Privacy policy

Privacy Policy

Little Bridge Ltd (‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Privacy Policy (together with our Terms & Conditions and any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Personal data includes but is not limited to information such as your name, e-mail address, residential and/or postal address, telephone number, date of birth and credit/debit card details. We advise you to read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

By using our website www.littlebridge.com (and any related mobile sites, services or apps – ‘our site’) and/or providing personal information, you consent to us obtaining personal information from you and holding and using personal information that is provided by or obtained from you in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Little Bridge is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office with registration number: ZA226542

Our product and services

Littlebridge.com is created by Little Bridge Ltd, a UK-based team of talented individuals (designers, technicians, academics, teachers) who are all dedicated to providing a positive and rewarding experience for our users. We never settle for second best and we want everyone who comes to Little Bridge to have a happy and positive experience.

Littlebridge.com is a safe, secure site where young learners, with their school’s or a parent’s permission, can explore an immersive, online, English-speaking environment. They can create their own character and customise their own profile in Little Bridge, then discover a huge range of fun and challenging activities – all designed to develop effective English language skills.

In the ‘DigiPals’ community area of the site, we provide an opportunity for children to use their steadily growing English language skills to make and connect with friends from around the world.

We believe it’s important for young learners to experience the positive benefits of engaging with others and the thrill of real communication. But we take online safety very seriously, which is why ‘DigiPals’ is a strictly moderated and controlled community.

You can contact us with any questions or concerns about the Little Bridge community using the contact details at the bottom of this notice.

You can also find more information about online safety here:

http://www.ceop.police.uk/

http://www.onguardonline.gov/

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/privacy-and-security/children%27s-privacy

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/age-appropriate-design/additional-resources/what-is-the-children-s-code/#:~:text=The%20Children’s%20Code%20(or%20Age,comes%20to%20their%20personal%20data.

What information do we collect from you?

The information we collect about you will depend on the services which you receive through our site.

  1. When anyone registers (by filling in forms on our site ) to use Little Bridge’s products and services, including all the learning content, or posting in our community, or requesting further services, we collect their first and last name and email address. These details are never displayed within the application or web site, and this information is solely used to identify users for the purposes of verification, or payment (for subscriptions), or for responding to your queries.
  2. In respect of children using our site, the personal data that we collect will be only such personal data as is absolutely necessary to provide services which the children (via their parents or guardian) and their teachers have requested. We are committed to providing special protection for the privacy of children who may visit our site. We encourage parents and legal guardians to spend time online with their children and become familiar with the features of our site.
  3. We always ask for an email address of a parent, guardian or teacher. We require a parent’s valid email address in order to register a child user on the website to participate in the ‘DigiPals’ community, to complete activities and play games on the platform.
  4. Likewise, when a school purchases licences for students to use littlebridge.com, we ask for details of the teacher who is the main contact for the account and details of the school (including email address, postal address etc.) The school immediately assumes responsibility for creating and managing the individual student accounts.
  5. We may also ask you for information when you enter a competition or promotion we sponsor and/or when you report a problem with our site. This information may include your name, contact details, location and school.
  6. If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence. We may also request a user name and email address when you submit a form through the “Contact Us” portion of the Little Bridge website so that we may respond to the inquiry. We collect the email address for the sole purpose of responding directly on a one-time basis to a specific inquiry. You can also contact Little Bridge at any time by emailing us at: hello@littlebridge.com.
  7. We collect information that you provide when completing surveys on our site (which we may ask you to complete and we use for research purposes although you do not have to respond to them).
  8. We collect details of transactions you carry out through our site and of the fulfilment of your orders.
  9. We collect details of your visits to our site including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data (IP address), weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or otherwise and the resources that you access.
  10. We make it very clear when you are leaving littlebridge.com and request confirmation that you wish to leave the site. Any user leaving littlebridge.com may transfer to another site and submit information to a third party, over whom we have no authority or control, and who may have different information collection policies and use different practices.

WE DO NOT COLLECT MORE INFORMATION THAN IS NECESSARY FOR OUR USERS TO EFFECTIVELY PARTICIPATE IN AND BENEFIT FROM THE LITTLE BRIDGE PROGRAMME.

