1. Who we are
MAK-IA is an online learning platform operated by MAK-IA, a corporation incorporated under the Business Corporations Act (Quebec), with its head office at:
263 1re Avenue
Val-des-Sources (Québec) J1T 1Y6
Canada
The platform connects independent partner instructors, learners, and businesses. In this document, "we" refers to MAK-IA and "you" refers to the person whose personal information is concerned.
We are subject to Quebec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, as amended by Law 25.
2. Person in charge of the protection of personal information
The person in charge of the protection of personal information at MAK-IA is:
- Audrée Pellerin, co-founder
- Email: info@mak-ia.com
- 263 1re Avenue, Val-des-Sources (Québec) J1T 1Y6
She oversees compliance with this policy, handles access and rectification requests, and is your point of contact for any question about your personal information.
3. The information we collect
We only collect the information necessary for the purposes described in section 4. It varies depending on your relationship with the platform.
3.1 If you visit the site without creating an account
- Browsing data: IP address, device and browser type, pages viewed, visit duration.
- If you fill in the contact form: your name, your email address, and the content of your message.
- If you subscribe to the newsletter: your email address, your first name, and the type of content that interests you.
3.2 If you are a learner
- Identity and account: first name, last name, email address, password (stored in encrypted form) and, if you provide it, your phone number (it is only used to find your account — the sign-in link is sent by email).
- Learning profile, if you choose to fill it in: language, interests, goals, self-declared level.
- Accessibility needs, if you choose to share them with us, to adapt how content is presented.
- Transaction data: courses purchased, amounts, invoices, promo code used. Your payment card data is processed by our payment provider (Stripe) and is never stored by MAK-IA.
- Learning data: courses and lessons started, progress, time spent, quizzes taken, results obtained, courses completed, certificates issued, end-of-course evaluations.
- Exchanges: questions asked to an instructor, questions asked to the AI assistant, support requests, reviews posted on a course.
- Pronunciation exercises, where a course offers them: your voice recording is sent to the speech-recognition service to produce a score, then deleted — we keep the score, not the recording.
- Security data: sign-in history, IP address, device used.
3.3 If you are a partner instructor
- Application and profile: name, contact details, professional background, areas of expertise, published photo and biography.
- Contractual and tax information: legal entity, business number, GST and QST numbers, address.
- Payout information: bank details for direct deposit of your royalties (stored encrypted).
- Content you submit to the AI-assisted creation tools.
3.4 If you are a business client or the employee of a business client
When a business uses MAK-IA for the internal training of its staff, it provides us with the information needed to create its employees' access: name, professional email address and, where applicable, position or department.
The learning data of these employees — assigned courses, progress, completion and evaluation results — is accessible to the business that employs them.
3.5 If you take part in the affiliate program
- Identity, contact details, legal entity, and the promo code assigned to you.
- Transactions attached to your code, for the purpose of calculating your royalty, and payout details.
4. Why we collect this information
Each piece of information is collected for a specific purpose. We do not use it for other purposes without informing you and, where the law requires it, without obtaining your consent.
| Purpose | Information used |
|---|---|
| Creating your account and authenticating you | Identity, email address, password |
| Giving you access to purchased courses | Account, transactions |
| Processing payments, issuing invoices and applying discounts | Transaction data, promo code |
| Tracking your progress and assessing your learning | Learning data, evaluation results |
| Issuing and verifying your training certificates | Identity, completion, results |
| Suggesting a personalized learning path | Profile, progress, results |
| Calculating the engagement points used to compensate instructors | Learning data (in aggregate form for the instructor) |
| Answering your questions and providing support | Contact details, content of exchanges |
| Keeping the platform secure and detecting fraudulent use | Sign-in logs, IP address, browsing behaviour |
| Sending you our commercial communications, if you consented | Email address, interests, preferences |
| Meeting our legal, tax and accounting obligations | Transactions, contractual and tax information |
5. Your consent and its withdrawal
Where the law requires your consent, we ask for it separately, in simple terms, and for each specific purpose. Consent given for one purpose does not extend to another.
Some information is necessary to provide the service: without it, we cannot create your account or give you access to courses. Other information is optional — notably your learning profile, your accessibility needs and your newsletter subscription — and refusing it has no consequence on your access to courses.
You can withdraw your consent at any time, from your account settings ("My account"), from the "Cookie preferences" panel in the footer, or by writing to info@mak-ia.com. Withdrawal does not call into question what was legitimately done before.
6. Cookies and tracking technologies
Our site uses cookies in three categories: essential (always on — session, security, remembering your choices, and referral attribution if you arrive through a partner link), analytics (Google Analytics, audience measurement with anonymized IP address) and marketing (LinkedIn Insight, campaign measurement). The analytics and marketing categories are off by default and only activate with your agreement, given through the consent banner.
