Effective Date: May 6, 2020
Stacks Foundation Privacy Policy
The Stacks Open Internet Foundation, Inc. ("Stacks Foundation") respects and protects the privacy of its users. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and share information gathered through our websites (www.stacks.org and any other site that links to this Privacy Policy) (collectively, "Services"). It also describes your rights and choices with respect to your information and how you can contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

1. Personal Information We Collect

We may collect Personal Information about you directly from you, as well as from third parties. In this Policy, "Personal Information" means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.

A. Personal Information You Provide

  • Contact information. When you sign up to receive updates about our products and services you provide us with contact information, such as your email address.
  • Communications. When you contact us or if you post on the Services, we may receive your contact information and the time, date, and content of your message and any attachments.

Where required by applicable law, we indicate whether and why you must provide us with your Personal Information, as well as the consequences of failing to do so.

B. Information We Collect Automatically

We do not collect any Personal Information about you automatically, such as through the use of Cookies. When you use our Services, we may automatically collect anonymized information about your use of the Services, such as number of page views, web browser, device type, and the web pages that you visit just before or just after you use the Services, as well as information about your interactions with the Services, such as the date and time of your visit, and where you have clicked. This information is collected on an anonymous and aggregated basis without the use of Cookies.

C. Personal Information We Collect from Third Parties

If you post on Stacks Foundation social media pages or post about the Stacks Foundation on other publicly available services, we may receive social media information about you, such as your profile information and the time, date, and content of your posts.

2. How We Use Personal Information

A. How We Use Personal information

We use Personal Information we collect through the Services as necessary for the following purposes:

  • Providing the Services. We use Personal Information to operate, maintain, and provide features of the Services.
  • Communicating with you. We use Personal Information to contact you for administrative and informational purposes, such as to respond to your inquiries, or to inform you about changes to our terms, conditions, and policies, or invitations to join the Services.
  • Marketing. We use Personal Information to send marketing communications, including promotional and advertising materials that may be useful, relevant, valuable, or otherwise of interest relating to products and services offered by us and by third parties we work with, such as app developers. We also use Personal Information to contact you to answer feedback and surveys, and to improve our marketing and promotional efforts. Generally, you have the ability to opt out of receiving any promotional communications as described below under Your Rights and Choices. Where required under applicable law, we will only send you promotional emails with your opt-in consent.
  • Understanding and improving the Services. We use Personal Information to understand and analyze the usage trends and preferences of our users in order to improve the Services, and to develop new products, services, features, and functionalities.
  • Other business purposes. We use Personal Information for compliance, risk management, and other business purposes, such as audits, security, compliance with applicable laws and regulations, fraud monitoring, and prevention.

B. Our Use of European Personal Information

If you are located in the European Economic Area, we only process your Personal Information when we have a valid legal basis to do so, including when:

  • You have consented to the use of your Personal Information, for example to send you marketing communications.
  • We need to use your Personal Information to provide you with the Services, for example to give you access to the Services, to respond to your inquiries, or to register you for an event.
  • We need to use your Personal Information to comply with a legal obligation, for example to comply with a court order.
  • We or a third party have a legitimate interest in using your Personal Information. In particular, we have a legitimate interest in using your Personal to understand and improve our Services, and to monitor and prevent fraud. We only rely on our or a third party's legitimate interests to process your Personal Information when these interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.

C. How We Use Cookies

Our Services do not currently use any Cookies to collect Personal Information.

3. How We Share Your Personal Information

Except as described in this Policy, we will not disclose your Personal Information collected on the Services to third parties without your consent. We may disclose information to third parties if you consent to us doing so, as well as in the following circumstances:

  • To our third-party service providers who provide services such as website hosting data analysis, information technology and related infrastructure provision, customer service, email delivery, auditing, and other services.
  • If required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is appropriate: (a) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (b) to comply with legal process; (c) to respond to requests from public and government authorities, including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
  • We may use and disclose aggregated or otherwise de-identified information for any purpose, unless we are prohibited from doing so under applicable law.

