Privacy Policy – Higher Education Services

Welcome to FutureLearn!

We respect your right to privacy.

This Privacy Policy applies to your use of our Higher Education Services environment and will apply to your application and to your study online for your degree or award. We work with      third party websites including the university or college awarding the qualification. Some of your online journey will be governed by their policies which are available on their websites. You will find out more information by clicking the link on the online application form.

We comply with our obligations under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. We will not collect any personally identifiable information about you unless it is in response to you using our website, actively registering or enquiring about one of our or our partner’s for one of our online products or participating in research sessions with us. 

The security of your personally identifiable information is extremely important to us. 

This Privacy Policy is regularly reviewed to make sure that we continue to serve your privacy interests and we reserve the right to update it as we deem necessary. 

Please review this Privacy Policy carefully.  It should be read alongside the FutureLearn Terms and the Cookies Policy. Unless otherwise defined, terms used have the same meaning as in the Terms.  

If you have any questions, comments, or complaints about this Privacy Policy please contact us at the details set out below. 

1. About Us

In this Privacy Policy, references to “we” or “us” are to FutureLearn Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales (registered number 8324083) whose registered office is at Buchanan House, 30 Holborn London, England, EC1N 2HS.

2. What information we collect

2.1. Registering with FutureLearn. 

When you register for your online learning journey, we and third parties working with us may      collect any of the following information:

• Name, email address      
• Home address, date of birth, telephone number, country of nationality, age 
• Identification documentation in order to verify your identity where required to obtain a certificate or academic accreditation (collected by our third-party identity verification vendors who may store your information for the sole purpose of identification verification)

• Biographical details 
• Employment history
• Education history 
• Data relating to your use of our Higher Education Services environment  and enrolment onto Online Courses
• Other information about your interests, educational background, qualifications, occupation and work experience, learning goals, and other general learning preferences      

     2.2. Learning journey

When you are participating on an Online Course, we and third parties may collect and store the following additional information:

• comments you voluntarily post while participating in online discussions with the Course educators and other Learners during the Course run
• any email communications with FutureLearn and third parties to seek user support or to send queries related to the Course
• any content submitted by you during the Course, such as written assignments, quizzes, and examinations, and the results of any assessments 
• responses you voluntarily provide to FutureLearn, the Course educators, or third parties in questionnaires, surveys, or user research that you participate in related to the Course

     2.3 Accessing the Website  

When you access the websites associated with our Higher Education Services environment we may use cookies to track, collect, and aggregate information about your use of our services, including pages you have visited, the specific URLs that brought you to our platform, and links that you have accessed.  This information may include IP addresses, and any information collected by cookies.  This may also include information such as the time and length of visits to certain pages on our website and page interaction information. For more information on our use of cookies, please refer to our Cookies Policy.

3. How we use your information

3.1. In providing our online services and products to you, we and third parties we work with will collect, store, and use your personal information for the following purposes:

3.1.1. to manage your Learner account (if applicable);

3.1.2. to provide technical support to you;

3. 1.3. to send you email notifications and updates about Courses you are enrolled on;

3.1.4. if you are taking a Course for academic credit, professional certification and/or other formal recognition of learning, to allow the university or other institution to monitor and track your progress, to award you with the relevant recognition as applicable, and to make direct contact with you regarding your progress and completion of the Course;

3.1.5. for marketing purposes, where you provide us with your consent to receive marketing communications, which may include email and/or telephone communications with information, news, and offers of Courses on our Website and third party offers;

3.1.6. for creating prospective customer databases by matching demographic data from your depersonalised information with members of the general public;

3.1.7. to use your information in an aggregated format to identify trends on our website and trends in our customer database. We may use this information in an aggregated and anonymous format and may share this information with third parties;

3.1.8. in connection with campaigns with higher education institution partners, to provide universities you have expressed an interest in, with your personal information so they may assess common areas of interest between their students and FutureLearn Learners and improve their educational programme offerings.  Any such data gathering will also be pursuant to the universities’ own privacy policies;

3.19. to enable other learners on our platforms to view the information you have chosen to add to your profile and, depending on the profile settings you have selected, your course activity;

3.1.10      where you request information on a particular course, course provider or type of study we will use your personal data to contact you regarding relevant educational opportunities

3.2 Marketing from FutureLearn: With your consent, 

3.2.1 we may use your personal information to send you updates about other degrees and online courses offered by FutureLearn’s university partners.

