreed between Vernier Software & Technology, Inc. dba Vernier Science Education (“Vernier,” “us,” “our,” or “we”) and the school, school district, or other organization (each a “School”) through which you access the Platform. This Privacy Notice explains our privacy practices related to your use of the Platform. 

By accessing or using the Platform, you consent to the privacy practices described in this Privacy Notice. If you do not agree with this Privacy Notice, do not access or use the Platform. 

Please note that Vernier’s Website and Applications are governed by their own privacy notices, not this one.

If you have questions about this Privacy Notice or the Platform, please contact us at info@vernier.com or toll free at 1-888-837-6437.

Your Learning Management System

Users link to the Platform from their user accounts on their School’s learning management system (“LMS”). The privacy practices of your LMS are separate from the Platform and are not addressed by this Privacy Notice. You are encouraged to review the Privacy Notice for your LMS.

Consent for Students

Schools that subscribe to the Platform permit Users to access the Platform through School’s LMS. By integrating the Platform into its LMS, the School consents to this Privacy Notice on behalf of its students, instructors, and other end users who access the Platform through the School’s subscription (“Users”), and the School is responsible for determining and obtaining any additional consent for students, including parental consent, that may be required under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or other applicable privacy laws. The School, not Vernier, is responsible for obtaining any legally required end user or parent or guardian consent to use the Platform.

Collection & Use of Personal Information

The Platform interacts with your Personal Information through your LMS account. A detailed description of what we mean by Personal Information is provided at the bottom of this Privacy Notice (What Is “Personal Information”?).

When you use the Platform, Vernier may collect your identifiers, educational or employment information, and internet activity data from your LMS account and data about your tasks and other activities using the application. 

• If you are an instructor, the Platform will collect and process your name or username, email address, course information, and activities while using the Platform. 
• If you are a student user, the Platform collects the unique ID associated with your LMS account to differentiate your work from your classmates and data about your coursework and other activities on the Platform. 
• The Platform uses cookies and similar technologies to track users’ activities on the application. These cookies are essential for the Platform to function and generally only collect technical data and only for the purpose of ensuring key features will function as intended.

We collect this information to achieve our legitimate interest in facilitating and improving the use of the Platform by Schools and their users. Vernier is careful to only collect and process Personal Information as necessary to facilitate your use of the Platform as requested by your School.

In addition to the specific uses described above, Vernier might also use your Personal Information to (i) fulfill any other purpose to which you consent; (ii) protect your privacy and enforce this Privacy Notice; (iii) if we believe it is necessary, to identify, contact, or bring legal action against persons or entities who may be causing injury to you, to us, or to others; (iv) monitor your compliance with agreements between you and us; or (v) comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or court order.

Privacy Controls

If you wish to change the Personal Information collected by the Platform, you can access, correct, update, or delete the Personal Information available to the Platform by logging into your LMS account and saving your changes. Your School and the LMS provider determine the controls that are available to you through your LMS account. Please contact your School if you require assistance. See Privacy Inquiries below for more information. 

Children’s Privacy

The Platform does not collect any Personal Information directly from the student. All Personal Information collected by the Platform is transmitted from the student’s account on the School’s LMS. As such, the Platform leverages the School’s LMS controls for notice to parents or guardians, methods to provide parental consent, and other efforts to protect children’s privacy. If we become aware that a child under the age of 13 has provided Personal Information to the Platform outside of a data transmittal via their LMS account, we will promptly delete that data from our systems. Please contact privacy@vernier.com if you believe a child has provided us with Personal Information.

Data Retention

Vernier retains Personal Information collected through the Platform as long as your LMS account remains linked to the Platform or as otherwise instructed by your School. It is Vernier’s policy to minimize the scope of Personal Information we collect and to retain that information only for the period necessary to achieve the purpose of its collection. Vernier regularly reviews and deletes or deidentifies unnecessary data. We reserve the right to retain data for longer periods as necessary to comply with our legal obligations. 