The "Cookie preferences" panel (footer) lists each cookie — name, purpose, duration — and offers a "Delete my browsing data" button. Full details are in our cookie policy.
We use no technology that identifies you, locates you, or profiles you without your knowledge.
7. Use of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is at the heart of MAK-IA. We believe it is only right to tell you precisely what it does with your information.
- It helps instructors design their courses. The content an instructor submits to it may be processed by an external provider of artificial-intelligence models, which acts under contract and does not use this data to train its models.
- It answers the questions you ask in the course player. These exchanges are processed by the same type of external provider. The course's instructor can read the questions asked, word for word, but never the identity of the person who asked them — a notice in the chat window reminds you of this.
- It assesses your pronunciation in language courses: the recording is sent to the speech-recognition service, scored, then deleted.
- It suggests a learning path based on your profile, progress and results.
- It helps detect abnormal behaviour that would distort instructor compensation.
No decision producing legal effects on you is made in a fully automated way.
8. Who we share your information with
We never sell your personal information. We only disclose it in the following cases:
- To our providers, so they can perform a service for us: hosting, payment processing, email delivery, technical support, artificial-intelligence tools, audience measurement (if you consented). They act on our instructions, under written contract, and may not use your information for their own purposes.
- To the partner instructor, only to the extent necessary for the educational support they provide you. The statistics they receive about their courses are aggregated, and questions asked to the AI assistant are shown to them without your identity.
- To your employer, if you access the platform through a business client's account, within the limits described in section 3.4.
- To anyone verifying the authenticity of your training certificate: the verification page shows your name, the course and the issue date to any person holding the certificate number — that is the very function of the document.
- If you consented to the publication of your end-of-course evaluation comment, it may be shared as a testimonial, accompanied at most by your first name.
- When the law requires it, or to assert our rights before a court.
9. Information kept outside Quebec
Our servers are hosted in Canada (Toronto, Ontario) — outside Quebec, but within the country.
Some of our providers process information outside Canada, mainly in the United States: payment processing (Stripe), providers of artificial-intelligence models, technical error monitoring and — only if you consented — audience measurement (Google) and campaign measurement (LinkedIn).
Before any communication outside Quebec, we assess the privacy factors involved, as required by Law 25, and we govern these communications by contract so that your information receives adequate protection.
10. How long we keep your information
We keep your information for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, then destroy or anonymize it:
- Your account and learning data: as long as your account exists. You can request the deletion of your account at any time from "My account".
- Billing data and tax information: 7 years, in accordance with our tax obligations.
- Training certificates: without time limit — later verification is their very purpose.
- Cookies: for the durations listed in the cookie policy.
11. How we protect your information
We put in place security measures proportionate to the sensitivity of the information: access limited to those who need it, encrypted communications, passwords stored in encrypted form, at-rest encryption of instructors' bank details, access logging and backups.
12. Your rights
The law grants you several rights that you can exercise free of charge by writing to info@mak-ia.com. We respond within 30 days.
| Your right | What it allows you to do |
|---|---|
| Access | Obtain confirmation that we hold information about you and receive a copy of it. |
| Rectification | Have inaccurate, incomplete or ambiguous information corrected. |
| Withdrawal of consent | Withdraw at any time the consent you gave for an optional purpose. |
| Portability | Receive, in a structured and commonly used technological format, the computerized information you provided to us. |
| De-indexing | Request that dissemination of information cease or that a hyperlink giving access to it be removed, under the conditions provided by law. |
| Account deletion | A voluntary commitment on our part: delete your account and the information not subject to a retention obligation, directly from "My account". |
| Complaint | Address a complaint to MAK-IA and, if the response does not satisfy you, to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec. |
A copy of your data (access, portability) and account deletion are also available self-serve in "My account".
We may ask you to verify your identity before proceeding, so as not to disclose your information to someone else. If we refuse a request, we give you the reasons in writing and inform you of the remedies available to you.
13. Minors
MAK-IA is intended for professionals and adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from a minor under 14 without the consent of the person having parental authority. If you believe such information has been provided to us, write to us and we will delete it.
14. In the event of a privacy incident
If an incident affecting your personal information were to occur, we would take reasonable measures without delay to reduce its consequences. Where the incident presents a risk of serious harm, we notify the Commission d'accès à l'information as well as the persons concerned. We keep a register of all privacy incidents, as the law requires.
15. Changes to this policy
We may amend this policy to reflect changes in the platform or the law. The version in force is always the one published on MAK-IA, with its update date. In the event of a significant change affecting your information, we inform you directly before it takes effect.
16. Contact us
For any question about this policy or to exercise a right:
- Audrée Pellerin, person in charge of the protection of personal information
- MAK-IA — MAK-IA
- 263 1re Avenue, Val-des-Sources (Québec) J1T 1Y6
- info@mak-ia.com
You can also contact the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, which oversees the application of the law.