www.valeriejoanconnors.com, including all of its features and content and related or commonly-owned or controlled websites (“Website”), is a service made available by www.valeriejoanconnors.com, a public benefit corporation that provides independently owned booksellers, industry partners, and conscious consumers with a direct-to-consumer e-commerce solution competitive to that of major retailers.
1. How This Privacy Policy Applies
This Privacy Policy describes the information www.valeriejoanconnors.com collects from you through the Website and SMS Service, how www.valeriejoanconnors.com uses that information, and its legal basis for doing so. It also covers whether and how that information may be shared and your rights and choices regarding such information. For residents of the European Economic Area, www.valeriejoanconnors.com is the data controller responsible for your information.
2. What Information www.valeriejoanconnors.com Collects and Receives
In order for you to use the Website or the SMS Service, www.valeriejoanconnors.com needs to collect and process certain information, which depending on how you use the Website, may include the following.
A. Information You Provide
(i) www.valeriejoanconnors.com collects information you provide by using the Website, such as when:
• Platform Sellers post Content (as such terms are defined in the Terms of Use).
• Users complete forms on or through the Website or subscribe to our newsletters or emails. The information you provide may include your name, email address, mailing address, or telephone number.
• Users make a request or transaction through the Website. www.valeriejoanconnors.com and Platform Sellers offer products for sale through the Website, and www.valeriejoanconnors.com and its payment processor will need to collect and use information such as your name, mailing address, billing address, email address, telephone number, and payment card information to process these requests and transactions.
• Users communicate with www.valeriejoanconnors.com, such as when you request support, submit comments or questions, or report a problem to www.valeriejoanconnors.com.
(ii) Through the use of the SMS Service, www.valeriejoanconnors.com will receive the following personal information:• Your mobile phone number when you send a text message to us.
• Any user or screen name you select in connection with the SMS Service.
• The text of messages that you send to other users of the SMS Service.
• Any comments or feedback regarding the SMS Service or other personal information you send to www.valeriejoanconnors.com.
B. Information Automatically Collected
www.valeriejoanconnors.com also automatically or passively collects information that relates to your usage of the Website or that is necessary for the proper functioning or improvement of the Website, including:
• Times and dates and the extent of your usage of the Website.
• Time zone, language, screen resolution, and other usage preferences you select when using the Website.
• Device keyboard settings.
• Usage history such as areas and pages within the Website that you access or use and/or which buttons on the Website you click on.
• The search terms you entered into a search engine that may have led you to the Website.
• The Internet service provider (ISP) or mobile platform you use.
• Other device and Website access information such as your browser type, operating system, Internet Protocol (IP) address, referring/exit pages, and other unique device identifiers.
www.valeriejoanconnors.com also collects and maintain aggregated, anonymized, or pseudonymized information to protect the safety and security of the Website, improve the Website, or comply with its legal obligations.
You may decline to provide www.valeriejoanconnors.com with some or all of your information. However, doing so will limit your ability to use the Website.
3. How www.valeriejoanconnors.com Uses the Information It Collects
(i) www.valeriejoanconnors.com uses the information it collects from and about you for the following purposes:
• To enable www.valeriejoanconnors.com to provide you and other Users with the Website, and to improve, protect, and promote the Website and services;
• To address inquiries and respond to customer service requests, questions, and comments;
• To contact you with newsletters, offers, promotions, and other product specials or to customize your experience on the Website;
• To track and analyze use of the Website and www.valeriejoanconnors.com’s services, such as to identify trends, conduct data analysis, and determine the effectiveness of marketing and promotion efforts, and other service offerings, so that www.valeriejoanconnors.com can improve its performance and provide Users with the best experience possible;
• To maintain security and to enforce the Terms of Use and comply with applicable law; and
• For other purposes that www.valeriejoanconnors.com believes are necessary to protect its rights and the rights of others, or as otherwise described to you at the time of collection.
