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Terms of Use
Privacy Policy

Website Terms of Use

Version date : 6th June 2018

This website is operated by
Hotcourses Ltd
First Floor
Bedford House
69-79 Fulham High Street
London
SW6 3JW

These website terms of use and our Privacy Policy as amended by us from time to time ("terms") govern your use of our website, https://www.postgraduatesearch.com and any and all services that we make available on or through our website. By using our website, you are agreeing to these terms. Please stop using our website if you do not agree to these terms.

We may revise these terms at any time at our sole discretion. If we do, we will notify you on our home page. Please also check back regularly for updates: you can easily determine whether changes have been made by confirming the version date at the top of these terms. Your continued use of our website means that you agree to these terms, as revised.

1. Intellectual Property Rights

1.1 You agree that our website and all Content contained in it are protected by Intellectual Property Rights that either belong to or are licensed to us.

1.2 You acquire no proprietary interest in our website or Content provided by us or others and may not use them in any way except as expressly permitted by these terms.

1.3 You may view, print, download or temporarily store such Content for your personal, non-commercial reference without alteration, addition or deletion. You may not otherwise copy, reproduce, retransmit, distribute, publish, commercially exploit or otherwise transfer such Content. You acknowledge that you will not acquire any Intellectual Property Rights by downloading or otherwise using any such Content.

2. Warranties

2.1 Our website is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We expressly disclaim all warranties or representations of any kind, express or implied, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

2.2 You understand and agree that we do not guarantee the accuracy, relevancy or completeness of any information in or provided on or from our website. We are not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of such information. Our website is provided for the general information of the general public.

2.3 Your use and participation in our website and services are solely at your own risk. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you from our website shall create any warranty not expressly made in these terms or imposed by law.



2.4 We make no warranty that our website will meet your requirements, or that access to our website will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error free; nor do we make any warranty as to the results that may be obtained from the use of our website.

3. Limitation of Liability

3.1 Except as required by law, we will not be liable for any direct losses or damages arising in contract, tort (including negligence) and for any reason.

3.2 Except as required by law, we shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses or damages or loss of profits, data, goodwill, revenue in each case regardless of whether such losses or damages arise in the normal course of events or whether we have been advised of the possibility of such damages and whether such losses or damages arise in contact or tort (including negligence) and for any reason.

3.3 Nothing in these terms shall operate to exclude or restrict our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

4. Territory Statement

Please do not access or use the Content from a jurisdiction where such access or use would be contrary to applicable laws, rules or regulations of any governmental authority or regulatory organisation. If you breach this provision, you will be held entirely responsible.

5. Assignment

We may assign our rights and obligations under these terms and upon such assignment we shall be relieved of any further obligation under these terms. You are not permitted to assign your rights and obligations under these terms.

6. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and any dispute shall be subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Hotcourses Group Privacy Notice
Last update 6th June 2018

This privacy notice has been compiled to help you understand why we ask you for your personal information when you use one of our websites and how we will store and use this information.

Hotcourses Limited, an IDP Education owned company, is the principle company and the Data Controller in the Hotcourses Group of companies (Hotcourses India PVT, Hotcourses Pty Ltd (Australia), Hotcourses Inc (North America) and Complete University Guide).

At the heart of our work is helping you and other users find suitable courses and learning providers. This is defined as our Legitimate Business Interest. We process your personal data to help you make informative decisions when selecting courses and learning providers. We do that by:

  • Providing extensive educational information
  • Recommending things which we think you'll like, such as courses and learning providers
  • Notifying you about things you’ve told us you like, such as a new course in your local area
  • Personalising sections of our websites to your preferences
  • Dealing with any requests you make or content you submit
  • Getting in touch if we need to tell you about something, like a change to our policies or issues with our service
  • Monitoring usage and performance in order to improve the services we offer.


This privacy notice applies to all our website and app users whether registered or not, including people responding to surveys, competitions and writing reviews.

Keeping your information safe and private is very important to us. All our services are designed with privacy and security in mind.

