Privacy Policy

Your privacy is critically important to us.

This Privacy Policy describes how Finetune collects, uses, shares, stores and protects your personally–identifiable information.

At Finetune, these are our guiding principles:

  • We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it.
  • We don’t keep your personal information longer than is necessary to provide our services to you.
  • We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.
  • We don’t store your personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of our services.
  • We don’t rent, sell or exchange your personal information.
  • We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what’s visible to the public, seen by search engines, kept private, and permanently deleted.

Below we describe the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information and how you can access and update this information.

Website and App Visitors

Like most website and app operators, Finetune collects non–personally–identifying information of the sort that web browsers, servers and apps typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Finetune’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Finetune’s visitors use its website and app. From time to time, Finetune may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website. Finetune may also use this information to improve our services and undertake quality assurance for our visitors and customers who engage with our website or apps. Where permitted by law, we may also use information to identify your general location to provide you with services, or relevant marketing and contextual advertisements. Finetune also collects potentially personally–identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and unique device identifiers. We use this information to recognize repeat visitors to our site and facilitate the use of our service by you.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain users of Finetune’s website and application (“app”) choose to interact with Finetune in ways that require Finetune to gather personally identifying information so that we may provide you with the services you request. The amount and type of information that Finetune gathers depends on the nature of that interaction. All interactions with Finetune’ website or app produce metadata that may identify you or could be identifiable information when paired with other information about you. In every case, Finetune strives to collect only the minimum necessary information from you as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of your interaction with Finetune or that is required by law. Users of the Finetune website or app may always refuse to supply personally identifying information, however, doing so may prevent you from engaging in certain website-related activities as we won’t be able to provide the services that rely on this information.

Children and Students

Finetune believes the personally identifiable information of children and students deserves special protections and we comply with all applicable data privacy laws, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). We also assist schools in meeting their obligations pursuant to the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA). Finetune offers a limited feature set and web site experience for young users of Finetune. Finetune collects the minimal amount of information from students necessary to create accounts on our Service: we ask students to provide a unique email, a password, their first and last name and a unique code they have been given by their teacher to connect to a class. Beyond this information, students can submit responses depending on the activities they are assigned, that will remain private between teacher and student. All this information will only be used for the purposes of the school/teacher. In addition to the information entered by the child, we automatically collect some information from any use of our Service as set forth in the “Website and App Visitors” section. Information collected from students (including personal information and information collected automatically) is never used or disclosed for third party advertising, including any kind of first– or third–party behaviorally targeted advertising, and children’s personal information is never sold or rented to anyone, including marketers or advertisers.

Children’s safety and full enjoyment of Finetune, as well as the safety and well being for all children and their families, is of the utmost importance to all of us at Finetune. Finetune does not accumulate personal information about any child or family for distribution, sharing, or selling except as described in this privacy policy. No student’s profile is made available or visible to the public, or to any other students, through Finetune. Teachers may share their classes, including grades or scores, with other teachers they co-teach with in their school, to help them collaborate.

Google Classroom Integration

For Google Classroom users, information obtained includes:

  • Email and names: These are obtained at the point of signing into Finetune with your Google account. They are used to create an account for you on Finetune. This data is stored and identifies you to Finetune on subsequent visits
  • Google Classroom classes: This only applies to a teacher. A list of the teacher’s classes are fetched at the point of sharing a Finetune assignment to Google Classroom. The teacher selects the target class from this list. This data is at no point stored in our system. It is fetched on every attempt to use the Share to Classroom functionality

Aggregated Statistics

Finetune may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to our website and app to improve our services. For instance, Finetune may monitor the most popular feature on the Finetune site. Finetune may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Finetune does not disclose personally identifying information to any third parties other than as described in this privacy policy.

Use and Sharing of Your Personally Identifiable Information

Finetune limits its disclosure of both information that could on its own or in combination with other information be used to identify you. We only disclose personally–identifying information to Finetune employees, contractors and subcontractors that: (i) must access that information in order to process it on Finetune’s behalf or to provide services available at Finetune’s website and mobile applications; and, (ii) agree not to disclose that information to others. Finetune will not rent, sell or exchange potentially personally–identifying and personally–identifying information to any third party. Other than to Finetune’s employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, Finetune discloses potentially personally–identifying and personally–identifying information only when required to do so by law such as to comply with a court order, or when Finetune believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property, or legal rights or safety of Finetune, third parties or the public at large.

Use of Your Information to Communicate with You

If you are a registered Finetune user and supplied Finetune with your email address, Finetune may occasionally send you communications, such as emails or texts, to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Finetune and our products. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. You may choose to stop receiving our emails by unsubscribing.

Parental Rights

Finetune empowers parents and legal guardians of children younger than 13 who have registered accounts with Finetune to exercise their legal rights pursuant to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Any parents that want copies of their children’s personal information that we may have stored can contact their children’s school personnel to that end. At any time, the school can also refuse to permit us to collect further personal information from its students, and can request that we delete the personal information we have collected from them by contacting us at ft-support[at]academicmerit[dot]com. Please keep in mind that deleting records may require us to terminate the account in question. Also remember that before we can share the information with the school, stop further collection of information, or delete it per your request, Finetune may ask additional questions or take other steps to verify the identity of the requester. Finetune will never require a child to share more information than is reasonably necessary for using Finetune.

Data Security

The protection of all of your information is of the utmost importance to Finetune. While no company can ever guarantee the protection of your personally–identifiable information, Finetune implements industry standard practices and procedures. As new methods of protecting your data become available, Finetune will introduce additional protections. Finetune takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally–identifying and personally–identifying information.

Finetune follows generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, however, is 100% secure. If you have any questions about Finetune’s security practices, you can contact us at ft-support[at]academicmerit[dot]com. Finetune reserves the right not to disclose our policies, procedures and the technologies and methods we employ to advance the security of your data so as to safeguard our practices.

Data Retention and Information Update

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. Upon request and in accordance with applicable law and regulations, we will grant you reasonable access to your personal information that is held by Finetune. In addition, we will take reasonable steps to permit you to correct, amend, or delete your personal information that is demonstrated to be inaccurate, incomplete or processed in violation of this Privacy Policy. It is Finetune’s goal to provide you with easy access to any personal information we have collected about you. If that information is incorrect, we also want to make sure there are give you easy ways to update it, or to delete it, unless we have to keep that information for legal purposes. If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer want to use Finetune, you may review, edit, or delete it by visiting Finetune’s User Profile page. Log into your account and on the dashboard, click on My Account. Also you can contact us at ft-support[at]academicmerit[dot]com. Please note that we may retain some of your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

Contact Us

If you have questions or wish to send us comments about this Privacy Policy, please send an email to ft-support[at]academicmerit[dot]com or write to us at:

Academic Merit LLC (db Finetune)
281 Summer St. Floor 2
Boston, MA 02210

Privacy Policy Changes

Finetune reserves the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make a material change to our practices regarding your personally identifiable information, we will notify, by email, and/or by means of a notice on our Web site prior to the change becoming effective and seek your consent for those new practices.