Microcollective for AI, Robotics, and the Sciences  

PRIVACY NOTICE

Last Updated: [6/25/2025]

Welcome to MARS, a nonprofit educational organization that operates a hybrid learning model for students in grades 6-12. MARS blends in-person instruction with virtual learning, integrating advanced technology and project-based learning experiences. This Privacy Notice explains how Microcollective for AI, Robotics, and the Sciences, Inc. (“MARS”) collects, uses, discloses, and otherwise processes personal data in connection with micromars.org, the delivery of its educational platform and related services.  

This Privacy Notice does not address our privacy practices relating to MARS job applicants, employees and other employment-related individuals, nor data that is not subject to applicable data protection laws (such as deidentified or publicly available information). This Privacy Notice is also not a contract and does not create any legal rights or obligations not otherwise provided by law.

Our Collection and Use of Personal Data

The categories of personal data we collect depend on how you interact with us and our services. For example, you may provide us with your personal data directly when you sign-up to use our services, sign-up a child to use our services in your capacity as their parent/guardian, or otherwise interact with us.

We also collect personal data automatically when you interact with our website and may also collect personal data from other sources and third parties.

Personal Data Provided by Individuals

We collect the following categories of personal data that individuals provide us:

-         Contact Information, including first and last name, parent or guardian name (if applicable), phone number, email address, mailing address, school grade and school progress reports. We use this information primarily to fulfill your request to sign-up for our services and to communicate with you directly.

-         Account Information, including first and last name, email address, phone number, account credentials or one-time passcodes. We use this information primarily to administer your account, provide you with our products and services, communicate with you regarding your account and your use of our products and services, and for user support purposes.

-         Payment Information, including payment card information, billing address, and other financial information (such as, routing and account number). Please note that we use third-party payment providers, including Stripe, to process payments made to us. We do not retain any personally identifiable financial information, such as payment card number, you provide these third-party payment providers in connection with payments. Rather, all such information is provided directly by you to our third-party payment providers. The payment provider’s use of your personal data is governed by their privacy notice. To view Stripe’s privacy policy, please click here.

-         User Content, including any files, documents, audio, videos, images, data, or communications you choose to input, upload, or transmit to our products and services. We may also obtain video recordings of virtual meetings or guest lecture sessions. We use this content primarily improve our services and share content.

-         Survey Information, including information provided when you complete a survey or submit a testimonial. We use this information primarily to administer and facilitate our products and services, respond to your submission, communicate with you, conduct market research, and improve and grow our organization.

-         Feedback and Support Information, including the contents of custom messages sent through the forms, email addresses, or other contact information we make available to you. We use this information primarily to investigate and respond to your inquiries, to communicate with you via email, phone, text message or social media, and to improve our products and services.

If you choose to contact us, we may need additional information to fulfill the request or respond to your inquiry. We may provide additional privacy disclosures where the scope of the request we receive or personal data we require fall outside the scope of this Privacy Notice. In that case, the additional privacy disclosures will govern how we may process the information you provide at that time.

Personal Data Automatically Collected

We, and our third-party partners, automatically collect information you provide to us and information about how you access and use our products and services when you engage with us. We typically collect this information through the use of a variety of our own and our third-party partners’ automatic data collection technologies, including (i) cookies or small data files that are stored on an individual’s computer and (ii) other, related technologies, such as web beacons, pixels and embedded scripts. Information we collect automatically about you may be combined with other personal information we collect directly from you or receive from other sources.

We, and our third-party partners, use automatic data collection technologies to automatically collect the following data when you use our services or otherwise engage with us:

-         Information About Your Device and Network, including the device type, manufacturer, and model, operating system, IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, and unique identifiers associated with you, your device, or your network (including, for example, a persistent device identifier). We employ third-party technologies designed to allow us to recognize when two or more devices are likely being used by the same individual and may leverage these technologies (where permitted) to link information collected from different devices.

-         Information About the Way Individuals Use Our Services and Interact With Us, including the site from which you came, the site to which you are going when you leave our services, how frequently you access our services, whether you open emails or click the links contained in emails, whether you access our services from multiple devices, and other browsing behavior and actions you take on our services (such as the pages you visit, the content you view, videos you watch, the communications you have through our services, and the content and links you interact with).

