Privacy Statement

 

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy (“Policy”), effective August 27th, 2024, tells you about ProperLiving’s (dba Budget Challenge) privacy practices governing personal information we may collect when you visit our budgetchallenge.com website (including any subdomains and mobile apps), and how we may use and share that information.  Your prior activities on the site may have been governed by an earlier version of this Policy.

From time to time, we may use your information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our Policy.  If our information practices do change materially, we will post the changes to our website and revise our Policy accordingly.  In addition, if we have collected personally-identifying information from you, we will notify you and secure your consent before using your personal information in new ways.

Special Note about Children’s Information:  Programs, games, contests, and services offered through budgetchallenge.com and any related subdomains are not marketed to children under the age of 13, nor do we knowingly collect information, or permit schools to collect information on our behalf, from children under the age of 13.

Special Note about Parents’ Bill of Rights:  To protect students participating in the Budget Challenge, we do not collect Personal Information from or about students. We cannot identify students in our system, and we cannot confirm parent-student relationships. For this reason, some elements of the Parents Bill of Rights are simply inapplicable to our site. Parents/legal guardians should direct any request for student records, correction or updating of student information, and/or transfer of student-generated content to personal accounts to the student’s teacher or school.

Special Note about Data Ownership:  We do not accept student or teacher data from schools and are never in possession of school data. Therefore, any provisions relating to ownership, access, auditing, processing, deletion, or return of such data outlined in student data privacy agreements that are predicated on the schools providing student data do not apply.

What Information Do We Collect?  (See also the section below on our Budget Challenge Bill-Pay Companion App.)

Personal Information:

What we collect depends on whether you are a teacher or student, and how your school wants you to interact with the site. We do not collect personal or contact information from students.

TEACHERS:

To register for Budget Challenge, you will be asked for your first and last name, school name and school address, phone number and school email address.  You will also set up a username and password.  You will also be asked to provide a class team name for identification of the class on publicly visible web pages.  You have full discretion on choosing a name that may reveal identifiable information (such as school name, city, mascot, state, teacher, etc.). 

STUDENTS:

Registration through our Site

To register for Budget Challenge, your teacher will provide you with the class code, which you will use to create your individual account.  We will match that up with your school name and address which has already been provided to us when your teacher registered the class.  You will also set up a username and password.  When you create your username and password, please do not include any personally identifying information.   If you are not sure whether information is personally identifying, check with your teacher.

Registration through your School

Schools may register their students through third-party services providing single login functionality for a variety of educational applications.  Schools control the information they provide to us when students are registered through one of these services.  We take the additional step of storing only a truncated version of the information; we never store students’ personal information.

Use of the Site

In addition, if you submit questions to the live Help Desk support service during the simulation, we collect any information you provide in asking your question.  Please do not include any personally identifying information or disclose your identity in any questions you submit.  If we determine that personal information has been disclosed to us, we will immediately delete that information.

You will be asked to provide answers to a few security questions to facilitate password reset in the event you are unable to remember your password.  These questions are not designed to collect information that could be used to identify you. 

In some cases, where approved by the teacher, students will provide email addresses as well.  These email addresses are not permitted to contain personally identifiable information such as your last and/or first name or initials.  If you are not sure whether your email address is personally identifying, check with your teacher.

Other user information we collect:

In addition, for each visitor to our site, we automatically gather certain other potentially identifying information and store it in log files.  This information includes (as applicable) internet protocol (IP) addresses and last login date and time.  We collect and store this information on an individual basis and in aggregate, or combined.  We use proprietary algorithms to calculate various behavior, knowledge, and skill statistics using individual simulation activity for each student.  We also collect aggregate information on what pages visitors access or visit.

“Do Not Track” Signals.  We do not currently have the capability to recognize browser “Do Not Track” signals.  We adhere to the standards set forth in this privacy policy.

Cookies – A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user’s computer for recordkeeping purposes.  If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some areas of our site will be limited.  We use session cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our site.  We use session cookies to record session information, such as which web pages a user has visited, and to track user activity on the site.  We use session cookies to store a unique one-time-use authentication token assigned to your session. This value is encrypted and does not contain any personally identifying information. These cookies expire once the session is terminated, either because the user has logged out or the user’s browser is closed.

Analytics –  To determine how many users visit our site and how often they visit this site, and to better understand the areas of greatest interest to our visitors, we use tools called GA4 “Google Analytics” to compile this information for us.  As a result of your visit to our site, these companies may collect information such as your domain type and clickstream information.  We do not combine the information collected through the use of analytics tools with personally identifiable information.  For more information about the analytics companies’ ability to use and share information about your visits to this site, see http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/

Ad Networks – We do not use ad networks on our site, and we do not host ads for others.

How Do We Use and Share the Information We Collect?

