Privacy Policy

Last updated on September 30, 2020.

This Privacy Policy describes how Astra Publishing House, Inc. and its parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, and successors and assigns, including but not limited to Astra Books for Young Readers, Boyds Mills & Kane, and Michael Neugebauer Publishing Ltd.  (collectively “APH”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) collect and process your personal information through APH’s websites, social media pages, sweepstakes other promotions, programs and events, newsletters, and any other services APH may provide (collectively the “Services”). By using the Services, you accept the terms of this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use.

What Personal Information Does APH Collect?

Information You Provide to Us

We collect personal information that you volunteer to us when you use or Services.  You can choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of some of our Services.

Examples of personal information you might supply us include:

  • identifying information such as your name, address, email address, and phone number
  • payment information
  • your age
  • your location information
  • reading preferences and other feedback regarding the Services
  • information to confirm your eligibility for contests, promotions, and sweepstakes
  • personal descriptions included in your profile
  • information and documents regarding identity

Automatic Information

We also automatically collect and store certain types of information about your use of our websites, including information about your interaction with content and services available through APH.

Examples of automatic information we may collect includes:

  • the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet
  • the location of your device or computer
  • browser type and version
  • operating system
  • version and time zone settings
  • the full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) clickstream to, through, and from our websites, including date and time; products and content you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, and page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs)

Information We Receive from Others

We also may receive information about you from third parties who operate services APH uses in order to provide our products and services to you.  For example, we work with third parties regarding technical, payment, and delivery services, advertising networks, marketing analytics providers, promotions, and search information providers. We may receive email addresses, mailing addresses, and demographic information from these third parties.

Use of Cookies and Pixels

Like many websites, we use “cookies” and other unique identifiers, and we obtain certain types of information when your web browser or device accesses our websites. By using our websites, you consent to our use of such cookies in accordance with this policy.

A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a website, that site’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but to protect your privacy your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

We use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, collect aggregate data about how our websites are used by users, control the display of advertisements, offer other products and services personalized to you, and improve the performance of our websites in order to provide you with a better user experience.

We reserve the right to use cookies and their technological equivalents, including social media pixels. These pixels allow social media websites and apps to track visitors to outside websites so as to tailor advertise messages users see while visiting that social media website or app. APH reserves the right to use these pixels in compliance with the policies of the various social media sites.

You may block our use of cookies through the settings on your browser. However, in order to use some of our Services on your web browser must accept cookies. If you choose to block the use of cookies, certain aspects of our Services may not work properly and you may not be able to access or use all of the features and services we provide.

How Does APH Use Personal Information?

We use information you provide to us to manage our contractual relationship with you, provide APH’s services and products, to improve our performance and fix any errors, communicate with you, provide you with personalized offers, promotions, and information, to prevent and detect fraud and abuse, to comply with our legal obligations, or based on our legitimate interests.

Does APH Share Personal Information?

Your personal information is important to us and our business, and so we only share in the ways described below.

We may disclose personal information to third-party providers who perform certain functions on our behalf. Examples include providing marketing assistance, payments, transmitting content, and providing customer service. These third-party service providers have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes.

We may disclose your personal information to a third party, including a lawyer or collection agency, when necessary to enforce our terms and conditions.

We may disclose information when we believe such release is appropriate to comply with the law, or to protect the rights and safety of APH and our users.

We may disclose personal information to our authors to assist in the management of their social media and websites.

How is Personal Information Stored?

The security of your personal information is important to us. We use reasonable and appropriate measure to protect this information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction, taking into due account the risks involved in the processing undertaken and the nature of the personal information we collect.

We will keep your personal data for as long as we need it, or as otherwise prescribed by law, for the purposes set out above.  This period will vary depending on your interactions with us.  We may also keep a record of correspondence with you (for example if you have made a complaint) for as long as is necessary to protect us from a legal claim.

You may unsubscribe from any of our newsletters, promotions, or updates by e-mail and mail e-mail updates and marketing by following the unsubscribe instructions in the body of any e-mail message or mail we have sent to you.  We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably possible. However, even after you opt out, you may also continue to receive information from us with respect to important administrative messages or information from third parties to whom we have previously disclosed your personal information.

Links to Third-Party Sites

Our Services may include advertising and links to third-party websites. We may use third-party advertising companies to serve advertisements regarding goods and services that may be of interest to you when you access and use the Services. If you follow a link to third-party websites, please note that these websites are not covered by this Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of any third parties or the content of linked sites although we do encourage you to read the applicable privacy policies and terms and conditions of such parties or websites.

Protecting Children’s Privacy

With a few specific exceptions, our Services are not intended for persons under the age of thirteen (13), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. We are strongly committed to protecting the safety and privacy of children who visit our website and have adopted techniques to ensure compliance with this Privacy Policy and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”). We encourage all parents and guardians to talk to their children about online safety and to monitor their children’s use of the Internet.

