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Pressbooks Privacy Policy
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Privacy Policy

(Effective September 22, 2023)

Welcome!

Welcome to Pressbooks! We hope you will enjoy and appreciate using our “Services”, which may be: visiting our website at https://pressbooks.com/ (the “Website”); signing up and using the book creation platform for individual authors available at https://pressbooks.pub/ (the “Platform”), where you may purchase a “Subscription” to use the Platform or purchase “Premium Support”; using Pressbooks Directory at https://pressbooks.directory/ (the “Directory”) or accessing any other Pressbooks websites or services which may be specified in this Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) from time to time.

Book Oven Inc. d.b.a Pressbooks (the company that owns and operates the Services) takes your privacy and security of personal data very seriously. We have provided and will continue to provide a secure environment.  This strict Policy describes the limited ways your information is used and the limited access to such information. We ask that you read it carefully.

Key Elements of this Policy

The table below outlines the key elements of this Policy you need to make informed decisions about your consent for our collection, use and disclosure of your personal data. By submitting any personal data to us via any means, you consent to such collection, use and disclosure. You can find further details in the rest of the Policy.

Personal Information we collect from you but only with your consent

What we do with it

Third parties we share it with

Newsletter Information (your email address)

Send you our newsletter and other relevant communications

Companies that support our email communications for the newsletter, specifically HubSpot

Contact Information (your name, email address, and any other personal information you may share with us)

Contact you about the Services or reply to your inquiry

Companies that provide CRM services, specifically HubSpot and Zendesk

Platform Account Information (your email address)

To create a Platform account for you, to communicate with you about your account, and to control your access to the Platform

Companies that provide the infrastructure for the Services, specifically Amazon AWS and companies that support email communications with customers, specifically Hubspot

Billing Information (your credit card information)

Process your payments for your Subscription or Premium Support

Payment processors, specifically Stripe

Some Terms

Before we really get started, here are a few terms you should know as you read this Policy.

Data Protection Laws” refers to the laws that are designed to protect your personal data and privacy in the place where you live. These include: (1) the “GDPR”, the European data protection law which stands for “General Data Protection Regulation”, with the official name Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council; (2) “PIPEDA” (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act), which is the Canadian Data Protection Law that applies to our activities in Canada; (3) An Act Respecting the Protection Of Personal Information in the Private Sector (the “Quebec Privacy Act”) as amended by Law 25, which applies to our activities in Quebec; (4) the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) which applies to our activities in the United States in certain circumstances; and (5) the “UK GDPR” which applies to our activities in the United Kingdom; please note that when this Policy refers only to the “GDPR”, this includes the UK GDPR as applicable. Pressbooks is committed to adhering to all these applicable Data Protection laws.

Personal data” – this is information we collect from you or about you and which is defined in the GDPR as “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.” It can be as simple as your name or your email, or something more complicated like an online identifier (usually a string of letters and / or numbers) that gets attached to you. Under PIPEDA, the CCPA and the Quebec Privacy Act, the equivalent concept is “personal information”, which is roughly the same. Any mention of “personal data” in this Policy shall also mean personal information.

About Us and Contacting Us

Book Oven Inc. d.b.a Pressbooks is a registered corporation located in the Province of Quebec, Canada, with an office at the address listed below. Where this Policy refers to “Pressbooks”, it may refer to Book Oven Inc. and / or its affiliates, subsidiaries and parent companies and / or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, partners, principals, representatives, successors and assigns (collectively “Representatives”), depending on the context. Any reference to “we”, “our”, or “us” in this Policy shall also refer to Pressbooks. In this Policy a Services user may be referred to as “you”.

