Brand New School Privacy Policy 

Brand New School - Privacy Policy

Last Updated: April 17, 2023

1. Keeping your information safe

Brand New School is committed to keeping your information safe and secure and handling it in accordance with our legal obligations.  We want you to understand how we handle your data.  We also want you to know your rights and choices. 

This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) applies to these services:

»   The Brand New School website; and

»   anywhere else we gather information about you and refer to this Policy

For simplicity, we call these services the “Site” in this Policy. 

How we handle your information depends on which Site services you use, and how you use them.  This Policy is grouped into these sections:

»   who we are and how this Policy works;

»   the categories and specific types of information we collect;

»   how we use information;

»   when we exchange information with other parties; and

»   your rights and controls over information about you. 

We encourage you to read this Policy carefully.  If you have questions, please contact us.

2. Who we are and how this Policy works 

(a) Who we are

Brand New School LLC operates the Site and is referred to in this Policy as “BNS”, “we”, “our” or “us”.  This Policy supplements and is governed by our Terms of Service (“Terms”).  Capitalized terms that are used but not defined in this Policy are defined in our Terms.  The Terms describe how the Site works in general, including security measures we use to protect our systems and the information described in the Policy.

(b) When this Policy applies

This Policy applies to you when you use the Site.  By using or accessing the Site, you signify that you have read, understand and agree to be bound by this Policy and the Terms. 

»   If you are a current or former employee or contractor of ours, this Policy does not apply to you. You may contact us about your privacy practices and rights at privacy@brandnewschool.com.

»   If we receive your information in our role as a service provider to another business, please see Our Role for more information.

This Policy is effective as of the Last Updated date above.  The prior version was effective July 1, 2019. 

Because the Site changes often, this Policy may change over time.  Anytime we modify the Policy, we will post a revised version on the Site and update the Last Updated date above.  If you have given us your contact information, we will notify you before any material changes take effect so you have time to review them. 

(c) Location-specific sections

The Site operates from the United States, but this Policy applies worldwide.  Our practices generally do not differ based on your location, but your rights and choices depend in part on the law where you live.  For example, you may have rights under:

»   “GDPR”:  implementations of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679; and

»   “CCPA”: the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended. 

As a result, some sections of this Policy apply to you only if you reside in a particular location. 

»   California residents should consult the Rights under California law section. 

→ If you reside in a U.S. jurisdiction that has enacted a data privacy law similar to CCPA or GDPR, we extend the same rights CCPA grants to California residents to you, except where we specify otherwise. 

»   Residents of jurisdictions where GDPR applies – such as U.K., EU and Swiss residents – should consult the Rights under GDPR and International Data Transfers sections. 

If any of those sections apply to you, those sections override any contrary descriptions elsewhere in the Policy as they relate to you.  If you have questions about your rights under other data privacy laws, please contact us

(d) Our role

Usually, we are the business controlling the personal information we collect about you.

However, if we receive your personal information in our role as a contractor or service provider to one of our customers, that customer may serve as the business controlling our processing of your information.  In those circumstances:

»   Additional privacy notices or policies, provided by our customer to you, may govern or apply to the personal information you or our customer provide to us.

»   We will direct any questions or rights requests you may send us as required under our customer agreements or applicable law. 

3. Information we collect

(a) Information you give us

You may use much of the Site without providing any information about yourself.  However, to use some aspects of the Site, we will need information about you, such as if you:

»   Contact or communicate with us

»   Apply for a job with us or work at BNS

»   Subscribe or opt-in to our newsletters, alerts, or other communications

»   Submit content

(b) Information collected when you use the Site

As you use the Site, we generate technical data about which features you’ve used, how you’ve used them and the devices you use to access our services, including:

»   “Device Information” related to the device you use to interact with the Site, such as your IP address, its browser and operating system, its internet service provider and its settings.

»   “Usage Data” related to your use of the Site, such as the pages you visit, the sites you use before or after visiting ours, your actions within the Site, the content or advertisements you interact with, general location information, time stamps and performance logs and reports.

(c) Information we don’t collect

For clarity, we do not collect:

»   Sensitive personal information (as defined by CCPA)

»   Personal information about anyone under the age of 18 (see Use by minors for more details)

For clarity, we therefore don’t use, sell, share those types of information. 

