Last updated: October 2023

We are strongly committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information. The policies below are applicable to bookclubfriends.com and all email newsletters published by bookclubfriends.com (collectively, “bookclubfriends.com” or “Site”). We have established this privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) to let you know the kinds of personal information we may gather, why we gather your information, what we use your personal information for, when we might disclose your personal information, and how you can manage your personal information.

Please be advised that the practices described in this Privacy Policy apply only to information gathered online at bookclubfriends.com. It does not apply to information that you may submit to us offline, or to Sites maintained by other companies or organizations to which we may link or who may link to us.

By visiting our site, you are accepting the practices described in our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy, please do not use the site. We reserve the right to modify or amend the terms of our Privacy Policy from time to time without notice, so we encourage you to review it frequently. The “Last Updated” legend above indicates when this Policy was last changed.  If we make any material changes to the Policy we will notify you by updating the date of this Privacy Policy.

 In all cases, your use of the Site and its Services after the effective date of any modified Privacy Policy indicates you are acknowledging that the modified Privacy Policy applies to your interactions with the Site and Services and our business.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or don’t see your concerns addressed here, you should contact us by email at the email address listed below. 

What We Collect

There’s a range of information we may collect about you so that we can operate our Site, Services, or otherwise. This information may include:

Information You Give Us. Personal information you may provide to us includes:

  • Contact data, such as your first and last name, email address. 
  • Profile data, such as the username and password that you may set to establish an online account on the Services, interests, preferences, and any other information that you add to your account profile. Note: If you choose to use a third-party Sign-on (OAuth) to sign up and log in to access our online services then any personal information provided to log in is controlled by that third-party Sign-on (OAuth) Service. These can include Facebook, Google, among others.
  • Communications data based on our exchanges with you, including when you contact us through the Services, social media, or otherwise.
  • Marketing data, such as your preferences for receiving our marketing communications, newsletters, and details about your engagement with them.
  • Promotion data, including information you share when you enter a sweepstakes, contest, or giveaway, or when you complete a survey.
  • Other data not specifically listed here, which we will use as described in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise disclosed at the time of collection.
  • Note: Any personal information provided to subscribe to our newsletter is controlled by the Newsletter Service listed here: [Insert Name of Newsletter Service]. Their privacy policy is available here: [enter URL] 

Information We Get From Others. We may get information about you from other sources, including:

  • Public sources, such as social media platforms and other publicly available sources.
  • Third-party services that you use to sign into, or otherwise link to, your account. This data may include profile information that is made available to us based on your account settings on the third-party service.
  • Information Automatically Collected. We, our service providers, and our business partners may automatically log information about you, your device, and your interactions with the Services, our communications, and other online services, including:
    • Device data, such as your computer or mobile device’s operating system type and version, manufacturer and model, browser type, screen resolution, RAM and disk size, CPU usage, device type (e.g. phone, tablet), IP address, unique identifiers (including identifiers used for advertising purposes), language settings, mobile device carrier, radio/network information (e.g. Wi-Fi, LTE, 3G), and general location information such as city, state, or geographic area.
    • Online activity data, such as pages or screens you view; how long you spend on a page or screen; the website you visited before browsing to the Service; navigation paths between pages or screens; information about your activity on a page or screen; access times and duration of access, authors you follow; books and advertisements you click; and your reactions, ratings, and reviews on books.
    • Communication interaction data, such as your interactions with our emails or other communications (e.g. whether you open emails or click links within them). 

Use of Cookies

Your use of our Site www.bookfriends.com indicates your consent to the use of Cookies, unless otherwise specified. You can change or withdraw your consent from the use of Cookies on our website by controlling your cookie preferences (see options below).

What are cookies ?

Cookies are small text files that are used to store small pieces of information. The cookies are stored on your device when the website is loaded on your browser. These cookies help us: make the website function properly, make the website more secure, provide better user experience, understand how the website performs, and to analyze what works and where it needs improvement.

How do we use cookies ?

As most of the online services, our website uses first-party cookies and third-party cookies for a number of purposes. The first-party cookies are mostly necessary for the website to function the right way.

The third-party cookies used on our websites are used mainly for understanding how the website performs, how you interact with our website, keeping our services secure, providing advertisements that are relevant to you, and all in all providing you with a better and improved user experience such as helping speed up your future interactions with our website.

