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This policy explains what The Global Association of Certified KYC Specialists (Global AKS) collects about you, why, who else sees it, how long we keep it and what you can require of us. It is written to be read, not to be got past.

Effective 15 November 2026 · Applies to globalaks.com and all Global AKS services

1. Who we are

The Global Association of Certified KYC Specialists ("Global AKS", "we", "us") develops, examines and issues professional certifications in know‑your‑customer, anti‑money laundering, financial crime and fraud compliance. We operate globalaks.com and the learner platform at globalaks.com/learn.

For the purposes of the data protection laws described in section 10, Global AKS is the controller of your personal data — the party that decides what is collected and why. Our certifications are developed in cooperation with ONRIGA, the Organization for Next‑gen Regulatory Intelligence & Global Accreditation, which accredits the credential standard; accreditation does not give ONRIGA access to your personal data.

2. What we collect

Collected automatically when you visit

  • IP address, browser type and version, operating system and device type;
  • Pages visited, time spent, and the page or search that referred you;
  • The approximate country your connection comes from, used to show prices in a sensible currency.

Given by you when you enrol or write to us

  • Your name, the name you want printed on your certificate, email address and telephone number;
  • Billing address, country and company name, where you give them, for the invoice;
  • Professional details you choose to provide, such as your role or organisation;
  • Anything you write to us in an enquiry, a support request or a review.

Created as you use the platform

  • Which courses you are enrolled on and your progress through the material;
  • Your examination sittings: when each was taken, how long it took, the answers you gave and the result;
  • The IP address and device used during an examination, kept for examination integrity;
  • Certificates issued to you, their credential IDs, scores and dates;
  • Orders, invoices, the currency and amount paid, and any refund.

3. Why we use it

  • To open your account, enrol you, give you the study material and let you sit the examinations;
  • To mark your papers, issue your certificate and allow anyone you give the credential ID to verify it;
  • To raise your invoice, take payment, and handle a refund where one is due;
  • To answer you when you write, and to tell you about your account: enrolment, results, expiry and renewal;
  • To keep the platform secure, to detect abuse, and to protect the integrity of an examination;
  • To understand how the service is used, so the material and the platform get better;
  • To meet our legal, tax and accounting obligations.

Where the UK or EU General Data Protection Regulation applies, we rely on:

  • Performance of a contract — to deliver the certification you enrolled for;
  • Legal obligation — to keep invoices, tax records and accounting data;
  • Legitimate interests — to keep the platform secure, prevent fraud, protect the integrity of our examinations, and improve what we offer; balanced each time against your interests;
  • Consent — for anything optional, such as making a credential publicly listed or receiving non‑essential messages. You may withdraw consent at any time without affecting what was done before.

5. Who else sees it

We share personal data only with providers who help us run the service, and only as much as each one needs. Every provider is bound by contract to use it for that purpose and no other, and none of them may use it for their own ends.

  • Our support chat provider — handles the support conversations you start, solely to answer you. Its chat loads only when you click its button; if you are signed in, it then receives your name and email address;
  • Our AI provider — helps prepare replies to the messages you write in the support chat. It receives the text of the conversation, including anything you choose to write in it, but not your name or email address, and processes it in the United States;
  • Our payment providers — take your payment and hold the card details we never see;
  • Hosting and database providers — run the platform your account sits on;
  • Our email provider — sends the messages your account requires;
  • Our network provider — counts visits and measures how our pages load, through its web analytics, without cookies and without storing anything in your browser;
  • Our error-monitoring provider — receives a report when a page or our server hits an error, and a record that a page was opened. Our reports to it carry no IP address, cookie or account detail. It records your browser's user agent (its name and version) and an approximate location, city and country, worked out from the connection, and keeps no IP address.

We will also disclose data where the law requires it — a court order, a regulator's lawful demand, or to establish or defend a legal claim.

Credential verification is public by design, and limited. Anyone given your credential ID may confirm that it is genuine. Verification shows the name printed on the certificate, the credential held and its dates. It shows nothing else about you — not your email address, not your score, not your account. A separate public page for a credential is published only if you switch it on yourself.

6. Cookies and what your browser stores

This section describes what is stored in your browser when you visit globalaks.com, as it stands on the effective date of this policy.

