Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

globefin.org is a free educational platform teaching comparative finance — how different societies allocate capital, manage risk, and regulate markets. It is owned and operated by Library B Development Corporation, a Kentucky non-profit corporation ("Globefin", "we", "us", "our"). This policy explains what personal data we handle when you visit the site or create an account, and what you can do about it.

For the purposes of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation, Library B Development Corporation is the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at any time at admin@globefin.org.

2. What we collect

We collect information in three ways: what you give us, what is generated as you use the site, and what is collected automatically by our servers.

Category	Examples	Source
Account data	Your real name, email address, password (stored only as a cryptographic hash), and account creation date.	You, at signup
Profile data	Any optional details you add — country, institution, role, professional background, bio, links, profile photo.	You, optionally
Learning data	Lessons viewed and completed, quiz answers and scores, tracks started, class enrolment and participation.	Generated as you learn
Content you submit	Lesson corrections and review-tool suggestions, messages, directory listings, and anything else you post.	You
Correspondence	Emails you send us and our replies, including any support or correction requests.	You
Technical data	IP address, browser type and version, device and operating system, referring page, pages requested, timestamps.	Automatic (server logs)

We do not ask for and do not want special category data — information about your health, race or ethnicity, religion, political opinions, sexual orientation, trade union membership, biometrics, or genetics. Please don't put such information into your profile or into content you submit.

Globefin is an educational site. We never ask for your financial account details — no bank account numbers, no brokerage credentials, no card numbers. If anyone claiming to be Globefin asks you for these, it is not us; please report it to admin@globefin.org.

3. How we use it

We use the information above to:

• Run your account — authenticate you, keep you logged in, let you reset a password, and let you delete the account.
• Deliver the curriculum — track your progress through the 283 lessons, remember where you left off, record quiz results, and enrol you in classes.
• Operate the community — display your profile to other members, power the directory, and connect students, educators, and innovators.
• Improve the lessons — process the corrections and suggestions you send through the built-in review tool, and route them to our editors.
• Communicate with you — send service messages (password resets, security notices, material changes to this policy) and, only if you have opted in, occasional updates about new lessons and features.
• Keep the site working and safe — diagnose faults, monitor performance, detect abuse, spam, scraping, and fraud, and enforce our Terms of Use.
• Understand usage in aggregate — see which lessons are read, which are abandoned, and where the curriculum needs work. We do this in aggregate wherever we reasonably can.
• Meet legal obligations — respond to lawful requests and keep records where the law requires it.

We do not sell your personal data, we do not share it with data brokers, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles. We do not use your personal data to train our own AI models.

4. Legal bases for processing

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we rely on the following legal bases under the GDPR:

• Contract — to create and operate your account and deliver the learning features you signed up for.
• Legitimate interests — to secure the site, prevent abuse, understand aggregate usage, and improve the curriculum. We balance these interests against your rights, and you may object (see Your rights).
• Consent — for optional marketing emails and any non-essential cookies. You may withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation — where we must retain or disclose information to comply with the law.

5. AI-assisted content and the review tool

Globefin is open about how it is built: our lessons are initially drafted with the help of large language models and then fact-checked and edited by our finance experts. That is what makes our global, comparative scope possible. It also has two privacy consequences you should understand.

The built-in review tool

Every lesson carries a review tool that lets you run the page through several independent AI models — which may include services operated by Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (GPT), Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), Mistral, and DeepSeek — to surface factual errors, missing context, or unclear passages, and then send the findings worth keeping to our editors.

When you use that tool:

• The lesson text is transmitted to the AI provider you select.
• Anything you type into the tool — a note, a question, a framing of the problem — is also transmitted to that provider, and is handled under their privacy policy and data-retention practices, not ours.
• The suggestions you choose to submit are stored by us, together with your account identifier, so our editors can act on them and credit the correction.

Accuracy

AI-assisted drafting can produce errors, and expert review is ongoing. Nothing on Globefin is financial, investment, tax, or legal advice — see our Terms of Use for the full statement.

6. Your profile is public by design

Globefin asks for real names, like LinkedIn, because the community is built on identifiable scholarship and professional connection. That means some of your information is visible to others by design:

• Your name, and any profile details you choose to add, may be visible to other members and, where you appear in the Directory, to the public and to search engines.
• Content you post publicly — corrections, directory listings, class contributions — is visible with your name attached.
• Your email address is never displayed publicly by us.
• Your quiz scores and lesson progress are private to you, except where you join a class and the instructor can see the progress of enrolled participants.

