Privacy Policy

Who We Are

VST is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to support science teachers and create knowledge and skill-building resources that help all students develop a strong foundation in science. We partner with teachers to build a scientifically literate society, equipping students with the skills to thrive in an ever-changing world. We believe everyone deserves access to engaging resources that help them grow in their understanding of science.

How to Contact Us

You can contact us at our main business address: 

Virtual Science Teachers

1500 Shipyard Rd suite d #1014, Chesapeake, VA 23323, USA

Chesapeake, VA 23323

United States

We can also be contacted by email at the following email address: admin@virtualscienceteachers.com.

What Personal Data Do We Collect?

Personal Information You Provide

You may be asked to provide us with certain personal information when you contact us for information about VST or one of our programs or when you make a donation. 

• Altogether, the personal data or personal information discussed in this policy shall be “Personal Information”. The Personal Information we request may include contact information, including your name and/or email address.

Information We Collect Automatically

We automatically collect certain information from visitors to our Services to help us understand trends about how our Services are used. This allows us to maintain and administer the Services, including supporting our security efforts, making improvements, and understanding aggregated information about the makeup of our visitors.

We use certain Service Providers (defined below) to help us collect and understand this information. The information might include, for example, the Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) from which the visitor arrived, the URL to which you next go, browser information, Internet Protocol addresses, a mobile device identifier, operating system, or general location data such as a city or zip code, as well as information about use of the Services, such as the pages or sections visited most often, the time spent there, and how a visitor moves through the Services.

We and our Service Providers collect this information directly from the device through the use of cookies, web beacons, or other similar technologies. A “cookie” is a small data file that a website transfers to a user’s device and is stored on the user’s browser. As a user moves from one page or one screen to another, a cookie is used to tell us that it is the same device and to remember your preferences. A “web beacon” (also referred to as a “clear gif” or “pixel tag”) is a one-pixel image (which may be visible or transparent), that may be embedded on a web page or in an e-mail message and which may also provide us with information about usage of that page or e-mail message, including if and when you have opened it. More information about the cookies used in our Services is available in our Cookie Notice below. Most browsers allow you to control the placement of cookies by third parties on your browser. To learn more about cookies and how to manage or delete them, refer to the “Tools,” “Help,” or similar section of your web browser.

Personal Information Received from Third Parties

We may receive Personal Information about you from other sources, including via your interaction with our social media pages (this includes aggregate data on our social media followers (e.g., age, gender, and location), engagement data (e.g., “likes,” comments, shares, reposts and clicks), awareness data (e.g., number of impressions and reach) and individual users’ public profiles).

We use Zeffy, a third-party platform, to securely process donations and manage event sign-ups, including professional development sessions. When you make a donation or register for an event through Zeffy, they may collect personal information such as your name, email address, and payment details (if applicable). We do not have access to full payment details as Zeffy securely handles transactions and registrations on our behalf. Zeffy’s collection and use of your personal information are governed by their own privacy policy, which we encourage you to review before submitting your information. You can view Zeffy’s Privacy Policy here: https://zeffy.com/en/privacy.

Why Do We Use Personal Data?

We process (use) Personal Information for the following purposes:

• To request feedback and communicate with you. We may process your information when necessary to request feedback and to contact you about your use of our Services.
• To provide and/or protect our Services. We may process your information as part of our efforts to continuously maintain and/or protect our Services.
• To identify usage trends. We may process information about how you use our Services to better understand how they are being used and in order to improve our Services.
• To resolve disputes. We may process your information to prevent, investigate, and defend against any known or suspected violations of our Terms of Use, including by sharing Personal Information with entities that assist us in those endeavors or otherwise as may be required by applicable law.
• To comply with law and prevent harmful activities. We may process your information if it is necessary to comply with legal requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity, to assist law enforcement, or to prevent imminent harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents, or government agencies.

We do not sell the Personal Information of our users.

With regard to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, notwithstanding anything to the contrary provided in this Privacy Policy, we collect personal information from children under the age of 13 for the sole purpose of performing internal operations of the Services. If we discover that we have unknowingly collected additional personal information from these children, we will delete it. If you believe this to be the case, please contact us at admin@virtualscienceteachers.com.

Who Can See Your Personal Data?

We disclose Personal Information in the following circumstances:

• Third-party service providers. We contract with third parties to provide certain services and to facilitate the operations of our Services (our “Service Providers”), such as data hosting, analytics, donation and event management, content delivery and payment processing. Our Service Providers may require access to certain Personal Information in order to provide their services.
• Professional advisors. We may share collected information with our professional advisors, such as lawyers, auditors, bankers and/or insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us.
• Business transfers. We may share any collected information in connection with a substantial corporate transaction, such as the sale of our organization, a merger, a consolidation, an asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.
• Legal requirements. We may disclose any collected information to respond to subpoenas, court orders, legal process, and other law enforcement measures, and to comply with legal or regulatory obligations.
• Protecting our Services and users. We, and our Service Providers and vendors, may disclose any collected information to enforce our Terms of Use and to protect and defend the legal rights, interests, and safety of VST, our employees, agents, contractors, sponsors and users, members of the general public, or others.
• Consent. We may share your Personal Information to others with your consent.

