Beneficent Technology, Inc. (“Benetech,” “we,” “us,” “our”) is a nonprofit organization that develops technology for social good. We are committed to transparency and to protecting the privacy of your personal information. This Privacy Policy is designed to let you know how we collect, use, and disclose information through the websites, mobile applications, social media pages, and other online services and products (collectively, the “Services”) that link to this Policy. We want you to know that we do not sell your personal information or share it with third parties for commercial gain or marketing purposes.
You may provide Personal Information directly to us in a number of ways. “Personal Information” is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable individual. For example:
We may also receive your Personal Information from third parties and may combine this information with any information we have collected directly from you. For example, we may receive:
We need to collect Personal Information in order to provide the requested Services to you. If you do not provide the information requested, we may not be able to provide the Services. If you disclose any Personal Information relating to other people to us or to our service providers in connection with the Services, you represent that you have the authority to do so and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
To the extent permitted by applicable law and any applicable contract to which we are a party (for example, with a school or school district), we use Personal Information for legitimate purposes that support and further our mission. These purposes include:
We will engage in these activities to manage our contractual relationship with you and/or to comply with a legal obligation.
We will engage in this activity with your consent or where we have a legitimate interest.
We will engage in these activities with your consent or to manage our contractual relationship with you.
We may aggregate and/or anonymize Personal Information so that it will no longer be considered Personal Information. We do so to generate other data, which we may use and disclose for any purpose, including for research and analysis.
We engage in these activities to manage our contractual relationship with you, to comply with a legal obligation, and/or because we have a legitimate interest. Finally, certain Services use data collected from you in a manner specific to those Services. For a more complete description of the way data collected from you is used by individual Services, please select a Service from the list below:
We are committed to maintaining your trust, and we want you to understand when and with whom we may share your Personal Information. To the extent permitted by applicable law and any applicable contract to which we are a party (for example, with a school or school district), your Personal Information will be disclosed:
Finally, certain Services share information collected from you in a manner specific to those Services. For a more complete description of the way information collected from you is shared by Bookshare related Services, please click on the link below:
We may receive certain “Other Information” automatically when you use our Services. Other Information does not reveal your specific identity or directly relate to an identifiable individual. We may use and disclose Other Information for any purpose. If we are required to treat Other Information as Personal Information under applicable law, then we may use and disclose it for the purposes for which we use and disclose Personal Information as detailed in this Privacy Policy. We and our service providers may collect Other Information in a variety of ways, including:
Some web browsers may transmit “do-not-track” signals to the websites with which the user communicates. Benetech does not take any specific action in response to these signals. Certain Benetech services, such as Bookshare, allow you to access the same service through multiple channels over time via your log-in credentials. In order to provide a positive user experience, Benetech may maintain information about your usage history across multiple channels, for example, in order to provide you reports of your complete reading history on the Bookshare website or in an electronic reader app. Benetech respects your privacy and will use this information only as described in this Privacy Policy.
Protection of our users’ Personal Information is important to us, so we seek to maintain security safeguards designed to protect against loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction of your Personal Information within our organization. Please note, however, that no information transmission or storage can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your Personal Information, we cannot guarantee the security of any Personal Information you disclose or transmit to us online and cannot be responsible for the theft, destruction, or inadvertent disclosure of your Personal Information. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us by contacting us at [email protected].
You may request to review, correct, update, suppress, restrict, or delete your Personal Information, object to the processing of Personal Information, or request to receive an electronic copy of your Personal Information for purposes of transmitting it to another organization (to the extent this right to data portability is provided to you by applicable law), by contacting us at [email protected]. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law. For your protection, we may only implement requests with respect to the Personal Information associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that we may need to retain certain Personal Information for recordkeeping purposes and/or to complete any transactions that you began prior to requesting a change or deletion. If you are using the Services through your school or school district, please contact your school or school district to request to access or take other action with respect to your Personal Information. If you are a resident of California, under 18, and a registered user of the Services, you may ask us to remove content or Personal Information that you have posted to the Services by writing to [email protected]. Please note that your request does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content or Personal Information, as, for example, some of your content may have been reposted by another user.