Data Disclosures 

Vernier will only disclose Personal Information to trusted third parties as described in this paragraph, with your permission, or as required by law. In the preceding 12 months, Vernier has disclosed Personal Information about Platform users collected from the user’s LMS account to the following recipients:

• Our Service Providers. Vernier’s third-party service providers may have access to your Personal Information to perform their contractual obligations to us. For example, Vernier works with our service provider EdLink to connect your LMS account to the Platform.  We also work with data hosting services, analytics services, and other technology providers to develop and provide the Platform to Schools and their users.  The type of information that we disclose to a service provider will depend on the services they provide to us. Our service providers are subject to contractual agreements that protect Personal Information, and we require all service providers to maintain confidentiality standards that are commercially reasonable to ensure the security of your Personal Information.
• Other Third Parties, as permitted by applicable law, for example: if we go through a business transition (e.g., merger, acquisition, or sale of a portion of our assets); to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; when we believe it is appropriate in order to take action regarding illegal activities or prevent fraud or harm to any person; to exercise or defend our legal claims; or for any other reason with your consent.
• Law enforcement, and other governmental agencies, at our sole discretion in connection with an investigation of any matter that is illegal or that could expose Vernier or our affiliates or subsidiaries to liability.
• Aggregated and De-Identified Information. Vernier reserves the right to disclose aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified information about any individuals with non-affiliated entities for research, product development, marketing, or other purposes, without restriction.

Data Security 

Vernier has implemented and maintains reasonable security measures to secure your Personal Information from accidental loss and unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. Our security measures are appropriate to the volume, scope, and nature of the Personal Information processed and designed to meet our duty of care with respect to your Personal Information. The Platform is designed with data security in mind to continuously protect your data and our systems. Vernier maintains internal policies to govern the collection, processing, and handling of data, and reserves data access only for those employees who require such access to perform their job functions. We educate our employees about the importance of confidentiality and privacy through standard operating procedures. We also ensure that our employees, contractors, and agents responsible for handling privacy inquiries are informed of applicable privacy law requirements and we restrict access to those who need that information to process it. Anyone with this access is subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations and may be disciplined or terminated if they fail to meet these obligations. 

Please note, however, that no transmission of data over the Internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee that unauthorized third parties will not defeat our security measures or use your Personal Information for improper purposes. Schools and educators that create an account on the Site are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of their username and password. We encourage you to take steps to protect against unauthorized access to your account and device by choosing a robust password and signing off after each session. Vernier is not responsible for any lost, stolen, or compromised passwords, or for any activity on your account via unauthorized access.

Platform User Privacy Rights

Some users of the Platform may be legally entitled to certain privacy rights. For users in the United States, consumer privacy is governed by federal privacy laws covering specific industries or data uses and state privacy laws providing general consumer privacy rights. For example, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Nevada, Utah, Virginia, and other states require companies to inform consumers about their privacy rights and provide a method to exercise those rights. 

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and its counterpart regulation in the United Kingdom entitle data subjects to control whether and how their Personal Information is collected and used by businesses. Vernier collects and processes the Personal Information of data subjects via the Platform as a processor for the School. 

For users in Canada, the Personal Data Protection and Electronic Documents Act and other provincial privacy laws give Canadians specific rights regarding their Personal Information. Additionally, Australia, as well as many countries within the continents of Africa, South America, and Asia, have enacted comprehensive consumer privacy laws offering a broad spectrum of consumer rights over their Personal Information. 

