PRIVACY POLICY
Our Commitment to Privacy
Our privacy policy was developed as an extension of our commitment to combine the highest-quality services with the highest level of integrity in dealing with our members. This policy is designed to assist you in understanding how we collect, use and safeguard the personal information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when using our site and our services. This statement will be continuously assessed against new technologies, business practices and our members' needs, so please refer back to it periodically. You will always find the latest version posted here. BY USING BOOKOHOLIC AND PROVIDING US WITH YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION, YOU ARE ACCEPTING THE PRIVACY PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THIS POLICY STATEMENT.
Information Collection and Use
Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing customer service and making available other services to you and prospective members. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our site, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. We use non-personally-identifiable information including IP addresses and aggregate user data to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track movement around the site and to gather demographic information about our membership base as a whole.
If you choose to register with us we request certain basic information to enable us to provide you with our services. For example, we ask you to provide your name, age, mailing address, and e-mail address. We store this information to save you time and allow for easier use of our services. We also look at the books you give, want and get, in order to help us provide you with better recommendations and exchange opportunities.
In order to facilitate member interaction, we display your display name, user name and, if you've provided it, your image on our site. We also display all books you are giving away, that you have received or are receiving, and all of your feedback, user settings, and history. We use your email address to send notices related to the service. Of course, the nature of our trading service requires disclosure of your name and mailing address to members who agree to ship you their books.
You can invite friends to join Bookoholic by sending invitation e-mails via our automated recommendation system. Bookoholic does not permanently store the e-mail addresses that you provide in those recommendations. Bookoholic does not sell these email addresses or use them to send any other communication besides invitations and invitation reminders. Recipients of invitations may contact Bookoholic to request to never receive invitations from Bookoholic in the future.
Similar to other commercial web sites, we may use "cookies" and other technologies to collect nonpersonally-identifiable information about how our site is used. This data is used to enhance the functionality of our site and to make your transactions and other activities more convenient and efficient.
"Cookies" are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a web site. They are small pieces of data that are stored by your web browser on your hard drive. Information gathered through cookies and web server logs may include information such as the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, and time spent at our site. Cookies can remember what information you accessed on one web page to streamline your transactions on related web pages. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized. You may be able to configure your browser to accept or reject all or some cookies, or notify you when a cookie is set.
Disclosure of Information to Strategic Partners
Bookoholic takes your privacy very seriously. Be assured that Bookoholic does not sell or rent your contact information to marketers. However, there are times when it may be advantageous for Bookoholic to make certain personal information about you available to companies that we have a strategic relationship with or that perform work for us to provide products and services that we think will be of interest to you.
Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information
We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.
Security
Bookoholic takes administrative, technical and physical precautions to protect the information that is stored within our database. We restrict access to member information to those employees who need access to perform their job functions, such as our customer service personnel and technical staff. Please note, however, that despite our reasonable precautions, unauthorized entry, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise the security of your information at any time.
Guidelines
Bookoholic is a service with a high degree of transparency, and almost all your information and activities are automatically visible to anyone who accesses our web site. This includes, but is not limited to: all the books you want, own and have received, all feedback, your name, userid and photo.
The only personal information that is not automatically visible is:
your postal address, which includes the name you put on your postal address. However, your postal address is automatically given to anyone you request a book from.
your email address. However, this is automatically given to anyone you request a book from, or from anyone you send an email to, or if you use a feature (such as charitable giving) which causes an email to be sent.
if you abuse the trust of the community by attempting to, or succeeding at "gaming the system", violate the terms of use, or other forms of cheating or fraud, we reserve the right to publicly publish all your confidential details and identify you as someone we believe has betrayed the trust of the community.
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act
Our site and services are directed to the general public. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13 years of age.