The privacy and protection of children is of great importance to us. We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose Personal Information from children under the age of 18 without obtaining consent from a parent or legal guardian, except as otherwise permitted by applicable law. For minor users who are signed up for Bookshare or other Services by their school, the school may provide Benetech with such students’ Personal Information, and, to the extent that parental or guardian consent to our receipt and use of such information is required under any applicable law, the school is responsible for obtaining that consent. We do not knowingly allow Bookshare members, or users of other Services, who are under the age of 18 to make Personal Information publicly available through our Services. If a member under the age of 18 (or his or her parent or legal guardian) wishes to review, modify, or delete the minor member’s Personal Information and refuse to permit further collection or use, please contact us using the contact information below. For Bookshare members, or users of other Services, who are under the age of 18, we may disclose information about the minor’s usage of the Service to his or her parent or legal guardian. For a more complete description of how Bookshare collects and uses information, please see the Bookshare section of this Privacy Policy.
We do not collect credit card information. We use a third-party payment service to process donations or payments made through the Services. If you wish to make a donation or payment through the Services, your Personal Information will be collected by such third party and not by us, and will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, this third party’s collection, use and disclosure of your Personal Information.
We retain Personal Information for as long as needed or legally permitted in light of the purpose(s) for which it was obtained and consistent with applicable law. The criteria used to determine our retention periods include:
You may use other third-party social media providers in conjunction with our services, including in certain instances to access our Services. For example, you can use third-party social networking services, including, but not limited to, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google, and Twitter, to share information about your experience on our Services with your friends and followers on those social networking services. The third-party social networking services may be able to collect information about you, including your activity on our Services. The third-party social networking services also may notify your friends, both on our Services and on the social networking services themselves, that you are a user of our Services or about your use of our Services, in accordance with applicable law and their own privacy policies. If you choose to access or make use of third-party social networking services, we may receive information about you that you have made available to those social networking services, including information about your contacts. We are not responsible for the information collection, use, disclosure, or security policies or practices of other organizations, such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, or any other application developer, application provider, social media platform provider, operating system provider, wireless service provider, or device manufacturer.
Our Services may contain links to other websites or online services that are operated and maintained by third parties and that are not under our control or maintained by us. This Privacy Policy does not apply to such third-party services. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any such third‑party services.
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Last Updated” legend at the top of this Privacy Policy indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. To the extent permitted by applicable law and any applicable contract to which we are a party, any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Services.
You may choose to receive promotional emails, newsletters, and similar communications from us. Even if you have opted in, you may opt out of receiving these communications by clicking on the opt-out or “unsubscribe” link included in the promotional emails. Please note that opt-out requests may take up to 10 business days to be effective. Your opt-out request will not apply to messages that are not promotional in nature. For example, we may contact you concerning your account or any purchases or donations you have made with us, even if you opt-out of receiving promotional email messages.
Your Personal Information may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, and, by using the Services, you understand that your information will be transferred to countries outside of your country of residence, including the United States, which may have data protection rules that are different from those of your country. In certain circumstances, courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies, or security authorities in those other countries may be entitled to access your Personal Information. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION REGARDING THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA (“EEA”): Some of the non-EEA countries are recognized by the European Commission as providing an adequate level of data protection according to EEA standards (the full list of these countries is available here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/data-transfers-outside-eu/adequacy-protection-personal-data-non-eu-countries_en). For transfers from the EEA to countries not considered adequate by the European Commission, we have put in place adequate measures, such as standard contractual clauses, to protect your Personal Information. You may obtain a copy of these measures by following this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/data-transfers-outside-eu/model-contracts-transfer-personal-data-third-countries_en.
You may:
Bookshare® is a nonprofit online library dedicated to providing accessible books and other materials (“Content”) to people with print disabilities. We have also partnered with outside organizations and developers to provide our members with mobile e-reader applications, such as Read2Go and Go Read. These e-reader applications allow members to access e‑books from Bookshare on their mobile devices. In order to provide these services, Bookshare collects, uses, and shares certain Personal Information relating to its members’ disability status, education, veteran status, and book-related information, as more fully described below. This Personal Information may be input by you directly, or may be input on your behalf by an Organizational Member such as a school, library, veterans’ organization, or other organization that provides services to people with print disabilities. The following descriptions of how we collect, use, and disclose information are in addition to those described in our general Privacy Policy.
