Privacy Policy

Collection and Use of Personal Information

Personal information is data that can be used to uniquely identify or contact a single person.

You may be asked to provide your personal information anytime you are in contact with Academia or an Academia affiliated company. Academia and it’s affiliates may share this personal information with each other and use it consistent with this Privacy Policy. They may also combine it with other information to provide and improve our products, services, content and advertising.

Here are some examples of the types of personal information Academia may collect and how we may use it.

What personal information we collect

When you create a website login, register your products, apply for commercial credit, purchase a product, register for an event or training  or participate in an online survey, we may collect a variety of information, including your name, postal address, phone number, email address, contact preferences and credit card information.

How we use your personal information

The personal information we collect allows us to keep you posted on Academia’s latest announcements, news and upcoming events. It also helps us to improve our services, content and advertising. If you don’t want to be on our mailing list, you can opt out anytime by updating your preferences or by contacting us.

We also use personal information to help us develop, deliver and improve our products, services, content and advertising.

From time to time, we may use your personal information to send important notices, such as communications about purchases and changes to our terms, conditions and policies. Because this information is important to your interaction with Academia, you may not opt out of receiving these communications.

We may also use personal information for internal purposes such as auditing, data analysis and research to improve Academia’s products, services and customer communications.

If you enter into a sweepstake, contest or similar promotion, we may use the information you provide to administer those programmes.

Collection and Use of Non-Personal Information

We also collect non-personal information — data in a form that does not permit direct association with any specific individual. We may collect, use, transfer and disclose non-personal information for any purpose. The following are some examples of non-personal information that we collect and how we may use it:

• We may collect information such as occupation, language, postcode, area code, unique device identifier, location and the time zone where products are used so that we can better understand customer behaviour and improve our products, services and advertising.
• We may also collect information regarding customer activities on our website and from our other products and services. This information is aggregated and used to help us provide more useful information to our customers and to understand which parts of our website, products and services are of most interest. Aggregated data is considered non-personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.

If we do combine non-personal information with personal information, the combined information will be treated as personal information for as long as it remains combined.

Cookies and Other Technologies

Academia’s website, online services, interactive applications, email messages and advertisements may use “cookies” and other technologies such as pixel tags and web beacons. These technologies help us better understand user behaviour, tell us which parts of our website people have visited, and facilitate and measure the effectiveness of advertisements and web searches. We treat information collected by cookies and other technologies as non-personal information. However, to the extent that Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or similar identifiers are considered personal information by local law, we also treat these identifiers as personal information. Similarly, to the extent that non-personal information is combined with personal information, we treat the combined information as personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.

Academia and its partners use cookies and other technologies in electronic advertising services to control the number of times you see a given ad, deliver ads that relate to your interests and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. If you do not want to receive ads with this level of relevance, please contact us. If you opt out, you will continue to receive the same number of electronic marketing, but they may be less relevant because they will not be based on your interests. You may still see ads related to the content on a web page or in an application or based on other non-personal information. This opt-out applies only to Academia advertising services and does not affect interest-based advertising from other advertising networks.

Academia and our partners also use cookies and other technologies to remember personal information when you use our website. Our goal in these cases is to make your experience with Academia more convenient and personal. For example, knowing your first name lets us welcome you the next time you visit the Academia Online Stores. Knowing your country and language − and if you are an educator, your school − helps us provide a customised and more useful shopping experience. Knowing someone using your computer or device has shopped for a certain product or used a particular service helps us make our advertising and email communications more relevant to your interests. And knowing your contact information, product serial numbers and information about your computer or device helps us provide you with better customer service.

If you want to disable cookies and you’re using the Safari web browser, go to Safari preferences and then to the Privacy pane to disable cookies. On your Apple mobile device, go to Settings, then Safari and then to the Cookies section. For other browsers, check with your provider to find out how to disable cookies. Please note that certain features of the Academia website will not be available once cookies are disabled.

As is true of most websites, we gather some information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type and language, Internet service provider (ISP), referring and exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp and clickstream data.

We use this information to understand and analyse trends, to administer the site, to learn about user behaviour on the site, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. Academia may use this information in our marketing and advertising services.

In some of our email messages, we use a “click-through URL” linked to content on the Academia website. When customers click one of these URLs, they pass through a separate web server before arriving at the destination page on our website. We track this click-through data to help us determine interest in particular topics and measure the effectiveness of our customer communications. If you prefer not to be tracked in this way, you should not click text or graphic links in the email messages.

Pixel tags enable us to send email messages in a format customers can read, and they tell us whether mail has been opened. We may use this information to reduce or eliminate messages sent to customers.

Disclosure to Third Parties

At times, Academia may make certain personal information available to strategic partners that work with Academia to provide products and services, or that help Academia market to customers.  Personal information will only be shared by Academia to provide or improve our products, services and advertising; it will not be shared with third parties for their marketing purposes.

Service Providers

Academia shares personal information with companies who provide services such as information processing, extending credit, fulfilling customer orders, delivering products to you, managing and enhancing customer data, providing customer service, assessing your interest in our products and services, and conducting customer research or satisfaction surveys. These companies are obligated to protect your information and may be located wherever Academia operates.

Others

It may be necessary — by law, legal process, litigation and/or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence — for Academia to disclose your personal information. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.

We may also disclose information about you if we determine that disclosure is reasonably necessary to enforce our terms and conditions or protect our operations or users. Additionally, in the event of a re-organisation, merger or sale, we may transfer any and all personal information we collect to the relevant third party.

Protection of Personal Information

Academia takes precautions — including administrative, technical and physical measures — to safeguard your personal information against loss, theft and misuse, as well as against unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

Academia online services such as the Academia Online Store use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on all web pages where personal information is collected. To make purchases from these services, you must use an SSL-enabled browser such as Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer. Doing so protects the confidentiality of your personal information while it’s transmitted over the Internet.

When you use some products, services or post on an Academia forum, chat room or social networking service, the personal information you share is visible to other users and can be read, collected or used by them. You are responsible for the personal information you choose to submit in these instances. For example, if you list your name and email address in a forum posting, that information is public. Please take care when using these features.

Integrity and Retention of Personal Information

Academia makes it easy for you to keep your personal information accurate, complete and up to date. We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

Access to Personal Information

You can help ensure that your contact information and preferences are accurate, complete and up to date by logging in to your account. For other personal information, we make good faith efforts to provide you with access so you can request that we correct the data if it is inaccurate or delete the data if Academia is not required to retain it by law or for legitimate business purposes. We may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardise the privacy of others, are extremely impractical or for which access is not otherwise required by local law. Access, correction or deletion requests can be made to the regional Privacy email addresses.

Children

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected the personal information of a child under 13, we will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible.

Third-Party Sites and Services

Academia websites, products, electronic marketing and services may contain links to third-party websites, products and services. Our products and services may also use or offer products or services from third parties. Information collected by third parties, which may include such things as location data or contact details, is governed by their privacy practices. We encourage you to learn about the privacy practices of those third parties.

Our Company-Wide Commitment to Your Privacy

To make sure your personal information is secure, we communicate our privacy and security guidelines to Academia employees and strictly enforce privacy safeguards within the company.

Privacy Questions

If you have any questions or concerns about Academia’s Privacy Policy or data processing, please contact us.

Academia may update its Privacy Policy from time to time. When we change the policy in a material way, a notice will be posted on our website along with the updated Privacy Policy.