Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

CritReview, LLC (“CritReview”) provides this Privacy Policy to let you know our policies and procedures regarding the collection, use and disclosure of information through www.sociologyexperiment.com (the “Site”), and any other websites, features, applications, or online services that are owned or controlled by CritReview (together with the Site, the “Service”). The policy also describes the choices available to you regarding the use of, your access to, and how to update and correct your personal information.

At CritReview, we only collect and track information that is necessary to administer your account, grant you easy access to your account, maintain and improve our Services, communicate with you, gauge and improve the satisfaction of our users, personalize your user-experience, protect our interests, and comply with legal obligations.

If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern, please contact us through the website, www.sociologyexperiment.com

Please also review our Terms of Service, which governs your use of the Service, and is available at www.sociologyexperiment.com.

If you live in the European Union, please click here to read about how our Services comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation  (the “GDPR”).

  1. INFORMATION COLLECTION

When you use the Service, you provide us with information about you. This may include your name, password, contact information, and financial information to make or receive payment for services obtained through the CritReview platform. We may also collect information related to your use of the Service and aggregate this with information about other users. This helps us improve our Services for you.

Personal Information.  In the course of your use of the Service, we may collect individual information that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Information”). Examples of Personal Information may include but are not limited to your name, email address, institution, semester, course name and number, instructor, and phone number.

Payment Information.  If you use the Service, we or our third-party pay vendor will also collect certain payment information, such as credit card, PayPal or other financial account information, and billing address.

Identity Verification. We may collect Personal Information to validate your identity or as required by law. We may request documents to verify this information.

Non-Identifying Information. We also may collect other information, such as zip codes, demographic data, information regarding your use of the Service, and general project-related data (“Non-Identifying Information”).  We consider usernames to be non-identifying information. Usernames are made public through the Service and may be visible to other Users.

Combination of Personal and Non-Identifying Information. Certain Non-Identifying Information would be considered a part of your Personal Information if it were combined with other identifiers in a way that enables you to be identified (for example, combining information with your name). But the same pieces of information are considered Non-Identifying Information when they are taken alone or combined only with other non-identifying information (for example, your viewing preferences).  We may combine your Personal Information with Non-Identifying Information, but CritReview will treat the combined information as Personal Information.

Information Required. You do not have a legal obligation to provide us with any information, but if we do not receive certain information from you, we will not be able to provide our Service to you. If you have any questions regarding whether provision of information is mandatory and the consequences for withholding such information, please contact us.

Third-Party Information. Third parties may also give us information about you. If we combine that information with information about you collected through the Service, we will still treat that combined information as set forth in this Privacy Policy.

Technical Information.  Like other online companies, we receive technical information about you when you use our Services. We use this information to analyze how people use our Service, to improve how our Service functions, and to save your login information for future sessions.

We and our Third-Party Service Providers may automatically collect certain information from you whenever you access or interact with the Service. This information may include, among other information, the browser and operating system you are using, the URL or advertisement that referred you to the Service, the search terms you entered that led you to the Service, areas within the Service that you visited, and other information commonly shared when browsers communicate with websites. We may combine this automatically collected information with other information we collect about you. We do this to improve services we offer you, to improve marketing, analytics, and to improve functionality.

The information we collect also includes the Internet Protocol (“IP”) address or other unique device identifier (“Device Identifier”) for any device (computer, mobile phone, tablet, etc.) used to access the Service. A Device Identifier is a number that is automatically assigned or connected to the device you use to access the Service, and our servers identify your device by its Device Identifier. Some mobile service providers may also provide us or our third-parties with information regarding the physical location of the device used to access the Service.

CritReview and its Third-Party Service Providers use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movement around the website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. The technology used to collect information may include but is not limited to the following:

Cookies.  Like many websites, we and our marketing partners, affiliates, analytics, and service providers use “cookies” to collect information. A cookie is a small data file that we transfer to your computer’s hard disk for record-keeping purposes. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functionality of the Service.

In addition, we and our Third-Party Service Providers may use a variety of other technologies that collect similar information for security and fraud detection.

Do-Not-Track Signals.  Your browser setting may allow you to automatically transmit a “Do Not Track” signal to websites and online service you visit.  Like many websites and online services, CritReview does not alter its practices when it receives a “Do Not Track” signal from a visitor’s browser.

User Profiles.  Users may have the opportunity to create a Profile, which consists of information about you, and may include Personal Information, including your username.  The information in your Profile may be visible to all users.

Community Forums or Blogs.   We may offer public forums or blogs (“Community Forum”). If you participate or post content, your comments, content, username, profile, and questions may be publicly displayed.  Anything you post to a Community Forum is public — others will have access to your User Forum Content and may use it or share it with third parties. If you choose to voluntarily disclose Personal Information or use Community Forums to link to your Profile, that information will be considered public information and the protections of this Privacy Policy will not apply.  To request removal of your personal information from our blog or community forum, contact us.

Testimonials and Feedback.  We may display personal testimonials of satisfied customers on our Service.  With your consent we may post your testimonial along with your name. If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, contact us.

We collect feedback from users about their experience with our Service. Feedback you provide may be publicly viewable via the Service. We reserve the right to remove feedback.

