Bookji Privacy Policy

LAST UPDATED: 11/03/2023

Welcome to Bookji. A modern and fun way to get your students excited about books and reading. Bookji is a social reading platform that emphasizes collaboration with peers, emoji integration, and geographical awareness to better captivate young readers with books. Bookji will help create an environment and culture where students see themselves, their classmates, friends and teachers as readers.

Bookji harnesses the most powerful tool to excite kids about reading—peer influence. On Bookji, classmates and friends can create book posts and share book-related content.

Bookji and Student Privacy

We value the privacy of all of our users and we know you care about your privacy and the privacy of your students, so we created this Privacy Policy. It explains the information we collect from users and how and when we disclose or use it. By accessing or using the Bookji website, services, software, applications, and/or content made available by Bookji, you are consenting to collection and use of your information as outlined in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies to our collection and use of data collected from schools, teachers, and students.

Protecting your privacy is fundamental to our mission and business. The following summarizes our promises to you with regard to student data:

• We use the personal information we collect from students only to provide you and your student’s access to the Bookji Service and its features as outlined in our Terms of Service.
• We do not use student personal information for advertising or marketing.
• We will never show a students information outside of their school.
• We never directly show third party ads in Bookji.
• We believe that schools should have control over their student data.
• We employ industry-standard network security and encryption technology to protect student data.
• We are transparent about our practices and will notify you if things change.
• We never display or allow third-party ads, share student data for advertising purposes, or allow data collection by third party advertisers or data brokers from students.

We have built a safe online platform to support, promote and foster independent reading activities of children of all ages. Because our users include children who are 12 and younger, we take extra precautions to keepall Bookji users safe and protected. Our information practices are designed to comply with the United States Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Our Privacy Policy will help you understand the different measures we take to help create a safe and fun digital platform for kids.

Registration

Bookji does not allow students to register without a unique eight digit class code, which needs to be provided by their teacher or school administrator. By providing a student with a class code, we are assuming, and you represent and warrant, that you have the authority to provide consent on behalf of the student’s parents, and for us to collect information from students for the purpose of providing the Services to you as described in our Terms of Service. Do not provide a class code to a student prior to receiving written consent from the parent.

Information We Collect

In providing our Services, we collect the following information:

• Profile Information:
  • For teachers, librarians and school administrators, Bookji collects: first name, last name, email, username, password, an emoji avatar or image associated with each user's profile, and the classes they teach.
  • For students, Bookji collects: first name, last name (which can be just an initial), email (optional), username, password and an emoji avatar associated with each user's profile, and the grade they are in, and what class(es) they are in.
• Lexile Levels:
  • Bookji may store the Lexile reading level of a student, if provided by the teacher or student.
• User Book Information:
  • Bookji stores a variety of information about books the user interacts with while using the application. We store information such as which books users have read, are reading now, books they add to their 'reading list', book reactions with emojis, their favorite books, and books they are willing to share with others in their school. This information is only provided to users with the student’s school, and if the user marks their profile as private, this information is hidden from all users, except their teachers and school administrators.
  • We also record when a user clicks on a book or clicks on an emoji to make an 'emoji search'. This information is used to provide analytics to teachers with in their school's account. We do not share this information with other users, schools, or districts.
  • We never show information about a student outside of their school.
• Use of Service:
  • Information about the use of the Services, including a user’s general location (based on IP address or GPS), when, and for how long a user accesses our Services, what content a user views, and what actions he or she takes.
• Device Information:
  • Information from and about a user’s device, such as mobile device type, browser type and version, operating system name and version, IP address, and referring URL. We collect this information automatically when you access our services, to help us understand usage, diagnose problems, administer our Services, and provide support.
• Cookies & Beacons:
  • Bookji uses cookies, which are pieces of information stored directly on a user’s computer, and other persistent identifiers. We and our service providers use this information for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, to display information more effectively, to personalize your experience while using the Services, and to recognize your computer in order to assist your use of the Services. We also gather statistical information about use of the Services in order to continually improve their design and functionality, understand how they are used and assist us with resolving questions regarding them.
  • Bookji also uses Google analytics, which uses pixel tags (also known as web beacons and clear GIFs) to track how you navigate through our Services, so that we can understand, for example, what links are clicked and what content is accessed and for how long.
  • We do not use cookies, pixel tags, or other technologies to track your use of third-party services.

How Do We Use Your Information?