Depending on where you live, you may be entitled to some or all of the following privacy rights:

• Right to know how we collect and process your Personal Information. We have set the required notices in this Privacy Notice. We may provide you with additional notices about other ways we process your Personal Information, such as by sending you a notice via email or by other means of communication.
• Right to reasonable expectations. You expect us to collect, use or disclose Personal Information responsibly and not for any other purpose other than that to which you consented. We set your expectations in this Privacy Notice, and we collect the legally required consent at various stages of our interactions with you. If we collect or use your Personal Information based on your consent, we will also notify you of any changes and will request your further consent as required by law. You may withdraw your consent at any time with reasonable notice by contacting privacy@vernier.com. 
• Right to access your Personal Information. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of your Personal Information, along with details about the types of Personal Information we process, why we process it, and any third parties we work with to collect Personal Information on our behalf. Please note that Vernier may be prohibited by law from disclosing certain pieces of Personal Information, and we may be limited in the number or frequency of requests we must fulfill.  
• Right to accuracy, and the right to correct your Personal Information. If you become aware that the Personal Information that we hold about you is incorrect, or if your situation changes (e.g., change of address), please inform us and we will update our records.
• No selling or sharing Personal Information. Some states entitle consumers to opt out of the sale or sharing of Personal Information or targeted advertising practices. Vernier does not sell Personal Information or share Personal Information with third parties for cross-contextual behavioral advertising purposes. If this changes in the future, we will update this Privacy Notice and provide you with a method to opt out.
• Limited use and disclosure of sensitive Personal Information. Vernier does not seek to collect sensitive Personal Information about anyone, and in no case will we use or disclose sensitive Personal Information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about a consumer. If this ever changes in the future, we will update this Privacy Notice and provide you with methods to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive Personal Information. 
• Right to deletion or erasure (a.k.a. the “right to be forgotten”). Upon your request and where we are required to do so by law, we will delete your Personal Information that we collected and retained, with certain exceptions. We may permanently delete, deidentify, or aggregate the Personal Information in response to a request for deletion.
• Right to data portability. In some cases, we are required to provide your Personal Information to another organization at your request and in a structured, commonly used machine-readable format, so that the other organization can read and use it.
• Right to restrict processing of your Personal Information. You may have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your Personal Information if (i) the data is inaccurate, (ii) the processing is unlawful, (iii) we no longer need the Personal Information, or (iv) you exercise your right to object. Your right to restrict may be limited to Personal Information that is sensitive in nature, or that is sold or shared for certain purposes.
• Right to object to certain processing of your Personal Information. You may have the right to request, under certain circumstances and where we are required to do so by law, that we limit our processing of your Personal Information as you request. 
• Right to nondiscrimination. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights. For example, unless permitted by law we will not: (i) deny you goods or services; (ii) charge you different prices or rates for goods or services; (iii) provide you a different level or quality of goods or services; (iv) retaliate against you as an employee, applicant for employment, or independent contractor for exercising your privacy rights; or (v) suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services, because you exercised a right under applicable privacy laws.
• No Automated Decision-Making (“ADM”) or profiling. Vernier does not use automated decision-making or any form of automated processing of Personal Information to evaluate, analyze, or predict your performance, preferences, choices, or behavior. If this changes in the future, we will update this Privacy Notice and provide you with an option to exercise your privacy rights related to Personal Information processed using ADM or profiling.
• Right to disclosure of certain information. You have a right to request information about our collection and use of your Personal Information over the past 12 months. If you are a resident of the State of California, you may request that we disclose (i) the categories of Personal Information we have collected about you; (ii) the categories of sources for the Personal Information we have collected about you; (iii) our business purpose for collecting, using, disclosing, or selling that Personal Information, as applicable; and (iv) the categories of third parties with whom we disclose that Personal Information. Vernier does not sell or share your Personal Information, but if we had you could request two separate lists stating: (a) sales, identifying the Personal Information categories that each category of recipient purchased; and (b) if shared for a business purpose, the Personal Information categories that each category of recipient obtained. Vernier is only required to respond to two disclosure requests within a 12-month period. 
• Right to disclosure of marketing information. If you are a resident of the State of California, note that California’s Shine the Light Act (Civil Code sections 1798.83-1798.84) entitles California consumers to request certain disclosures regarding Personal Information sharing with affiliates and/or third parties for marketing purposes.

