Privacy Policy
Introduction
The website Proofed.com (which will be hereby referred to as the “website”) is the property of Proofed Inc. The terms “Proofed.co.uk,” “we,” “us,” and “our’” all refer to the company Proofed Inc. (which will be hereby referred to as “Proofed”), whose registered office is 8 The Green, Dover, 19901, DE, USA. Proofed is a registered company in Delaware: File Number 6566631.
The terms “user(s),” “customer(s),” and “you” refer to you as the client of our website and services.
The terms “proofreader(s),” “editor(s),” and “copy editor(s)” refer to our partners offering such services to you through our website.
The terms “document(s)” and “work product” refer to the text that you have submitted to us for servicing.
The term “proofreading” includes “editing,” “formatting,” “copy editing,” and “translating” as services that we offer our users.
This privacy policy sets out how Proofed uses and protects any information that you give Proofed when you use this website.
Proofed is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy policy.
Proofed reserves the right to amend these terms by updating this page without notice. Proofed will make reasonable efforts to ensure its customers are aware of any such amendments. However, the onus is on you to regularly check the privacy policy. These terms were last updated on March 2, 2020.
Payment Information
Users who are on our Pay As You Go method will be required to supply credit/debit card information on their first order. All card information is stored securely with our third-party payments processor, Stripe Inc.
Contacting Us
Your personal information, including the contact details you provide, is used to respond to any email, website, postal, or telephone query you make. If your inquiry is about an order you have already placed, it will be correlated with the information regarding that order. Information regarding your query and our response may be retained to assist us in fulfilling future orders (for example, when you ask us for a quote or to create a customized service) or to answer further queries from you. Information regarding your query and our response may be used to monitor or improve our customer service procedures.
The user agrees (i) to the electronic recording of its telephone conversations with the Proofed (or any of its associated persons) with or without the use of an automatic tone warning device, (ii) that such recordings and transcripts can be used as evidence by either party in any dispute between them, and (iii) that neither party is obligated to maintain copies of such recordings and transcripts for the benefit of the other party. Proofed agrees promptly to provide the user a copy of such recordings upon request. The user waives any further notice of such monitoring or recording.
Managing Your Information
You have the ability to edit all the information that we have associated with your user account. You also have the ability to delete your document from our system once the work has been completed. This will remove the physical document from our system; however, we will retain the associated metadata of the order for our records.
Data Protection
Proofed uses SSL/TLS encryption to ensure the secure transmission of your information when you place an order, including your payment details and your documents. The strength of the encryption will usually be 256-bit or higher. We recommend using the latest version of your web browser software to ensure that strong encryption is supported by your browser. You accept responsibility for ensuring the activation of the security features of your browser or computer that enable it to communicate your information securely to our website.
Agents, Successors, And Assigns
Proofed may, from time to time, employ the services of contractors or agents. If said contractors or agents require access to personal information or documents held by Proofed to perform their duties, they will be bound by a non-disclosure agreement and required to adhere to this privacy policy.
Should Proofed be purchased by, sell a substantial part of its business operations to, or merge with another company, personal information we hold may form part of the business records transferred to the new owner (including a due diligence review). This privacy policy, or an equivalent policy, will become binding upon the new owner.
Governing Law
This site and this agreement are governed by the laws of the State of New York, excluding any conflicts of law provisions and excluding the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Any legal action against Proofed shall take place in the courts of the State of New York.
If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
Information Gathered And Held
Visiting Our Website
Our server collects information (“server logs”) regarding the pages you request, your IP address, and the server’s success in sending you the page you requested. These server logs are used for diagnostic and maintenance purposes and to produce aggregated statistics that we may use to monitor and improve our services.
Your web browser may accept a “session cookie” that allows the webserver to associate your requests with each other and to distinguish them from the requests of other visitors. The “session cookie” is a random string of letters and numbers and contains no personally identifying information.
Your web browser sends information “request headers” to any site you visit to let the site know what language(s) you prefer to see the site displayed in. You can control this information using the options or preferences settings in your browser software. This information is used only to serve the current request and for system diagnostics.