We may collect a child’s email address in the case of certain promotions, such as in order to enter a child into a contest or sweepstakes or notify them whether they have or lost such contest or sweepstakes. We will not keep the child’s email for any other purpose. For prize fulfillment purposes in certain instances we may require a child to notify a parent in order to obtain more personalized information or consent.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If you are within the European Union, you are entitled to certain information and have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Purpose and Legal Basis for Processing Your Personal Information

The purpose and legal basis for processing your personal information will typically be one of the following:

  • our own legitimate business interests, provided they don’t outweigh your rights or freedoms
  • the performance of a contract that we have in place with you
  • your consent where appropriate
  • compliance with our legal obligations, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements

We may disclose your personal information to related companies and third parties as described in this Privacy Policy; however, we do not share your personal information with third parties for them to market their products or services to you without having obtained your prior opt-in consent. If you give consent for such sharing, you may revoke it any time.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of thirteen (13).

Data Retention

We will retain the any information you choose to provide to us until the earlier of: (a) you asking us to delete the information, (b) our decision to cease using our existing data providers, or (c) we decide that the value in retaining the data is outweighed by the costs of retaining it.

International Transfer

APH is based in the United States. Your personal information may be processed or stored in the United States and other countries which may not have equivalent privacy or data protection laws. By using our Services, you consent to these transfers.

Your Rights

You have the right to request access to your data that APH stores and the rights to either rectify or erase your personal data.

You have the right to seek restrictions on the processing of your data.

You have the right to object to the processing of your data and the right to the portability of your data.

To the extent that you provided consent to APH’s processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based upon consent that occurred prior to your withdrawal of consent.

To exercise these rights please email us at digital@astrapublishinghouse.com.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority that has jurisdiction over issues related to the General Data Protection Regulation.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

If you are a California consumer, you are entitled to certain information and have certain rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Pursuant to the CCPA, we are providing the following additional details regarding the categories of personal information about California residents that we have collected or disclosed within the preceding twelve (12) months.

(1) We collect the following categories of personal information:

  • Identifiers, such as name, contact information and online identifiers
  • Personal information, as defined in the California customer records law, such as name, contact information and financial information
  • Protected classifications under California or federal law, such as sex, age and race
  • Commercial information, such as transaction information, purchase history, financial details and payment information
  • Internet or network activity information, such as browsing history, online behavior, interest data and interactions with our websites
  • Geolocation data, such as device location and IP location
  • Audio, electronic, visual or similar information, such as images and audio, video or call recordings created in connection with our business activities
  • Inferences drawn from any of the personal information listed above to create a profile or summary about, for example, an individual’s preferences and characteristics

We collect this personal information from you and from other categories of sources, including publicly available databases, joint marketing partners, social media platforms and third-party service platforms, and our business customers, clients and partners, when they share this information with us.

We may use this personal information to operate, manage, and maintain our business, to provide our products and services, and to accomplish our business purposes and objectives, including, for example, using personal information to: develop, improve, repair, and maintain our products and services; personalize, advertise, and market our products and services; conduct research, analytics, and data analysis; maintain our facilities and infrastructure; undertake quality and safety assurance measures; conduct risk and security control and monitoring; detect and prevent fraud; perform identity verification; perform accounting, audit, and other internal functions, such as internal investigations; comply with law, legal process, and internal policies; maintain records; and exercise and defend legal claims.

(2) We disclosed the following personal information to third parties for our operational business purposes:

  • Identifiers, such as name, contact information and online identifiers
  • Personal information, as defined in the California customer records law, such as name, contact information and financial information
  • Protected classifications under California or federal law, such as sex, age and race;
  • Commercial information, such as transaction information, purchase history, financial details and payment information
  • Internet or network activity information, such as browsing history, online behavior, interest data and interactions with our websites
  • Geolocation data, such as device location and IP location
  • Audio, electronic, visual or similar information, such as images and audio, video or call recordings created in connection with our business activities
  • Professional or employment-related information, such as work history
  • Inferences drawn from any of the personal information listed above to create a profile or summary about, for example, an individual’s preferences and characteristics

We share personal information with our service providers for services such as website design and hosting, data analysis, payment processing, order fulfillment, information technology and related infrastructure provision, customer service, email delivery, ad serving, research survey/interview/focus group management and analysis, marketing, and auditing.

We will not sell your personal information. For purposes of this Privacy Policy, “sell” means the disclosure of personal information for monetary or other valuable consideration but does not include, for example, the transfer of Personal Information as an asset that is part of a merger or other disposition of all or any portion of our business.

If you are a California resident, you have the right to request that APH disclose what personal information it has collected, used, disclosed, and sold over the twelve (12) month period preceding the APH’s receipt of such a request. To exercise this right, please email us at digital@astrapublishinghouse.com.

You have the right to request the deletion of their personal information collected or maintained by us. To exercise this right, please email us at digital@astrapublishinghouse.com.

You have the right to not be discriminated against because the consumer exercised any of the consumer’s rights under the CCPA.

Conditions of Use, Notices, and Revisions

If you choose to use our Services, your use and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use, including limitations on damages, resolution of disputes, and application of the law of the state of New York. If you have any concern about the privacy of our Services, please contact us with a thorough description, and we will try to resolve it.

As our business changes and evolves, our Privacy Policy may change also. You should check this Privacy Policy frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions or suggestions with respect to this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please email us at digital@astrapublishinghouse.com.

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