What types of cookies do we use ?

The cookies used on our website are grouped into the following categories.

  • Advertisement: Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
  • Analytics: Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. 
  • Functional: Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedback, and other third-party features.
  • Necessary: Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
  • Performance: Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
  • Preference: Preference cookies are used to store user preferences to provide content that is customized and convenient for the users, like the language of the website or the location of the visitor.

How can you control the cookie preferences?

You can manage your cookies preferences in a variety of ways. The following are examples of how you can manage or delete many of the cookies served through Bookclubfriends.com:

1. Changing your web browser settings. Different browsers provide different methods to block and delete cookies used by websites. You can change the settings of your browser to block/delete the cookies. You can usually change your browser’s settings to reject and/or to remove many cookies. On some browsers, you can choose to let our website place cookies, but choose to reject cookies from certain third parties (such as analytics companies or advertising companies). The precise means by which you may do this will vary from browser to browser, therefore please visit your browser’s help or settings menu for more information.

Please note also that if you choose to reject or remove cookies, this may prevent certain features or services of BookClubFriends.com from working properly. Since your cookie opt-out preferences are also stored in a cookie in your website browser, please also note that if you delete all cookies, use a different browser, or buy a new computer, you will need to renew your opt-out choices.

2. Industry opt-out sites. You may also opt-out of some uses of Advertising cookies by visiting:
Network Advertising Initiative’s Website https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1, the Digital Advertising Alliance https://optout.aboutads.info/?c=2&lang=EN, the European DAA Website (for the EU/UK) https://www.youronlinechoices.com/ and the AppChoices Website (for mobile app opt-out) https://youradchoices.com/appchoices ,www.youradchoices.ca (Canada) and following the directions there.

3. Opt out directly from our advertising and analytics partners. We may use third-party Service Providers to show advertisements to you to help support and maintain our Site. Third-party Service Providers we select include:

  • Google Ad Manager: Google Ad Manager, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our Site. You may control the information Google uses to show you ads through Google by visiting the Google Ads Settings web page: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ and https://adssettings.google.com/
    Note: Using the Google Ads Settings, visitors can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize Google Display Network ads.
  • Google Analytics: Google uses cookies to understand how visitors interact with the website and provides us access to these reports. No personally identifiable information is shared with us. If you wish to opt-out of Google Analytics you can review the browser tool they have here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/
  • Amazon: Amazon, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our Site. To learn more about Amazon and their use of cookies visit Amazon’s Privacy Policy page: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468496

Affiliate links

We participate in Affiliate Programs as a means of earning advertising fees. Some pages on BookClubFriends.com contain affiliate links, which help our affiliate partners identify our website through the use of cookies. Please visit our Affiliate Disclosure Statement for further details on affiliate links used on our site and how they function.

How We Share This Information

We may share your personal information as follows:

  • Third Parties Designated by You. We may share your personal information with third parties where you have provided your consent to do so.
  • Our Third-Party Service Providers. We may share your personal information with our third-party service providers who provide services such as data analysis, information technology and related infrastructure, email delivery, and other similar services. We require that our third-party service providers use your personal information only to provide the services we’ve requested.
  • Other Disclosures. We may share personal information as we believe necessary or appropriate (a) to comply with applicable laws; (b) to comply with lawful requests and legal process, including to respond to requests from public and government authorities to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; (c) to enforce our Privacy Policy; and (d) to protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property, and/or that of you or others.

Information That May Be Publicly Visible

If you have a social profile on bookclubfriends.com, then certain information may be publicly visible, including your name and username; other users you’re following; and your reactions, ratings, and reviews that you share with other BookClubFriends users. You can control the information that is publicly visible on your profile by adjusting your privacy settings.

We urge you to be very careful when deciding to disclose your personal information, or any other information, on our Site.

Your Choices

Deleting your content or closing your account. You can choose to delete certain content through your account. If you wish to close your account, please contact us.

Unsubscribing from our newsletter. You can always unsubscribe from our newsletter by clicking on the unsubscribe link provided at the end of each newsletter. 

Managing settings on third-party services. If you choose to connect to our Services through a third-party service, then you may be able to use your account settings on that third-party service to limit the information we receive from it. If you revoke our ability to access information from a third-party service, that choice will not apply to information that we have already received.

