The Great Books Foundation is committed to protecting personal information that you may provide to us. In particular, we believe it is important for you to know how we treat information about you that we may receive from Great Books Foundation websites including greatbooks.org, store.greatbooks.org, and online.greatbooks.org, and our Great Books Plus application.
What information do we collect?
We collect information from you when you register on our sites or in our application, subscribe to our newsletter, or fill out a form.
When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your name, email address, phone number, school name, and title. You will be asked to provide credit card information only when making a donation or placing an order for materials or training that are not free. You may, however, visit our site anonymously.
How do we protect your information?
The Great Books Foundation is very concerned with safeguarding your information. We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information. We employ limited data security measures, such as encryption, on some but not all systems.
All credit card information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment Gateway providers database to be accessible only by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and who are required to keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your credit card information is not stored on our servers.
What do we use your information for?
Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:
- To personalize your user experience on our websites or in our application
- To improve our website. We continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you.
- To improve customer service. Your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs.
- To process transactions. Your information will be used for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service that you requested.
- To send periodic emails. The email address you provide for order processing, professional development registration, or downloading information on our websites may be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order or registration, in addition to occasional company news, updates, related product or service information, etc.
How do I unsubscribe?
If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of marketing and newsletter emails. Or you may write to customer.service@greatbooks.org and we will remove your email address or all your information from our system at your request.
Children’s Personal Information
If you are a minor under the age of 13 (“Student”), you may only use our websites and Great Books Plus application and disclose personally identifiable information with your parent or guardian’s express consent and as instructed to do so by your school educator. We knowingly collect only limited personally identifiable information from such Students, including name, email address, and a profile photograph, which is not required (“Children’s Personal Information”). We require schools, school districts, and/or educators to obtain parental consent from their Students’ parents before collecting any such Children’s Personal Information in order to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If you are under the age of 13, please do not send any Children’s Personal Information about yourself to us unless you are using our application as instructed to do so by your school teacher, and then only what we request from you when you sign up for the application. In the event that we learn that we have collected Children’s Personal Information from a Student without parental consent being obtained by his or her school, school district, and/or educator, or if we learn that a Student has provided us Children’s Personal Information beyond what we request when he or she signs up for the application, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a Student may have provided us Children’s Personal Information beyond what is requested when signing up for the application, or that a student’s school, school district, or educator has not obtained parental consent, please contact us at support@greatbooks.org.
References to “Children’s Personal Information” in this Privacy Policy shall apply only to personal information of users of the Service under the age of 13.
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, if you are a Student registrant and your parent has signed up for the Service, you understand that your parents and educators may be able view all information within or associated with your Service account, including without limitation messages between you and your educator and grades you received on assignments.
Do we use cookies?
Yes, we use cookies to collect information, but not Children’s Personal Information. A cookie is a small file that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your web browser (if you allow) that enables the site’s or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information.
We use persistent cookies to save your login information for future logins to our websites. We utilize session ID cookies to enable certain features of our websites, to better understand how you interact with our sites, and to monitor aggregate usage and web traffic routing on our sites. Unlike persistent cookies, session cookies are deleted from your computer when you log off from the Site and Service and then close your browser. You can instruct your browser, by changing its options, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit.
Do we disclose any information to outside parties?
We do not sell or trade to outside parties your personally identifiable information. We may employ third-party companies and individuals to facilitate, to provide on our behalf, or to perform related services on our websites and application, e.g., maintenance services, database management, web analytics, DRM management, and improvement of our sites and application features. These third parties may have access to your personal information or Children’s Personal Information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.
We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, to enforce our site policies, or to protect our own or others’ rights, property, or safety.
Your Consent
By using our websites or application you consent to our Privacy Policy.
Changes to Our Privacy Policy
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page and update the Privacy Policy modification date below.
Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at support@greatbooks.org or at The Great Books Foundation, 35 E. Wacker Dr. Suite 400, Chicago, IL 60601.
This policy was last modified on October 6, 2016.