4. How we use information

The main reason we use your information is to deliver and improve our content and services.  We also use it to communicate with you. 

(a) Uses

Here is a detailed explanation of the various reasons for which we use your information, together with practical examples:

1.  To provide our content, services and products to you

·   Provide you with customer support and respond to your requests

·   Communicate with you about our services

2.  To improve our services and develop new ones

·   Administer focus groups, market studies and surveys

·   Review interactions with customer teams to improve our quality of service

·   Develop new content and services

3.  To prevent, detect and fight fraud and other illegal or unauthorized activities

·   Find and address ongoing, suspected or alleged violations of our Terms

·   Better understand and design countermeasures against violations of our Terms

·   Retain data related to violations of our Terms to prevent against recurrences

·   Enforce or exercise our rights; for example, those in our Terms

4.  To ensure legal compliance

·   Verify copyright or IP claims

·   Comply with legal requirements

·   Assist law enforcement

5.  To facilitate your application or employment

(b) Purposes

We rely on the following purposes to collect and use your information as described in this Policy:

»   Commercial purposes: The reason we process your information for purposes 1 and 2 above is to advance your economic interests or our economic interests.  These purposes include performing the contract that you have with us, as embodied by our Terms, which advances our economic interests and yours. 

»   Business purposes: We process your information for purposes 1, 4 and 5 above for operational reasons, in a reasonably necessary and proportionate manner (i.e., for business purposes under CCPA).  For instance, we analyze users’ behavior on to continuously improve our offerings, we process information to help keep our users and personnel safe and we process data where necessary to enforce our rights, assist law enforcement and enable us to defend ourselves in the event of a legal action.

»   Comply with applicable laws and regulations: We process your information for purpose 6 above where it is necessary for us to comply with applicable laws and regulations and evidence our compliance with applicable laws and regulations.  For example, we retain traffic data and data about transactions in line with our accounting, tax and other statutory data retention obligations and to be able to respond to valid access requests from law enforcement. 

»   Consent: From time to time, we may ask for your consent to collect specific information or use it for certain specific reasons, like providing your email address or phone number for direct marketing purposes.  In general, you may withdraw your consent by changing your settings (such as browser or device settings) or following instructions provided with information we send you based on the consent you gave us (such as texting ‘stop’ to text messages from us).  You may always withdraw your consent at any time – just contact us.

5. Our exchange of information with others

Since our goal is to help you discover BNS’ products and services, the principal reason we exchange your information is to enhance your experience of the Site. 

This section describes how and why we exchange personal information with third parties, like our contractors.  It also describes exchanges made for certain purposes, like legal reasons and consensual direct marketing.  We also exchange deidentified and/or anonymized data for these purposes.

(a) We do not ‘sell’ or ‘share’ personal information

That means we don’t exchange personal information with others for behavioral ads (i.e., ads targeted to you) or otherwise sell it.  Nor have we done so in the past year!  Let’s get that out of the way.

(b) Direct marketing

We only disclose, rent, sell or share any information about you to third parties for direct marketing purposes unless you opt in, and will only do so until you opt out. 

We may share information about you with third party sponsors or partners who will use it for marketing purposes but only if you opt in to such sharing or do not opt out when prompted.  We will never share information in this manner without giving you one of these two options.

(c) Functional disclosures

We contract with third parties to provide certain services related to the functionality and features of the Site, including payment processing, email and hosting services, software development and data management.  We call them “contractors.” 

We may disclose information about you, as well as Usage Data and Device Information, to contractors as necessary for them to perform their services.  Our contractors are not permitted to use your information for any other purpose.  In the past year, we have disclosed User Data, Usage Data, to the following types of contractors:

»   Analytics providers, namely Google Analytics, to tell us how the Site is doing, such as which parts interest visitors and how long they visit before leaving.  Among other data, they may receive your IP address.

»   Various hosting services and data processors to provide the infrastructure of the Site, such as Vercel, which ensures that traffic is from real people, not computers.  Among other data, they may receive your IP address.