Under the GDPR, Pressbooks is a “Data Controller”. That means we collect personal data directly from you and determine the purpose and means of “processing” that data. “Processing” is a broad term that means collection, use, storage, transfer or any other action related to your personal data; it is used in this Policy in that way. Under PIPEDA, Pressbooks is an “organization”, and under the Quebec Privacy Act, Pressbooks is an “enterprise”. PIPEDA uses the phrase “collection, use and disclosure” and the Quebec Privacy Act uses “collects, holds, uses or communicates to third parties” as the rough equivalent to the “processing” of the GDPR. When we use “processing” in this Policy, you can substitute either of those phrases.

If you want to ask us anything about what’s in this Policy, or anything else privacy- or data-related, you can contact us at:

privacy@pressbooks.com 

or:

5455 De Gaspe Avenue, Suite 710
Montreal, QC
Canada
H2T 3B3

Data Protection Officer

In addition to the contact information above Pressbooks has designated Allen Mendelsohn as our  Data Protection Officer (DPO) who is responsible for all personal data matters at Pressbooks. If you have a specific complaint or wish to invoke your legal rights under any Data Protection Law, please contact our DPO directly at dpo@pressbooks.com.  

Your Rights 

You have the following rights regarding your personal data held by Pressbooks, and other rights. Please note that not necessarily all of these rights may be available to you; this depends on the Data Protection Laws where you are located that apply to you. These rights may be exercised without affecting the price you pay for any of the Services, if any.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at the contact information above, or refer to the relevant sections further in this Policy.

Please note that if you request erasure of your personal data we shall do it to the extent feasible; however Pressbooks reserves the right to retain some of your personal data for a reasonable time in order to satisfy certain legal obligations or under a legal procedure of any sort. Furthermore, deletion of your personal data may prevent you from using all or a portion of the Services.

Limited Personal Data Collected from You and What We Use It For

Pressbooks limits the amount of personal data we collect to only what is necessary and appropriate for the identified purposes. We will not use or disclose your personal data for purposes other than those for which it was collected, except with your consent or as permitted or required by applicable law.

In the table below, please find all the personal data we may collect from you directly, what we use it for, and the legal basis under the GDPR for us having and processing this personal data. Under PIPEDA, the CCPA and the Quebec Privacy Act, the legal basis is your informed consent, and by submitting this personal data you acknowledge having granted this consent to Pressbooks.

Personal Information category

Personal Information processed

What we use it for (the “purpose” of processing)

Legal basis for processing under the GDPR

Newsletter information

Your email address

To send you the newsletter and other relevant communications

Your consent in giving us this information

Contact Information

Your name, email address, and any other personal information you may choose to share

To communicate with you about the Services or respond to your inquiry

Your consent in giving us this information

Platform Account Information

Your email address and optionally your name

To create an account on the Platform for you, to communicate with you about your account, and control your access to the Platform

Your consent in giving us this information

Support Information

Your email address

Provide support for the Platform when you contact us to request support

Your consent in giving us this information and performance of a contract between you and us

Billing Information

Credit card holder name, credit card number, expiration date, CVV/CVC number and billing address (if required by your credit card agreement)

Process your payments for your Subscription or Premium Support

Performance of a contract between you and us

Where you have provided personal data further to the contract between you and us, if you fail to provide such data or withdraw your consent to use such data, you may no longer be able to access certain of the Services, including the Platform.

Personal Data Collected About You from Third Parties and What We Use It For

Sometimes we get personal data about you from third parties. This table explains the details about this personal data – what it is, where it came from, what we do with it, and legal basis for us having and processing this personal data under the GDPR. Under PIPEDA, the CCPA and the Quebec Privacy Act, the legal basis is your informed consent. None of this data comes from publicly-available sources.

Personal data category

Personal data processed

Who we get the data from

What we use it for

(the “purpose” of processing)

Legal basis for processing under the GDPR

Platform Account Information

Your email address, and sometimes additional personal data such as your name, depending on the third-party service

A third-party service (such as Facebook) if you choose to create an account on the Platform via a third-party internet service account

To create an account on the Platform for you

Your consent

To the extent that analytics identifiers and IP addresses are generated by or collected from third parties, these may be considered personal data collected from third parties, and you can find details about that further below in this Policy.