Important: We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health or genetic and biometric data)

Please note: By providing the necessary details to validate your account with Little Bridge, you are not consenting to receive additional information (including newsletters) from Little Bridge. Little Bridge will always explicitly seek your permission for these kinds of communications and will never share your details with third parties. You are free to withdraw your consent at anytime by contacting: privacy@littlebridge.com

Why do we collect this information?

We collect information to help us provide, update, maintain and protect our services, websites, apps and business and to respond to your queries and comments, to investigate and help prevent security issues and abuse and as required by applicable law, legal process or regulation.

  1. We use a teacher/parent/guardian email address to send a message that can be used to activate a child’s Little Bridge/DigiPal account, to send information to teachers/parents/guardians regarding the account and to notify them about any changes in our privacy practices.
  2. We will use this email address to contact you with information concerning your account, including ‘forgotten passwords’.
  3. If you purchase a product or service from us, we request certain personally identifiable information from you on your order form. We ask for contact information, such as name, email address, and postal address and, when you are purchasing a subscription, we ask for financial information, such as credit card information and expiration date (see ‘Who might we share your information with’ below).
  4. With your prior permission, we also may use this email address to send promotional messages regarding Little Bridge products and services and general newsletters about Little Bridge. You will always be asked if you’d like to receive these emails and you can unsubscribe anytime from promotional email communications from Little Bridge by clicking on unsubscribe links in those emails or by contacting us at the address below.
  5. We collect data on each user’s activity in Little Bridge, including frequency of logins, Little Bridge Activity scores, number and accuracy of community posts and other engagement behaviour. We may use this data (usage activity) to inform us on how to improve our products and services. This information is also available to teachers/parents/guardians who, for pedagogical purposes, have purchased one of our subscription services, in order to track and support a user’s progress through the programme. When a school has purchased a Little Bridge Account (with Teacher Dashboard), or a parent/guardian has purchased access to a Little Bridge Parent Dashboard, they will be able to view real time updates on a child’s progress with the learning activities and any activity in the social features in Little Bridge, under the rights described in this Privacy Policy notice.
  6. We may collect information about your computer provided by your web browser and where available your IP address. These are used for system administration, security and statistical data about our users’ browsing patterns and does not identify any individual. Your IP address is also used to identify the country you are in to set language preferences and pre-select options in forms.

How do we make the Little Bridge experience safe?

  1. We ask you to create an ‘identity’ and ‘password’ in Little Bridge. This is a ‘DigiPal’ name. We also give you the opportunity to modify your password. Once a parent or teacher has completed the registration (and created their own account), the ‘DigiPal’ name and password are used by the child to enter the Little Bridge web platform and applications.
  2. Children are able to participate in moderated chat and discussion in English with other children on the Little Bridge web platform and applications. They may use the ‘Sentence Maker’ feature, which provides predefined and approved sentences, created by Little Bridge. All ‘free typed’ messages are moderated both by machine moderation and also by a team of trained human moderators,  before they become visible to other users.
  3. We do everything we can to discourage and disallow users from sharing personally identifiable material. Little Bridge Ltd is not responsible if users choose to submit such material to the community forum, but the Little Bridge moderators are trained to reject and remove any posts that contain information such as local addresses, email addresses, phone numbers etc. or any inappropriate content.
  4. The purpose of the community is to practise communicating in English. Therefore, all messages that are not written in English are rejected.
  5. We NEVER prompt site users to provide any personal identifying information. No employee of Little Bridge Ltd nor any automated system will contact a user or parent by email, asking for a user or child’s login password or any other personal information related or unrelated to a Little Bridge service or product. If any message claiming or appearing to come from Little Bridge or any of its related websites is sent to you asking for such information, or if you have any questions or suggestions about security on the site, please contact us immediately at : privacy@littlebridge.com.
  6. From time to time, we may contact a school or parent/legal guardian when breaches of the community rules occurs and if a teacher, parent or legal guardian becomes aware that their child or children has provided us with any personal information without their written consent we invite you to notify us so that we may delete this information from our site and our records and reserve the right to discontinue any related services or features. We appreciate your co-operation in assisting us to provide a safe and enjoyable online experience for your children.
  7. We comply with legal standards, including GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, EU), the CHILDREN’S CODE (ICO) and COPPA (the Children’s Privacy Protection Act, USA) to protect the personally identifiable information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal data, through use of strict internal Policies, Procedures, team training, and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.

