Hometown Authors | Start Where You Are | Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

Privacy Policy

OUR COMMITMENT TO PROTECTING YOUR PRIVACY

Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used.

We are committed to safeguarding your privacy. Contact us at info@hometownreads.com if you have any questions or problems regarding the use of your personal data and we will gladly assist you.

By using this site or/and our services, you consent to the processing of your Personal Data as described in this Privacy Policy.

Definitions used in this Policy
Data protection principles we follow
What rights do you have regarding your Personal Data
What Personal Data we gather about you
How we use your Personal Data
Who else has access to your Personal Data
How we secure your data
Information about cookies
Contact information

Personal Data – any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
Processing – any operation or set of operations which is performed on Personal Data or on sets of Personal Data.
Data subject – a natural person whose Personal Data is being processed.
Child – a natural person under 16 years of age.
We/us (either capitalized or not) – Hometown Authors

We promise to follow the following data protection principles:

Processing is lawful, fair, transparent. Our processing activities have lawful grounds. We always consider your rights before processing personal data. We will provide you information regarding processing upon request.
Processing is limited to the purpose. Our processing activities fit the purpose for which Personal Data was gathered.
Processing is done with minimal data. We only gather and process the minimal amount of Personal Data required for any purpose.
Processing is limited with a time period. We will not store your Personal Data for longer than needed.
We will do our best to ensure the accuracy of data.
We will do our best to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data.

The Data Subject has the following rights:

Right to information – meaning you have to right to know whether your Personal Ddata is being processed, what data is gathered, from where it is obtained, and why and by whom it is processed.
Right to access – meaning you have the right to access the data collected from/about you, including your right to request and obtain a copy of your Personal Data gathered.
Right to rectification – meaning you have the right to request rectification or erasure of your Personal Data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
Right to erasure – meaning in certain circumstances you can request for your Personal Data to be erased from our records.
Right to restrict processing – meaning where certain conditions apply, you have the right to restrict the processing of your Personal Data.
Right to object to processing – meaning in certain cases you have the right to object to processing of your Personal Data, for example in the case of direct marketing.
Right to object to automated processing – meaning you have the right to object to automated processing, including profiling; and not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing. This right you can exercise whenever there is an outcome of the profiling that produces legal effects concerning or significantly affecting you.
Right to data portability – you have the right to obtain your Personal Data in a machine-readable format or if it is feasible, as a direct transfer from one processor to another.
Right to lodge a complaint – in the event that we refuse your request under the Rights of Access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. If you are not satisfied with the way your request has been handled please contact us.
Right for the help of supervisory authority – meaning you have the right for the help of a supervisory authority and the right for other legal remedies such as claiming damages.
Right to withdraw consent – you have the right withdraw any given consent for processing of your Personal Data.

You may download your data as a table for viewing, export it in machine-readable JSON format, or withdraw your consents to retain Personal Data and delete any collected information. To do so, please view our Privacy Tools page.

Information you have provided us with. This might be your e-mail address, name, billing address, home address, etc. — mainly information that is necessary for delivering you a product/service or to enhance your customer experience with us. We save the information you provide us with in order for you to comment or perform other activities on the website. This information includes, for example, your name and e-mail address.

Information automatically collected about you. This includes information that is automatically stored by cookies and other session tools. For example, your IP address, your contact history (if there is any), etc. This information is used to improve your customer experience. When you use our services or look at the contents of our website, your activities may be logged.

Information from our partners. We gather information from our trusted partners with confirmation that they have legal grounds to share that information with us. This is either information you have provided them directly with or that they have gathered about you on other legal grounds.

Information that is publicly available. We might gather further information about you that is publicly available.

We use your Personal Data in order to enhance your customer experience; fulfill an obligation under law or contract; and provide our service to you. For example, registering your account, providing you with other products and services that you have requested, providing you with promotional items at your request and communicating with you in relation to those products and services, communicating and interacting with you, and notifying you of changes to any services.

We use your Personal Data on legitimate grounds and/or with your consent. On the grounds of entering into a contract or fulfilling contractual obligations, we process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

to identify you;
to provide you a service or to send/offer you a product; and
to communicate either for sales or invoicing.

On the grounds of legitimate interest, we process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

to send you personalized offers (from us and/or our carefully selected partners);
to administer and analyze our client base (purchasing behavior and history) in order to improve the quality, variety, and availability of products/services offered; and
to conduct questionnaires concerning client satisfaction.

As long as you have not informed us otherwise, we consider offering you products/services that are similar or same to your purchasing history/browsing behavior to be our legitimate interest.

With your consent, we process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

to send you newsletters and campaign offers (from us and/or our carefully selected partners); and
for other purposes we have asked previously your consent for.

We process your Personal Data in order to fulfill obligation rising from law, and/or use your Personal Data for options provided by law. We reserve the right to anonymize Personal Data gathered and to use any such data. We will use data outside the scope of this Policy only when it is anonymized. We save your billing information and other information gathered about you for as long as needed for accounting purposes or other obligations deriving from law, but no longer than is absolutely necessary.

We might process your Personal Data for additional purposes that are not mentioned here, but are compatible with the original purpose for which the data was gathered. To do this, we will ensure that:

the link between purposes, context and nature of Personal Data is suitable for further processing;
the further processing would not harm your interests; and
there would be appropriate safeguard for processing.

We do not share your personal data with strangers. Personal Data about you is, in some cases, provided to our trusted partners in order to either make providing the service to you possible or to enhance your customer experience. We share your data only with trusted third-parties, and will only work with processing partners who are able to ensure adequate level of protection to your Personal Data.

