The following is Brookes Publishing’s privacy policy and appears on www.brookespublishing.com and all Brookes web sites:
Brookes Publishing Co. respects the privacy of our customers, our web site visitors, and our newsletter subscribers. Anyone can visit our web site without revealing his or her name or personal information, and we do not use any devices that detect personally identifying information about the visitors to our site.
This web site agrees to notify you of:
- What personally identifiable information of yours or third-party personal identification is collected from you through the web site
- The organization collecting the information
- How the information is used
- With whom the information may be shared
- What choices are available to you regarding collection, use, and distribution of the information
- The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of information under Brookes Publishing Co.’s control, and
- How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.
If users have questions or concerns regarding this statement, they should first contact: webmaster@brookespublishing.com or by mail: Brookes Publishing, P.O. Box 10624, Baltimore, MD 21285.
Collecting and Using Information
All of the personal information that we collect on this site is volunteered by our visitors, such as through our site feedback form or our on-line order form. Brookes Publishing Co. is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement.
Brookes Publishing Co. collects information from our web site’s visitors at several different points on our site.
E-mailing Lists
Subscriptions to Brookes’s e-mailing lists are voluntary, and anyone may subscribe at www.brookespublishing.com/lists. If you supply us with your e-mail address under other circumstances (such as on our site feedback form), then you will not be added to any of our e-mail lists unless you explicitly request to be added.
Furthermore, we do not share or sell e-mail addresses under any circumstances. If your e-mail address should change, or if you should receive unwanted e-mail communication from us, then please e-mail webmaster@brookespublishing.com, or follow the directions for unsubscribing included in the e-mail you received. We will promptly update our records and, if requested, remove your e-mail address from our lists.
Postal Mailing Lists
Once you place an order with Brookes, on-line or otherwise, you likely will receive catalogs by postal mail from us throughout the year. On rare occasions, we share small segments of our list of customers with related publishers and nonprofit organizations.
If you wish to be removed from our postal mailing list, then please email custserv@brookespublishing.com; call toll-free 1-800-638-3775; fax to 410-337-8539; or write to Brookes Publishing Co., P.O. Box 10624, Baltimore, MD 21285-0624, Attention: Customer Service. We will be happy to remove you from any list that we generate from our customer records, but please be aware that we may not be able to remove your name from lists that we purchase from outside vendors—although we will make every effort to make your name inactive if you so request.
Feedback
Visitors to our site can send us feedback though our on-line feedback form or by e-mailing webmaster@brookespublishing.com. Visitors who use our on-line feedback form can choose to remain anonymous or can include an e-mail address if they desire a response.
E-mail submitted to webmaster@brookespublishing.com
or custserv@brookespublishing.com contains the e-mail address of the sender. In any case, if a user requests a response, then the e-mail address (or other means of communication) is used only for purposes directly related to the response, and no personally identifiable information about the sender is stored or retained in our database.
Orders and Exam/Adoption Copy Requests
If you would like to place an order or request an exam/adoption copy from Brookes, then we require information necessary to process the order or request, including contact information (name, organization, shipping address, telephone/fax number) and, if making a purchase, financial information (credit card number, expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill customers’ orders or requests. Some additional information required on exam/adoption request forms is used to qualify requesters or to collect aggregate information about how our products are used.
Once you place an order with Brookes, you may receive e-mail related to your order (e.g., confirmation), or we may contact you if we have trouble processing your request. Customers who supply their e-mail addresses during the ordering process will be added to our e-mail lists only if they opt to do so at that time.
In addition, once you place an order with Brookes, on-line or otherwise, you likely will receive catalog mailings (by postal mail) from us throughout the year. On rare occasions, we share small segments of our list of customers with related publishers and nonprofit organizations. If you wish to be removed from any of our mailing lists (postal or e-mail), then please e-mail custserv@brookespublishing.com; call toll-free 1-800-638-3775; fax to 410-337-8539; or write to Brookes Publishing Co., P.O. Box 10624, Baltimore, MD 21285-0624, Attention: Customer Service.
We will be happy to remove you from any e-mailing or postal mailing list that we generate from our customer records, but please be aware that we may not be able to remove your name from lists that we purchase from outside vendors—although we will make every effort to make your name inactive if you so request.
Permission to Reuse or Reprint Our Material
Web site visitors who wish to request permission to reuse or reprint Brookes material may do so through our on-line permission request form. On this form, a user must provide contact information (name, organization, shipping address, telephone/fax number) and detailed information about how the material will be reused. Requests for permission to reuse or reprint our materials go through a detailed review process, and contact information may be retained for the life of the product, or longer.
Cookies
A cookie is a small piece of information deposited by a web site and stored by your web browser on your computer’s hard drive. Our shopping cart uses a cookie to assign shoppers a simple shopping cart ID, which allows them to pick up items and add them to their carts. The cookie is temporary and is automatically deleted from your hard drive when you close your browser. If you choose not to accept cookies, you won’t be able to use our shopping cart, but you will be able to access all of the other features available on our web site. (To learn more about cookies, visit
http://www.pcwebopedia.com/TERM/c/cookie.html.)
