privacy policy

TextbookX.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. This privacy statement discloses the privacy practices for TextbookX.com. This privacy statement has an effective date of July 18, 2006.

TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build users' trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. Because we at TextbookX.com wish to demonstrate our commitment to your privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices and have our privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.

If you feel that this company is not abiding by its posted privacy policy, you should first email your comments to us. If you do not receive acknowledgment of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should then contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with the Web site to resolve your concerns.

Here are some steps we have taken to ensure your privacy:

Information Collection and Use

We are committed to protecting your privacy and will take every measure to ensure that all information you provide us is held confidential. The information you share with us is used strictly to process your order, service your account, and to improve our site's content and functionality. It will not be used for purposes of selling, trading, or leasing to others without your prior consent.

Personal Information

The information you provide us including your name, email address, mailing address, bank account information, credit card number, and expiration date is used strictly to correctly process and bill your orders, contact you when you encounter any problems, and if you have chosen to receive, send you information about our company's new services and special offers.

Registration

It is not necessary to register in order to purchase products from this website. It is necessary, however, to register in order to buy or sell products through our marketplace platform. All users of the marketplace (buyers and sellers) must read carefully and agree to the terms of our Membership Agreement in order to activate an marketplace account. Users may also wish to register their information without participating in the marketplace for faster ordering. To register with us, the user must complete the registration form. For purchasing only non-marketplace items, the user is required during registration to give her or his contact information (such as name and email address). This information is used to contact the user about the services on our site for which they have expressed interest. It is optional for the user to provide demographic information (such as education status and gender), but encouraged so we can provide a more personalized experience on our site. For this registration level (purchasing only non-marketplace items), Akademos does not store financial data, such as credit card information. If, however, the user desires to become a buyer or seller on the marketplace, in addition to the foregoing, registration requires personal bank account information (for the purpose of payment dispersal) and credit card information (for the purposes of fraud prevention and facilitating purchases). All sensitive information (such as contact, bank account, and credit card information) is stored as safely as possible behind a protective state of the art "firewall."

Order

We request information from the user on our order form. Here a user must provide contact information (like name and shipping address) and financial information (like credit card number, expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill customer's orders. If we have trouble processing an order, this contact information is used to get in touch with the user.

Refer-A-Friend

The TextbookX.com Refer-A-Friend program allows you to enter a friend's email address in order to send them a one-time email regarding a product that you specify. The email address of your friend is stored in our database for the purpose of sending this one-time email only. The email address is not used for any other purposes, nor will the friend be added to our list of registered email subscribers. If you or your friend have been sent an email through this program and wish to have your information removed from our database, click contact us to make your request.

Cookies

We use cookies in our system for order processing and other tracking capabilities. A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's hard drive containing information about the user. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site. Once the user closes their browser, the cookie simply terminates. For instance, by setting a cookie on our site, the user would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. If a user rejects the cookie, they may still use our site. Some of our business partners use cookies on our site (for example, advertisers). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies.

Log Files

We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site, track user's movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Sharing

We share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. We use an outside shipping company to ship orders, and a credit card processing company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

In some cases, we make special offers available to our customers that are provided by third parties. If you wish to take advantage of such an offer, Akademos will transfer relevant personal information over to the third party. We will not, however, transfer any such information without your express prior consent.

We partner with other partners to provide specific services. When the user signs up for these services, we will share names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these services. These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services.

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 a current judicial proceeding, a court order, or a legal process served on our website.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by the TextbookX website.

If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address. Members whom have chosen to receive email communications will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, and a newsletter. Please see our choice and opt-out below.

Forums

If you use the forums on textbookx.com, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums.

Security

This website takes every precaution to protect our users' information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line. When you place an order with us, you are using our secure e-commerce server and secure server software (SSL). This means that all of the information you enter is encrypted before we receive it. While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just 'surfing'.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user information offline. All of our users' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use password-protected screen-savers when they leave their desk. When they return, they must re-enter their password to re-gain access to your information. Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Every quarter, as well as any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers' information is protected. Finally, the servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure environment.

If you have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an e-mail.

Administrative Type Emails

We also send the user administrative type email communications. Members are not able to un-subscribe from administrative type emails, which contain important information about the service. We communicate with the user to provide requested services and in regards to issues relating to their account via email or phone.

Correction/Updating Personal Information:

If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your zip code), or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update or remove that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done by clicking the "Your Account" link on any page on the website and making the desired changes, or by visiting our Customer Service Center.

Choice/Opt-out

Our users are given the opportunity to 'opt-out' of receiving our newsletter or promotional materials at the point where we ask for the information. Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line of the email or by clicking the "Your Account" link on any page on the website and opting out of these services.

Affiliate Program

We are a LinkShare Merchant and, through this network, we have many affiliates. We also have an internal affiliate network. All information collected on users who have been referred to our site by a LinkShare or internal affiliate is treated in the same manner as information collected on users who come directly to our site. The only information that is shared with affiliates is the order number and the revenue associated with that order for purposes of compensating said affiliates.

Third Party Tracking

We have contracted with Overture services, Inc. Overture and DealTime, Inc. to monitor certain pages of our Web site for the purpose of reporting web traffic, statistics, advertisement 'click-throughs', and/or other activities on our site. Where authorized by us, Overture and DealTime may use cookies, Web beacons, and/or other monitoring technologies to compile anonymous statistics on our Web site visitors. No personally identifiable data is collected by or transferred to Overture and Dealtime. For more information about how the information collected by Overture and DealTime is used, please see their privacy policies at: http://www.overture.com/d/USm/about/company/ccprivacypolicy.jhtml and http://www.dealtime.com/dealtime2000/Pages/About/1,2751,3593--1,00.html

Notification of Changes

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will prominently post those changes on our Homepage so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and the circumstances, if any, under which 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, we will notify users by way of an email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

Akademos, Inc.
25 Van Zant Street
Norwalk, CT 06855
Fax: 203 866 0199

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