Sensitive Personal Data

We do not collect any of what the GDPR considers sensitive personal data from you, unless you voluntarily submit it to us, which we encourage you not to do.

Who We Transfer Your Personal Data To

We routinely share some of your personal data with certain types of third parties who are identified in the table below along with what they do with it. Please note that some of those third-party recipients may be based outside your home jurisdiction. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom— please see the “Transfer of Your Personal Data Outside of the European Economic Area” further down in this Policy for more information including on how we safeguard your personal data when this occurs. If you are in Quebec, please see the “Transfer of Your Personal Data Outside of Quebec” section further down in this Policy for information on how we safeguard your personal data when this occurs.

We will share personal data with law enforcement or other public authorities if: (1) we are required by applicable law in response to lawful requests, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; (2) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, fraud, or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, or any violation of any Pressbooks Services Terms of Use or Terms and Conditions; or (3) if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding situations that involve abuse of the Services infrastructure or the Internet in general (such as voluminous spamming, denial of service attacks, or attempts to compromise the security of the Services infrastructure or the Services generally).

We may also share personal data: (1) to a parent company, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control with Pressbooks (in which case we will require such entities to honour this Policy); (2) if Pressbooks merges with another entity, is subject to a corporate reorganization, sells or transfers all or part of its business, assets or shares (in which case we will require such entity to assume our obligations under this Policy, or inform you that you are covered by a new privacy policy).

We will never share your personal data with other third parties except under these circumstances. We do not sell or rent your personal data to any third party for direct marketing purposes or any other purpose.

Personal data category

Who we transfer it to

What they do with it

Newsletter Information

HubSpot

Send you the newsletter and other relevant communications

Contact Information

Companies that provide CRM services, specifically HubSpot and Zendesk

Store it so that we can communicate with you about the Services and / or respond to your inquiry

Platform Account Information

  • Companies that provide email services, such as Mailgun
  • Companies that provide the infrastructure for the Services, specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Companies that support our email communications with customers, specifically Hubspot
  • Send you emails
  • Store it to facilitate your logging-in to the Platform

Support Information

Companies that help us manage our support services, specifically Zendesk

Store it so that we may retrieve it to communicate with you about your support request, and keep records of the progress of your support request

Billing Information

Payment processing companies, particularly Stripe 

Process the payments for your purchase of a Subscription or Premium Support

Analytics identifiers and IP addresses

Companies that provide data analytics, specifically Google Analytics

Provide us with analytics as to how the Services are used and to trace fraudulent activities, as further detailed in the Limited Gathering of Information section below

Limited Gathering of Information for Statistical, Analytical and Security Purposes

Pressbooks automatically collects certain information using the “Third-Party Analytics ProgramsGoogle Analytics and HubSpot to help us understand how our users use the Services, but none of this information identifies you personally, except via an alphanumeric string. For example, each time you visit the Website or log in to the Platform, we automatically collect (as applicable) your IP address, browser and computer or device type, access times, the web page from which you came, the web page(s) or content you access, and other related information. We use information collected in this manner only to better understand your needs and the needs of Services Users in the aggregate. Additionally, HubSpot gathers information about the website activity of individual visitors who have submitted Contact Information to us, using cookies as described further in this Policy. Pressbooks also makes use of information gathered for statistical purposes to keep track of the number of visits to the Website and Platform, the specific pages on the Website and Platform, and users with a view to introducing improvements to the Services.

Your IP address and other relevant information we collect using the Third-Party Analytics Programs may be used in order to trace any fraudulent or criminal activity, or any activity in violation of any applicable Pressbooks Terms of Use.

Pressbooks also makes use of the Third-Party Analytics Program Koko Analytics, but absolutely no transfer of personal data occurs to or from Koko Analytics.