-         Information About Your Location, including general geographic location that we or our third-party providers may derive from your IP address.

All of the information collected automatically through these tools allows us to improve your user experience. For example, we may use this information to enhance and personalize your user experience, to monitor and improve our products and services, to offer communications features such as live and automated chat, and to improve the effectiveness of our products, services, offers, communications and customer service.  We may also use this information to:  (a) remember information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the site; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information; (c) identify you across multiple devices; (d) provide and monitor the effectiveness of our services; (e) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, usage, and demographic patterns on our website; (f) diagnose or fix technology problems; and (g) otherwise to plan for and enhance our products and services.

For information about the choices you may have in relation to our use of automatic data collection technologies, please refer to the Your Privacy Choices section below.

Personal Data from Other Sources and Third Parties

We may receive the same categories of personal data as described above from the following sources and other parties:

-         Employers: If you interact with our services in connection with your employment, we may obtain personal data about you from your employer or another company for which you work. For example, we may obtain your contact information from your employer to allow us to communicate with you about your employer’s customer relationship with us.

-         Other Users: We may receive your personal data from our other users. For example, a user may provide us with your contact information as a part of a referral.

-         Social Media: When you interact with our services through other social media networks, such as when you follow us or share our content on other social networks, we may receive some information that you permit the social network to share with third parties. The data we receive is dependent upon your privacy settings with the social network, and may include profile information, profile picture, username, and any other information you permit the social network to share with third parties. You should always review and, if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third-party websites and social media networks and services before sharing information and/or linking or connecting them to other services. We use this information primarily to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of our products and services, as well as to communicate directly with you, such as to send you messages about features that may be of interest to you.

-         Business Partners: We may receive your information from our business partners, such as companies that offer their products and/or services as a part of or in connection with our services. For example, certain of our products and services allow our users to integrate third-party services. If you choose to leverage these third-party service integrations, we may receive confirmation from our business partner regarding whether you are an existing user of their services.

-         Service Providers: Our service providers that perform services on our behalf, such as platforms we utilize to provide our services, collect personal data and often share some or all of this information with us. For example, we use service providers to grant students and parents with access to videoconferencing, chat functions, and educational tools.

-         Other Sources: We may also collect personal data about you from other sources, including publicly available sources, third-party data providers, or through transactions such as mergers and acquisitions.

-         Inferences: We may generate inferences or predictions about you and your interests and preferences based on the other personal data we collect and the interactions we have with you.

Additional Uses of Personal Data

In addition to the primary purposes for using personal data described above, we may also use personal data we collect to:

-         Fulfill or meet the reason the information was provided, such as to fulfill our contractual obligations, to facilitate payment of donations, or to deliver the services requested;

-         Manage our organization and its day-to-day operations;

-         Communicate with you, including via email, text message, chat, social media and/or telephone calls;

-         Facilitate the relationship we have with you;

-         Request you provide us feedback about our product and service offerings;

-         Address inquiries or complaints made by or about an individual in connection with our products or services;

-         Create and maintain accounts for our users;

-         Verify your identity and entitlement to our products and services;

-         Administer, improve, and personalize our products and services, including by recognizing you and remembering your information when you return to our products and services;

-         Develop, operate, improve, maintain, protect, and provide the features and functionality of our products and services;

-         Create aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be used to identify you, which information we may use for purposes outside the scope of this Privacy Notice;

-         Conduct research and analytics on our user base and our products and services, including to better understand the demographics of our users; 

-         Improve and customize our products and services to address the needs and interests of our user base and other individuals we interact with;

-         Test, enhance, update, and monitor the products and services, or diagnose or fix technology problems;

-         Help maintain and enhance the safety, security, and integrity of our property, products, services, technology, assets, and business;

-         Defend, protect, or enforce our rights or applicable contracts and agreements, as well as to resolve disputes, to carry out our obligations and enforce our rights, and to protect our business interests and the interests and rights of third parties;

-         Detect, prevent, investigate, or provide notice of security incidents or other malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity and protect the rights and property of MARS and others;

-         Facilitate business transactions and reorganizations impacting the structure of our business;

-         Comply with contractual and legal obligations and requirements;

-         Fulfill any other purpose for which you provide your personal data, or for which you have otherwise consented.