Privacy Inquiries

To exercise your privacy rights, express concerns, revoke your consent, lodge a complaint, or request information, please contact your School. Questions specific to Platform functionality and privacy inquiries from Schools can be sent to privacy@vernier.com. Depending on the nature of your inquiry, Vernier will respond to you directly or forward the inquiry to your School. 

Vernier endeavors to respond to privacy inquiries as required by applicable law. Note that we can only respond to verifiable inquiries, and only when we have sufficient information to understand, evaluate, and respond to the inquiry. We do not charge a fee to process or respond to an inquiry unless we have legal grounds to do so. If we determine that a fee is warranted, we will provide you with a cost estimate before you incur a cost. If we do not respond to your inquiry within the legally required timeline, you can appeal by contacting privacy@vernier.com. 

If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (“EEA”) and you believe we are unlawfully processing your Personal Information, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. If you are a resident in Switzerland, you have the right to complain to the Swiss data protection authorities. Residents of the European Economic Area or Switzerland with privacy inquiries related to the Platform or other Vernier solutions should direct their questions to the broker or reseller used to facilitate their purchase.

Cross-Border Data Transfers

Vernier is owned and operated in the United States. We provide the Platform using technical infrastructure in the United States and other jurisdictions. As such, we must sometimes transfer data across jurisdictional boundaries. If you use the Platform from outside the United States, please be aware that your Personal Information may be transferred to, processed, stored, and used in the United States or elsewhere. When your information is moved across borders, the laws where your information is transferred may be different from those of your home country. For example, if your information is in the United States, it may be accessed by government authorities under United States law.

When we transmit data from Europe or the UK to other jurisdictions, we do so pursuant to standard contract clauses approved by the European Commission and employ those security measures required by the country in question to secure the data. We also require our third-party service providers to meet the same standards. Each Customer is solely responsible for determining whether their use of the Platform complies with applicable laws. By allowing us to collect Personal Information about you, you consent to the transfer and processing of your Personal Information as described in this section.

Third-Party Platforms

Vernier may provide links from the Platform to third-party platforms for your convenience. Vernier is not responsible for and cannot control the privacy and data collection, use, and disclosure practices of any third party. When you use an LMS or other third-party platform, you will be subject to the third party’s privacy practices, not ours. You are encouraged to review and understand the third party’s privacy notice before submitting any information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

The privacy practices stated in this Privacy Notice are effective beginning on December 11, 2023. Vernier reserves the right to amend this Privacy Notice from time to time. We will update this post 90 days before any changes to our privacy practices take effect. Your continued use of the Platform following the effective date of changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes. Please note that EdLink, your School’s LMS, or other third-party platforms or service providers may alter their privacy practices or update their privacy notices at different intervals and with different or no prior notice to you. 

What is “Personal Information”?

When we say, “Personal Information” we mean any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. Personal Information is a broad legal term often sorted into categories: 

• Identifiers (e.g., name, email, telephone number, address, username); 

• Commercial information (e.g., products or services purchased, obtained, or considered; or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies); 
• Educational information, including information protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. § 1232g, 34 C.F.R. Part 99);
• Employment information (e.g., current or past employment);
• Sensitive information (e.g., government identification number; precise geolocation; racial or ethnic origin; religious beliefs; health information; contents of messages when we are not the recipient; in some cases, information about a known child);
• Legally protected information (e.g., race, citizenship, marital status, sex);
• Biometrics (e.g., DNA, face/voice prints, health data) and audio, electronic, visual, thermal, or olfactory information;
• Internet activity (e.g., browsing history; content interactions); and
• Inferences drawn from Personal Information to create a profile about preferences, characteristics, trends, predispositions, behaviors, attitudes, intelligence, and aptitudes. 

Not all information about a person qualifies as Personal Information under privacy laws. For example, publicly available information, aggregated data, and anonymized information is often exempt from legal rights and protections.