We use information about you for the following general purposes:

• to register accounts and students
• to fulfill your requests
• to manage your account
• understand how you are engaging with Bookji and to personalize your experience, such as displaying the name on a user's profile page
• to improve customer service by diagnosing problems, troubleshooting issues, and providing maintenance and support
• to communicate with you in general
• to respond to your questions and comments
• to prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities
• to enforce our Terms of Service
• and as otherwise described to you at the point of collection
• permit teachers to view student's reading activity, their reactions and comments about books, and to otherwise support instruction

The profile name of a student will not appear to anyone outside of the student’s school.

We may disclose information to a third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stock (including in bankruptcy or similar proceedings).

We may use and disclose information as we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

We may use and disclose information that does not identify or otherwise directly relate to an individual for any purpose, subject to any restrictions imposed by applicable law.

How Do We Protect Your Information?

Bookji has gone to great lengths to keep your information safe. We have implemented both technical and organizational measures designed to secure your information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration or disclosure. These include, but are not limited to:

• Our data is stored on secure servers and we use industry standards to protect against hacking.
• We use SSL to encrypt all and any personal information whenever it is transmitted over the wire.
• We encrypt at rest all user passwords.
• Our Production server environment is located in a private network and fully isolated from other company systems.
• Our Production server is fully redundant and backed up nightly.

Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe the security of your account has been compromised, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “Contact Us” section below.

If you communicate with us by email, please do not include confidential or private information. By sending sensitive or confidential email messages or information which are not encrypted you accept the risk of such uncertainty and possible lack of confidentiality over the Internet.

Also, Bookji does not encourage minors to make personal information publicly available.

Third party services

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information, or other practices of any third parties, including any third party operating any site or service to which the Bookji Services link. The inclusion of a link on the Services does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service.

If there is a breach or suspected breach of data,

• the affected parties will be notified within 72 hours;
• the school administrators and/or teachers will be notified by email or phone if the school or teacher account or any related student accounts are affected;
• the appropriate person in the school or school district who has purchased the valid school-wide or district-wide subscription will be notified by email or phone if the users from this school or school district are affected.
• we will provide a plan for how to stop any further beaches and a summary of the data we believe was breached.

Your Right to Access Information

You are entitled to see the information held about you. If you wish to do this, please contact us using information at the end of this page. We may require you to provide verification of your identity and to pay an administration fee to provide a copy of the information we hold. Please note that, in certain circumstances, we may withhold access to your information where we have the right to do so under current data protection legislation.

Updating Your Information & Decommissioning

You may review, correct, update or change your Personal Information at any time by accessing your account on gobookji.com. If you would like us to delete your record in our system, please contact us using information at the end of this page and we will accommodate your request, if we do not have any legal obligation to retain the record.

After the product is no longer in use by the school, we will:

• delete all students’ personally identifiable information we hold within 1 year.
• upon request, as explained in our Terms of Services, we will delete students’ personally identifiable information within 5 days from our website.

Upon request by the school, we can transfer any students’ personally identifiable information we held to the school or its designated third party. A school can request such a transfer not more than once a year.

Our Policy Towards Minors

As stated in our Terms of Service, minors are only allowed to use our Website and Services with their legal representative’s consent. Bookji strictly adheres to the Family Education Rights Protection Act of 1974 (FERPA). FERPA protects the privacy of students' data by specifying how and with whom schools can share information from these records.

We agree that students’ personally identifiable information stays under the direct control of the school. We will not use personally identifiable information in student records to engage in targeted advertising. Nor will we use any information in the student record for any purpose other than those required or specifically permitted by our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Services.

If a legal representative becomes aware that his / her represented minor has provided us with Personal Information without their consent, he or she should contact us at support@gobookji.com. We will delete such information from our files within 5 working days.

Disclosing Information

We may disclose Personal Information if we have to comply with legal obligations or to law enforcement requests, to protect and defend our rights and property or the safety of other users, and with your permission.

If we are involved in a change in control, merger, acquisition, reorganization, receivership, bankruptcy, transition of Services to another provider, or any similar transaction, your information may be transferred or sold as permitted by law and/or contract.

Updates to this Privacy Policy

This policy may be amended from time to time. If we amend the Privacy Policy in any way we will:

• place an updated version on this page, and/or update the Privacy Policy issue date;
• email you, provided we have a valid email address.

The “Last Updated” legend at the top of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Your use of the Services following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

Jurisdiction and Applicable Law

This policy and all matters arising out of or related to this policy shall be governed by the substantive laws of the State of Colorado, USA, without regards to conflicts of laws and principles thereof.

Any controversy, claim or dispute between you and Bookji arising out of or relating to this policy shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the State of Colorado, USA.

Your Consent

By using Bookji, you expressly consent to our Privacy policy.

Contact us

If you would like to contact us with questions or feedback, please contact us here at support@gobookji.com.