Updated: [8 March 2024]
This privacy policy covers the use of Public Spaces on the open web.
This privacy policy informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information of users of our website and/or services. We pride ourselves in ensuring that we collect, use, process, and erase any personal information in accordance with current applicable laws in the United States of America (USA) and the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR).
If you have requests or questions concerning your personal information, please contact us at info@plaincypher.com
Public Spaces offers annotation services, which you can use by signing up for an account where you will be asked to acknowledge and agree to our privacy policy. Some parts of those services are also available for anyone to view without an account, such as public annotations. We also publish an organizational website which in turn includes our annotation services so people can annotate our website.
We do not ask visitors to opt in just to access our organizational website because we have taken specific steps not to collect any personal information on the website using cookies or other means. The only cookies we use are de-identified, helping us understand how the website is used in general and to make it faster and easier to use. The website does enable you to opt in separately to do things like file support requests, receive emails, and/or follow our social media accounts, each of which may collect personal information from you to fulfill your request and are outlined below. Because our annotation services are embedded in our website, and because annotations can in turn embed other media, you may encounter annotations made by visitors that include media or links to other websites that set cookies that collect personal information. You can adjust your browser to block such cookies before viewing annotations on our website.
We collect both personally-identifiable information, or personal information, and non-personally-identifiable information from you. Often, you choose what information to provide to us, but sometimes, we may require certain information for you to use and for us to provide our services. Specifically, we collect the following:
Account Creation & User Profile: When you sign up and use our services, you will voluntarily provide us with the following information: Email address, First name and last name, Usage Data
Annotating Using Sidebar: When you are using our Public Spaces Sidebar you are actively visiting websites on the internet, highlighting content of interest, and annotating (i.e. providing your opinion or remarks as related to content you’ve found). These annotations are associated to your account.
By giving us this information, you agree to it being collected, used, disclosed, transferred to the government (if enforced), and stored by us (encrypted).
Information about your computer hardware and software may be automatically collected by our services. This information can include your IP address, location information, operating system, browser type, domain names, access times, and referring website addresses. This information is collected in a log file and retained for a limited time and is used for the operation of the services, to maintain the quality of the services, and to provide general statistics regarding the use of the services and website.
The website and services may use “cookies” to help personalize your online experience.
The primary purpose of a cookie is to tell the web server that you have previously visited a specific page. For example, if you personalize login to our services, a cookie tracks your session to various parts of the site.
You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of our website and services.
We may use your personally identifiable information to process user requests; to provide and improve services administration; to personalize your user experience; to contact users via email; to respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions; to send company news, updates, and other related info via our mailing list; to facilitate registration for and use of our services; and to provide technical support.
Public Spaces gives you the choice of providing, editing or removing certain information. You may update your Public Spaces account information through your account settings. You can also request the deletion of the personal information in your account by contacting us at info@plaincypher.com
Public Spaces shares information with the following third parties:
Public Spaces doesn’t share user information with advertisers, affiliates, or partners. However, we do provide API access to our systems to third parties, as described above (Authenticated and Unauthenticated users) who access user information such as annotations (along with the username of annotator, URL of annotation source, and text body of annotation) for which they have specific permissions to access. We do not monetize our user traffic in any way.
Public Spaces does not engage in any automated processing (i.e. profiling) of user information at this time. Users should be aware that third parties with access to our services using our APIs may engage in automated processing of user information.
Public Spaces secures your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure using the following methods:
When personal information is transmitted to other websites, it is protected through the use of encryption, such as the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.
User passwords are salted and hashed using the industry standard “bcrypt” algorithm. No Public Spaces staff member has access to user passwords. Public Spaces staff have access to user email addresses only for support purposes.
We retain user IP address information and request information for a strictly limited period for diagnostic purposes only. We also collect some information in aggregate about your activities within our application from the client. This de-identified information is used for internal metrics and operational support, but we do not track your individual activity.
In case of a breach of private information, we will notify affected users via the email address associated with their account within 72 hours of uncovering the breach.
Public Spaces operates globally so it is necessary to transfer your information internationally. In particular, your information will likely be transferred to and processed via servers located in the USA. The USA, European Economic Area (“EEA”) Member States, and other countries all have different laws. When your information is moved from your home country to another country, the laws, and rules that protect your personal information in the country to which your information is transferred may be different from those in the country in which you live. For example, the circumstances in which law enforcement can access personal information may vary from country to country. In particular, if your information is in the USA, it may be accessed by government authorities in accordance with laws in the USA.
To the extent that Public Spaces is deemed to transfer personal information outside of the EEA, we rely separately, alternatively, and independently on the following legal bases to transfer your information:
Privacy Shield. Public Spaces does not participate in Privacy Shield at this time. However, Public Spaces may rely on the EU-USA Privacy Shield to transfer personal information to some of our third-party service providers in the United States of America, where they are certified to receive such information under the Privacy Shield Program.