We store and process teachers’ Personal Information to facilitate registration of classes and participation in, and/or observation of, the Budget Challenge simulations.  We may also use teacher contact information to notify teachers of other programs we think would be of interest; teachers may unsubscribe or opt-out from such email messages at any time.  We also use teacher emails to facilitate password reset in the event you are unable to remember your password.

We use the information we collect to analyze trends, to administer the site, and to track users’ movements around the site.  We also use this information to improve the simulations and to make our site more useful to visitors.

School administrators may be provided reports that reflect summary statistics of students and individual teachers upon request.

The following Personal Information you provide to us through the site is displayed to others as follows:

TEACHERS:  All class team names, class score average, and class engagement average may be visible to the public on a leaderboard per simulation. If you opt-in to “class vs. class competition” via your profile settings, additional information, such as Budget Challenge statistics and achievements will be visible to other teachers who have opted-into class vs. class competition. Teacher competition profile data such as Name, school name, school state, school city is also visible to other teachers who have opted-into class vs. class competition.  Teachers can manage which profile data elements are included in their competition profile.  Teacher profile data is not shown to the public unless the teacher gives us permission to do so.

STUDENTS:  You have agreed not to provide any Personal Information through the site.

We do not share Personal Information we collect with any third parties, except as follows:

·         We share information to the extent reasonably necessary to comply with law enforcement requests and judicial proceedings, and to ensure the safety and security of the site.

·         We may engage in research with academic institutions.  However, if we do so, we will use only non-personally-identifiable data sets.

It is possible that, at some time in the future, our company may be sold along with its assets, or may engage in business transactions in which customer information is one of the assets transferred. In such a case, the customer information which we have gathered may be one of the business assets we transfer. 

How Long Do We Keep the Information We Collect?

TEACHERS:  We will retain your contact information after the end of a simulation so that you do not have to re-register with each group of students participating, and so that we may contact you with other programs of interest.  If, at any time after the simulation, you wish to have your contact information deleted, please let us know. 

STUDENTS:  We will retain student username and password information, which do not contain Personal Information, indefinitely.  We will also automatically delete any email addresses after the end of your participation in a Budget Challenge simulation. 

We will retain nonidentifying information indefinitely to improve the Budget Challenge simulations.   

Budget Challenge Bill-Pay Companion App

As part of the Budget Challenge simulation, students have the opportunity to pay bills, review bills, and request support through the Bill-Pay Companion App downloaded to the student’s phone.  Teachers may also access the App, but there is no teacher-specific functionality.  Your login credentials will be the same ones you use for the site; no additional personal information is requested prior to or during use of the App.  Only users who have accounts on the site can access the App; the App is not an entry point to the simulation.

When you use the App, we will collect your phone’s UDID (unique device identifier).  The UDID will be stored only if you opt into push notifications when launching the App.  We do not access any other information on your phone.

How to Correct Information

Teachers may request updates or corrections to your Personal Information that we maintain.  Send your request to the postal address or email address provided below.  To help us process your request, please provide sufficient information to allow us to identify you in our records.

We reserve the right to ask for information verifying your identity prior to updating or correcting any information for you or deleting your information.  Should we ask for verification, the information you provide to verify your identity will be used only for that purpose, and all copies of this information in our possession will be destroyed when the process is complete. 

Security

The security of your Personal Information is important to us.  We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, and to guard that information against loss, misuse, or alteration.   

When the Services are accessed using the internet, Secure Socket Layer (“SSL”) technology protects your Information, using both server authentication and data encryption. These technologies help ensure that your Information is safe, secure, and only available to you and to whom you have granted access. We have implemented the following measures to protect and safeguard your personal information:

  • Zero PII collection for students by default. If allowed by the school district, teachers can opt in to allowing students to register with their email address;
  • Using SSL or other secure connection technologies when receiving or sending personal information beyond internal networks;
  • Screening all employees and independent contractors with access to personal information;
  • Limited secure access to data to employees;
  • Automated deletion of all student generated data at regular rolling intervals upon completion of the program;
  • User generated data and account deletion upon request.

Please note, however, that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure.  Therefore, while we use commercially reasonable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. 


Links to Third-Party Sites

This Policy applies only to information collected by this website.  From time to time, this website may link you to other sites (“Linked Sites”) that are not owned by us.  While the vast majority of links are to government sites, we do not control the collection or use of any information, including Personal Information, that occurs during your visit to the Linked Sites.  Further, we make no representations about the privacy policies or practices of the Linked Sites, and we are not responsible for their privacy practices. 

Be careful of disclosing any of your personally identifiable information when leaving our site.  We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of every website that collects personally identifiable information. 

Questions About Our Privacy Policy and Practices

If you have any questions about the Policy or our privacy practices, you may contact:

ProperLiving, LLC

3874 Paxton Ave., #9115

Cincinnati, Ohio 45209

513-335-0619

support@budgetchallenge.com