Our Disclosure of Personal Data

We disclose or otherwise make available personal data in the following ways:

-         To Your Employer: If you interact with our services in connection with your employment, we may disclose personal data to your employer or another company for which you work. For example, we may provide information to your employer about your usage of our services in connection with your work for them

-         To Other Users and the General Public: We make available personal data designed for sharing through our services with certain or all other MARS users, or the general public, based on the applicable privacy settings and intended recipients. This may include, for example, peer-to-peer sharing of class material, or feedback and reviews posted to our social media accounts. Keep in mind that the users who view user-generated content can always reshare or redistribute the content both on and off our services or save or copy the content outside of our services. In addition, by publicly posting content on our services, you are directing us to disclose that information as broadly as possible and directing those accessing the content to do the same.

-         To Business Partners: We may share personal data with our business partners, or we may allow our business partners to collect personal data directly from you in connection with our services. Our business partners may use your personal data for their own business and commercial purposes, including to send you information about their products and services.

-         To Service Providers: We engage other third parties to perform certain services on our behalf in connection with the uses of personal data described in the sections above, such as freelance educators, and platforms providing video-conferencing and educational tools used as part of our services. Depending on the applicable services, these service providers may process personal data on our behalf or have access to personal data while performing services on our behalf.

-         AI Service Providers: We share personal data with service providers who enable us to provide AI-powered services. For example, this may include service providers who assist us in providing the AI-powered tools that form part of our service. Our current list of providers is available upon request.

-         To Other Businesses as Needed to Provide Services: We may share personal data with third parties you engage with through our services or as needed to fulfill a request or transaction including, for example, payment processing services.

-         In Connection with a Business Transaction or Reorganization: We may take part in or be involved with a business transaction or reorganization, such as a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or financing or sale of company assets. We may disclose, transfer, or assign personal data to a third party during negotiation of, in connection with, or as an asset in such a business transaction or reorganization. Also, in the unlikely event of our bankruptcy, receivership, or insolvency, your personal data may be disclosed, transferred, or assigned to third parties in connection with the proceedings or disposition of our assets. 

-         To Facilitate Legal Obligations and Rights: We may disclose personal data to third parties, such as legal advisors and law enforcement:

o    in connection with the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;

o    to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process;

o    to protect our rights and property and the rights and property of our agents, users, and others, including to enforce our agreements, policies, and terms of use;

o    to detect, suppress, or prevent fraud;

o    to protect the health and safety of us, our users, or any person; or

o    as otherwise required by applicable law.

-         With Your Consent or Direction: We may disclose your personal data to certain other third parties or publicly with your consent or direction. For example, with your permission, we may post your testimonial on our websites.

Your Privacy Choices

The following privacy choices are made available to all individuals with whom we interact.

Communication Preferences

-         Email Communication Preferences: You can stop receiving promotional email communications from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link provided in any of our email communications. Please note you cannot opt-out of service-related email communications (such as, account verification, transaction confirmation, or service update emails).

-         Direct Mailing Preferences: You can stop receiving promotional direct mail communications from us by contacting us at [email protected].  Please note this opt-out does not affect any mailings that are controlled by third parties that may feature or mention our services.

Withdrawing Your Consent

Where we have your consent for the processing of your personal data, or you have provided consent as a parent or guardian on behalf of a child, you may withdraw your consent by contacting us at [email protected].

Automatic Data Collection Preferences

When cookies are used on our website, you may be able to utilize third-party tools and features to further restrict our use of automatic data collection technologies. For example, (i) most browsers allow you to change browser settings to limit automatic data collection technologies on websites, (ii) most email providers allow you to prevent the automatic downloading of images in emails that may contain automatic data collection technologies, and (iii) many devices allow you to change your device settings to limit automatic data collection technologies for device applications. Please note that blocking automatic data collection technologies through third-party tools and features may negatively impact your experience using our services, as some features and offerings may not work properly or at all. Depending on the third-party tool or feature you use, you may not be able to block all automatic data collection technologies or you may need to update your preferences on multiple devices or browsers. We do not have any control over these third-party tools and features and are not responsible if they do not function as intended. 