Public Spaces will keep information provided by users and third-party service providers for no longer than is necessary for operating and improving our services. Moreover, Public Spaces will respect of rights of individual users who request that their information be removed, updated, etc.
Public Spaces will retain your information for as long as your account is active (i.e. for the lifetime of your Public Spaces account), as described in this policy, or as needed to provide our services to you. If you no longer want Public Spaces to use your information to provide our services to you, you may close your account. Public Spaces will retain and use your information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your information to comply with applicable tax/revenue laws), resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and as otherwise described in this policy. We also retain log files for internal analysis purposes. These log files are generally retained for a brief period of time, except in cases where they are used for site safety and security, to improve site functionality, or when we are legally obligated to retain them for longer time periods.
Users have a right to access their User Information (email, username, number of annotations, annotations, etc) at any time either through their user settings or by logging into the services.
Users have a right to update their User Information (email, username, number of annotations, etc) at any time either through their user settings or by contacting Public Spaces at info@plaincypher.com and submitting an email request to have their user Information updated. Public Spaces may request identifying information to confirm the identity of the party requesting an update.
Users have a right to update or delete their public, and private annotations. Any update or delete request of public annotations will take effect going forward in our systems, but any prior publication of the “un-edited” public annotation captured by third parties with API access (authenticated or unauthenticated) to our systems may still retain the original, unchanged public annotation which they may have retrieved prior to the update or delete request.
Users have a right to delete their user Information (email, username, active status, number of annotations etc) at any time by contacting Public Spaces at info@plaincypher.com and submitting an email request to have their user Information deleted. Public Spaces may request identifying information to confirm the identity of the party requesting an update.
Please note that any annotations captured by our services prior to the request for deletion by a user would have been accessible to API users, and we do not have a mechanism to force those API users to remove that information, but we will respect the request of the user and delete it from our services going forward.
Users have the right to receive a copy of the information maintained about them, which they have provided to our services, in a standard format and have the right to transmit the information to another business entity without hindrance from us. Users can email info@plaincypher.com to request a copy of their information.
Users have the right to restrict the processing of their personal information. We will assist users in updating the information maintained about them or assisting them with their subject access requests in a timely manner in order to remedy concerns users have about their personal information.
Our services do not justify data processing on the basis of legitimate interest. Therefore, this right does not apply to our services.
Our services do not provide decisions based solely on automated processing that produces legal effects concerning the user. Therefore, this right does not apply to our services.
Where you have provided your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your information and your use of our services. For example, you can withdraw your consent to email communications by using the unsubscribe links in such emails. You can choose to withdraw your consent to our processing of your information and your use of our services at any time by closing your account and then emailing info@plaincypher.com to request that your personal information be deleted, except for the information that we are required to retain. This deletion is permanent and your account cannot be reinstated.
From time to time, we may contact you via email for the purpose of providing news, announcements, alerts, confirmations, surveys, and/or other general communication. In order to improve our services, we may receive notifications when you open, forward, or click on links in emails from us.
Please note that email communications from us about our services or annotation beyond the administration of your account are opt-in. If you would like to stop receiving such email communications, you may opt-out using the “unsubscribe” link provided in every email or by contacting us at info@plaincypher.com.
Opt-in organizational emails from us may contain tracking facilities within the actual email. Subscriber activity is tracked and stored in a database for future analysis and evaluation. Such tracked activity may include but shall not be limited to: the opening of emails, forwarding of emails, the clicking of links within the email content, times, dates and frequency of activity. This information is used to refine future email campaigns and supply the users with more relevant content based on their activity.
You may also control the receipt of certain types of communications from us. We may send you messages about our services or your activity. Some of these messages are required, service-related messages for users (such as transactional messages, email confirmation, replies to annotations, or legal notices). Other messages are not required, such as newsletters and announcements. You can control which optional messages you choose to receive via the unsubscribe links in our emails.
If you no longer wish to use our services or receive service-related messages (except for legally required notices), then you may close your account by contacting us at info@plaincypher.com.
Children's Information
Another part of our priority is adding protection for children while using the internet. We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in, and/or monitor and guide their online activity.
Remark does not knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.
We encourage you to reach out to us at info@plaincypher.com to resolve any issues or concerns that you may have with this privacy policy or the ways we manage your information. In the event that you feel that we have not resolved your issue via email or support ticket communications, you have the right to file a complaint with your local supervisory authority or regulatory agency.
We may modify, add to, suspend, or delete this privacy policy, in whole or in part, at our sole discretion at any time, with such modifications, additions, or deletions being effective on the date of publication online. Your access to the website and/or use of our services, after modification, addition, or deletion of the privacy policy shall be deemed to constitute acceptance by you of the modification, addition, or deletion.