Last updated: January 14, 2024
This policy applies to our handling of information about site visitors and registered users. We refer collectively to these categories of individuals as "you" throughout this policy.
When you sign up for a Pickwick account, we ask for identifying information such as your name and email address. That’s so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you essential information. We also give you the option to upload a profile picture that displays in the Service.
We’ll never sell your personal information to third parties, and we won’t use your name in marketing statements without your explicit permission either.
We store on our servers the content that you upload or receive or maintain in your Pickwick account. This is so you can use our products as intended.
We log the IP address used to sign up for an account and retain that for use in mitigating abuse. We also log account access by IP address for security and fraud prevention purposes.
We collect information about your browsing activity for analytics and statistical purposes such as conversion rate testing and experimenting with new product designs. This includes, for example, your browser and operating system versions, your IP address, which web pages you visited and how long they took to load, and which website referred you to us. If you have an account and are signed in, these web analytics data are tied to your IP address and user account until your account is no longer active. The web analytics we use are described further in the Advertising and Cookies section.
We use CAPTCHA across our applications to mitigate brute force logins and as a means of spam protection. We have a legitimate interest in protecting our apps and the broader Internet community from credential stuffing attacks and spam.
Pickwick may run contextual ads on various third-party platforms. Where permissible under law, we may load an ad-company script on their browsers that sets a third-party cookie and sends information to the ad network to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of our ads, e.g., which ad they clicked and which keyword triggered the ad, and whether they performed certain actions such as clicking a button or submitting a form.
We also use persistent first-party cookies and some third-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our applications, and perform A/B testing as well as support some analytics.
A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser. It may help remember login information and site preferences. It might also collect information such as your browser type, operating system, web pages visited, duration of visit, content viewed, and other click-stream data. You can adjust cookie retention settings and accept or block individual cookies in your browser settings, although Pickwick may not function properly if you turn cookies off.
When you email Pickwick, we keep that correspondence, including your email address, so that we have a history of past correspondence to reference if you reach out in the future.
To provide products or services you’ve requested. We use some third-party subprocessors to help run our applications and provide the Service to you. We also use third-party processors for other business functions such as analytics and payment processing.
To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your content to help you with a support case.
To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding restricted uses. Accessing a user’s account when investigating potential abuse is a measure of last resort. We want to protect the privacy and safety of both our users and the people reporting issues to us, and we do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we discover you are Pickwick for a restricted purpose, we will take action as necessary, including notifying appropriate authorities where warranted.
Aggregated and de-identified data. We may aggregate and/or de-identify information collected through the services. We may use de-identified or aggregated data for any purpose, including marketing or analytics.
When required under applicable law. Pickwick is a U.S. company and all data infrastructure are located in the U.S.
Requests for user data. Our policy is to not respond to government requests for user data unless we are compelled by legal process or in limited circumstances in the event of an emergency request. However, if U.S. law enforcement authorities have the necessary warrant, criminal subpoena, or court order requiring us to disclose data, we must comply. Likewise, we will only respond to requests from government authorities outside the U.S. if compelled by the U.S. government through procedures outlined in a mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement. It is Pickwick’s policy to notify affected users before we disclose data unless we are legally prohibited from doing so, and except in some emergency cases.
Preservation requests. Similarly, Pickwick’s policy is to comply with requests to preserve data only if compelled by the U.S. Federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 2703(f), or by a properly served U.S. subpoena for civil matters. We do not disclose preserved data unless required by law or compelled by a court order that we choose not to appeal. Furthermore, unless we receive a proper warrant, court order, or subpoena before the required preservation period expires, we will destroy any preserved copies of customer data at the end of the preservation period.
If we are audited by a tax authority, we may be required to disclose billing-related information. If that happens, we will disclose only the minimum needed, such as billing addresses and tax exemption information.
If Pickwick is acquired by or merges with another company we’ll notify you well before any of your personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. Database backups are also encrypted at rest.
We give you the option to delete content you upload or publish to Pickwick. Anything you elect to delete from Pickwick will be scheduled for immediate removal, though it may take up to several days for this to fully propagate across the entire service for technical reasons. Additionally, copies of the content may be held in encrypted database backups.
If you choose to delete your account, your content will become immediately inaccessible and should be purged from our production systems in full within 60 days.
We keep your information for the time necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. The length of time for which we retain information depends on the purposes for which we collected and use it and your choices, after which time we may delete and/or aggregate it. We may also retain and use this information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Through this policy, we have provided specific retention periods for certain types of information.
Our products and other web properties are operated in the United States. If you are located in the European Union, UK, or elsewhere outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to and stored in the United States. By using our websites or Services and/or providing us with your personal information, you consent to this transfer.
This document was adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0