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Privacy Policy

The private limited liability company Soofos B.V. (hereinafter: “Soofos”) respects the privacy of everyone whose personal data is processed by Soofos, including visitors to and users of www.soofos.nl, the Soofos mobile application and derivatives thereof on which this privacy policy is posted (these, and each of them individually, are hereinafter referred to as the “Platform”).

Soofos considers the careful handling of personal data to be of great importance. Soofos will process your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

1. Different users, different processing

Soofos offers its services both to individual users (for example, consumers who take a course on their own initiative) and to users who obtain access through an organisation (for example, through an employer or educational institution).

  • In the case of individual users, Soofos acts as the controller. The provisions of this privacy policy then apply in full.
  • In the case of users who obtain access through an organisation via Soofos Zakelijk or Soofos Zakelijk Plus, Soofos acts as a processor on behalf of the organisation. In those cases, a separate privacy policy applies, which is available at zakelijk.soofos.nl/zakelijk-privacy.

Note: when creating an account on the Platform, both types of users can log in through the same domain. The way in which you obtained access (personally or through an organisation) determines which privacy rules apply to you.

2. Legal bases for processing

Soofos processes personal data if and insofar as this is necessary to comply with a statutory requirement or court order, as well as on the basis of the following three legal bases:

Performance of a contract to which you are a party or your request to enter into such a contract

This basis applies when you enter into a contract with Soofos or enter into a contract through the Platform with another provider of services or products, or when you have submitted an application or request to do so. Soofos processes personal data under this legal basis in the following cases:

  1. When you enter into a contract with Soofos concerning your registration on the Platform. This may be as a student, as an organisation with which students are affiliated, as a provider of services and/or products, or as an affiliate;
  2. When you enter into a contract with Soofos other than the contract referred to under (a), concerning specific services or products of Soofos;
  3. When you enter into a contract on the Platform with a party other than Soofos. Through the Platform, you can purchase services and products from other providers;
  4. When you offer your own services or products on the Platform and have entered into a contract with Soofos for that purpose, or when a user of the Platform orders your services or products.

Under this legal basis for processing personal data, Soofos processes your personal data only if and insofar as this is necessary to perform the relevant contract, including providing the Platform functionality agreed with you under that contract and being able to contact you insofar as this is necessary for the proper performance of that contract.

Under a contract entered into with you, personal data may be shared (automatically) with third parties. This occurs in the following situations:

  • If you have an account on the Platform, you can use many of the Platform features offered to you, such as creating and publishing a profile, communicating with other users of the Platform through an online community, posting messages and responding to them, creating and uploading assignments, conducting conversations with other users of the Platform through an internal messaging system, posting questions, updates, content or other information on a timeline, following other users of the Platform, and offering your own services and/or products if you have agreed this with Soofos. The Platform features offered to you form part of the contract you have entered into with Soofos. These various features may logically result in your personal data being shared (automatically) on the Platform or with other users of the Platform, for example when you send a private message to another user. If Soofos does not do this, the relevant feature cannot be provided correctly. In any event, the following applies to the Platform:
    1. Your (user)name, any profile picture, public reviews and ratings, and your number of followers and connections are visible to every visitor to the Platform, even if they do not have an account. In addition, you can choose under your account to make your portfolio public to everyone;
    2. Your timeline and the information on it, posts, responses to posts, the courses you follow, and live sessions in which you participate can be seen by anyone who has an account on the Platform;
    3. A review you write on the Platform about a service, a product, Soofos, or another provider, including your name and any profile picture, is published on the Platform, possibly alongside the relevant offer of the service or product or on the provider’s profile.

If, as a student, you obtain a certificate or complete a course, users with an account on the Platform who follow you can see these updates on your timeline. It is also possible that others can verify your certificates. The links to them are public on the Platform, and information from your certificate is accessible if someone has the link to the verification URL. The certificate includes your name, the course you followed, and its completion date. Under your account, you can choose whether or not to shield certain data. You can therefore manage your privacy yourself in part under your account.

  • When you enter into a contract on the Platform with a party other than Soofos, Soofos shares the personal data necessary to perform the relevant contract with the relevant provider, to enable the provider to perform the contract and provide you with appropriate service. Conversely, in this case the provider’s personal data is also shared with the party that entered into the contract with the provider.
  • If you make a payment through the Platform, your payment details are shared with the payment provider contracted by Soofos so that the payment can be processed. Soofos may also sell products on the Platform itself. In that case, your personal data is provided to a transport company so that the ordered product can be delivered to you.

