bythom.com and its related sites may collect information about you in order to properly function, but only via partner services. All of those partners and their services have published privacy policies. Your continued use of the bythom.com and its related sites indicates that you are aware of these policies and accept them.
Summary:
- Google fonts are used on this site; they collect usage data
- PayPal is used on our sites when you order byThom Press books; PayPal uses cookies and collects usage and order data
- E-Junkie is used on our sites when you purchase byThom Press books; E-Junkie collects order data when you do
- B&H advertising appears on this site; B&H uses tracking IDs to understand where the link came from
- bythom.com, dslrbodies.com, sansmirror.com, filmbodies.com, zsystemuser.com do not add additional cookies or tracking information. If you send us an email, that information is collected and retained.
Details:
This site has used the Google Analytics external tracking mechanism in the past to better understand whether you're a new or repeat visitor to this site, and which articles you're reading. It currently uses Google fonts, which do something similar. Thus, even if you restricted yourself to just visiting pages on this site, you may have left information behind that could be used to track you, though this is minimal. We don’t look at or use that information, but Google does.
If you purchase an eBook or other item directly from this or any of the bythom-owned sites, the payment processor that is used is PayPal, regardless of whether you have a PayPal account or not (i.e., PayPal is our merchant credit card processor). PayPal has its own privacy policies. None of your credit card or account information is ever seen by the bythom sites or passed through them, let alone retained. Indeed, that's one of the reasons why we use PayPal, as we don't want to have your information sitting around anywhere on our sites, even temporarily. All we receive is an email notification when an order has been completed and the payment processed correctly and completely, and that notification includes what you purchased, how much you paid, what your address and email are, and perhaps a note if you added one. We also get a Transaction ID# (though it is different from the transaction ID you get) so that we can look up the transaction in PayPal's database, if necessary. At no time do we or this site have any access to your private information during this transaction (you'll note that you're taken to a secure PayPal site during checkout). We realize that our choice of PayPal as our payment processor is problematic for some, especially for some foreign visitors, as the foreign servers and policies for PayPal do sometimes differ in what information they request and how they handle a transaction. The primary reason we originally selected PayPal had to do with privacy, though. Most other merchant processing services required our sites to at least temporarily acquire and handle, and in some cases, temporarily store, sensitive credit card information. We prefer not to create yet another vulnerability point for private data access, especially since this site is hosted on a shared server.
To deliver any book you purchase, this site uses E-Junkie. This automated service will send you emails to deliver your purchase and any subsequent updates for your purchase, and it retains information about you in their database so as to continue to serve you (and us, if we need to resend your order).
We maintain a database of all book orders made from the bythom sites. That database contains name, address, email address, item ordered, date sent, tracking number (when used), any note that you added to your order, the PayPal transaction ID, and any notes we add to the database about subsequent correspondence about that order. This database is stored and backed up outside the site server and is not accessible outside bythom offices. We have not released any information nor do we have any current intention to release information from this database to other parties. We may choose to use your email address in the future to do marketing of new products to previous byThom customers, but if we do this, we will include an Opt Out option on those emails that you can use to remove yourself from any future mailings.
B&H is this site's exclusive advertiser. Any B&H link on this site will have tracking information associated with it so that B&H understands where the referral came from. You may then see B&H "recommendations" pop up as you continue to browse the Internet, and those would be based upon that tracking information.
Some of you send us direct email and comments on articles. We archive only some of such email received (our email provider archives it permanently). Thus, we may maintain a record of something you've sent us. Again, however, it is not our practice to do anything with such information other than act on it and store it. We don't currently build email address lists and sell them to others (and if we ever do build such lists, we would likely perform a courtesy opt-out mailing first). If a response is warranted, we respond to your email and possibly archive your original query. If you've submitted a comment on an article, we may edit it and place it on the site if we think it adds useful information or commentary, and we may archive your original submission (usually we’ll respond directly if the comment contained a question). We do not, however, currently identify the originator of such information posted on our sites by anything other than initials. You won’t see your name pop up in a Google search because of something you wrote to us (you can explicitly tell us to do otherwise and we may comply). In short, we'll respond when you ask for response, and we may archive what you've sent us so that our records regarding this site are complete.
To be complete we should say that this site’s privacy policies are subject to change, as are those of the third-party services it uses. If and when we make intentional changes they would be published here for you to see (this page is date stamped at the bottom with last modification date). All we can say is that we're Internet users just like you are, and we prefer sites that have policies that impact privacy concerns as little as possible. We've tried to model our own behavior accordingly. But business practices and needs, and legal regulations do change from time to time, and we may need to change my policies accordingly. We've always tried to conduct this business as an "open dialog" between ourselves and our customers, so if you have any concerns or criticisms, please feel free to address them to us so that we can consider them.
More information about:
- How Google treats personal information: Google privacy policy.
- How PayPal treats personal information: PayPal privacy policy.
- How E-Junkie treats personal information: E-Junkie privacy policy.
- How B&H treats personal information: B&H privacy policy.