(d)   For legal reasons

Finally, we may share your Information:

»   In response to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process; to establish or exercise our legal rights; to defend against legal claims; or as otherwise required by law.  In such cases we reserve the right to raise or waive any legal objection or right available to us;

»   When we believe it is appropriate to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal or suspected illegal activities; to protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of our company, our users, or others; and in connection with the enforcement of our Terms and other agreements; or

»   In connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy. 

(e)    With your consent or at your request

We may periodically ask for your consent to exchange your information with third parties.  Whenever we ask your consent for this reason, we will summarize the purpose and scope of the exchange.

(f)     Technical

Finally, we may use and share non-personal information (meaning information that, by itself, does not identify who you are, such as device information, general demographics, general behavioral data, location data in de-identified form), as well as personal information in hashed, non-human readable form, under any of the above circumstances.  We may also share this information with other Affiliates and third parties (notably advertisers) to develop and deliver targeted advertising on our services and on websites or applications of third parties, and to analyze and report on advertising you see.  We may combine this information with additional non-personal information or personal information in hashed, non-human readable form collected from other sources. 

6. How long we retain your information

We retain your information only as long as we need it for the purposes described under How we use information, except when longer retention is required by our compliance policies and efforts toward applicable legal, tax, accounting and regulatory requirements.  

How long we need information for those purposes varies by category, and even within categories.  These retention determinations always consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from its unauthorized use or disclosure, whether we can achieve those purposes without using the personal information.

For example, we delete some Usage Data at some soon as you exit the Site, whereas we may retain records of your orders for services and products for several years as required by law or contract, such as agreements with our payment processors or under our accounting standards.

7. Your rights

(a) In General

We want you to be in control of your information, so we want to remind you of the following options and tools available to you:

Opting Out of Communications

As described above, we may use the information we collect from you to send messages to you.  If you do not want to receive such communications, you can opt out by using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our communications, responding “STOP” to any text message from us or unchecking the applicable box to opt out when prompted.  You may also at any time opt out of receiving communications from us by sending an e-mail to privacy@brandnewschool.com with the subject line “Opt Out”.

Please note that even if you unsubscribe from our communications, we may still need to contact you with important information related to the Site.  For example, even if you have unsubscribed from our promotional emails, we will still alert you to changes to our Terms or Privacy Policy.

(b) Rights under GDPR

This section applies to you only if you reside in a jurisdiction where GDPR applies. 

For GDPR purposes, the data controller is Brand New School LLC at 121 Varick Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Parties with which we exchange data are data processors to us. 

The purposes and the legal bases for our collecting and processing of personal data under GDPR are generally described under How we use information.  Each “Purpose” above generally corresponds to a legal basis under GDPR.  Please contact us if you are confused about the applicable legal basis. 

Depending on your jurisdiction’s enactment of GDPR, you may have these rights:

»   Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

»   Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

»   Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us to continue to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully, or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we might not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons that will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

»   Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation that makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information that override your rights and freedoms.

»   Request restriction of processing your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful, but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data, but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

»   Request the transfer of your personal data to you or a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information that you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

»   Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we might not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

You may exercise rights under GDPR as described under Requesting information.  If you do not provide personal data to us or withdraw consent for processing personal data, we may not be able to provide you with certain aspects of the Site.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

(c) International Data Transfers

If you reside outside the United States, we transfer information about you for processing in the United States.  By providing information about you to enable Site services, you consent to the processing of such data in the United States.  The transfer of this information to the United States is necessary for the performance of our contract for use of the Site.

When we transfer personal data subject to GDPR outside of Brand New School, we use standard contract clauses approved by the EU for this purpose.

Note that U.S. law is not equivalent to GDPR.  The U.S. has not been deemed an “adequate” jurisdiction under GDPR for the purposes of international data transfers.

(d)   Rights under California law

This section applies to you only if you reside in California or another U.S. state where applicable law provides for some or all of these rights.  Except as noted in this section, we extend these California rights to residents of those states regardless of whether applicable law in those states includes all of these rights.

(i) Rights under CCPA

The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) provides California consumers with additional rights regarding their personal information (as defined in CCPA). 

The categories of personal information we collect are generally described above, and depend on how you use the Site.  If you are unsure of how a category described above maps to a category defined by CCPA, please

The categories of third parties to whom we disclose personal information are in Section 5.  The disclosures in Section 4(b) describe the business or commercial purpose for those exchanges of information.

