Privacy Policy
Websites operated by us from which you are accessing this Privacy Policy;
Software applications made available by us for use on or through computers and mobile devices;
Our social media pages;
Email messages that we send to you that link to this Privacy Policy or other communications with you; and
Offline business interactions you have with us.
Collectively, we refer to the websites, apps, social media pages, emails, and offline business interactions as the “Services.”
PERSONAL INFORMATION
“Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable individual. The Services collect Personal Information, including:
Name
Postal address (including billing and shipping addresses)
Telephone number
Email address
IP address (we may also derive your approximate location from your IP address)
Payment card data
Login credentials such as username and password
Demographic information such as date of birth, age, grade, and gender identity or expression
Writing assignments and other submitted content
Collection of Personal Information
We and our service providers collect Personal Information in a variety of ways, including:
Through the Services. We collect Personal Information through the Services, for example, when you sign up for a newsletter, register an account to access the Services, attend one of our events, contact customer service, or make a purchase.
From Other Sources. We receive your Personal Information from other sources, for example: (i) publicly available databases; and (ii) joint marketing or business partners when they share the information with us.
We need to collect Personal Information in order to provide the requested Services to you. If you do not provide the information requested, we may not be able to provide the Services. If you disclose any Personal Information relating to other people to us or to our service providers in connection with the Services, you represent that you have the authority to do so and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Use of Personal Information
We and our service providers use Personal Information for the following purposes:
Providing the functionality of the Services and fulfilling your requests.
To provide the Services’ functionality to you, such as arranging access to your registered account, and providing you with related benefits, special promotions, or customer service.
To respond to your inquiries and fulfill your requests, when you contact us via one of our online contact forms or otherwise, for example, when you send us questions, suggestions, compliments, or complaints, or when you request a quote for or other information about our Services.
To complete your transactions, process returns and exchanges, and verify your information.
To send administrative information to you, such as changes to our terms, conditions, and policies.
To allow you to send messages to another person through the Services if you choose to do so.
Providing you with our newsletter and/or other marketing materials and facilitating social sharing.
To send you marketing related emails, with information about our services, new products, and other news about our company.
To facilitate social sharing functionality that you choose to use.
Analyzing Personal Information for business reporting and providing personalized services.
To analyze or predict our users’ preferences in order to prepare aggregated trend reports on how our digital content is used, so we can improve our Services.
To better understand your interests and preferences, so that we can personalize our interactions with you.
To better understand your preferences so that we can deliver content via our Services that we believe will be relevant and interesting to you.
Allowing you to participate in sweepstakes, contests, or other promotions.
We may offer you the opportunity to participate in a sweepstakes, contest, or other promotion.
Some of these promotions have additional rules containing information about how we will use and disclose your Personal Information. Please read those additional rules before choosing to participate.
Aggregating and/or anonymizing Personal Information.
We may aggregate and/or anonymize Personal Information so that it will no longer be considered Personal Information. We do so to generate other data for our use, which we may use and disclose for any purpose, as it no longer identifies you or any other individual.
Accomplishing our business purposes.
For data analysis, for example, to improve the efficiency of our Services.
For audits, to verify that our internal processes function as intended and to address legal, regulatory, or contractual requirements.
For fraud prevention and security monitoring purposes, for example, to detect and prevent cyberattacks or attempts to commit identity theft.
For developing new products and services.
For enhancing, improving, repairing, maintaining, or modifying our current products and services, as well as undertaking quality and safety assurance measures.
For identifying usage trends, for example, understanding which parts of our Services are of most interest to users.
For determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, so that we can adapt our campaigns to the needs and interests of our users.
For operating and expanding our business activities.
Disclosure of Personal Information
We disclose Personal Information:
To our third-party service providers, to facilitate services they provide to us.
These can include providers of services such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, order fulfillment, return authorization, fraud prevention, information technology and related infrastructure provision, customer service or related benefits (including special promotions), email delivery, auditing, and other services.
To third parties with which we partner to offer products and services, including to permit them to send you marketing communications.
To third party sponsors of sweepstakes, contests, and similar promotions.
By using the Services, you may elect to disclose Personal Information.
On message boards, chat, profile pages, blogs, and other services that allow you to communicate with others and to post information and content (including, without limitation, our social media pages). Please note that any information you post or disclose through these services may become public and may be available to other users and the general public.
Other Uses and Disclosures
We also use and disclose your Personal Information as necessary or appropriate:
To comply with applicable law and regulations.
This may include laws outside your country of residence.
To cooperate with public and government authorities.
To respond to a request or to provide information we believe is necessary or appropriate.
These can include authorities outside your country of residence.
To cooperate with law enforcement.
For example, when we respond to law enforcement requests and orders or provide information that we believe is important.
For other legal reasons.
To enforce our terms and conditions.
To protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property, and/or that of you or others.
In connection with a sale or business transaction.
We may disclose or transfer your Personal Information to a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets, or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).
OTHER INFORMATION
“Other Information” is any information that does not reveal your specific identity or does not directly relate to an identifiable individual. We collect Other Information such as:
Browser and device information
Usage data
Information collected through cookies, pixel tags and other technologies
Information that has been aggregated in a manner such that it no longer reveals your specific identity
Other information provided by you that does not reveal your specific identity
Collection of Other Information
We and our service providers may collect Other Information in a variety of ways, including:
Your browser or device.
Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device, such as your Media Access Control (MAC) address, computer type (Windows or Mac), screen resolution, operating system name and version, device manufacturer and model, language, Internet browser type and version and the name and version of the Services you are using. We use this information to ensure that the Services function properly.