Modifying or Deleting Your Personal Data

If you have any questions about reviewing, modifying, or deleting your personal data, you can contact us directly at [email protected]. We may not be able to modify or delete your personal data in all circumstances.

Children’s Personal Data

MARS does not knowingly collect any information from a child or student under the age of 13 (or the applicable age of consent in local jurisdictions) unless and until we have obtained parental consent.

This Privacy Notice for Children’s Personal Data describes our practices with respect to personal information collected from child users under the age of 13.  

Personal information collected from children under 13

We intentionally limit the collection of personal information from children to only what is needed to provide our Services. The children’s personal information collected by MARS is initially requested from the parent/guardian adult users when they sign up for their child to participate in our services and is not collected directly from the children themselves. This includes name, address, school, and assessment scores. We also collect information during the course of providing our services, including progress reports, course participation records, assessment scores and coursework generated by children when participating in our services. This data is uploaded to the cloud and stored.

How we use and disclose personal information collected from children

We collect, use and disclose personal information from a child under 13 to provide our services.

We only share personal information collected from or about a child under 13 in a few limited circumstances, described below.

-       We share information within the MARS organization as needed to perform the service and/or at the direction of the parent/guardian.

-       We share information with our trusted third-party service providers who perform technology services on our behalf (e.g., web hosting, educational tools, AI service providers, and cloud providers). We also share information with freelance educators who provide educational content and courses as part of our services. Whenever we share information with our service providers it is strictly for the purpose of carrying out their work for us.

-       We may be required to share information with law enforcement or other third parties when compelled to do so by court order or other legal process, to comply with statutes or regulations, to enforce our terms of use or contractual agreements, or if we believe in good faith that the disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property or personal safety of our users.

-       We may use information in an aggregated and/or anonymous form that does not reasonably identify an individual child. For example, we may use and share aggregate or anonymized data to study and improve our service, user functionality, and educational products and services.

-       If we sell, divest or transfer MARS, we will not transfer personal information of our users unless the new owner intends to maintain and provide the service as a going concern, and provided that the new owner has agreed to data privacy standards no less stringent than our own. In such case we will provide the parent/guardian with a notice within 60 days of the transaction and provide an opportunity to opt-out by requesting a deletion of all personal information of the child.

Accessing or Deleting a Child’s Personal Information

Upon written request, we will provide the parent/guardian the opportunity to access and review the personal information collected from their child. At any time, a parent/guardian can refuse to permit any further collection of a child’s personal information and/or request to delete a child’s personal information. Upon request from the parent/guardian, we will promptly delete and/or de-identify a child’s personal information. Even if we do not receive a deletion request, we may delete or de-identify personal information of a child after a period of inactivity in accordance with our standard data retention schedule. 

Security of Personal Data

We have implemented reasonable physical, technical, and organizational safeguards that are designed to protect your personal data. However, despite these controls, we cannot completely ensure or warrant the security of your personal data.

Retention of Personal Data

We will usually retain the personal data we collect about you for no longer than reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, and in accordance with our legitimate research interests and applicable law. However, if necessary, we may retain personal data for longer periods of time as required under applicable law or as needed to resolve disputes or protect our legal rights.

To determine the appropriate duration of the retention of personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of personal data and if we can attain our objectives by other means, as well as our legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, and other applicable obligations.

Once retention of the personal data is no longer reasonably necessary for the purposes outlined above, we will either delete or deidentify the personal data or, if that is not possible (for example, because personal data has been stored in backup archives), we will securely store the personal data and isolate it from further active processing until deletion or deidentification is possible.

Third-Party Websites and Services

Our services may require you to set up accounts with or otherwise use third-party websites, plug-ins, applications and other services. This Privacy Notice does not apply to any personal data practices of these types of third parties. To learn about the personal data practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy notices.

Updates to This Privacy Notice

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. When we make changes to this Privacy Notice, we will change the date at the beginning of this Privacy Notice. If we make material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify individuals by email to their registered email address, by prominent posting on this website or our other platforms, or through other appropriate communication channels. All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or requests in connection with this Privacy Notice or other privacy-related matters, please send an email to [[email protected]].