(ii) With respect to the SMS Service, www.valeriejoanconnors.com uses personal information to (a) provide you with the SMS Service, (b) process and respond to inquiries, (c) improve the SMS Service, (d) if necessary, contact you with important announcements, or messages, (e) conduct research, and (f) provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients and partners.
Each message that you send through the SMS Service is stored on our servers. We retain these messages on our servers. www.valeriejoanconnors.com utilizes servers owned by third parties.
4. How www.valeriejoanconnors.com Shares the Information It Collects
www.valeriejoanconnors.com may share the information it collects from and about you in the following ways:
• Service Providers: www.valeriejoanconnors.com may share your information with certain service providers to help provide, improve, promote, or protect the Website, process payments, or manage ads on other websites. www.valeriejoanconnors.com requires those service providers use your information only for the purposes www.valeriejoanconnors.com has authorized and protect your personal information at least to the same standards as www.valeriejoanconnors.com does.
• Affiliates and Platform Sellers: www.valeriejoanconnors.com may share your contact information with an Affiliate if you visited www.valeriejoanconnors.com’s website via that Affiliate’s referral link, or you shopped from the Affiliate’s book lists or a Platform Seller’s page on our Website. We will only share your information with Platform Seller from whom you purchase.
• Legal Matters; Safety: www.valeriejoanconnors.com reserves the right to disclose information www.valeriejoanconnors.com collects from or about you when doing so is reasonably necessary to comply with the law or law enforcement, to prevent fraud or abuse, or to protect the legal rights, property, or the safety of www.valeriejoanconnors.com, Users, or others.
• Sale or Transfer of Assets: In the event that www.valeriejoanconnors.com is acquired by or merged with a third-party entity, or sells all or substantially all of its assets, www.valeriejoanconnors.com reserves the right, in any of these circumstances, to transfer or assign the information it has collected from and about Users as part of such merger, acquisition, sale, or other change of control. In the unlikely event of bankruptcy, insolvency, reorganization, receivership, or assignment for the benefit of creditors, or the application of laws or equitable principles affecting creditors’ rights generally, www.valeriejoanconnors.com may not be able to control how your personal information is treated, transferred, or used.
• Aggregate or Anonymous Information: www.valeriejoanconnors.com may also share information that is aggregated or anonymized in a way that it does not directly identify you.
• Publicly Available Information: When Platform Sellers post Content, all Users will be able to view such Content. Platform Sellers should not post any information, including personal information, that they do not want to be publicly accessible.
The above excludes the sharing of any personal information collected by the SMS Service, which shall not be shared with any third parties.
5. Tracking and Other Technologies
A. Types of Cookies www.valeriejoanconnors.com Utilizes
www.valeriejoanconnors.com uses the following types of cookies and other technologies:
• User Information: www.valeriejoanconnors.com will store a logged-in User’s information to remember the customer information you gave us so that you do not have to re-enter it when making additional purchases.
• Shopping Cart Contents: www.valeriejoanconnors.com also uses cookies to keep track of items you put into your shopping cart including when you have abandoned your cart and this information is used to determine when to send cart reminder messages via the SMS Service
• Security: www.valeriejoanconnors.com secures the Website with cookies that facilitate security features and allow www.valeriejoanconnors.com to detect activity that might violate the Terms of Use, such as unauthorized access or activity.
• Localization: Some cookies help www.valeriejoanconnors.com provide localized experiences, such as displaying the Website in the local language.
• Site Features and Services: Certain cookies provide greater functionality to the Website and help www.valeriejoanconnors.com deliver our products and services.
• Performance: www.valeriejoanconnors.com uses performance cookies to help route traffic between servers and understand how the Website is performing so www.valeriejoanconnors.com can provide Users with the best experience possible.
• Analytics and Research: Cookies and other technologies also help www.valeriejoanconnors.com to understand, improve, and research features and content on the Website.