You can withdraw your consent or update your preferences at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in our emails or by contacting us at privacy@futurelearn.com.

3.2.2 We use cookies to collect information relating to your use of the Website to enable, maintain and improve the functioning of our Website and the quality of our products and services. For more information, please see our Cookies Policy. 

4. Whom we may share your information with

4.1. For the above purposes, we may share your information with the following third parties.  Please note that any third parties’ use of your personal data will be governed by their own privacy policies and give rise to separate obligations under applicable data protection laws.  We suggest that you carefully review any third party privacy policies that may apply to you.  

4.2.Third parties that may receive your information include:

4.2.1. our payment services providers which are listed below as our sub-processors.

4.2.2. universities and other institutions that provide Online Courses on our Website, and institutions that award academic credit to Learners who successfully complete an Online Course;

4.2.3. University Partners: If you submit an enquiry about a specific programme, we will share your personal data with the university delivering that programme.

We will not share your personal data with other university partners unless you have given us explicit permission to do so (for example, by ticking a relevant opt-in box on an enquiry form).

4.2.4. providers of assessments and marking services when you register for an assessment or submit a piece of work for marking in connection with an Online Course;

4.2.5. our ID verification partner Sumsub, when you are required to submit personal information on certain Online Courses offering academic credit or professional recognition, or when you exercise the option of doing so on other Online Courses in order to receive a certificate of learning;   In order for your identity to be verified we will collect personal data including your email and telephone number and provide it to Sumsub to check that you are a genuine applicant for the course. By providing this data, you give your express consent solely for the purpose of ID verification, so that you can join the course.

4.2.6. customer relationship management and communication service providers, Iterable Ltd, Salesforce, Meta (Whatsapp), Intercom  Net2Phone, Havana, Zapier Inc (which allows us, for example, to send personalised email communications to you relating to your involvement with us);

4.2.7. our customer service software provider Zendesk International Limited, if you contact our support team;

4.2.8. our file storage and management service providers;

4.2.9. your employer, educational institution, or third parties (including resellers) who may invite you to enrol on an Online Course for training, educational, or assessment purposes;

4.2.10. any FutureLearn group company (in a pseudonymised format for analytical purposes only);

4.2.11 any subcontractors of FutureLearn contracted for providing our service to you and our partner organisations;

4.2.12 where you consent, with third parties who may contact you with regards to educational opportunities you have expressed an interest in;

4.2.13. if we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets, provided that they continue to use your information in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy; 

4.2.14. if all, or substantially all of our assets, are acquired by a third party provided that they continue to use your information in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy, in which case information held by us will be one of the transferred assets; and

4.2.15. Any entity to which we are under a duty to disclose or share your information in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms and other legal requirements; or to protect our rights, property, or safety, our users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

5. Legal Basis for Processing Your Information

We have several legal bases for collecting and using the personal information described above.  They are:

5.1. Where the use of your personal information is necessary to perform our obligations under any contract with you (including providing you with access to Online Courses on the Website for which you have registered and/or made a purchase);

5.2. Where we have your explicit consent to collect, store, and use your information for a particular purpose, including where you consent to participate in research with us, receiving marketing and promotional communications for products on our Website or third party websites;

5.3. Where use of your personal information is necessary for purposes of pursuing FutureLearn’s legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party such as our Course providers, as long as these interests are not outweighed by your own interests, fundamental rights, or freedoms.  For example, we will need to ensure that in these cases you would reasonably expect your personal information to be used, and that it would have a minimal impact on your personal privacy.  Such legitimate interests are:

