Bookspoke, LLC Privacy Policy
This policy tells you about how we use and protect your personal information.
Contents
1. Scope
2. Collection
3. Marketing
4. Use
5. Our Disclosure of Your Information
6. Activity Associated with User IDs
7. Using Information from Bookspoke
8. Cookies
9. No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing
10. Account Protection
11. Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information
12. Security
13. Third Parties
14. General
Scope
This Privacy Policy describes how we handle your personal information for our services on the Bookspoke websites. It applies generally to the Bookspoke.com website and other related websites where this policy appears in the footer of the page. Some Bookspoke-branded websites or websites we operate may be governed by separate privacy policies. The policy that applies on any of our domains or subdomains is always the policy that appears in the footer of each website.
Subject to the requirements of applicable law, we strive to provide a consistent set of privacy practices throughout the global Bookspoke community. By accepting the Privacy Policy and the User Agreement in registration, you expressly consent to our collection, storage, use and disclosure of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance for new users and is otherwise effective on June 30, 2007.
Regardless of location, all members of the Bookspoke community fall under this privacy policy, which is governed by the laws of the United States of America. As we expand, we may make adjunct policies which apply to and account for the laws of specific countries.
Collection
You can browse our sites without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. Once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous to us. If you choose to provide us with personal information, you consent to the transfer and storage of that information on our servers located in the United States.
We may collect and store the following personal information:
1. email address, physical contact information, and (depending on the service used) sometimes financial information, such as credit card or bank account numbers;
2. transactional information based on your activities on the sites (such as bidding, buying, selling, item and content you generate or that relates to your account);
3. shipping, billing and other information you provide to purchase or ship an item;
4. community discussions, chats, forums, dispute resolution, correspondence through our sites, and correspondence sent to us;
5. other information from your interaction with our sites, services, content and advertising, including computer and connection information, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the sites, ad data, IP address and standard web log information;
6. information from other companies, such as demographic and traffic data; and
7. other supplemental information from third parties.
Marketing
We don't sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We may combine your information with information we collect from other companies and use it to improve and personalize our services, content and advertising. If you don't wish to receive marketing communications from us or participate in our ad-customization programs, simply indicate your preference once you sign-on in My Account (or similar account status page) or by following the directions provided in an email or from a link on the advertisement. We may aggregate information you have provided on Bookspoke, including reviews, survey questions and forum posts, and provide that information to other users without revealing your identity.
Use
Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. You agree that we may use your personal information to:
1. provide the services and customer support you request;
2. resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems;
3. prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and enforce our User Agreement;
4. customize, measure and improve our services, content and advertising;
5. tell you about targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences; and
6. compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third parties.
Our Disclosure of Your Information
We may disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements, enforce our policies, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property, or safety.
We may also share your personal information with:
1. Members of our corporate family to help detect and prevent potentially illegal acts and provide joint content and services (for example, registration, transactions and customer support). Our corporate affiliates will send marketing communications only to users who request these services.
2. Service providers under contract who help with our business operations (such as printers, fraud and/or copyright investigations, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs).
3. Other third parties to whom you explicitly ask us to send your information (or about whom you are otherwise explicitly notified and consent to when using a specific service).
4. Law enforcement or other governmental officials, in response to a verified request relating to a criminal investigation or alleged illegal activity. In such events, we will disclose information relevant to the investigation, such as name, city, state, zip code, telephone number, email address, User ID history, IP address, fraud complaints, and purchasing, bidding and listing history.
5. Other business entities, should we plan to merge with or be acquired by that business entity. (Should such a combination occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this privacy policy with respect to your personal information. If your personal information will be used contrary to this policy, you will receive prior notice.)
Without limiting the above, in an effort to respect your privacy and our ability to keep the community free from bad actors, we will not otherwise disclose your personal information to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties without a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal procedure, except when we believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected illegal activity.
Activity Associated with User IDs
Your User ID is displayed throughout Bookspoke and is therefore available to the public. All of your activity on our sites is traceable to your User ID. Other people can see your works that you have listed, ratings, comments, and so on. Notices are sent to other community members regarding suspicious activity and policy violations on our sites and refer to User IDs and specific items. Therefore, if you associate your name with your User ID, the people to whom you have revealed your name will be able to personally identify your Bookspoke activities.