Under CCPA, California consumers have the following rights:

(1)     Rights to Know, Access, Correct and Delete.

You have the right to request that we disclose, correct and delete personal information about you that we have collected.  Your right to know includes the personal information we have sold or shared or disclosed for a business purpose. 

(2)     Rights to Limit and Opt-Out of Sharing/Sale

You also have the right to direct us (1) not to share or sell your personal information and (2) limit our disclosure and use of your sensitive personal information to purposes necessary to provide the Site to you. 

BNS does not collect sensitive personal information, or sell or share personal information.  For clarity, as of the Last Updated date, we have no knowledge of any use of personal information we collect from individuals under the age of 16 for ‘sale’ or ‘sharing’ purposes.

(3)     Right of No Retaliation

CCPA prohibits us from discriminating against you if you exercise rights under CCPA, except when you opted in to a financial incentive involving certain of your personal information, and subsequently restrict our use of that personal information through a CCPA rights request. 

Your right of no retaliation doesn’t need to be exercised.  We never retaliate against anyone exercising their rights under this Policy or CCPA.

(4)     Preference signals

Because we do not collect sensitive personal information or sell or share any personal information, the Site is not presently configured to honor any global Opt-out preference signal sent from California IP addresses to the Site through browser or device-level settings, provided the signal complies with CCPA’s requirements. 

(5)     Request process for CCPA rights

To submit a CCPA request relating to the foregoing rights, please contact us as described under Requesting information.  That section generally applies to requests to exercise CCPA rights.  However, in addition:

»   We will confirm receipt of your CCPA request within 10 days, and will substantively respond within 45 days. 

»   We may initially substantively respond by informing you that we will require up to 45 further days, along with an explanation of why our substantive response is delayed. 

»   We provide responses in the manner we receive your request (i.e., with an email response to an email request).

Finally, we may deny deletion requests, in whole or in part, with respect to information we reasonably need to:

»   comply with a legal obligation

»   allow you, other consumers, or us to exercise free-speech rights or other legal rights

»   perform a contract with you

»   or if we use the information for solely internal purposes reasonably aligned with consumer expectations.

(ii) Other California law

Because we only give your information to third parties for direct marketing purposes with your consent, and always allow you to opt out of direct marketing communications after opting in, we believe we are not currently required to comply with California Civil Code Section 1798.83. 

(e) Requesting information

(i) Submitting requests

To exercise a right under this Section 7, please contact us.  Your request must:

»   provide sufficient information to identify you and the law that applies to you, such as your name, e-mail address, home or work address, or other information we maintain. 

»   not include or disclose social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, third-party account numbers, credit or debit card numbers, or health information.

(ii) Verifying requests

We verify requests by first confirming the source of the request and then by matching the information submitted to the information we maintain.  If your request is unclear or we are unable to authenticate your identity, we will respond with direction on how to remedy the deficiencies, in accordance with law that applies to you. 

If we cannot verify the identity of the individual making the request, we may deny it, in full or in part.

(iii) Responses to requests

We will respond to your request as quickly as we can, taking into account the nature of your request and the volume of pending requests.  The content of our response will vary with the nature of your request, but will always respond in accordance with any deadlines or requirements specified by the laws that applies to you.

Under certain circumstances, we may be unable to provide responsive personal information, such as when disclosure would create a substantial, articulable and unreasonable risk to the security of the information, customers’ account with us, or the security of our systems or networks.  We do not disclose account passwords or any other non-personal information that enables access to an account.

Please understand, however, that we reserve the right to retain an archive of any information about you, to the extent permitted by law.  We may also retain deidentified or aggregate data derived from information about you.

8. Use by minors

The Site is intended for adult users.  We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 16.  If we learn that we have collected information from a child under age 16, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. 

»   If you are under 16:  sorry, but please leave the Site.  If you’ve already sent us information, please contact us first so we can delete it. 

»   If you are a parent or guardian of a child under 16 years of age and you believe your child has provided us with information, please contact us.

9. Contact us

If you have questions or comments about this Policy, or would like to submit a rights request, please contact us at privacy@brandnewschool.com with “Privacy” in the subject line.