5.3.1. to conduct our day-to-day business, including the operation of a fully functioning website offering online educational products;

5.3.2. to build relationships with universities and other institutions in the online education sector;

5.3.3. to ensure we are delivering a high level of customer service through ongoing customer communications and responses to customer queries;

5.3.4. to invest, test and roll out new products which we believe will benefit our customers or prospective customers;

5.3.5. track and ensure completion of contractual obligations;

5.3.6. carry out market research and business development; 

5.3.7. to operate our website;

5.3.8. to consider your employment application, if you apply for a role at our company; and

5.3.9. In some cases, we may have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you. 

6. Storage and Security of Information

6.1. All information is stored on our secure servers. When you register on the website, we will ask you to choose a password which enables you to access the Online Courses and Content. You are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share this password with anyone.

6.2. In addition, we (or third parties acting on our behalf) may also store or process information that we collect about you in countries outside the United Kingdom or outside the European Economic Area, which may have different standards of data protection than in the UK. Specifically, servers used by our Website are located in the Republic of Ireland and we work with Course providers and third party service providers around the world. We have put in place technical and organisational security measures to prevent the loss or unauthorised access of your personal information. However, whilst we have used our best efforts to ensure the security of your data, it is your responsibility to make an informed decision to avail yourself of our services and products or if your concerns about the handling of data require you to refrain from using our Website.

7. Sub-Processors

We use the following sub-processors

Stripe

SumSub

Zapier

Salesforce

Iterable

Intercom

Meta (Facebook and Whatsapp)

Net2phone

Havana

8. Data Retention

8.1. We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

8.2. When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

8.3. Where we have your personal data as a result of you participating in a research session with us we will retain your personal data for no more than two years after conducting the session the personal data pertains to.

9. Your Rights

9.1. You have the following data protection rights:

9.1.1. You can ask us to restrict processing of your personal information, request access to and to receive a copy of your personal data or request portability of your personal information. You can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “Contact details” heading below.

9.1.2. You may unsubscribe from certain email communications by following the Unsubscribe link in the email communication itself. 

9.1.3. You may ask us to delete or remove your personal data; 

9.1.4. Similarly, if we have collected and process your personal information on the basis of your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time.  Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time by using the contact details below. If you gave consent as part of a research project with us then please email research@futurelearn.com and legal@futurelearn.com to withdraw your consent.

9.1.5. If you have any privacy-related questions or unresolved problems, you may contact us using the information provided below.

10.1.6. You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information.  For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. (Contact details for data protection authorities in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area, Switzerland and certain non-European countries including the US and Canada are available here.)

10. Cookies

The Website uses cookies. Cookies are small files stored on your computer’s hard drive which are used to collect your personal information. You may choose to refuse cookies but, if you do so, some of the functionality of the Website or Online Courses may no longer be available to you.

For more information about cookies, including further details as to what they are and how to refuse them, please see our Cookies Policy.

11. Contact details

FutureLearn Limited
FAO: Data Protection Officer
30 Holborn, Buchanan House
London, England
EC1N 2HS
United Kingdom
E-mail: legal@futurelearn.com

Alternatively, if you are based in the EU or EEA you may contact us at:

FAO: FutureLearn Limited
C/O IBAT College Dublin
Wellington Quay Campus, 16-19 Wellington Quay
Dublin 2
Ireland
E-mail: dpo@futurelearn.com

12. Updating this Privacy Policy

We may update or amend this Privacy Policy from time to time, to comply with law, in accordance with best practice in our industry, or to meet our changing business requirements. Any updates or amendments will be posted on the Website. By continuing to access the Website, use the Online Courses and Content, and/or provide content in connection with the Online Courses and Content, you will be deemed to have accepted the Privacy Policy as amended at the time of your access and use.

This page was last updated on 18th August 2025.