Using Information from Bookspoke
Bookspoke enables you to share personal and financial information to complete transactions. We encourage you to disclose your privacy practices and respect the privacy of other users. We cannot guarantee the privacy or security of your information and therefore we encourage you to evaluate the privacy and security policies of your partner before entering into a transaction and choosing to share your information, especially if using an editor or purchasing a work through a third party. To help protect your privacy, we allow only limited access to other users' contact, shipping and financial information to facilitate your transactions. When users are involved in a transaction, they may have access to each other's name, User ID, email address and other contact and shipping information. In all cases, you must give other users a chance to remove themselves from your database and a chance to review what information you have collected about them.
You agree to use user information only for:
1. Bookspoke transaction-related purposes that are not unsolicited commercial messages;
2. using services offered through Bookspoke (e.g. escrow, print-on-demand, digital rights management, insurance, shipping and fraud complaints), or
3. other purposes that a user expressly chooses.
Cookies
We use "cookies" (small files placed on your hard drive) on certain of our pages to help analyze our web page flow; customize our services, content and advertising; measure promotional effectiveness, and promote trust and safety.
A few important things you should know about cookies are that:
1. We offer certain features that are available only through the use of cookies.
2. We use cookies to help identify you and maintain your signed-in status.
3. Most cookies are "session cookies," meaning that they are automatically deleted from your hard drive at the end of a session.
4. You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although doing so may interfere with your use of some of our sites or services.
5. You may encounter cookies from third parties on certain pages of the sites that we do not control. (For example, if you view a web page created by another user, there may be a cookie placed by that web page.)
No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing
We and our users do not tolerate spam. Make sure to set your Bookspoke notification preferences so we communicate to you as you prefer. You are not licensed to add other Bookspoke users, even a user who has purchased an item from you, to your mailing list (email or physical mail) without their express consent. To report Bookspoke-related spam or spoof emails to Bookspoke, please forward the email to spam@Bookspoke.com or spoof@Bookspoke.com. You may not use our communication tools to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate our User Agreement. We automatically scan and may manually filter messages to check for spam, viruses, phishing attacks and other malicious activity or illegal or prohibited content, but we do not permanently store messages sent through these tools. If you send an email to an email address that is not registered in our community, we do not permanently store that email or use that email address for any marketing purpose. We do not rent or sell these email addresses.
Account Protection
Your password is the key to your account. Use unique numbers, letters and special characters, and do not disclose your Bookspoke password to anyone. If you do share your password or your personal information with others, remember that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of your account. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personal information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately notify Bookspoke and change your password.
Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information
You can see, review and change most of your personal information by signing on to Bookspoke. Generally, we will not manually modify your personal information because it is very difficult to verify your identity remotely. You must promptly update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it. Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable law. We do retain personal information from closed accounts to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our Bookspoke User Agreement, and take other actions otherwise permitted by law.
If you choose a User Name that is similar or the same as a published author, poet, journalist, essayist or a similar professional in the publishing or e-publishing industry, we may require that you change your User Name. This will occur only if the author, etc. requests that User Name, and we verify that the author, etc. is, in fact, the same author popularly associated with his or her published works (for example, if you choose the User Name “John Grisham,” and the John Grisham who wrote The Firm asks for that user name, we will grant that name to John Grisham, even if you are a published author with the name John Grisham. We would likely ask you to change your name to JohnGrisham1 or another name substantially similar to your previous user name). If you do not change your User Name in the time permitted by us when we notify you, we may change your User Name or delete your account without further notice.
Security
Your information is stored on our servers located in the United States. We treat data as an asset that must be protected and use lots of tools (encryption, passwords, physical security, etc.) to protect your personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure. However, as you probably know, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, and other users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the site. Therefore, although we work very hard to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private.
Third Parties
Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. If you disclose your information to others, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Bookspoke does not control the privacy policies of third parties, and you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties where applicable. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.
General
We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on this site. All amended terms automatically take effect 30 days after they are initially posted on the Site. In addition, we will notify you through your email. If your questions are not answered online, you may write to us at: Bookspoke, LLC Attn: Legal - Privacy Practices, 57 E 3rd St., Suite 2A, New York, NY 10003, or using the Contact Us form.