B. Limiting or Blocking Cookies and Our Do Not Track Policy
Your browser may give you the ability to control cookies, which may depend on the type of cookie, and browsers can be set to reject browser cookies. However, blocking or deleting cookies may prevent you from using most of the Website. Some browsers have “do not track” features that allow you to tell a website not to track you. These features are not all uniform. If you block cookies, certain features on the Website may not work. If you block or reject cookies, not all of the tracking described in this Privacy Policy will necessarily stop. Note that certain options you select are specific to certain browsers and devices. Our system may not recognize Do Not Track requests or headers from some or all browsers.
C. Web Beacons
The Website may contain electronic images known as web beacons (sometimes called single-pixel gifs) and are used along with cookies to compile aggregated statistics to analyze how the Website is used. www.valeriejoanconnors.com uses third parties to gather information about how you and others use the Website. For example, www.valeriejoanconnors.com will know how many Users access a specific page and what Website Content they clicked on. www.valeriejoanconnors.com uses this aggregated information1 to understand and optimize how the Website is used.
D. Social Media Plug-Ins
www.valeriejoanconnors.com may use certain social media plug-ins (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) to allow you to communicate with such services and interact (e.g., “like” or “comment”) with various Website content. The social media plug-in will enable a direct communication between your end user device and the servers of the applicable social media provider, allowing the applicable social media provider to communicate with you and collect information about you browsing the Website. If you decide to use a social media plug-in, www.valeriejoanconnors.com may transfer your information to the social media provider, whether or not you have a registered user account with the applicable social media provider. www.valeriejoanconnors.com is not responsible for the content and the data collection on respective third-party websites or apps and that www.valeriejoanconnors.com neither controls the extent of personally information collected by the respective plug-in provider nor knows the processing’s purpose or the period your personally information will be retained. For further information as to how and for what purpose certain social network providers process your data, please see the relevant privacy policies of the applicable social media provider.
6. Your Rights
A. Information for California Residents
California residents may also take advantage of the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA):
• Access: You may request, up to two times each year, that we disclose to you the categories and specific pieces of personal information that we have collected from and about you, and how we used, disclosed, and sold that personal information.
• Deletion: You may request that we delete any personal information that we have collected from or about you. Please note that we may not always be able to fully address your request, such as if we need the information to complete a transaction for you, to detect and protect against fraudulent and illegal activity, to exercise our rights, or to comply with a legal obligation.
We value your privacy and will not discriminate in response to your exercise of your privacy rights.
In addition to the information provided throughout this Privacy Policy, we make the following disclosures:
• We collected the following categories of personal information within the previous 12 months: identifiers/contact information, commercial information, internet or other electronic network activity information, geolocation, and inferences drawn from the above.
• We disclosed the following categories of personal information for a business purpose within the previous 12 months: identifiers/contact information, commercial information, internet or other electronic network activity information, geolocation, and inferences drawn from the above. We disclosed this personal information to the service providers, Affiliates and Platform Sellers described in Section 4, above.
B. Information for European Economic Area Residents
If you are a resident of the European Economic Area and would like to gain access to, update, erase, or restrict or withdraw any consent to the processing of certain information collected from and about you through the Website, please contact us at [email protected].
In addition, residents of the European Economic Area also have the right to object to the processing of such information and, in some instances, the right to request that we export, in a structured, commonly used, machine readable, and interoperable format, and transmit to another controller, such information.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires a “lawful basis” for collecting and retaining personal information from citizens or residents of the European Economic Area. www.valeriejoanconnors.com’s lawful bases include:
• Consent: In certain cases, you have affirmatively provided www.valeriejoanconnors.com with your consent to collect your personal information for a specific purpose, such as providing your name and email address when you register for an Account.
• Contract: www.valeriejoanconnors.com may need your personal information to comply with contractual obligations to deliver the Website, such as fulfilling transactions for Merchandise.
• Legal Obligations: Sometimes the law requires the collection and use of your information. For example, applicable tax laws may require www.valeriejoanconnors.com to retain records of payments made through the Website.
