BookSurge Privacy Notice

Last updated: April 27, 2007

BookSurge knows that you care how information about you is used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly. This notice describes our privacy policy. By visiting BookSurge, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Notice. As used herein, "you" and "customers" mean all visitors to this site, including customers, authors, and publishers.

• What Personal Information About Customers Does BookSurge Gather?
• What About Cookies?
• Does BookSurge Share the Information It Receives?
• How Secure Is Information About Me?
• Which Information Can I Access?
• What Choices Do I Have?
• Are Children Allowed to Use BookSurge?
• Conditions of Use, Notices, and Revisions
• Examples of Information Collected

What Personal Information About Customers Does BookSurge Gather?

The information we learn from customers helps us personalize and continually improve your experience at BookSurge. Here are the types of information we gather.

• Information You Give Us: We receive and store any information you enter on our Web site or give us in any other way. Click here to see examples of what we collect. You can choose not to provide certain information, but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, customizing future shopping and other features for you, improving our site, and communicating with you.
• Automatic Information: We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many Web sites, we use "cookies," and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses BookSurge. Click here to see examples of the information we receive. A number of companies offer utilities designed to help you visit Web sites anonymously. Although you will not be able to log into your account at BookSurge if we cannot recognize you, we want you to be aware that these tools exist.
• E-mail Communications: To help us make e-mails more useful and interesting, we often receive a confirmation when you open e-mail from BookSurge if your computer supports such capabilities. We also compare our customer list to lists received from other companies, in an effort to avoid sending unnecessary messages to our customers. If you do not want to receive promotional e-mail from us, please update your account information or otherwise let us know.
• Information from Other Sources: We might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information.

What About Cookies?

• Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser to enable our systems to recognize your browser and to provide features such as personalized greetings and storage of items in your Shopping Cart between visits.
• The Help portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. However, cookies allow you to take full advantage of some of BookSurge's coolest features, and we recommend that you leave them turned on.

Does BookSurge Share the Information It Receives?

Information about our customers is an important part of our business, and we are not in the business of selling it to others. We share customer information only as described below and with our parent corporation, Amazon.com, Inc., and the subsidiaries it controls that either are subject to this Privacy Notice or follow practices at least as protective as those described in this Privacy Notice.

• Affiliated Businesses We Do Not Control: We work closely with our affiliated businesses. In some cases, we will include offerings directly from those businesses on BookSurge. In other cases, we may include joint offerings from BookSurge and these businesses on BookSurge. You can tell when a third party is involved in the offering, and we share customer information related to those offerings with that business.
• Third-Party Service Providers: We employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and e-mail, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links), processing credit card payments, and providing customer service. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes.
• Promotional Offers: Sometimes we send offers to selected groups of BookSurge customers on behalf of other businesses. When we do this, we do not give that business your name and address. If you do not want to receive such offers, please update your account information.
• Business Transfers: As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy stores, subsidiaries, or business units. In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets but remains subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Notice (unless, of course, the customer consents otherwise). Also, in the unlikely event that BookSurge or substantially all of its assets are acquired, customer information will of course be one of the transferred assets.
• Protection of BookSurge and Others: We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of BookSurge, our users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction. Obviously, however, this does not include selling, renting, sharing, or otherwise disclosing personally identifiable information from customers for commercial purposes in violation of the commitments set forth in this Privacy Notice.
• With Your Consent: Other than as set out above, you will receive notice when information about you might go to third parties, and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information.

How Secure Is Information About Me?

• We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information you input.
• We reveal only the last five digits of your credit card numbers when confirming an order. Of course, we transmit the entire credit card number to the appropriate credit card company during order processing.
• It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when finished using a shared computer.

Which Information Can I Access?

BookSurge gives you access to a broad range of information about your account and your interactions with BookSurge for the limited purpose of viewing and, in certain cases, updating that information. To access account information, login to your GPS account.

What Choices Do I Have?

• As discussed above, you can always choose not to provide information, even though it might be needed to make a purchase or to take advantage of certain BookSurge features.
• You can add or update certain information on pages such as those listed in the "Which Information Can I Access?" section above. When you update information, we may keep a copy of the prior version for our records.
• If you do not want to receive e-mail or other mail from us, please update your account information or otherwise let us know.
• The Help portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. However, you will not be able to log into your account.
• The Federal Trade Commission provides useful information about online privacy on its own Web site, Site Seeing on the Internet.

Are Children Allowed to Use BookSurge?

BookSurge does not sell products or services for purchase by children.  If you are under 18, you may use BookSurge only with the involvement of a parent or guardian.

Conditions of Use, Notices, and Revisions

If you choose to visit BookSurge, your visit and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Notice and our Conditions of Use, including limitations on damages, arbitration of disputes, and application of the law of the state of Washington. If you have any concern about privacy at BookSurge, please contact us with a thorough description, and we will try to resolve it. Our business changes constantly, and our Privacy Notice and the Conditions of Use will change also. We may e-mail periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, unless you have instructed us not to, but you should check our Web site frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Notice applies to all information that we have about you and your account. We stand behind the promises we make, however, and will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of customer information collected in the past without the consent of affected customers.

Examples of Information Collected

Information You Give Us

You provide most such information when you search, buy, submit content and other materials, participate in a contest or questionnaire, or communicate with customer service. For example, you provide information when you search for a product; place an order through BookSurge; provide information in GPS; communicate with us by phone, e-mail, or otherwise; complete a questionnaire or a contest entry form; provide and rate reviews. As a result of those actions, you might supply us with such information as your name, address, and phone numbers; credit card information; people to whom purchases have been shipped, including addresses and phone numbers; and the content of your literary work, reviews and e-mails to us.

Automatic Information

Examples of the information we collect and analyze include the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; login; e-mail address; password; computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform; purchase history, which we sometimes aggregate with similar information from other customers to create features such as Top Sellers; the full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) clickstream to, through, and from our Web site, including date and time; cookie number; products you viewed or searched for; and the phone number you used to call our 800 number. During some visits we may use software tools such as JavaScript to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

Privacy Companies

Information You Can Access

Examples of information you can access easily at BookSurge include up-to-date information regarding name, e-mail address, physical address, telephone number, sales information, and other payment information.