BigBluebutton Privacy Policy

BigBlueButton Inc. (“BigBlueButton”) is committed to protecting your privacy. We have prepared this Privacy Policy to describe our practices regarding the personal information that may be collected from users of our websites, including https://bigbluebutton.org, https://demo.bigbluebutton.org,  any other sites that link to this Privacy Policy (each a “Site” and collectively, the “Sites”), BigBlueButton’s  iOS and Android Applications (“Apps”), and/or data collected through the provision of other related BigBlueButton products or services, including without limitation, the hosting of BigBlueButton (collectively, the “Services”).  By submitting personal information through our Sites, Apps or Services, you expressly consent to the collection and processing of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.  If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Sites, Apps or Services.  BigBlueButton’s use of personal information collected through the Sites, Apps or Services is limited to the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

1. COLLECTION OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We collect information from you, such as your first and last name, e-mail and mailing addresses, professional title, company name and navigational data like Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) when you fill out a “Contact Us” form on our Site.  When you order Services from our Sites or Apps, you provide us or our third party payment processor with information necessary to complete the transaction, which may include your name, credit card information, billing information and shipping information.  We also may retain information on your behalf, such as files and messages that you store using your account. If you provide us feedback or contact us via e-mail, we will collect your name and e-mail address, as well as any other content included in the e-mail.  When you participate in one of our surveys, we may collect additional profile information.  We also collect other types of personal information and demographic information that you provide to us voluntarily.

We do not knowingly collect any information from children under the age of 13 unless and until a school or educational institution has provided appropriate consent and authorization for a student under 13 to use the Services and for BigBlueButton to collect information from such student. Please contact us at legal@bigbluebutton.org. if you believe we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 13 without proper consents so that we may delete such information as soon as possible.

To make our Sites, Apps, and Services more useful to you, our servers (which may be hosted by a third party service provider) collect information from you, including browser type, operating system, Internet Protocol (IP) address (a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the Internet, which may vary from session to session), domain name, and/or a date/time stamp for your visit.  Our BigBlueButton hosting will collect first name, last name, length you stayed in a session and any information you share during your session, which includes audio, response to polls, raise hand, chat messages and video.  We also use cookies and web beacons (as described below) and URLs to gather information regarding the date and time of your visit, the solutions and information for which you searched and which you viewed. Like most Internet services, we automatically gather this data and store it in log files each time you visit our Sites, use our Apps, or access your account on our network.  We may link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information.

“COOKIES” are small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer’s hard drive while you are viewing a website. We may use both session cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience on our Sites.

“WEB BEACONS” are digital images we use to log information on our Sites and in our emails. We use web beacons to manage cookies, count visits, and to learn what marketing works and what does not.  We also use web beacons to tell if you open or act on our emails.

“FLASH COOKIES” are used to store your preferences such as volume control or to display content based upon what you view on our websites to personalize your visit. Third party partners who provide certain features on our websites, such as videos, may place Flash cookies on your device. They may use Flash cookies to track your Web browsing activity and to display personalized advertising.  Flash cookies are different from other cookies because of the amount of, type of, and way in which data is stored.  Cookie management tools provided by your browser usually will not remove Flash cookies.  To learn more about Flash cookies, who has placed Flash cookies on your device, and how to manage privacy and storage settings for Flash cookies click here:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html#117118.

We do not control the privacy practices of the third parties who place or track Flash cookies and this Privacy Policy does not cover their practices.  You should visit the privacy policies of companies who place Flash cookies to understand their practices.

ANALYTICS – We may use analytics services to help analyze how users use the Sites and Apps.  These services use cookies and scripts to collect and store information such as how users interact with our Apps, errors users encounter when using our apps, device identifiers, how often users visit the Sites, what pages they visit, and what other sites they used prior to coming to the Sites.  We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve our Sites, our Apps and our Services. Please see the following links for more information about Google Analytics:

http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html, http://www.google.com/privacy.html, and http://www.google.com/analytics/tos.html.  We do not tie the information gathered using third party analytics to your personally identifiable information.

BLOGS – Our Sites and Apps offer a publicly accessible blog.  You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. Anytime you post on our blog, please be aware that you may be posting using a third party application and we have no access or control over this information.  This Privacy Policy does not cover the practices of these third parties.  Your interaction with these third party applications is governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

TESTIMONIALS – We may display personal testimonials of satisfied customers on our Sites in addition to other endorsements.  With your consent we may post your testimonial along with your name.  If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, you can contact us at legal@bigbluebutton.org.

2. USES OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

In general, personal information you submit to us is used either to respond to requests that you make, or to aid us in serving you better.  Some of the ways in which we may use your personal information include: to create and maintain your account; to identify you as a user in our system; to operate, maintain, and improve our Sites, Apps, and Services; to personalize and improve your experience; to send you administrative e-mail; to respond to your comments or inquiries; to send you surveys, promotional communications about our products; to protect, investigate, and deter against fraudulent, unauthorized, or illegal activity; and to make telephone calls to you, from time to time, as a part of secondary fraud protection or to solicit your feedback with your permission.