Who do we share your information with?

Little Bridge Ltd is the sole owner of the information it collects and does not share, rent or trade personally identifying information of our users. However,

  1. We use a credit card processing company to bill you for the goods and services we provide, including online subscriptions. When you purchase a physical product from Little Bridge, we use other third parties such as a shipping company to fulfil product orders, where relevant. We will then share certain personally identifiable information with such third parties – but only as necessary for the third party to provide that service.
  2. We also use third party software to manage our Customer Support Desk (HubSpot) and our marketing emails (MailChimp). These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for promotional purposes. You can view their Privacy Policies here:

https://legal.hubspot.com/privacy-policy

https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy

If you have questions about using our site or regarding your order, we use email (hello@littlebridge.com) and in UK office hours between 09:00-18:00 the telephone (+44 (0) 20 8935 5689) to assist you.

What do we do with your information?

  1. All of your data is transmitted securely over HTTPS. We also encrypt or hash some information at rest (eg: passwords).
  2. The data that we collect from you is primarily stored inside the European Economic Area (EEA). Some processing may occur outside the EEA (eg log file processing or to improve the performance of the service for customers in some countries).  It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our distributors/partners. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. If your personal data is transferred outside of the EEA, we require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions and that they have obtained all and any consents required in order to use our products and services.
  3. Little Bridge is hosted at AWS, a world-class hosting provider, using EEA data centres. For more information please see https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/eu-data-protection/.
  4. Where you have chosen a password which enables you to access our site, you are responsible for keeping that password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone, to choose a suitably strong password and not to choose a password that you have used for another website.
  5. Where teachers/parents/guardians have purchased a subscription, for pedagogical purposes, we provide them with information about a child’s activity in Little Bridge.

Further Disclosure of your information

We reserve the right to disclose personal information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order or legal process. For example:

  1. We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.
  2. We may disclose your personal information to third parties in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets
  3. We may also disclose your information if substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets;
  4. We may disclose your information if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, in order to enforce or apply our terms of use, terms and conditions of supply and other agreements; or to protect our rights, property, or safety, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
  5. If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to our site, or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on our site, or are otherwise in breach of the terms of any of our other policies or terms of use, we may disclose your personal data to relevant law enforcement authorities; and where we reasonably believe that you are or may be in breach of any of the laws of England and Wales (for example, because content you have posted may be defamatory), we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, e-mail/internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

How long do we keep hold of your information?

We will retain your personal data for as long as we need to in order to fulfil legitimate business interests, conduct audits, comply with (and demonstrate compliance with) legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements. 

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

You have the right to delete your personal data by sending an email requesting so to privacy@littlebridge.com (see below). Please note in this case any financial information will be kept in accordance with local laws. You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will ask you for permission to use your data for such purposes and you can exercise your right to decline by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your registration data (see above: ‘What data do we collect from you?’)

If you would like to contact us about our processing of your personal data or to enforce your rights you may do so by emailing us at: privacy@littlebridge.com. 

Your rights

If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you have the right to rectify, update, amend or delete it. Specifically, you have the right to request:

  1. Access to your Personal Identifiable Information (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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 continuing 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 may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
  4. Restriction of processing of 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.
  5. The transfer of your personal data to you or to 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 which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to form a contract with you.

You also specifically have the right to:

  1. 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 which 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. However, in some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
  2. 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 may 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 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. 

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. 

Also, we may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to accelerate our response. We aim to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at : privacy@littlebridge.com

Important: Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

A note about Cookies

Our site uses cookies to help us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allow us to improve our site. We use cookies in order to uniquely identify your browser and user preferences while logged in. We ask you to give your consent for us to be able to do this.

You can find detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in our Cookie Policy.

Date posted: March 2021