Your use of the Services.
When you use the Services, we and our service providers may track and collect usage data, such as the date and time your device accesses our servers.
Cookies.
Cookies are pieces of information stored directly on the computer that you are using. Cookies allow us to collect information such as browser type, time spent on the Services, pages visited, language preferences, and other traffic data. We and our service providers use the information for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, to display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience. We also gather statistical information about use of the Services in order to continually improve their design and functionality, understand how they are used, and assist us with resolving questions regarding them. We do not currently respond to browser do-not-track signals. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, most browsers allow you to automatically decline cookies or be given the choice of declining or accepting a particular cookie (or cookies) from a particular website. You may also wish to refer to http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html If, however, you do not accept cookies, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of the Services.
Pixel tags and other similar technologies.
Pixel tags. Pixel tags (also known as web beacons and clear GIFs) may be used to, among other things, track the actions of users of the Services (including email recipients), measure the success of our marketing campaigns, and compile statistics about usage of the Services and response rates.
Analytics. We use Google Analytics, which uses cookies and similar technologies to collect and analyze information about use of the Services and report on activities and trends. This service may also collect information regarding the use of other websites, apps, and online resources. You can learn about Google’s practices by going to www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/, and exercise the opt-out provided by Google by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Invisible reCAPTCHA. We may use Google’s invisible reCAPTCHA application on our Services in order to protect against spam and other automated abuse. The reCAPTCHA tool may make use of cookies, as well as other information like IP address, date, time, language, screen size and resolution, and mouse movements. The use of the reCAPTCHA tool and any information collected through the tool are subject to Google’s privacy policy, available at https://policies.google.com/privacy, and Google’s terms of service, available at https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en
Adobe Flash technology (including Flash Local Shared Objects (“Flash LSOs”)) and other similar technologies.
We may use Flash LSOs and other technologies to, among other things, collect and store information about your use of the Services. If you do not want Flash LSOs stored on your computer, you can adjust the settings of your Flash player to block Flash LSO storage using the tools contained in the Website Storage Settings Panel. You can also go to the Global Storage Settings Panel and follow the instructions (which may explain, for example, how to delete existing Flash LSOs (referred to as “information”), how to prevent Flash LSOs from being placed on your computer without your being asked, and how to block Flash LSOs that are not being delivered by the operator of the page you are on at the time). Please note that setting the Flash Player to restrict or limit acceptance of Flash LSOs may reduce or impede the functionality of some Flash applications.
Uses and Disclosures of Other Information
We may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose, except where we are required to do otherwise under applicable law. If we are required to treat Other Information as Personal Information under applicable law, we may use and disclose it for the purposes for which we use and disclose Personal Information as detailed in this Privacy Policy. In some instances, we may combine Other Information with Personal Information. If we do, we will treat the combined information as Personal Information as long as it is combined.
SECURITY
We seek to use reasonable organizational, technical, and administrative measures to protect Personal Information within our organization. Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contact Us” section below.
CHOICES
We give you choices regarding our use and disclosure of your Personal Information for marketing purposes. You may opt out from receiving marketing-related emails from us. If you no longer want to receive marketing related emails from us on a going-forward basis, you may opt out by following the unsubscribe instructions in the message.
We will try to comply with your request(s) as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that if you opt out of receiving marketing related emails from us, we may still send you important administrative messages, from which you cannot opt out.
RETENTION PERIOD
We retain Personal Information for as long as needed or permitted in light of the purpose(s) for which it was obtained and consistent with applicable law.
The criteria we may use to determine our retention periods include:
The length of time we have an ongoing relationship with you and provide the Services to you (for example, for as long as you have an account with us or keep using the Services);
Whether there is a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, certain laws require us to keep records of your transactions for a certain period of time before we can delete them); or
Whether retention is advisable in light of our legal position (such as in regard to applicable statutes of limitations, litigation, or regulatory investigations).
THIRD PARTY SERVICES
This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information, or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any website or service to which the Services link. The inclusion of a link on the Services does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us.
In addition, we are not responsible for the information collection, use, disclosure, or security policies or practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, or other social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider, or device manufacturer, including with respect to any Personal Information you disclose to other organizations through or in connection with the Services or our social media pages.
USE OF SERVICES BY CHILDREN
When a user who is under the age of 13 seeks to create an account online, we collect the child’s first name and the parent’s email address in order to seek parental consent to our collection of personal information from the child. If a parent or guardian provides consent to our collection of Personal Information from the child, we may collect the categories of Personal Information listed above, under “Personal Information,” and use and disclose such information for the purposes described in that section. We may also collect and use Other Information, as set forth above, under “Other Information.”
If you would like to review the Personal Information we have collected from your child, or if you would like to ask us to make no further use of, or delete, the Personal Information we have collected from your child, please contact us as described in the “Contact Us” section, below. In your request, please include your name and your child’s name, and specify the action you would like us to take. For your child’s protection, we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request.
JURISDICTION AND CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER
Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and by using the Services you understand that your information will be transferred to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country.
THIRD PARTY PAYMENT SERVICE
The Services may provide functionality allowing you to make payments to the Company using third-party payment services with which you have created your own account. When you use such a service to make a payment to us, your Personal Information will be collected by such third party and not by us, and will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, this third party’s collection, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information.
UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
The “LAST UPDATED” legend at the top of this Privacy Policy indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Services.
CONTACT US
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at [email protected], or:
432 Broadway, Ste. 1A
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Because email communications are not always secure, please do not include credit card or other sensitive information in your emails to us.