BoomWriter Privacy & Security Policies
v3.0 - Effective April 15, 2019
Welcome to BoomWriter’s Privacy and Security Policies. We have made a big effort to make this easy to read and understand, so it will be worth your time to review, to understand how we use your data, protect it, and your own rights and responsibilities
We are vocal advocates for safeguarding student data and privacy and want to make sure that parents, educators, and schools know this, which is why we took the Student Privacy Pledge, put forth by the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). We are also KidSafe Certified and follow the EU’s GDPR.
If you are a user of BoomWriter, you fall under one of two user types.
- Educator Administrator - An educator administrator is a teacher, school admin, district admin, organizational leader or parent responsible for supplying, creating and managing the student's information on the site.
- Student - The student is the user who engages in the writing activity on the BoomWriter platform and is added to the platform by an appropriately responsible Educator Administrator.
For the purposes of this document, the term, ‘Users’ refers to both the Educator Administrator and Student roles.
| Summary | More Details |
|---|---|
If you sign up to use this website’s services, we may retain personal information about you, such as your name, home address, email, and phone number. | What Data We Collect and Why |
Educator Administrators can opt into this website by signing up to use our product by giving us your personal information that we use to provide you with our personalized services online. Students are opted-in via their Educator Administrator (parent, guardian or school) who acts as the data controller on their behalf. | What Data We Collect and Why |
Aggregated data is analyzed to inform internal decision making. Personal information is used to deliver services. You opt-in to this on the sign-up form. | How We Use the Data |
If you have any questions or comments about this privacy policy, or the data collected, or wish to modify or remove your data, email privacy@boomwriter.com | |
Your personal information is retained on our servers until such a time as you request it to be removed or we determine the account is inactive for a prolonged time, both follow the retention requirements that the law requires. | How We Use the Data |
BoomWriter is GDPR compliant and follows a rigorous standard for security and privacy of our user’s data. The following is a quick summary of how we meet these privacy and security regulations.
We use this data in order to create accounts and to communicate with you from time to time in order to carry our necessary application functions.
- Name
We use this data in order to verify identity and to communicate with you from time to time in order to carry our necessary application functions.
- Mobile Phone Number
As an Educator Administrator, you may optionally also supply us with your mobile phone number. This enables us to better identify who you are and to send you text messages which may include password resets codes.
- School
We use this data in order to match you to the right school or organization in our platform, a necessary application function.
- School Details
This includes school name, location, subjects taught and grades. We use this data in order to match our users with the right school, help give the user a more personalized experience in our platform and to better improve our platform according to our user demographics.
- Student Details
Educator Administrator creates student accounts on BoomWriter so that the student may participate in writing activities. We receive this information so that Educator Administrators may properly identify which student is which for grading purposes. The Educator Administrator, in this case, is the ‘Data Controller’ of the Student’s data.
- Parent or Gaurdian Details
Educator Administrators can add parent or guardian details to student accounts on BoomWriter so that the parent may co-manage the students account, retrieve passwords, and review student work. This user will also become a Educator Administrator of that student. This information is received from the originating Educator Administrator and is used to verify a certain party has been approved and deemed responsible for that student by that Educator Administrator.
- Browser Cookies, User Behavior Tracking, and Third-party tools.
Cookies are used to securely identify you and maintain your logged-in session. We do not use those cookies for any other purpose or for tracking you outside of the BoomWriter website.
We also use third-party tools like Google Analytics, FullStory, AppCues, Facebook Pixel that utilize cookies and other tools that track your progress through the site as well as user behaviors. The ultimate goal of these tools is to supply us with information that helps us supply you, the user, with a better and ever-improving experience.
You can control whether or not cookies you accept cookies through your own browser settings. If you choose to disable cookies, it will limit the use of certain features or functions of our service and reduce the ability of us to deliver a great user experience.
- Social Media Links and Widgets
Our website includes social media features, such as the Facebook “Like” button, the “Share This” widget or interactive mini-programs that run on our site. These features may collect your IP address, a record of which pages you visit on our site, and set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. These features and widgets are sometimes hosted by a third party. Your interactions with these features are governed by the Privacy Pledge of the company providing the specific feature.
- SignIn with Google
When signing in with your Google account, we only save your email, first and last name as the basic information for your profile.
- Google Drive
When creating new assignments for their students, Educators have the option to attach documents from their own Google Drive account. Those documents will only be visible to students who work on that specific assignment. Documents can also be removed at any time from an assignment, which will only remove our reference to that file from Google Drive and will not touch the file itself.
What Data We Collect and Why
When an institution’s administrator or an instructor, parent or guardian (Educator Administrator) creates an account with us, we ask for their personal data such as name, email, phone, and job title, so that we can correctly administer their account and provide them with the best customer service.
The type of information we request is connected to a specific purpose, namely to:
- Verify your identity and connection with a specific institution or company
- Download content from our website, such as demos, teacher resources, lesson plans whitepapers or webcasts
- Send important messages about our service, such as any changes to functionality
- Send system emails, including account setup and password retrieval information
- Provide additional product and service support as needed.