Collecting and using your personal data

You can browse our websites without providing any personal information. However, to use some of our enhanced functionality will sometimes ask for additional information in order to process your request. Examples include:

  • Providing your name, email, and contact details to request a prospectus or make an enquiry to an education provider.
  • Providing your name, email address, and preferences to create an account to receive email newsletters and save your preferences.
  • Providing your name, contact details, and education history to engage with offline education counselling services.


The details we request for each piece of enhanced functionality will depend on what is required to perform the action. For example:

  • If we need to contact you by email, we will request your email address.
  • If we tailor your experience by displaying available courses, we will ask for your preferred start date.
  • If you are making a payment to Hotcourses or one of our partner providers, you will be asked for you card and billing details.


Details of why we collect each piece of information is displayed clearly next to the field used to enter the data.

A full list of the data collected by each website is available on the site-specific data collection notice.

We also collect some technical information while you use our websites. For example, information on the type of browser you use and your IP address. This information is used to maintain and monitor the performance of our websites.


Cookies
We use cookies on our websites to provide login and preferences functions, and to collect anonymised data on user interactions. For example, we use cookies to:

  • Keep you logged into the website.
  • Understand and save your user preferences for future personalised experience and to allow us to deliver the type of content and products in which you are most interested.
  • Compile anonymised data about site traffic and site interactions in order to offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We use tools such as Google Analytics, Hotcourses Insights, and the Hotcourses Enrolment Matching Tool to do this.
  • To provide targeted content and advertising based on your preferences and previous interactions. We work with third-party companies to provide targeted advertising. Personal data is not shared with these companies. Further details of the companies we work with are available within our Cookie Policy.

Personal information is never held on any of our first-party cookies.

You can choose to have your computer block some or all cookies for you. You do this through your browser settings. Each browser is a little different, so look at your browser's Help menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies.

If you disable cookies, some advanced features will be disabled and some of our services may not function as intended.

You can read more about how we use cookies on our Cookie Policy.

Anonymised analytics and insights
Occasionally, we will ask for additional information to help us monitor the reach and effectiveness of our services. For example, when creating an account, we may ask for your country of residence or postcode. This data will only ever be used in an anonymised format to help us demonstrate the effectiveness and improve the products and services we offer.

We use Google Analytics to log review aggregated use data across all of our websites. No personal data is shared with Google Analytics.

Geographical data and geotargeting
As with all websites, your IP address is sent to us each time a webpage is viewed. For some functionality we use this, along with geo-location information provided by your browser to provide location-specific content within our websites and apps. Your IP address and location information is stored anonymously, and not associated with any other personal details. You can stop sharing this information by changing your browser settings.

Mobile app specific settings
We offer push notifications, location based services, and targeting advertising through our apps. When you first use one of our apps, you will be asked whether or not you want to turn-on these services. You can opt-out of these services at any time using the changing the permissions through your device settings.

Storing your data

The personal data you provide is stored in a secure hosting environment based in the UK. We employ a range of technology and procedures to ensure that this data is secure, including encryption, anti-virus and anti-malware software, intrusion detection, company-wide data usage policies, and mandatory security and privacy staff training.

Your data is not stored outside EU however it may be accessed by one of our principal companies based in USA, India or Australia if they need to provide you with a service on our behalf. To ensure your data is secure and we comply with our privacy obligation, we have data sharing agreements and security operational and technical measures in place with these companies.

How long will you keep my information for?

We will keep your data for as long as we are required to, either:
  • By law, for example to meet financial regulations relating to payments
  • For as long as we require the data to provide a service to you. For example, we will retain your email address for as long as you are subscribed to one of our newsletters.


Personal data is deleted in accordance with our internal retention policy. All identifiable personal data is deleted five years following your last interaction with this website.

Your rights
Reviewing and updating your data
You can update the information we store on your behalf by logging into your website account and updating your profile. If you were not assigned a password when creating your account, you can request a new password online by selecting the ‘forgotten password’ option. If you do not have access to this account, you can request a data update by contacting the Hotcourses Privacy Manager.

In line with the GDPR regulations, you have the following rights:

The right to be informed
You have the right to be informed why and how we collect your personal data, how we will use this information, who we share it with, what are the security measures we take to protect this information and what are you are your individual rights. We will publish this information in this Privacy Notice.