We use cookies and various types of tracking technologies to understand customer behavior, to track sales channels, and for marketing/remarketing purposes. This includes technologies such as Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics UserID, Microsoft Clarity, and other technologies that use anonymous tracking.
On Registration
When you create your user account for the purpose of using one or more of our services, we collect the following information:
- Full name
- Email address
- Telephone number
- Country
Based on your user type selection, we will request additional information:
Student User
- University, college, or institution
- Year of study
- Level of study
Business User
- Company name
- Full company address
Researcher
- Institution or company name
Submitting An Order
When submitting your document for proofreading, we collect the following information:
- Subject of the document
- Document type
- Notes for our proofreader (these notes are shared directly with our proofreaders, so please do not include any personal information. Any personal information will be removed manually after submission. We also reserve the right to amend these notes as we see fit to deliver our services)
We would additionally store document metadata from the file that you submit during the upload process, regardless of whether the upload process is completed or not. This data is removed after 30 days automatically from the Proofed platform.
Google Drive
When linking your Google Drive (Authorizing Google Workspace APIs) account to Proofed, you are providing:
- Access to share and submit specific (selected by you) Google Drive stored documents for editing
- Authorization to edit specific Google Drive documents shared on Google Drive
- Permission for Proofed to store updated copies of any edited documents within a folder created by Proofed for your completed files.
Please note that Google Workspace APIs are not used to develop, improve, or train generalized AI and/or ML models.
Third Party Processors
Our carefully selected partners and service providers may process personal information about you on our behalf as described below:
Digital Marketing Service Providers
We periodically appoint digital marketing agents to conduct marketing activity on our behalf, such activity may result in the compliant processing of personal information. Our appointed data processors include:
(i)Prospect Global Ltd (trading as Sopro) Reg. UK Co. 09648733. You can contact Sopro and view their privacy policy here: http://sopro.io. Sopro are registered with the ICO Reg: ZA346877 their Data Protection Officer can be emailed at: dpo@sopro.io.
Partners
Users who have registered to Proofed via a Proofed Partner website consent to having their personal and order information shared directly with the Proofed Partner. All Proofed Partners are subject to strict NDAs and are not permitted to contact the User unless the User has previously granted the Partner this right prior to the User signing up with Proofed.
Statistical Analysis
Proofed may, from time to time, make use of analytics advertising features; these include, but are not limited to, remarketing, remarketing with analytics, display network impression reporting, and demographics and interest reporting. This is done via advertising cookies and anonymous identifiers. If you wish to opt-out of these features, you may do so through ad settings, ad settings for mobile apps, or any other available means. Please also see https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/.
Proofed may contract third parties to analyze other data provided to us (on an aggregate basis and subject to a non-disclosure agreement) for the purpose of improving our services.
Legal Disclosure
Proofed does not share personal information or your documents with any third parties, except as disclosed in this policy. We may need to disclose personal and other information we hold as a result of a legal process, or for other reasons required or allowed by applicable laws. If we believe that a crime, tort, or other illegal act, including payment fraud, has taken place or is about to take place, we may voluntarily disclose relevant personal information to the police, courts, or other competent authorities.
Contact
For all questions, comments, and inquiries, please contact legal@proofed.com.
GDPR
Proofed takes privacy seriously. We are committed to ensuring that your data remains yours. To comply with the GDPR legislation in the EU, we request that all Subject Access Requests (SARs) are sent to legal@proofed.com.
On submitting a SAR, please include your full name, email address, and telephone number. We may request a form of ID to prove your identity if the information we have does not match the information that you have provided.
All requests will be processed within the permitted 30 days. All information stored on the Proofed platform, along with metadata of the documents submitted (if any) will be shared.
All users have the ability to opt out of marketing emails via the User Area. Additionally, all users have the right to be forgotten. If actioned, we will remove all data and documents from our platform. You will receive a final email confirming that this has been done.