4. Third Party Services

This Privacy Policy does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy, information, or other practices of any third parties or any third party operating any site or service to which the Services link. The inclusion of a link on the Services does not imply endorsement of the linked site or service by us or by our affiliates. We encourage you to learn about third parties' privacy and security policies before providing them with information.

5. Security

We use certain physical, organizational, and technical safeguards that are designed to maintain the integrity and security of information that we collect. Please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable and thus we cannot and do not guarantee the security of your data. It is important that you maintain the security and control of your credentials, and not share your passwords or private keys with anyone.

6. Your Rights and Choices

You have several rights and choices with regard to our use of your Personal Information. You may, of course, decline to share certain Personal Information with us, in which case we may not be able to provide to you some of the features and functionality of the Services. If you wish to access, amend, or delete any other Personal Information we hold about you, you may contact us using the contact details at the end of this Policy. Please note that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases instantly or within a reasonable period of time, we may retain all information you submit for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligations, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so, as permitted under applicable data protection law.

From time to time, we send marketing email messages to our users. If you no longer want to receive such emails from us on a going forward basis, you may opt-out via the "unsubscribe" link provided in each such email or by contacting us using the contact details at the end of this Policy.

A. Your European Privacy Rights

If you are located in the European Economic Area, you have additional rights described below.

  • You may request access to and receive information about the Personal Information we maintain about you, update and correct inaccuracies in your Personal Information, restrict or object to the processing of your Personal Information, have the information anonymized or deleted, as appropriate, or exercise your right to data portability to easily transfer your Personal Information to another company. In addition, you may also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, including in your country of residence, place of work, or where an incident took place.
  • You may withdraw any consent you previously provided to us regarding the processing of your Personal Information, at any time, and free of charge. We will apply your preferences going forward and this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before you withdrew your consent.

You may exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details at the end of this Policy. Please note that there are exceptions and limitations to each of these rights, and that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases instantly or within a reasonable period of time, we may retain information for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligations, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so.

B. Your Cookie Choices

Our Services do not currently use any Cookies or tracking signals to collect Personal Information.

7. Use of Services by Minors

The Services are not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and we request that they not provide personal information through the Services. If you learn that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information in violation of this Privacy Policy, then you may alert us at [email protected].

8. International Visitors

The Stacks Foundation uses servers hosted in the United States and is intended for users in the United States. If you choose to use the Services from regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, please note that we may be transferring your information outside of your region for storage and processing in the United States and around the globe. By using the Services you consent to the transfer of information 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.

European Visitors

If you are located in the European Economic Area, we will comply with applicable EEA data protection law when transferring your Personal Information outside of the EEA. We may transfer your Personal Information to countries which have been found to provide adequate protection by the EU Commission (e.g., Canada), use contractual protections for the transfer of Personal Information, or transfer to recipients who have certified to the Privacy Shield or adopted Binding Corporate Rules. For more information about how we transfer Personal Information outside of the EEA, or to obtain a copy of the contractual safeguards we use for such transfers, you may contact us as specified below.

9. Retention

We take measures to delete your Personal Information or keep it in a form that does not permit identifying you when this information is no longer necessary for the purposes for which we process it, unless we are required or permitted by law to keep this information for a longer period. When determining the specific retention period, we take into account various criteria, such as the type of Services provided to you, the nature and length of our relationship with you, and mandatory retention periods provided by law and the relevant statute of limitations.

10. Updates to this Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy. The "Effective Date" at the top of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy became effective. If we make material changes, we may notify you through the Services or by sending you an email or other communication. We encourage you to read this Privacy Policy periodically to stay up-to-date about our privacy practices. Your use of the Services following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Policy.

11. Contact Us

Unless otherwise indicated in this Privacy Policy, the Stacks Foundation is the entity responsible or "data controller" for the processing of Personal Information described in this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices in general, please contact via email at: [email protected] or via regular mail at:

Stacks Open Internet Foundation, Inc.
1950 W Corporate Way #32799
Anaheim, CA 92801