  1. USE OF INFORMATION

We use information collected through the Service to provide and improve the Service, process your requests, prevent fraud, provide you with information that may interest you, comply with the law, and as otherwise permitted with your consent.  More specifically, we may use the information:

  • To provide and improve the Service, complete your transactions, and address your inquiries, process your registration, verify the information you provide is valid, and for compliance and internal business purposes;
  • To contact you with administrative communications, marketing materials, and other information that may interest to you. If you no longer wish to receive such communications from us, please follow the instructions in the Your Choices and Rights section, below;
  • To tailor content we display to you;
  • To take steps to keep the information we collect secure;
  • To comply with the law and protect our property and rights or a third party’s property rights, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent, stop, or report activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, fraudulent, unethical or legally actionable;
  • For the purposes disclosed at the time you provide your information, with your consent, and as further described in this Privacy Policy.
  1. DATA RETENTION

Unless you request that we delete certain information (see Your Choices and Rights below), we may retain the information we collect, including after your account is closed. Your information also may persist in copies made for backup and business continuity purposes for additional time. If you choose to provide us with Personal Information, we encourage you to routinely update the data to ensure that we have accurate and up-to-date information about you.

  1. INFORMATION SHARING AND DISCLOSURE

We may share information that you provide for legal and investigative purposes, in connection with promotions, or if we are part of a merger or acquisition. We may also share non-identifying information with third parties. We may share information, including Personal Information, about you to third-parties in order to perform services on our behalf, including but not limited to: web maintenance, database management, web analytics and online advertising, payment processing, and fraud detection.

CritReview will not share your Personal Information with third parties for their marketing purposes unless we provide you an opportunity to consent or decline to consent to such sharing first.

If you are presented with an opportunity to receive information and/or marketing offers from a third party, and agree at that time to share your Personal Information, your Personal Information will be disclosed to that third party and will be subject to the privacy policy and practices of that third party. We are not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of third parties, and, if you later decide that you no longer want to receive communications from a third party, you will need to contact that third party directly.

CritReview will share information with government agencies as required in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements. We will disclose information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (including, but not limited to, subpoenas), or, at the request of governmental authorities or other third parties conducting an investigation where we determine in our sole discretion the disclosure is necessary to (a) protect the property and rights of CritReview or a third party, (b) protect the safety of the public or any person, or (c) prevent or stop activity we may consider to be, or pose a risk of being, illegal, fraudulent, unethical or legally actionable.

CritReview may sell, transfer, or otherwise share some or all of our assets, including your Personal Information, in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets (including, in each case, as part of the due-diligence process with any potential acquiring entity) or in the event of bankruptcy.

From time to time, we may offer optional promotions (“Promotions”) that may require registration. By participating in a Promotion, you are agreeing to this Privacy Policy, in addition to official rules that may govern that Promotion, which may contain specific requirements of you.  If you choose to enter a Promotion, your Personal Information may be disclosed to third parties or the public in connection with the administration of such Promotion.

  1. YOUR CHOICES AND RIGHTS

Registered CritReview users may choose what communications from us to receive. You may opt-out of receiving marketing emails from us by following the opt-out instructions provided in those emails. Please note that we reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to your account or use of the Service via email.

All Users may request access to or correction of any Personal Information we have about them or delete their account and/or request deletion of all Personal Information we have about them. We will honor User requests to the extent we can reasonably do so and as required by law.  Please note that some information, such as information you posted publicly, may remain on the Services.

Upon request CritReview will provide you with information about whether we hold any of your personal information. If you delete all such information, then your account may become deactivated. If your account is deactivated or you ask to close your account, you will no longer be able to use the Service.

  1. SECURITY

We take good care to protect your data, but no security is guaranteed, and no method of transmission or storage using the Internet can be guaranteed to be secure.

As part of the commercially reasonable security steps we take, , access to the Site is encrypted using industry-standard transport layer security technology (“TLS”). When you enter sensitive information, we or our third-party partners encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology (“SSL”). We also use HTTP strict transport security to add an additional layer of protection.

  1. LINKS TO OTHER SITES

As part of our commitment to education and exploring the world around us, our Service contains links to relevant websites. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third party’s website. The fact that we link to a website is not an endorsement, authorization or representation of our affiliation with that third party, an endorsement of any point of view, and does not indicate approval of that website’s privacy or information security policies or practices. CritReview does not have any control over third-party websites, which may place their own cookies or other files on your computer, collect data or solicit Personal Information from you. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of other websites.

  1. PUBLIC PROFILE

The profile you create on our Site will be publicly accessible unless otherwise indicated. You may change the privacy settings of your profile through your account portal.

  1. PHISHING

Phishing websites imitate legitimate websites in order to obtain personal or financial information and are sometimes associated with identity theft. For more information about phishing, visit the website of the Federal Trade Commission at http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles.  In addition, if you believe you have received an email or had a similar interaction with a third party pretending to be CritReview, please report it to us.

  1. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

CritReview may change or update this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes to the way we treat your Personal Information, we will display a notice through the Services prior to the change becoming effective. We may also notify you by email, in our discretion.

  1. CONTACTING US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at www.sociologyexperiment.com.