When you open a page of globalaks.com, nothing is stored on your device, with one exception: if the address you arrive at names a currency (for example an old link from our previous shop, some of which still appear in search results), a cookie holding that currency and lasting one year is set so that prices are shown in it. Otherwise, no cookie is set and nothing is written to your browser's storage until you do something that needs it:

  • Arriving through a partner's link stores nothing when the page opens. On your first click, tap or key press on our page, a cookie remembers that partner's code for 30 days, so that the partner is credited if you enrol;
  • Signing in sets the cookies that keep you signed in;
  • Choosing a currency sets the same currency cookie to remember your choice;
  • Opening the support chat loads our support chat provider's chat; nothing of it loads before you click. From then on it sets cookies and keeps records in your browser so that it recognises you, and it receives basic information about your visit, such as the pages you viewed and how long you spent on them. If you are signed in, it is given your name and email address;
  • Our payment providers set their own cookies to keep payments secure;
  • Your browser remembers that you have seen our cookie notice, so we do not show it again. That record stays on your device.

Two services run on every page without storing anything on your device: our network provider's web analytics, which counts visits and measures page performance, and our error-monitoring provider, which receives error reports and a record that a page was opened (see section 5).

Our pages load their fonts from our own site, not from a third party, so opening a page sends nothing to a font provider.

We do not use advertising cookies. You can block or delete cookies in your browser, though signing in will not work without the sign‑in cookies.

7. How we protect it

  • Every page and every form on globalaks.com is served over SSL/TLS encryption. Nothing you send us travels in the clear;
  • Card details never touch our servers: they go directly to our payment providers;
  • Access to learner data is restricted to the few people who need it, and administrative actions are recorded in an audit log;
  • Data is encrypted at rest, backed up, and the platform is monitored for abuse and intrusion;
  • You can sign in with a one‑time code sent to your email, a verified provider, or a password. A password is stored only as a one‑way hash, never as the password itself.

No system connected to the internet can be guaranteed absolutely secure, and we do not claim otherwise. If a breach ever affects your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant authority within the time the applicable law requires.

8. How long we keep it

  • Your account and learning record — while your account is open, and for a reasonable period after you close it;
  • Credential records — kept for as long as the credential may need to be verified. A certificate an employer can no longer confirm is worth nothing, so this record is deliberately long‑lived;
  • Invoices and payment records — for the period tax and accounting law requires, which we cannot shorten at request;
  • Support correspondence — while it is needed to resolve the matter and for a reasonable period afterwards;
  • Technical logs — a short period, for security and diagnosis.

When data is no longer needed it is deleted or irreversibly anonymised.

9. Where it is processed

We certify professionals in many countries, and our providers operate internationally, so your data may be processed outside the country you live in. Where personal data protected by the UK or EU GDPR leaves that area, the transfer is made under an approved safeguard — standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision — so the protection travels with it.

Our error-monitoring provider is in the United States. Our support chat provider processes data in Singapore and Japan, and to help answer you the text of a conversation is processed by our AI provider in the United States. We do not pass your name or email address to our AI provider, but anything you type into the chat, including anything personal you choose to write, goes with the conversation text.

10. Your rights

Whichever law applies to you, write to us and we will honour the rights it gives you. We do not ask you to prove you are covered by one before we help.

11. How to exercise a right

Write to support@globalaks.com from the email address your account is registered under, and say what you want. There is no form and no fee. We answer within one month, and tell you if a request is genuinely complex enough to need longer.

One honest limit on erasure. If you ask us to erase your data and you hold a Global AKS credential, erasing your record means that credential can no longer be verified by anyone. We will tell you that before we act, and we will not act until you confirm. Invoices and tax records we are legally required to keep are retained whatever else is erased.

12. Children

Global AKS certifications are professional qualifications intended for adults working in or entering compliance. Our services are not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, the account and its data are deleted.

Our pages link to websites we do not run, including accreditation bodies and industry publications. We are not responsible for how those sites handle your data, and we suggest you read their own policies before giving them anything.

14. Changes to this policy

We revise this policy when the law, our providers or our services change. The revised version is published here with a new effective date. Where a change materially affects how your data is used, we tell account holders directly rather than relying on you to notice.

15. Contact us

Questions about this policy, about what we hold, or about a request you have made:

Effective 15 November 2026. This policy supersedes all previous versions.