A legitimate interest of Soofos or a third party

This basis applies, for example, to:

  1. Soofos automatically providing the personal data that you entered or uploaded through the Platform and that is stored under any account you may have on the Platform to the hosting provider engaged by Soofos. This is necessary for the Platform and Soofos’s email facilities to function properly;
  2. Security and fraud prevention, such as protecting your account against unauthorised access and detecting and preventing fraudulent activities and misuse of the Platform;
  3. Improving Soofos’s services, such as analysing user behaviour to improve the functionality and user experience of the Platform and collecting feedback from users to improve the quality of the services and products offered;
  4. Customer service and support, including providing effective customer service and technical support to users and managing and resolving complaints and problems experienced by users;
  5. Personalisation and user experience, such as personalising content and recommendations based on user preferences and activities and providing targeted advertisements that are relevant to your interests;
  6. Internal administration, including managing payments and financial transactions for services and products;
  7. Complying with accounting and administrative obligations;
  8. Research and innovation, including conducting market research to identify trends and user needs and developing new features and services based on user behaviour and preferences;
  9. Community management, including moderating content and enforcing the community guidelines to create a safe and respectful environment, managing user accounts, and taking measures in response to breaches of the general terms and conditions.

Your personal data may also be shared with third parties on the basis of a legitimate interest. This applies, for example, to:

  1. Soofos providing your personal data to an accountancy firm so that it can take care of Soofos’s administration and accounts;
  2. The use of software to process and store Soofos’s administration and accounts;
  3. The use of newsletter software to send you the newsletters you requested;
  4. The use of review software to publish any review you may make on the Platform;
  5. The use of an internal messaging system to exchange messages through the Platform;
  6. The use of cloud storage software to store personal data, among other things.

The operators of the software referred to above process relevant personal data in order to provide Soofos with the software’s features.

Under this basis, Soofos processes your personal data only if and insofar as this is necessary to serve the legitimate interests referred to above. With regard to newsletters, you can unsubscribe from further receipt in the manner indicated in the relevant messages.

Your consent

This basis applies when:

  1. You contact Soofos by telephone, email, or in any other way, subscribe to receive newsletters, or post a review on the Platform. Your consent is implicit in the fact that you contact Soofos, subscribe to receive newsletters, or write a review;
  2. You have given consent for final assignments to be used for promotional purposes;
  3. Soofos wishes to use your personal data for other purposes or provide it to third parties. In this context, your consent always applies to specific processing and a specific purpose. If Soofos has multiple purposes for processing personal data, Soofos will inform you about this and request separate consent for each purpose.

Under this legal basis, Soofos processes your personal data only if and insofar as this is necessary to handle your request or carry out that for which you have given consent.

3. European Economic Area

Soofos stores your personal data within the European Economic Area (“EEA”). However, certain personal data collected by Soofos may be transferred to or stored outside the EEA because an external service provider of Soofos is established there. When this occurs, Soofos ensures that your personal data is processed outside the EEA in a secure and lawful manner. In this context, Soofos will therefore take the necessary steps to guarantee that your personal data is adequately protected.

4. Your rights

You have the right to ask Soofos for access to, erasure of, and rectification of your personal data, as well as restriction of the processing concerning you. You also have the right to object to the processing and the right to data portability. This means that you can submit a request to Soofos to send the personal data that Soofos processes about you in a computer file to you or to an organisation named by you.

To ensure that you made the request, Soofos asks you to send a copy of your identity document with the request. In this copy, black out the MRZ (machine-readable zone, the strip with numbers on the document), document number, and citizen service number (BSN). This is to protect your privacy. Soofos will respond to your request as soon as possible, but in any event within four weeks.

Insofar as the processing of personal data is based on consent obtained from you, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any time, without this affecting the lawfulness of the processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority or, if you live in a country other than the Netherlands, the supervisory authority there.

5. Retention of personal data

Soofos retains personal data only for as long as is necessary in view of the purposes for which it is processed. Soofos implements appropriate technical and organisational measures to secure personal data against loss and against any form of unlawful processing. Taking into account the state of the art and the cost of implementation, these measures guarantee an appropriate level of security in view of the risks presented by the processing and the nature of the personal data to be protected. The measures are also intended to prevent unnecessary processing of personal data.

6. Contact

For questions about this privacy policy or questions or complaints about the processing of your personal data by Soofos, you can contact Soofos. Soofos will be happy to help if you have questions or complaints about Soofos’s processing of your personal data or if you wish to change or delete your personal data.