• Legitimate Interests: This is a technical term that means www.valeriejoanconnors.com has a good and fair reason to use your information and in ways that do not harm your interests and rights, such as in a way that might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and that does not materially impact your rights, freedom, or interests. For example, www.valeriejoanconnors.com uses identity, device, and location information to prevent fraud and abuse and to keep the Website secure. We may also send you promotional communications about the Website and services subject to your right to opt out, as well as analyze how Users interact with the Website so www.valeriejoanconnors.com can understand better what elements do or do not work well, thereby facilitating improvements and developments in the quality of the online experience for all Users.
C. Email Notifications
www.valeriejoanconnors.com wants to communicate with you only if you want to hear from us. www.valeriejoanconnors.com will send you emails relating to your transactions on or through the Website, as well as service-related announcements when necessary. You may also elect to receive marketing emails, in accordance with your preferences, and from which you may opt out at any time by adjusting your notification settings. www.valeriejoanconnors.com will try to keep emails to a minimum and give you the ability to opt in to any marketing communications.
7. Links to Other Websites and Services
The Website may include links to other websites or services whose privacy practices may differ from the privacy practices as described in this Privacy Policy. When you click or otherwise use a link to an external website or service, the privacy policy and data processing disclosures for that website or service govern.
8. Data Retention
www.valeriejoanconnors.com will retain the information collected from or about you as long as necessary to provide you with the Website or www.valeriejoanconnors.com’s services, as otherwise set forth in this Privacy Policy, and to the extent necessary to comply with www.valeriejoanconnors.com’s legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and protect our legal rights. Additionally, www.valeriejoanconnors.com may retain indefinitely any aggregated or anonymized information, and may from time to time transfer or merge your information collected off-line to our online databases or store off-line information in an electronic format.
9. Cross-Border Data Transfers
www.valeriejoanconnors.com is based in the United States so your information will be collected and processed in the United States, which has its own laws governing data protection and access to it, including by the government. If you reside outside of the United States, be advised that the rules that protect your personal information under United States federal, state, and local law may differ from those of your home country. With respect to any personal information that may be originally collected and stored in the European Economic Area, if and when www.valeriejoanconnors.com transfers your personal information to countries outside the European Economic Area, it will do so under the European Commission’s model contracts for the transfer of personal information to third countries (i.e., standard contractual clauses) pursuant to 2004/915/EC or 2010/87/EU (as appropriate). For a copy of these Standard Contractual Clauses, please contact www.valeriejoanconnors.com at [email protected].
10. Children’s Privacy
The privacy of children is of the utmost importance, and www.valeriejoanconnors.com is committed to complying with applicable privacy law, including the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). www.valeriejoanconnors.com does not knowingly collect or process personal information from children under the age of sixteen (16). If www.valeriejoanconnors.com ever discovers that it has inadvertently collected or processed personal information from a child under the age of sixteen (16) on or through the Website, www.valeriejoanconnors.com will take steps to delete such personal information from its records as soon as possible. We do not knowingly sell the personal information of minors under the age of sixteen (16) without such persons’ affirmative authorization as required by applicable law.
11. Security
www.valeriejoanconnors.com takes security seriously, and the security of your personal data is important to us. www.valeriejoanconnors.com follows industry-standard practices to protect the data www.valeriejoanconnors.com collects and maintains, including using Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt information as it travels over the Internet. However, the nature of security risks is constantly evolving, as are the technical and organizational industry standards relating to management of those risks, and www.valeriejoanconnors.com cannot guarantee the complete security of any information it collects, stores, or uses.
12. Updates to this Privacy Policy
www.valeriejoanconnors.com may change the terms of this Privacy Policy at any time. Whenever www.valeriejoanconnors.com makes a material change, www.valeriejoanconnors.com will provide appropriate notice to you. The effective date of the most recent version of this Privacy Policy will appear at the top of this page.