SHARING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will ask for your consent before we use or share your personal information for any purpose other than the reason you originally provided it to us or as otherwise provided by this Privacy Policy.  We do not sell or rent your Personal Information to third parties for marketing purposes unless you have granted us permission to do so.

AFFILIATES – Although we currently do not have a parent company, any subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under a common control (collectively, “Affiliates”), we may in the future.  We may share some or all of your information with these Affiliates, in which case we will require our Affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy.

THIRD PARTY SERVICE PROVIDERS – We may share your personal information with third party service providers for the sole purpose of providing you with the Services that we offer you through our Site.  For example, we may share data with service providers who host our websites or provide email services on our behalf.  We only provide these third parties with the minimum amount of personal information necessary to complete the requested Service or transaction.

OTHER DISCLOSURES – BigBlueButton may disclose information about you if it believes such disclosure is necessary to (a) comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process; or (b) protect or defend the rights, safety, or property of BigBlueButton, users of the Services, or any person including to enforce our agreements, policies, and terms of use or (c) in an emergency to protect the personal safety of any person.  We may also share information about you in connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, transaction or proceeding involving sale, transfer, divestiture or disclosure of all or a portion of our business or assets to another company.  In the event that information is shared in this manner, notice will be posted on our Sites.

We may also share de-identified and/or aggregated data with others for their own uses.

NOTICE TO CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS – YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS (AS PROVIDED BY CALIFORNIA CIVIL CODE SECTION 1798.83) – California’s “Shine the Light” law, Civil Code section 1798.83, requires certain businesses that share customer personal information with third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes to respond to requests from California customers asking about the businesses’ practices related to such information-sharing. Alternately, such businesses may have in place a policy not to disclose a customer’s personal information to third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes if the customer has exercised an option to opt-out of such information-sharing.  We have such a policy in place.  As described in this Privacy Policy, you can opt-out of our sharing of your personal information with third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes by emailing us at legal@bigbluebutton.org.  To find out more about your opt-out rights, please review this Privacy Policy or contact us by e-mailing legal@bigbluebutton.org or writing us at the mailing address below. Please note that under California law businesses are only required to respond to a customer making such a request once during any calendar year.

SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS – We may allow you to connect and share information with certain social networking platforms (“Social Networking Platforms”) (e.g., a Facebook application).  By choosing to use these Social Networking Platforms, you allow BigBlueButton to share information with the Social Networking Platform. For example, you might use an application to publish BigBlueButton related notices on Facebook.  If you do not want us to continue to provide your information to the Social Networking Platform, you may change your privacy settings in the Social Networking Platform.  You can also access certain features of our Sites using Social Networking Platforms.  These services will authenticate your identity and provide you the option to share certain personal information with us such as your name, email address, and other personal information to pre-populate an application.  Since we do not control the privacy practices of the Social Networking Platforms and sign-in services you may choose to use and since this Privacy Policy does not cover their practices, you should visit the privacy policies of any Social Networking Platform or sign-in service you choose to use to understand their practices.

4. YOUR INFORMATION CHOICES

We offer you choices regarding the collection, use and sharing of your personal information. When you receive newsletters or promotional communications from us, you may “opt-out” by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in the e-mails you receive from us or by contacting us directly using the contact information below.  Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default.  If you prefer, you can typically remove and reject cookies from our Sites with your browser settings. If you remove or reject our cookies, it will affect how our Sites and Services work for you.

5. CHANGES TO YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION 

You may change some of your personal information in your account by editing your profile within the Services. You may also request changes or deletions by e-mailing us at the e-mail address set forth below.  We will respond to your request, when permitted by law, within 30 days.  We may be unable to delete information that resides in our archives.

6. SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

In an effort to prevent unauthorized access, use, or disclosure, BigBlueButton takes reasonable administrative, technical and physical measures to protect your personal information stored on our servers.  Despite these measures, you should know that BigBlueButton cannot fully eliminate security risks associated with personal information.  No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure and for this reason, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your personal information.  Any content you post while using the Services is at your own risk.  If you have any questions about security on our Sites or Apps, you can contact us at the contact information set forth below.

7. CONTACT BIGBLUEBUTTON

BigBlueButton welcomes your comments or questions regarding this Privacy Policy.  Please e-mail us at legal@bigbluebutton.org or write to us at the following address:

BigBlueButton Inc.
311 St. Patrick’s Building
1125 Colonel By Drive Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6 Canada

8. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

BigBlueButton may change this Privacy Policy from time to time.  If we make any changes to this Privacy Policy, we will change the “Last Updated” date above.  If such changes are material, a notice of the changes will be posted along with the revised Privacy Policy.  Your continued use of the Sites, Apps or Services following the posting of changes to this Privacy Policy will mean that you accept such changes.  We encourage you to visit this page from time to time for the latest on our privacy practices.

This Policy was last updated on August 21, 2018.