In order to comply with the laws that allow Bookshare to provide copyrighted material to people with print-related disabilities that prevent them from reading or handling print materials, Bookshare requires proof of a print-related disability, which may include medical information, for each member who wishes to receive copyrighted Content. Further, because Bookshare was built to serve members with print disabilities, Bookshare may collect other information that reflects the nature of its members’ disabilities in order to better serve the member, as well as to comply with Department of Education requirements. For example, Bookshare may collect information that a certain member prefers to read books in Braille and was referred to Bookshare by a school for the blind. If a member joins Bookshare through an organization, then the Organizational Member typically collects the member’s proof of a print-related disability, not Bookshare. However, the Organizational Member may share the nature of the member’s print-related disability with Bookshare and will be obligated to provide proof of the print-related disability to Bookshare on request, in order to confirm that the member is eligible to use Bookshare. To streamline the process of verifying eligibility, Bookshare has agreements in place with other nonprofit organizations serving people with disabilities (“Verification Partners”), including National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (“NLS”), Learning Ally (formerly RFB&D), Hadley School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and various U.S. and international organizations. If a potential member has already provided proof of a print-related disability to one of our Verification Partners, the potential member may use this proof to sign up for Bookshare by filling out our online form. Upon receipt of this form, Bookshare will send the potential member’s name, address, email, birth date, and/or other information on the submitted form to the Verification Partner, and the Verification Partner will provide confirmation that the member has a qualifying print-related disability and is thus eligible to use Bookshare.
Bookshare partners with the U.S. Department of Education to provide free access to students in the United States. Bookshare also partners with other nonprofit and for-profit organizations to provide greater access to children with qualifying print-related disabilities. To further this goal, Bookshare collects information on members’ education, including, but not limited to, a member’s grade, birth date, school name, school address, school district, and whether the member is enrolled in a qualifying Individualized Education Plan (“IEP”) or a 504 Plan. Bookshare also collects information on whether or not a member is a minor. For each member with an Individual Membership who is a minor, Bookshare may collect the contact information of the member’s guardian, such as the guardian’s name, e-mail address, postal address, zip code, and telephone number. Finally, Bookshare collects information on whether the user is a U.S. Veteran. This information is only used to provide free or discounted services and special programs to qualifying Veterans and in aggregated, de-identified reporting.
Bookshare is dedicated to expanding access to books for members with qualifying print-related disabilities. To further this goal, as well as to comply with copyright law requirements, publisher agreements, and funder contracts, Bookshare maintains transaction logs of the materials downloaded by members. These transaction logs contain information such as the title and author, the member who downloaded the book, the date and time of the download, the format of the download, and the status of the download. Further, for each download of a copyrighted work, Bookshare embeds a digital fingerprint in the book download. Bookshare stores this digital fingerprint so that it can trace downloaded material back to the original downloader to determine the source of any unauthorized copies of Bookshare material. If a member uses the Read Now option to launch a book using Bookshare Web Reader, Bookshare also records whether the book was opened by the member and remembers the last read location to keep the member’s place in the book. Bookshare also stores each reader’s preferred download format and preferred language. As part of its efforts to build and improve the Bookshare collection, Bookshare may accept uploads of Content, accessibility improvements (such as image descriptions), and reviews of books. Bookshare maintains transaction logs of these activities.
If a member lives outside of the United States, Bookshare may also receive information from an international Membership Partner. For our international members, the International Partner in the member’s country of residence may collect the member’s proof of print-related disability, rather than directly by Bookshare. In that case, the International Partner may share the nature of the member’s print-related disability with Bookshare and will be obligated to provide proof of the disability to Bookshare upon request, in order to confirm eligibility to use Bookshare.
To the extent permitted by applicable law and any applicable contract to which we are a party, in addition to the uses of Personal Information described in the Benetech Privacy Policy, Bookshare uses Personal Information collected in connection with the Bookshare service:
We will engage in this activity as necessary or appropriate, especially when we have a legal obligation or legitimate interest to do so.
In addition to the general disclosures of Personal Information described in the Benetech Privacy Policy, Bookshare may share a member’s Personal Information:
We may provide aggregate reports on Bookshare usage to government, nonprofit, and for‑profit partners, such as publishers and developers of e-readers and other assistive technology tools. These reports will not include any Personal Information, and may include, for example, aggregated information on the number of books downloaded by Bookshare users in a given time frame, and this information may be broken down by demographic information, such as location or school district. Further, these aggregate reports may be used by Bookshare or its partners to advertise their products, to compete for grants, or for any other purpose.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or about any other aspect of the Services, please contact us at:
Benetech
480 California Avenue, Suite 201
Palo Alto, CA 94306-1609
Attn: Privacy
[email protected]
(650) 644-3400
Last updated: June 11, 2020