We may also anonymize your Personal Information and share such anonymized information with third parties for any purpose permitted by applicable laws.

How Do We Look After Your Personal Data?

We use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative safeguards to protect the Personal Information we collect and process. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing Personal Information. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (for example, if you feel that the security of your Personal Information held with us has been compromised), please immediately notify us of the problem by contacting us in accordance with the “How to Contact Us” section above.

In the event of a data breach, we will identify and assess the breach to determine its scope and impact, notify affected parties and regulatory authorities as required by law, and implement corrective measures to prevent future incidents. We are committed to protecting the privacy of all users and ensuring compliance with applicable data protection laws.

How Long Is Your Personal Data Kept?

We will retain your Personal Information in accordance with the time period allowed under applicable law, and with consideration for the sensitivity, volume, and type of Personal Information, as well as the purpose for which we have collected it, after which time we will take steps to delete it.

We will retain de-identified, aggregate data for lawfully allowed purposes.

Do You Have A Say In What Happens To Your Personal Data?

Depending on your state of residence, you may have the following right(s):

• Right to know whether or not we are processing your Personal Information, and, if processed, how so;
• Right to access your Personal Information;
• Right to correct inaccuracies in your Personal Information;
• Right to request deletion of your Personal Information;
• Right to object to our processing of your Personal Information under certain conditions;
• Right to request that we restrict the processing of your Personal Information, under certain conditions;
• Right to obtain a copy of the Personal Information you previously shared with us;
• Right to non-discrimination for exercising your rights;
• Right to opt out of the processing of your Personal Information if used for targeted advertising or the sale of your Personal Information;
• Right to request a machine-readable copy of your Personal Information, or that we transfer the Personal Information that we have collected to another organization, under certain conditions;
• Right to opt out of automated decision-making (decisions based solely on autonomous decision-making, that is, a decision made without human involvement), including profiling, where the decision would have a legal effect on you or produce a similarly significant effect.

Virtual Science Teachers does not use Personal Information for targeted advertising, and we do not sell or share Personal Information for commercial purposes. Therefore, rights related to opting out of targeted advertising or the sale of Personal Information do not apply.

You have the right to withdraw your consent to us at any time regarding our processing of your Personal Information. To do so, please contact us by using the contact details under the “How to Contact Us” section above.

Cookie Notice

Types of Cookies We Use

We might use both session and persistent cookies. Session cookies last for as long as you are using your browser, while persistent cookies will last for some time after you close your browser. The time that persistent cookies last is dependent on your browser configuration and the lifespan of each cookie.

We use cookies to help improve your experience on our site. This includes functional cookies that maintain website performance and security, as well as Google Analytics 4 (GA4) cookies that help us understand how visitors use our site.

How We Use Cookies

We use the information that is automatically collected through cookies to support our operations, analysis, and promotion of the Services. More specifically, we use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand how visitors interact with our website. GA4 uses first-party cookies to collect anonymous usage data, such as the pages visited and time spent on the site. GA4 is designed to respect user privacy. It does not store full IP addresses, does not track users across different websites, and does not collect personally identifiable information by default. This data helps us improve our educational resources while respecting user privacy.

You can opt out of Google Analytics by installing Google’s browser add-on available here.

Disabling, Deleting, or Opting Out of Cookies

You may visit the “Consent Preferences” link at the bottom of each page on our website to make choices about cookies we and third parties place on our Services. If you do not or no longer want to have cookies placed on your browser by third parties, many of them also offer ways to opt out. Most browsers also allow at least some control of most cookies through browser settings. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser to decline cookies. You may also delete existing cookies through your browser.

Controls for Do-Not-Track Features

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track (“DNT”) feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage, no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policies of Other Websites We Link To

Our Services may link to other websites or apps, including content offered by third parties that we do not control and whose privacy and data collection practices may differ from ours (“Third Party Services”). We are not responsible for the practices employed by any websites or services linked to or from our Services, including the information or content contained within them.

When you go via our link to Third Party Services, you become subject to their Terms of Use and privacy policies rather than ours. You should review these other website privacy policies regarding any personal information that they may collect about you.

Updates to this Policy

We will review and update this Privacy Policy periodically and will note the date of its most recent revision at the end of this Privacy Policy. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the revised Privacy Policy on our website and may take additional measures to inform you about such changes prior to such changes taking effect.

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This Privacy Policy was last updated: March 28, 2025