Privacy Policy

This privacy statement applies to Pen Publishing Interactive, Inc. (from here-on referred to as "Pen Publishing") websites, services and products that collect data and display these terms, as well as their offline support services. It also describes your choices in regard to how we use your personal information and how you can access and update this information.

Pen Publishing complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information from European Union member countries. Pen Publishing has certified that it adheres to the Privacy Shield Principles of Notice, Choice, Accountability for Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity and Purpose Limitation, Access, and Recourse, Enforcement and Liability. If there is any conflict between the policies in this privacy policy and the Privacy Shield Principles, the Privacy Shield Principles shall govern. To learn more about the Privacy Shield program, and to view our certification page, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/.

In compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Principles, Pen Publishing commits to resolve complaints about your privacy and our collection or use of your personal information. European Union individuals with inquiries or complaints regarding this privacy policy should first contact Steve Pendergraft of Pen Publishing, at support@penpublishing.com.

Pen Publishing has committed to refer unresolved privacy complaints under the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Principles BBB EU PRIVACY SHIELD, a non-profit alternative dispute resolution provider located in the United States and operated by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your complaint, or if your complaint is not satisfactorily addressed by Pen Publishing, please visit www.bbb.org/EU-privacy-shield/for-eu-consumers/ for more information and to file a complaint.

Please note that if your complaint is not resolved through these channels, under limited circumstances, a binding arbitration option may be available before a Privacy Shield Panel.

Pen Publishing will not lease, exchange, or sell your personal data to, or share your personal data with, third parties in any way other than those described in this Privacy Policy. By using any service or product provided by Pen Publishing, you agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy. If our business practices change in the future, we will provide individuals with Opt-In or Opt-Out choice regarding the sharing of their personal data.

Pen Publishing is subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

We also may be required to disclose an individual's personal information in response to a lawful request by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

In cases of onward transfer to third parties of data of EU individuals received pursuant to the EU-US Privacy Shield, Pen Publishing is potentially liable.

Information We Collect

When you login to a site supported by Pen Publishing, we collect certain information that allows us to verify your identity to protect you from malicious account usage and to protect the efficiency and security of Pen Publishing services. For instance, when you sign in to a Pen Publishing website or service, you will be asked for login credentials (username or email address, first and last name, or password).

Please note that sites and services that use our products and services may use or share any information you provide to them as described in their privacy statements. We do not control or monitor the privacy practices of our clients and their privacy practices will vary. You should review the privacy statements of each site you offer information to or sign in to in order to determine what information the site collects and how it is used.

We use third party providers to assist in managing communications and emails sent to us through the website and through some Pen Publishing managed sites. Please note that any personal information you disclose through such communications will be governed by the third party vendors' privacy policy.

Billing Information

In order to bill you for services, Pen Publishing may collect the following personally identifiable information from you: credit card number, credit card expiration date, and zip code. You may also provide your company name, phone number, and full billing address.

Payment Processors

Pen Publishing uses the following third party payment processors: Authorize.Net, Intuit, and PayPal. Personal information stored by third party payment processors is governed by the respective company's privacy policy. You will be informed of which payment processors are used when processing your payments.

Email Messages

Pen Publishing provides tools that allow you to promote your website via email, e.g., digital newsletters. Email addresses added to the recipient list will not be stored in our database, but may be stored in system logs in text format. This assists us in tracking down abusive users. We will never attempt to contact people from the email addresses logged in this way.

Hosted Websites

Pen Publishing offers tools that may ask you to enter your email address when making comments on websites that are hosted by Pen Publishing, but populated by a client. We also offer tools that allow you to contact our clients through their websites. We also provide opportunities to contact the owner of the website that may require you to enter personally identifiable information such as an email address and full name. Since our users can manipulate the HTML code on their sites, it is possible for a malicious user to inject code that would log your information before it reaches our system. Because our clients have full reign over the content of sites they host through us, this privacy policy does not apply to any hosted Pen Publishing website that you do not own. Insure that you trust the owner of a particular site before submitting personally identifiable information on said site.

Server Logs

When accessing web pages on a website hosted or supported by Pen Publishing, we may log your IP address, access URL, time of access, geographic location, browser type, and referral URL in order to provide us with internal information regarding site traffic statistics. This information may also be used to identify users who are using the service for spam. Otherwise, this information is never linked back to any personally identifiable information.

User Content Posted to a Website

Be aware that if you post any comments or user content on a website hosted or in any way supported by Pen Publishing, any personally identifiable information you choose to provide may be collected, read, or used by anyone who sees it. We are not responsible for the information you choose to submit in such forums, nor can we guarantee that other users will not copy and/or use posted information outside of the website.

