Introduction
Ziptales respects your personal information. We are aware of our obligations under COPPA, FERPA (USA), the current Privacy Act (1974) (AU), the General Data Protection Regulations (EU), and fulfill our obligations under those Acts. We follow strict guidelines for protecting and maintaining any and all information we may have about you. This responsibility is fundamental to our business.
We understand that you may have concerns about our collection of your personal information via the Ziptales website and how we may use that information.
We have implemented this Privacy Policy in order to inform you about how we will collect, store, use your personal information.
What we collect from you
We may ask you to supply personal information such as your name, your school's or library's name, your address, telephone number, e-mail address and postal address. This is for the purposes of legitimate communication with you as a customer, as for instance the need to send you information packs by mail, or periodic emails about new content.
We may also conduct surveys or collect other information from you on an occasional basis. These surveys are to help us improve the service offered to you.
The information we collect from you is kept in strict confidence. We will not sell, distribute, rent, license, disclose, share or pass your personal information on to any third party for any reason. It remains strictly confidential within the Ziptales office. If and when you cease to be a client, the information is deleted from our database, though we may retain a digital record of your period as a client.
Payment Information
Where clients use credit card payment, note that the credit card companies have their own data collection policies. Payments made through credit card are subject to the Privacy Practices of those institutions.
Children's Privacy
Because Ziptales works with a single login for schools and bar code registration for municipal libraries, no data is collected at all about children using the website.
We do not store any names or keep any records of children's activities on Ziptales. Children have access to the website via their school's login, or parents' personal login - not any individual (child) login.
What control do you have over information collected by this site?
A client school or home user providing information to Ziptales may ask us to delete personal information that we maintain in the ordinary course of our business. You can exercise this option by sending a request using the form on the Contact Us page of this website.
Cookies
Commercial websites use 'cookies', which are tiny 'coded messages' about your communication with the server (the machine on which the website is stored). These messages enable you to use the login (the username and password) and be admitted to the website – the server 'talks' to your computer or mobile device, and 'recognizes' your login. Cookies themselves do not identify you personally – it is an entirely mechanical process. Information about you as a client is stored elsewhere on the Ziptales database, and this (see above) is never revealed to any third party.
You can disable cookies, by changing your security settings, but this will in effect also disable your use of the website. You will have asked the server to stop talking to your computer – a counterproductive and unnecessary step. If you have any doubts about this, please contact us and we can explain what cookies are used for, and assure you that our use of them is totally harmless.
What about emails and direct mail?
Ziptales uses information about its clients for emails and mail, but only as directed by clients who have signed on to our educational service and accepted that information about the evolving content is a legitimate subject for communication (between provider and client). In short, only Ziptales itself communicates with users. No information about clients is shared with third parties (see above).
Unsubscribing from our email database
To unsubscribe from our email database, just click on the "UNSUBSCRIBE" link at the bottom of the email.
The email, however, is only used for legitimate and periodic bulletins about changes to the website and new content. Unsubscribing would break the link between Ziptales (the provider) and your school (the client) – and leave your teachers or librarians without up to date information. We therefore strongly recommend against it.