How We Use the Data
We take every possible step to make sure that the personal data in our systems is relevant for its intended use, accurate, complete, and current. If you wish to change, modify or remove your data from our system, please email us at privacy@boomwriter.com and request that we remove your account. Please specify whether or not you want your personal account removed, or your entire institution and all data with it if you are an Educator Administrator.
You will retain 100% ownership of your intellectual property rights, i.e. the writings. BoomWriter does not ever assert or claim copyright ownership of any works submitted to or through our service. Your property is YOUR property. We do not, and will not, use your intellectual property for any purpose other than to deliver, support, and develop our services, which are designed to protect and strengthen your copyright. For those activities that involve publishing there is a shared copyright among the participants including BoomWriter. For these published writings you can request anonymization of students work but we are unable to delete the work as this would invalidate the writings of other students that have participated.
Additionally, upon lawful request, BoomWriter will provide information about any personal data we process to governing authorities.
Finally, if BoomWriter is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website, of any change in ownership, uses of your personal data, and choices you may have regarding your personal data.
topHow Long Do We Keep Data and Why
BoomWriter will retain personal data we process on behalf of our Educator Administrators for as long as needed to provide services to our users. We retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
You may stop using BoomWriter at any time. You do not need to specifically inform BoomWriter when you stop using the services. However, at any time you may also delete your account. In order to do so, you must email us at privacy@boomwriter.com and request that we remove your account. Please specify whether or not you want your personal account removed, or your entire institution and all data with it if you are an Educator Administrator.
topHow We Protect Your Data
We endeavor to keep your personal data safe and secure at all times. Our data is stored in the EU or USA with robust physical, digital, and procedural safeguards in place to protect your personal data, including the use of SSL encryption, redundant servers and data centers, and sophisticated perimeter security. We continuously audit for security vulnerabilities and make software patching a priority.
BoomWriter is committed to handling your personal information with high standards of information security. In order to protect and safeguard the personal data provided to us, we have implemented and use appropriate business systems and procedures. For example, your personal information is transmitted to us through a secure server protocol, which encrypts all your personal information. The encryption method used is the industry standard "Transport Layer Security (TLS)" technology. However, due to submitting information over the Internet not being 100% secure, BoomWriter does not guaranteed 100% security of personal information submitted.
Furthermore, we have implemented and use security procedures and technical and physical restrictions for accessing and using personal information. Only authorised employees are permitted to access personal information for performing their duties in respect of our services. Our server and network are protected by firewalls against unauthorised access and we have intrusion detection systems that monitor and detect unauthorised (attempts to) access to or misuse of our servers. Additional we undergo extensive penetration testing annually to continually improve the security on our systems.
At BoomWriter we have also ensured that all employees have sufficient information security training and follow our strict media handling policy which helps maintain, enforce and communicate best practices surrounding media handling throughout the business.
topYour Responsibilities and Rights as an Educator Administrator
Your Responsibilities
In terms of the GDPR regulations, BoomWriter is a ‘Data Processor’ and the Educator Administrators are the ‘Data Controllers’. In other words, BoomWriter takes the information teachers, schools, districts or even parents give us, and process that for them. In the case of BoomWriter, students are added to the platform via an Educator Administrator. This person is an adult representing that student and they attest they have the legal right to do so. Students cannot sign-up to BoomWriter without such a representing administrating adult. It is the responsibility of that representative to make certain they have received all appropriate authorization from the student’s guardians according to their local jurisdiction.
In terms of security, you are also responsible for keeping your account secure. As an Educator Administrator, you have access to a lot of student data. We strongly recommend having a strong password and changing it often. Be careful about who you add, approve and make an Educator Administrator. We encourage you to verify all requests to join your school. We also recommend using VPN services when accessing our site in a cafe or unencrypted network. We’ll work hard to keep your data safe. However, you also need to keep it safe as well.
Your Rights
BoomWriter gives you the ability to opt out of email communication, with the exception of system emails (e.g. password resets). Additionally, an individual who seeks access or would like to correct, amend, rectify or erase data, should direct their query to BoomWriter and will have your request completed within 30 calendar days If you are an Educator Administrator who has questions or would like to make changes to your personal data, please contact us at privacy@boomwriter.com
topYour Responsibilities and Rights as a Student
Your Responsibilities
- Having a really strange and good password. Don’t pick anything someone can guess.
- Don’t write your password down, memorize it. Make it a game.
- Don’t tell anyone, unless they are your parent or guardian.
- Change your password often.
- Keep your parents informed about what you’re doing on BoomWriter.
Your Rights
If you want to get access to your account, or would like to correct, add to, fix or erase information, please contact your Educator Administrator (that’s your teacher) or email us at privacy@boomwriter.com and we’ll reach out to them for you.
Additional Information
Your trust is important to us. That is why we are always available to talk with you at any time and answer any questions concerning how your data is processed. If you have any questions that could not be answered by this privacy notice or if you wish to receive more in depth information about any topic within it, please contact us via email: privacy@boomwriter.com
Review Of This Notice
We keep this notice under regular review. This notice was last updated on 31st January 2019
Amendments
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
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