Social Media

Pen Publishing provides the opportunity to interact and post content through various social media sites. These include but are not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube. Any interactions with these or similar tools and information you provide in connection with said interactions are viewable to the public outside of the website domain. Please refer to the privacy policies of the social media sites you are using to determine how protective they are. The only way to be sure that this information is not disclosed is to refrain from using these tools. Pen Publishing is not responsible for information you choose to post in those forums.

Pen Publishing uses social media features such as the Facebook button and widgets on many of our sites. These features may collect your IP address, may note which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. These features are either hosted by a third party or are hosted directly on our site. Your interactions with these features and the information you share during these transactions are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing the feature.

How We Use Your Information

Pen Publishing collects the information listed above in order to provide a service that allows you to maintain an online presence. In the case that we help you develop content for your website, we will verify that any personal information shared with the public or anyone else is approved for display by you.

We will also use information collected through our websites and other services to send out notifications regarding service issues.

Information collected through our service logs is used to identify potential cases of abuse and establish statistics regarding website traffic. These statistics and the information collected in the establishment of them would not identify personal information of individual users.

Information collected through any official Pen Publishing websites is owned solely by Pen Publishing. Your information is not sold, leased, or otherwise given to any third party in anyway, other than by those methods and for the purposes stated in this privacy policy.

Information Security

All user information is stored in secure databases and protected by a variety of access controls. Despite security measures including but not limited to, passwords, SSL encryption, and firewalls, no company can fully eliminate security risks associated with transmitting personal information through online transactions, and you do so at your own risk.

Accessing Your Information

Personally identifiable information will only be made public at the discretion of the client. If you want to access or change information we have on file about yourself, including billing information, you may call our office at 316-651-0551 and we will make the requested changes after appropriately verifying your identity.

Your information can be removed upon reasonable request. Information necessary for operation such as billing information will be retained. Information will be retained as necessary to provide you services, resolve disputes, comply with our legal obligations, and enforce our agreements.

Service-related Announcements

We occasionally send out service-related announcements as they are necessary. These are not promotional in nature, rather they will inform you if your service is temporarily suspended for maintenance. We generally do not offer an option to opt-out of these emails, but if you prefer not to receive them, you can call us at 316-651-0551 and let us know.

We may send messages occasionally about services or features that we offer our users. You may opt-out of these emails at any time by emailing us at support@penpublishing.com and asking us not to send you such emails.

Personal Information

Pen Publishing employs third party service providers to perform business functions including but not limited to email service providers, credit card processors, and data analyzers. Such providers have access to information needed to perform appropriate business functions on our behalf. They are authorized only to use your personal information as necessary to provide these services to us.

Account and personal information may be released if its release is necessary to comply with the law or protect the property, rights, or safety of Pen Publishing, our users, or others, including the exchange of information with organizations for credit risk reduction or fraud protection.

Unless otherwise stated by this privacy policy, notice will be given if information about you might go out to third parties, and you will be given an opportunity to choose whether or not to share that information.

Logged Information

We use information to analyze trends, administer websites, gather demographic information about our user base, and track users' movements around websites. This information is not linked to personally identifiable information. Information used for these purposes is captured automatically and stored in log files. It includes internet service provider, internet protocol addresses, browser type, date/time stamp, clickstream data, operating system, and referring/exit pages.

Cookies

Our websites use small bits of data called cookies stored on users' computers to help "remember" information about your passwords and preferences. Disabling cookies disallows you from using this service, but does not block you from accessing websites published by Pen Publishing. These cookies cannot be tied back to personal information unless you are logged into a Pen Publishing service, at which time the cookies on your computer identify your account within our system.

This privacy policy only covers the use of cookies by sites owned and maintained by Pen Publishing.

Links

Be aware that Pen Publishing is not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites, even if we provide links to them from our websites.

This privacy policy applies only to information collected by this website.

Disclaimer

Pen Publishing reserves the right to disclose your personally identifiable information when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a court order, judicial proceeding, or legal process served on us, our employees, agents, or affiliates.

Changes

We reserve the right to modify this policy at any time. If material changes are made, a notification will be posted on our websites and you will be emailed. Moreover, we will not make our policies less protective of client information collected in the past without consent from the affected clients.

Children Under 13

Pen Publishing websites are not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from such children. In the case that we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with personally identifiable information, we will delete such information.

Last updated 10/01/2017.