You control what optional information goes into your profile, and you can edit or remove it at any time from your account settings.

7. Cookies and similar technologies

We keep cookies to a minimum.

• Strictly necessary cookies. A PHP session cookie identifies your logged-in session and protects forms against cross-site request forgery. The site cannot work without these, and they require no consent. They expire when your session ends, or when you log out.
• Preference cookies. If you ask us to remember you between visits, we set a persistent cookie to do so.
• Analytics. Where we use analytics, we configure it to be as privacy-preserving as we can, and where such cookies are not strictly necessary we ask for your consent first.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. If you block strictly necessary cookies, you will not be able to log in.

We do not host third-party advertising networks and we do not use cross-site tracking pixels for advertising. Some pages embed third-party resources (for example, icon and font libraries, or an embedded video); those providers may see your IP address as a consequence of serving the file.

8. When we share information

We share personal data only in these circumstances:

• Service providers ("processors"). Hosting, email delivery, and error monitoring providers process data on our instructions, under contract, and may not use it for their own purposes.
• AI providers. Only the content you route to them through the review tool, as described in section 5.
• Other members. The public elements of your profile, as described in section 6.
• Legal requirements. Where we are required to disclose information by law, court order, or a valid request from a public authority — or where disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, safety, or property of Globefin, our users, or the public.
• Business transfer. If Globefin is ever merged, acquired, or reorganised, personal data may transfer as part of that transaction. We will tell you before your data becomes subject to a materially different privacy policy.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not "share" it for cross-context behavioural advertising as those terms are defined under California law.

9. International transfers

Globefin is a global project with a global audience, and our providers — including our hosting and AI providers — may be located outside your country, including in the United States. Where we transfer personal data out of the EEA or the UK, we rely on an adequacy decision where one applies, or otherwise on Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent safeguard. You may request a copy of the relevant safeguard by writing to admin@globefin.org.

10. How long we keep it

• Account and profile data — for as long as your account is open.
• Learning data — for as long as your account is open, so that your progress persists.
• Server logs — typically for a short period (on the order of a few months) for security and diagnostics, then deleted or aggregated.
• Correspondence — for as long as needed to handle your query and to keep a record of it.
• Lesson corrections — we may retain the substance of an accepted correction indefinitely, because it becomes part of the lesson and of its editorial history. Our lessons are published under an open CC BY 4.0 licence, so once a correction is incorporated it is publicly reusable and cannot be withdrawn. We can, however, de-link it from your account and remove your name from it on request.

When you delete your account, we delete or anonymise your personal data within a reasonable period, except where we must keep something to comply with a legal obligation, resolve a dispute, or enforce our terms. Backups are overwritten on a rolling cycle.

11. Security

We take reasonable and appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your information: encrypted connections (HTTPS), passwords stored only as salted hashes and never in plain text, access to production data limited to those who need it, and prompt patching of the software we run.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Please use a strong, unique password for Globefin, and tell us immediately at admin@globefin.org if you believe your account has been compromised. If you are a security researcher and have found a vulnerability, we would genuinely like to hear from you at the same address.

12. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights over your personal data:

• Access — get a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data, and delete your account.
• Restriction — ask us to pause processing while a dispute is resolved.
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Objection — object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests.
• Withdraw consent — at any time, where we rely on consent. This does not affect processing already carried out.
• Non-discrimination — if you are in California, we will not treat you worse for exercising your privacy rights.

To exercise any of these, email admin@globefin.org. We will respond within the period the applicable law requires — normally within one month under the GDPR, and within 45 days under the CCPA/CPRA. We may need to verify your identity first, which usually means confirming you control the account's email address. An authorised agent may act for you where the law allows, with proof of authorisation.

If you are in the EEA or UK and you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority. We would appreciate the chance to address it first.

13. Children

Globefin is intended for adults and for older students studying finance. Accounts are not available to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 16. If you believe a child has created an account, write to admin@globefin.org and we will delete it.

The lessons themselves are freely readable by anyone without an account, and we do not require any personal data to read them.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Globefin grows — new pillars, new tools, new providers. When we do, we will revise the "last updated" date at the top of this page. If a change is material — for example, a new purpose for your data — we will give you notice by email or a prominent notice on the site before it takes effect. Continuing to use Globefin after a change takes effect means you accept the revised policy.