Because we value your privacy we have taken the necessary precautions to be in compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. We therefore will not distribute your personal information to outside parties without your consent. We disclose your Personal Data to third parties or public officials when we are legally obliged to do so. We might disclose your Personal Data to third parties if you have consented to it or if there are other legal grounds for it.

We do our best to keep your Personal Data safe. We use safe protocols for communication and transferring data (such as HTTPS). We use anonymizing and pseudonymizing where suitable. We monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential.

Even though we try our best we can not guarantee the security of information. However, we promise to notify suitable authorities of data breaches. We will also notify you if there is a threat to your rights or interests. We will do everything we reasonably can to prevent security breaches and to assist authorities should any breaches occur.

If you have an account with us, note that you have to keep your username and password secret.

Children

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act). We do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

We use cookies and/or similar technologies to analyze customer behavior, administer the website, track users’ movements, and collect information about users. This is done in order to personalize and enhance your experience with us.

A cookie is a tiny text file stored on your computer. Cookies store information that is used to help make sites work. Only we can access the cookies created by our website. You can control your cookies at the browser level.

Currently we operate an ‘implied consent’ policy which means that we assume you are happy with this usage. If you are not happy, then you should either not use this site, or you should delete the cookies having visited the site, or you should browse the site using your browser’s anonymous usage setting (called “Incognito” in Chrome, “InPrivate” for Internet Explorer, “Private Browsing” in Firefox and Safari, etc.). However, choosing to disable cookies may hinder your use of certain functions. Learn more about cookies here.

We use cookies for the following purposes:

Necessary cookies – these cookies are required for you to be able to use some important features on our website, such as logging in. These cookies don’t collect any personal information.
Functionality cookies – these cookies provide functionality that makes using our service more convenient and makes providing more personalised features possible. For example, they might remember your name and e-mail in comment forms so you don’t have to re-enter this information next time when commenting.
Analytics cookies – these cookies are used to track the use and performance of our website and services
Advertising cookies – these cookies are used to deliver advertisements that are relevant to you and to your interests. In addition, they are used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement. They are usually placed to the website by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. These cookies remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers. Often targeting or advertising cookies will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organisation.

We use WordPress to store basic data on your interactions with our website, and whether you have logged into WordPress. We use a session cookie to remember your log-in for you (if you are a registered user), and what you’ve put in the shopping cart. These we deem strictly necessary to the working of the website. If these are disabled then various functionalities on the site will be broken. More information on session cookies can be found here.

We use Google Analytics to measure traffic on our website. Google has their own Privacy Policy, which you can review here. If you’d like to opt out of tracking by Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics opt-out page.

We use other third party cookies that are set on your machine by external websites whose services are used on this site. This includes sharing buttons across the site, which allow visitors to share content onto social networks. Cookies are currently set by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn. In order to implement these buttons, and connect them to the relevant social networks and external sites, there are scripts from domains outside of our website. You should be aware that these sites are likely to be collecting information about what you are doing all around the internet, including on this website.

You should check the respective policies of each of these sites to see how exactly they use your information and to find out how to opt out, or delete, such information.

You can remove cookies stored in your computer via your browser settings. Alternatively, you can control some 3rd party cookies by using a privacy enhancement platform such as optout.aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.com. For more information about cookies, visit allaboutcookies.org.

We are committed to safeguarding your privacy. Contact us at info@hometownreads.com if you have any questions or problems regarding the use of your Personal Data and we will gladly assist you.

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page, and/or update the Privacy Policy modification date below. This policy was last modified on May 17, 2018.

Terms and Conditions

These ‘Terms Of Use’ set forth the terms and conditions that apply to your use of the Hometownauthors.com web site, or any web site owned by Hometown Authors that links to this page as well as any related products, services, websites or other information provided by Hometown Authors, also knows as the (‘Web Site’). By using the Web Site, other than to read this page for the first time, you agree to comply with all of the Terms of Use set forth herein. The right to use the Web Site is personal to you and is not transferable to any other person or entity.

Copyrights And Trademarks

No person is authorized to use, copy or distribute any portion the Web Site including related graphics.
Hometown Authors and other trademarks and/or service marks (including logos and designs) found on the Web Site are trademarks/service marks that identify Hometown Authors and the goods and/or services provided by Hometown Authors. Such marks may not be used under any circumstances without the prior written authorization of Hometown Authors.

Links To Third-Party Web Sites

The web site may provide hyperlinks to third-party web sites as a convenience to users of the Web Site. Hometown Authors does not control third-party web sites and is not responsible for the contents of any linked-to, third-party web sites or any hyperlink in a linked-to web site. Hometown Authors does not endorse, recommend or approve any third-party web site hyper-linked from the Web Site. Hometown Authors will have no liability to any entity for the content or use of the content available through such hyperlink.

No Representations Or Warranties

The information and materials on the Web Site may include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically made to the information contained herein. Hometown Authors makes no representations or warranties with respect to any information, materials, or graphics on the web site, all of which is provided on a strictly “AS-IS” basis, without warranty of any kind and hereby expressly disclaims all warranties with regard to any information, materials, or graphics on the web site, including all implied warranties of merchant-ability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

Under no circumstances shall the site owner or publisher be liable under any theory of recovery, at law or in equity, for any damages, including without limitation, special, direct, incidental, consequential or punitive damages (including, but not limited to loss of use or lost profits), arising out of or in any manner connected with the use of information or services, or the failure to provide information or services, from the web site.

Changes To These Terms Of Use

Hometown Authors reserves the right to change these terms of use at any time by posting new terms of use at this location. These Terms of Use were last updated May 21, 2018.

Contacting Us

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy or terms of use you may contact us at: ideas@hometownreads.com at any anytime.

Privacy Policy and Terms of Use