Email Communications and Compliance with Anti-Spam Laws

Pressbooks uses HubSpot to manage customer communications, newsletter mailing lists, to send out our newsletter and communicate with you about the Services, and Mailgun to send out emails related to various Platform functions (HubSpot and Mailgun, together the “Email Service Providers”). Personal data (your email address) is transferred to the Email Service Providers in order to manage mailing lists and for the emails to be sent out properly. Your personal data is only used to send emails and communications on behalf of Pressbooks; the Email Service Providers do not use this personal data for any other purpose, and will not transfer or sell your personal data to any other third party. For more information, please refer to HubSpot’s Privacy Policy and Mailgun's Privacy Policy.

You may unsubscribe from Pressbooks’ mailing list at any time by following the link at the bottom of all Pressbooks emails. Other types of emails, such as transactional, relational, and other emails related to certain Platform functions will not have an opt-out option as they are necessary for the use of the Platform.

Pressbooks’ practices in regards to its email are designed to be compliant with anti-spam laws, including the American CAN-SPAM Act and the law unofficially called “CASL”, or Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (S.C. 2010, c. 23). If you believe you have received email in violation of these laws or any other anti-spam law, please contact us using the contact information further up in this Policy.

Tracking Technology (“Cookies” and Related Technologies)

This section summarizes the use of tracking technologies in the Services. For more detailed information, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Pressbooks uses tracking technology (“cookies” and related technology such as tags, pixels and web beacons) in the Services and by interacting with the Services you agree to their use. Cookies are small text files placed on your computer or device when you visit a website or use an online service, in order to track use of the site or service and to improve the user experience by storing certain data on your computer or device. By default, all non-necessary cookies are turned off when you first visit the website; you can use our cookie management tool in the cookie banner presented to you to accept or decline categories of cookies.

Specifically, we use cookies and related technologies for the following functions:

Your browser or device can be set to refuse cookies or delete them after they have been stored. You can refer to your browser’s or device’s help section for instructions, but here are instructions for the most commonly-used browsers and operating systems:

Please note that deleting or blocking certain cookies may reduce your user experience by requiring you to re-enter certain information, including information required to use certain of the Services. Furthermore, deleting certain cookies may prevent certain functions, or the entirety of the Platform, from working at all.

How We Protect Your Personal Data

We have implemented very strict technical and organisational procedures for ensuring that, by default, only personal data which are necessary for each specific purpose of the processing are processed by us. These procedures prevent your personal data from being lost; or used or accessed in any unauthorised way. Examples of such procedures include restricted access to offices, training of personnel, using passwords and well-defined internal policies and information technology practices.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable supervisory authority of a suspected data security breach where the Data Protection Laws requires us to do so, and within the time frame required by the applicable Data Protection Law.

Pressbooks uses only industry best practices (physical, electronic and procedural) in keeping any data collected (including personal data) secure. In addition, we use third-party vendors and hosting partners to provide the necessary hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology required to operate the Services, and these third parties have been selected for their high standards of security, both electronic and physical. For example, Pressbooks uses vendors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), a recognized leader in secure data, for hosting of the Services and related data, and storage of data including personal data.

All information, including personal data, is transferred with encryption using Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) or Transport Layer Security (“TLS”), robust security standards for Internet data transfer and transactions. You can use your browser to check Pressbooks’ valid SSL security certificates on the Website and Platform.

Internal Procedures and Policies

In addition to the measures to protect your personal data described in the previous section, we have drafted and implemented certain internal procedures and policies regarding personal data, including the following:

  1. A framework for the keeping and destruction of the personal data, including where we may keep anonymized data;
  2. Defining and describing the roles and responsibilities of the members of Pressbooks personnel throughout the life cycle of the personal data; and
  3. A process for dealing with individual complaints and requests for personal data and exercising of the individual’s rights under Data Protection Laws.
  4. A management and IT policy and procedure for addressing potential data breach incidents involving personal data in the custody of Pressbooks.