The right of access
You have the right to access the information we hold for you by logging to your online profile. If you need further information, you can make a Subject Access Request by contacting your Hotcourses contact or the Hotcourses Privacy Manager.

The right to rectification
You have the right for inaccurate or incomplete data we hold to be updated. You can make a request to have your data updated either through your Hotcourses contact or the Hotcourses Privacy Manager.

The right to erasure
You have the right to be forgotten at any point by contacting the Privacy Manager or emailing delete@hotcourses.com. At your request, we will remove all the data we have for you which we are not required legally to retain.

The right to restrict processing
You have the right to restrict processing when you have exercised one of the above right and it may take some time to process that request. For example: when you contact us to update your details you have the right to request restriction until your details are updated.

Right to withdraw consent
For the processing activities where we have asked you for consent, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any point by clicking on the unsubscribe link in any email we send you, or contacting the Privacy Manager.

The right to object
You can object to the processing of your personal data at any point by contacting the Privacy Manager. There may be instances where we may not be able to fulfil those requests, but we will provide you with explanation when replying back to you.

Right to not be subject to automated decisions and profiling
None of our processing activities are purely automated. There are instances where we process data to analyse or predict behaviour but we will ask you for explicit consent when this processing will involve your personal data.

Right to data portability
If you have provided us with your personal data with consent or under the contact obligations, you have the right to request the data you have provided to us in a machine-readable format should you decide to move to another data controller.

Sharing your data with partners

We work with range of learning providers that advertise courses on our platforms and have agreements and procedures in place to ensure your personal data is protected through the service you receive from us.

Your personal data will only be shared with learning providers you have chosen to engage with via our websites. For example, when you make an enquiry or a prospectus request to an institution, your details relating to that enquiry will be provided to the institution so that they may answer your enquiry directly.

We also provide anonymised site usage data to providers to enable them to monitor enrolment from users who use our websites.

We have data sharing agreements in place with these learning providers to make sure they apply security operational and technical measures when processing your personal information.

In the future, if all or part of the Hotcourses Group business is sold, acquired, or merged with another business, we may share the personal data we hold with the parties involved.

Links to other websites

On our website there are lots of links to course provider websites. This privacy notice does not cover these links. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

Changes to Hotcourses Privacy Notice details

The date of the most recent version will appear on the top of the page. From time to time we may be updating this Privacy Notice, please review it each time you are to submit personal information. If we make any significant changes to this notice we will send you an email informing you of these amendments. If you do not agree with these changes please do not use our websites to provide personal information. You can also delete your account at any time - please see your rights section

Further questions

If you have any question regarding your personal data, please contact the Privacy Manager at the address below:

Privacy Manager
Hotcourses Ltd
First Floor, Bedford House, Fulham Green
69-79 Fulham High Street
London
SW6 3JW

privacy@hotcourses.com

If you feel we have been intrusive to your privacy or misused your data you have the right to complain to the ICO https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/raising-concerns/

Site Specific Privacy Notice

The following section provides information on the collection and processing of personal data specific to the Hotcourses Postgraduate Search website.
This site is available at https://www.postgraduatesearch.com/

The site is intended for use by users aged 16 years and over. Users under this age are not allowed to create an account on the website.


What personal data do we collect?
The following items of personal data are collected as part of the initial registration process:
  • First name
  • Last name
  • Email
  • Postal address
  • Intended Start year


The following optional fields can be completed by users when completing their profile
  • Date of birth
  • Nationality
  • University
  • Course
  • Year completed/expected
  • Award classification
  • Employment status
  • Study mode
  • Degree type
  • Research interests

How we process your data
While using the Postgraduatesearch website, you can carry out the following interactions where we process your personal data:
  • Creating a user account
  • Making an enquiry to an institution
  • Requesting a prospectus from an institution
  • Booking an open day
  • Adding a course or institution review


Consent options
As part of the registration process, you have the choice to opt-in to the following:
  • Newsletters from Postgraduatesearch
  • University updates from partners
  • Surveys from Postgraduatesearch


Data sharing
Your contact details are shared with education institutions to which you have made an enquiry.