Blocking cookies. There are a variety of ways to block cookies. We have outlined several methods in the “How can you control the cookie preferences?” section above. Please note that if you set your browser to disable cookies, the Services may not work properly.

Blocking advertising ID use in your mobile settings. Your mobile device settings may provide functionality to limit use of the advertising ID associated with your mobile device for interest-based advertising. Please check the instructions for your operating system: iOS or Android.

Sensitive Personal Information

We ask that you not send us, and you do not disclose, any sensitive personal information (e.g. social security numbers, information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, biometrics or genetic characteristics, criminal background or trade union membership) on or through our Site or otherwise to us.

If you send or disclose any sensitive personal information to us when you submit user-generated content to our Site, you consent to our processing and use of such sensitive personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you do not consent to our processing and use of such sensitive personal information, you must not submit such user-generated content to our Site.

User Testimonials and Feedback

When we receive testimonials and comments from users who have had positive experiences with our Services that have not been publicly disclosed on our Site, we may wish to publish them. We obtain the user’s consent prior to posting any feedback on a public area of our Site.

Our Policy On Children

Our Site is not directed at children under 13. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that their child has provided us with information without their consent, they should contact us, and we will delete such information as soon as reasonably practicable.

Parental participation. We strongly recommend that minors 13 years of age or older ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet and we encourage parents to teach their children about safe internet use practices. https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/keeping-children-safe-online

Other Sites and Services

The Site and Service may contain links to websites, mobile applications, and other online services operated by third parties. In addition, our content may be integrated into web pages or other online services that are not associated with us. These links and integrations are not an endorsement of, or representation that we are affiliated with, any third party. We do not control websites, mobile applications, or online services operated by third parties, and we are not responsible for their actions. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of the other websites, mobile applications, and online services you use.

Governing Law / International Data Transfer

Your information, including personal information that we collect from you, may be transferred to, stored at, and processed by us and other third parties outside the country in which you reside, including but not limited to the United States, where data protection and privacy regulations may not offer the same level of protection as in other parts of the world. By using our Sites, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We will only process your personal information in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws. We need certain personal information in order to provide you with access to our Site. If you are an EU resident and you registered with us, you will have been asked to check a box indicating your agreement to provide this information in order to access our Services. This consent provides us with the legal basis we require under applicable law to process your information. You maintain the right to withdraw such consent at any time. If you do not agree to our use of your personal information in line with this Privacy Policy, please do not use our Site.

If you are uncertain whether this privacy policy conflicts with the applicable local privacy laws where you are located, you should not submit your Personal Information to bookclubfriends.com.

U.S. State Privacy Rights

This section applies to California, Virginia, Colorado, and Connecticut residents and provides additional information pursuant to applicable state privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (“VCDPA”), the Colorado Privacy Act (“CPA”), and the Connecticut Data Privacy Act (“CTDPA”) (collectively, the “U.S. State Privacy Laws”). In this section, the term “Personal Information” means information defined as “personal information,” “personal data,” or other similar terms under the U.S. State Privacy Laws. The U.S. State Privacy Laws may provide residents with some or all of the rights listed below. Please note that not all rights listed below may be afforded to all users, and if you are not a resident of one of the states listed above, you may not be able to exercise these rights. In addition, we may not be able to process your request if you do not provide us with sufficient detail to allow us to confirm your identity or understand and respond to it. We may decline your request in certain cases as permitted by law.

Your privacy rights. The State Privacy Laws may provide residents with some or all of the rights listed below. However, these rights are not absolute and some State Privacy Laws do not provide these rights to their residents. Therefore, we may decline your request in certain cases as permitted by law.

  • Information. You can request the following information about how we have collected and used your Personal Information during the past 12 months:
    • The categories of Personal Information that we have collected.
    • The categories of sources from which we collected Personal Information.
    • The business or commercial purpose for collecting Personal Information.
    • The categories of third parties with which we share Personal Information.
    • The categories of Personal Information that we disclosed for a business purpose.
    • The categories of third parties to whom the Personal Information was disclosed for a business purpose.
  • Access. You can request a copy of the Personal Information that we have collected about you during the past 12 months.
  • Appeal. You can appeal our denial of any request validly submitted.
  • Correction. You can ask us to correct inaccurate Personal Information that we have collected about you.
  • Deletion. You can ask us, subject to certain exceptions, to delete the Personal Information that we have collected from you.
  • Opt-out of certain processing for targeted advertising purposes. You can opt-out of certain processing of Personal Information for targeted advertising purposes.
  • Nondiscrimination. You are entitled to exercise the rights described above free from discrimination as prohibited by the State Privacy Laws.

