Privacy Policy

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Swim Buddies Inc. we have a few fundamental principles:

  • We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
  • We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
  • We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on our website is shared publicly (or kept private), indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.
  • We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.

Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

We are Swim Buddies Inc. (“Swim Buddies,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), and we made it our mission to help the world learn how to swim by providing private lessons that are more affordable, accessible, flexible, and effective. Today, we build technology that helps swim instructors leverage their experience to better serve their communities as recreation entrepreneurs.

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use our online services (the “Services”), which are made available to you through our website located at www.Swim-Buddies.com (the “Site”), or our mobile app (the “App”). By visiting our Site and/or using our App and/or Services, you are agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

As you might expect, we collect and store the information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

  • Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account, such as first name, last name, email address, phone number, current city of residence, and password. You may provide us with more information — such as how you heard about our Services — but we don’t require that information to create a Swim Buddies account.
  • Public profile information: If you are registered as a Coach with Swim Buddies, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, your first name and initial of your last name are part of your public profile, along with a profile photo, description, specific known skills, existence and type of valid training certificates, lesson price, choice of location, and teaching availability.
  • Payment and Contact Information: As a user of our Services, you may provide personal and payment information like your name, credit card information, and contact information. We also keep a record of the purchases you’ve made. If you offer Services as an Instructor with Swim Buddies, we will also collect direct deposit information for the purposes of paying out your earnings.
  • Swimmer Information: As a user of our Services, you may provide limited information about lesson participants. For example, the first name of each participant may be given to assist the Instructor with lesson planning. It is important you obtain the permission of the participant, or the participant’s parent or legal guardian before submitting this data. For more on this, please see Our Policy on Children’s Privacy
  • Communications with us: You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, polls, texts, emails, support questions, reviews, or other communications we send/ask-for in normal operation of our Services. Additionally, when you communicate with us via form, email, phone, review, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications (including any call recordings as permitted by applicable law).

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

  • Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services — for example, when you create or make changes to your account.
  • Usage information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that users perform, and any preferences that are set. We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, support document searches or in the help sidebar, search queries and results, and any errors that occur), along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, get insights on how people use our Services so we can make our Services better, and understand and make predictions about user retention.
  • Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, show relevant localized content, or calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions. We may also collect information about your precise location via our mobile apps (like when you post a photograph with location information) if you allow us to do so through your mobile device operating system’s permissions.
  • Stored information: We may access information stored on your device. We access this stored information through your browser permissions and/or device operating system’s permissions. For example, if you give us permission to access the photographs on your mobile device’s camera roll, our Services may access the photos stored on your device when you upload a photograph.
  • Information from cookies & other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Propel uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, engagement, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads on external website (e.g., Facebook or Google ads). For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see the section on Cookies below.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log in to your Swim Buddies account through another service (like Google) or if you connect your website or account to a social media service (like Instagram), we’ll receive information from that service (e.g., your username, basic profile information) via the authorization procedures for that service. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and what options are available.

As a client using Swim Buddies Services, we may collect information about lesson participants’ goals, progress, and lesson plans, mainly to improve the Service.

If you are an Instructor, we may collect extra information about your certifications and customer interactions. For example, if you are registered with a certified training body (e.g., the Red Cross), your information may be available to us through partner programs with those training bodies (e.g., Canadian Red Cross Training Partner program). Additionally, we may collect reviews from your clients to post on your profile.

We may ask users of our Services to provide emergency contact information should anything happen where we need it (and we hope we never do!). It is possible that Swim Buddies collected your name and phone number from someone using the Services, however we do not use emergency contact information for anything other than emergencies.