Log Files and IP Addresses
In our web site’s log files, we collect anonymous data such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited, and time spent on our site. IP addresses are used to generate temporary shopping cart IDs to facilitate the shopping process and are subsequently discarded. IP addresses are NOT linked to personally identifiable information. All other anonymous data are used only in aggregate for internal review to improve the content of our web site.
Third-Party Vendors
Brookes enlists the services of an order fulfillment center to ship orders, and a bank processes orders made by credit card. These companies do not retain, share, store, or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes. We also use a third-party mailing house to send catalogs and other postal mail to current and potential customers. The mailing house is bonded, which means that it cannot and does not share, store, sell, or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
Linking to Other Sites
This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Brookes Publishing Co. is not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by Brookes Publishing Co.
Surveys and Contests
From time to time, our web site and our e-mail newsletters request information from users via surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary, and the user therefore has a choice whether to disclose any information. Information requests may include contact information (e.g., name, address) and/or demographic information (e.g., ZIP code, affiliation, job title). Survey information will be used to monitor or improve the use and user satisfaction of this site or to gather aggregate data about our customers.
From time to time, we offer opportunities to participate in contests. Participation in these contests is completely voluntary, and the entrant therefore has a choice whether to disclose any information. Information requests may include contact information (e.g., name, address) and/or demographic information (e.g., ZIP code, affiliation, job title). Contest rules will disclose how the information will be used. If your personal information will be used in a way different from that stated in the privacy statement at the time, then you will have a choice as to this new use. And, as stated in each contest’s rules, winners’ names will be posted to the web site or in other promotional materials.
Referral Service
If you elect to use our referral service (e.g., “e-mail a colleague about this book”) to inform a friend about our site, we ask you for your name and e-mail address and your friend’s e-mail address. Brookes will automatically send the friend a one-time e-mail inviting them to visit the site, and, if you request one, you will receive a single e-mail confirming your request. Brookes does not store either your information or your friend’s information once these e-mails have been sent.
Security
This web site takes every precaution to protect our users’ information. When users submit sensitive information via the web site, their information is protected both on-line and off-line.
When you place an order on-line, all of the information that you submit—including your credit card number, name, address, contact information, and even the list of books you’ve chosen to purchase—is encrypted by a secure server using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which is the industry standard security protocol. During the encryption process, the information is scrambled into small bits of code that cannot be read as they are transmitted to us over the Internet. Once we receive the encrypted information, Brookes uses a private, one-of-a-kind key to decode your order. While on a secure page, such as our on-line order form, the lock icon on the bottom of web browsers, such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, becomes locked (as opposed to unlocked, or open, when you are just “surfing”). To learn more about SSL, follow this link: http://www.pcwebopedia.com/TERM/S/SSL.html.
Once we receive your order, all of your information—not just the sensitive information mentioned above—is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (e.g., our customer service representatives) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our databases and customer service systems are protected by employee-specific passwords, and the servers on which we store customer information are kept in a secure environment. Furthermore, all employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Each year, as well as any time policies are added or modified, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy and what they can do to ensure that our customers’ information is protected. If you have any questions about the security at our web site, you can send an e-mail to webmaster@brookespublishing.com.
Correcting/Updating Personal Information
If your personally identifiable information changes (e.g., ZIP code), or if you no longer desire our services, then we provide a way to correct, update, or remove the personal data provided to us. To make changes to your personal data, please e-mail custserv@brookespublishing.com; call toll-free 1-800-638-3775; fax to 410-337-8539; or write to Brookes Publishing Co., P.O. Box 10624, Baltimore, MD 21285-0624, Attention: Customer Service.
Choice/Opt-Out
Our users and customers are given the opportunity to “opt-out” of having their information used for purposes not directly related to our site.
Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletters or other promotional materials may opt-out of receiving these communications. If your e-mail address should change, or if you should receive unwanted e-mail communication or other promotional materials from us, then please e-mail webmaster@brookespublishing.com, or follow the directions for unsubscribing included in the e-mail you received. We will promptly update our records and, if requested, remove your address from our e-mailing lists.
As discussed in the section pertaining to orders, we will be happy to remove you from any on-line or off-line mailing list that we generate from our customer records, but please be aware that we may not be able to remove your name from mailing lists that we purchase from outside vendors—although we will make every effort to make your name inactive if you so request.
Notifying Users of Changes
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our homepage so that our users and customers are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, then we will prominently notify customers on our e-mailing lists of the change as well as post the change on our web site to give all customers the opportunity to opt-out of having their information used in this different manner.
Legal Disclaimer
Although we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with an appropriate law enforcement investigation, current judicial proceeding, or a court order or legal process served on our web site.
Questions?
Thank you for taking the time to read our privacy policy. We take your privacy seriously, so please let us know if you have any questions or comments regarding our web site or this policy. Please direct questions to our webmaster at webmaster@brookespublishing.com.