How to exercise your rights to information, access, appeal, correction, or deletion. You can submit requests to exercise your rights to information, access, appeal, correction, or deletion by contacting us.

Exercising your right to opt-out of processing for targeted advertising purposes. Like many companies, we use services that help deliver interest-based ads to you as described above. The State Privacy Laws may classify our use of some of these services as “sharing” your personal information with our advertising partners. You can opt-out of this tracking by enabling Global Privacy Control (GPC) for each supported browser that you use. Learn more about Global Privacy Control. https://globalprivacycontrol.org/

We share the following categories of Personal Information with advertising partners: Device data and Online activity data.

Verification of identity; authorized agents. We may need to verify your identity in order to process your information, access, appeal, correction, or deletion requests and reserve the right to confirm your residency. To verify your identity, we may require government identification, a declaration under penalty of perjury, or other information, where permitted by law.

Under the State Privacy Laws, you may be permitted to authorize an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. However, we may need to verify your authorized agent’s identity and authority to act on your behalf. We may require a copy of a valid power of attorney given to your authorized agent pursuant to applicable law. If you have not provided your agent with such a power of attorney, we may ask you to take additional steps permitted by law to verify that your request is authorized, such as by providing your agent with written and signed permission to exercise your privacy rights on your behalf, the information we request to verify your identity, and confirmation that you have given the authorized agent permission to submit the request.

Additional information for California residents

  • Sensitive personal information. We do not use or disclose Sensitive Personal Information for purposes that California residents have a right to limit under the California Consumer Privacy Act.
  • Sources and purposes. We collect all categories of Personal Information from the sources listed in the “What We Collect” section above and use them for the purposes described in the “What We Do With This Information” section above.
  • Collection and disclosure. The list below describes the Personal Information we collect by reference to the categories of Personal Information specified in the CCPA (Cal. Civ. Code §1798.140), and the categories of third parties to whom we disclose it. The terms in the list refer to the categories of information and third parties detailed above in the “What We Collect” and the “How We Share This Information” sections. Information you voluntarily provide to us, such as in forms, may contain other categories of Personal Information not described below. We may also disclose Personal Information to professional advisors, law enforcement and government authorities, and business transferees as described above.
    • Identifiers. Identifiers may include Contact data, Demographic data, Profile data, Communications data, Transactional data, Marketing data, Promotion data, Data about others, Device data, Online activity data, and Communication interaction data. We may disclose this information with the following categories of third parties: Third Parties Designated by You, Our Third-Party Service Providers, Payment Processors, Our Advertising Partners, Our Other Services, Corporate Restructurings, or Other Disclosures.
    • California customer records. California customer records may include Contact data, Demographic data, Profile data, Communications data, Transactional data, Marketing data, Promotion data, Data about others, Device data, Online activity data, and Communication interaction data. We may disclose this information with the following categories of third parties: Third Parties Designated by You, Our Third-Party Service Providers, Payment Processors, Our Advertising Partners, Our Other Services, Corporate Restructurings, or Other Disclosures.
    • Commercial information. Commercial information may include Contact data, Demographic data, Profile data, Communications data, Transactional data, Marketing data, Promotion data, Data about others, Device data, Online activity data, and Communication interaction data. We may disclose this information with the following categories of third parties: Third Parties Designated by You, Our Third-Party Service Providers, Payment Processors, Our Advertising Partners, Our Other Services, Corporate Restructurings, or Other Disclosures.
    • Financial information. Financial information may include Transactional data and Payment data. We may disclose this information with the following categories of third parties: Our Third-Party Service Providers, Payment Processors, Our Other Services, Corporate Restructurings, or Other Disclosures.
    • Online identifiers. Online identifiers may include Contact data, Demographic data, Profile data, Communications data, Marketing data, Promotion data, Data about others, and Communication interaction data. We may disclose this information with the following categories of third parties: Third Parties Designated by You, Our Third-Party Service Providers, Payment Processors, Our Advertising Partners, Our Other Services, Corporate Restructurings, or Other Disclosures.
    • Internet or network information. Internet or network information may include Communications data, Device data, Online activity data, and Communication interaction data. We may disclose this information with the following categories of third parties: Third Parties Designated by You, Our Third-Party Service Providers, Payment Processors, Our Advertising Partners, Our Other Services, Corporate Restructurings, or Other Disclosures.
    • Inferences. Inferences may be derived from any of the above categories. We may disclose this information with the following categories of third parties: Third Parties Designated by You, Our Third-Party Service Providers, Payment Processors, Our Advertising Partners, Our Other Services, Corporate Restructurings, or Other Disclosures.
    • Protected classification characteristics. We do not intentionally collect this information, but it may be revealed in information we collect.