Transfer of Your Personal Data Outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) and the United Kingdom (U.K.)

For our European users, we endeavour to keep your personal data inside the EEA or the U.K. (as applicable). However, certain of our data processors (and Pressbooks) are in other countries where your personal data may be transferred. However, these countries are limited to countries with particular circumstances that protect your data, specifically:

That’s it! You have the right, however, to refuse to have your data transferred outside the EEA or the U.K. Please contact our privacy officer to make that request. Please note that making this request may prevent you from being able to use a portion or all of the Services, though we will make every attempt to ensure this is not the case.

Transfer of Your Personal Data Outside of Quebec

For our Quebec users and visitors, we endeavour to keep your personal data in Quebec. However, certain of our third-party service providers are in other provinces or countries where your personal data may be transferred. When this happens, we do the following to safeguard your personal data:

  1. We will perform what the Quebec Privacy Act calls an “Assessment of the privacy-related factors” (what is generally called a “Privacy Impact Assessment,” or “PIA”) prior to the personal data leaving Quebec. If the PIA does not meet our standards and the standards required by the Quebec Privacy Act, we will not transfer your personal data to such a service provider; and
  2. If the PIA allows us to transfer the personal data to such a service provider outside Quebec, we will sign what is generally called a “Data Processing Agreement,” or DPA, or conclude other contractual provisions with the service provider, which protects the person data transferred to them and limits their use of it to what we have contracted with them to do. This DPA will adhere to the requirements of the Quebec Privacy Act.

Furthermore, any time we are considering sending your personal data outside Quebec to a third party who is not a service provider, we will perform a PIA. If the PIA does not meet our standards and the standards required by the Quebec Privacy Act, we will not transfer your personal data to such third party. 

Supervisory Authorities and Complaints

If you are in the EEA or the U.K., under the GDPR you have the right to make a complaint to the appropriate supervisory authority. If you are not satisfied with the response received or the actions taken by our privacy team or DPO, or if you would like to make a complaint directly about Pressbooks’ data practises, we invite you to contact the supervisory authority in your country. If you are in the U.K., you should contact the Information Commissioner’s Office who is the supervisory authority. You can reach them in a variety of ways, including by phone (0303 123 1113 in the UK) and mail (Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF). If you are in France, you should contact the Commisssion Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés who is the supervisory authority there. Their contact information can be found here.

The full listing of all Data Protection Authorities (the supervisory authorities) across the EEA can be found here.

If you are in Canada and you are not satisfied with the response received or the actions taken by our Privacy Officer, you can make a complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Instructions on how to do so can be found on their website. In Quebec you can make a complaint to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec with information found on their website.

Data Retention

Your personal data will only be kept for as long as it is necessary for the purpose needed for that processing. For example, we will retain your Platform Account Information only for as long as you have an account with us to use the Platform.

We may have to keep your data for a longer period of time to satisfy our requirements under any applicable law.

Automated Decision-Making

Pressbooks does not use any automated decision-making processes in providing the Services.

Children’s Privacy Statement

The Services are not intended for children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect any personal data from a child under 16. If we become aware that we have inadvertently received personal data from a person under the age of 16 through the Services, we will delete such information from our records.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

The date at the top of this page indicates when this Policy was last updated. Every now and then, we will have to update this Policy, and we will update it no less than once every 12 months. You can always find the most updated version at this URL, and we will always post a notice on our Website and Platform if we make big changes. If you have a Pressbooks account to use the Platform or any other Pressbooks service, we will also email you to tell you the Policy has been updated, and what the important changes are.


Thanks for reading! Please keep your personal data safe; we promise to do the same.

© Book Oven Inc. d.b.a Pressbooks 2023

Pressbooks (from Book Oven Inc., makers/maintainers of Pressbooks)        

pressbooks.com | 888.716.4313 |contact@pressbooks.com