California “Do Not Sell My Info”

The California Consumer Protection Act (“CCPA”) requires us to tell you if we have sold your personal information to third parties in the past 12 months and how to opt-out of future sales. Because the CCPA considers IP address, cookie IDs, and mobile IDs “personal information” and defines “sale” to include simply making data available to third parties, we are providing this notice to give you additional information. We let some advertising providers collect IP addresses, cookie IDs, through our site and their use of that information when providing us services may constitute a sale of personal data under the CCPA. We do not “sell” any other types of personal information. 

You can opt-out from any sharing of your personal information with third parties if that sharing constitutes a “sale” of that data under the CCPA. You can opt out of this type of information sharing by opting out of third-party Advertising cookies as noted above.

Note that although we will not “sell” your personal information after you opt out of Advertising cookies, we will continue to share some personal information with our partners (acting as our service providers) to help us perform advertising-related functions such as managing how many times you see an ad, managing and reporting on ad performance, providing aggregate statistics and analytics, and/or reducing ad fraud. 

Further, updating your cookie preferences will not necessarily opt you out of the use of previously collected personal information by these cookies or stop all interest-based advertising. 

Please note that your cookie preferences are domain- and browser-specific. This means that if you replace or upgrade your browser, use another browser (or device), clear your browser’s cookies, or set your browser to refuse third-party cookies, you may need to reset your opt-out preferences.

To learn about cookies in general and how to manage and delete cookies, visit wikipedia.org, www.iab-performance-marketing-explained.net, www.allaboutcookies.org.

Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data Under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are from the European Economic Area (EEA), bookclubfriends.com legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described in this Privacy Policy depends on the Personal Data we collect and the specific context in which we collect it.

Our Site may process your Personal Data because:

  • You have given us permission to do so
    The processing is in our legitimate interests and it’s not overridden by your rights
  • For payment processing purposes

Our Site does not directly hold any personal identifiable information about any users unless they have created a Personal Profile, subscribed to our electronic newsletter, made a purchase through our Payment Processor or submitted a query and contacted us through our Contact Us form, social media channels, or other means of direct communication, in which case we have access to the supplied personal information. You can opt-out of our newsletter at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link in the footer of any newsletter email you receive from us, or by contacting us directly (see “Contact Us” below).

If you would like further information in relation to your legal rights under applicable law or would like to exercise any of them, please contact us using the information in the “Contact Us” section below at any time. Your local laws may permit you to request that we:

  • provide access to and/or a copy of certain information we have about you;
  • prevent the processing of your information for direct-marketing purposes;
  • update information which is out of date or incorrect;
  • delete certain information which we have about you;
  • restrict the way that we process and disclose certain information;
  • transfer your information to a third party provider of services; and
  • revoke your consent for the processing of your information.

We will consider all requests and provide our response within the time period stated by applicable law. Certain information may be exempt from such requests in some circumstances, which may include if we need to keep processing your information for our legitimate interests or to comply with a legal obligation. We may request you provide us with information necessary to confirm your identity before responding to your request.

Consent

Unless otherwise specified, if you do not opt out, as provided through the various methods herein, you expressly consent to the collection, use, and sharing of your information by us and the third parties listed above, subject to their privacy policies, preferences, and opt-outs available through the links set forth above. You also expressly consent to the use of Cookies or other local storage and the collection, use, and sharing of your information by us and each entity identified under “How can you control the cookie preferences?” section above. Certain information collected through cookies and other tracking technology does not require affirmative consent and you will not be able to opt out of collection. For more information about online tracking and options to prevent most tracking visit the Future of Privacy Forum site https://allaboutdnt.com/.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Thanks for using our site, and for reviewing our Privacy Policy. If you have any feedback, we encourage you to contact us.