Privacy Policy

Last updated on April 25, 2011.

Our Commitment to Privacy

Pixton Comics Inc. is committed to maintaining the security, confidentiality and privacy of your personal information.

This is our Privacy Policy. It documents our on-going commitment to you and has been developed in compliance with the British Columbia Personal Information Protection Act ("PIPA").

Scope of Policy

This Policy applies to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in connection with our website and services. This Policy does not impose any limits on our collection, use or disclosure of the following information:

business contact information; and
certain publicly available information.

Accountability

We have designated a Privacy Officer who is responsible for our compliance with this Policy. The Privacy Officer may be contacted as described below.

What Do We Collect?

We collect the following types of personal information from all Pixton members:

screen name and password; and
IP address, browser and operating system descriptor.

Additionally, we collect the following types of personal information, by product:

PIXTON FOR FUN

Facebook User ID, OR: screen name, email address, password, birth date, country, and gender;
email address and phone number of parent, if applicable;
approximate location, as optionally indicated by the user using the Google interactive map feature on our website; and
optional information provided to us such as: occupation, likes, dislikes, biographies, responses to interview questions, friends' email addresses.

PIXTON FOR SCHOOLS

email address (required for Teachers, optional for Students);
name (does not have to be real name); and
institution name, address, city, province/state, country, postal/zip code, phone number, first name, last name, title (main Teacher or Administrator only).

PIXTON FOR BUSINESS

Facebook user ID, OR: email address, first name, last name, job title, company name, website, phone number, city, province/state, country, postal/zip code.

How Do We Collect Information?

We collect information from you in a variety of ways, including the following:

sign-up forms;
our "contact us" form;
comments you provide to us;
comics you create;
private messages you send and receive;
profile fields (freestyle text fields);
third-party services such as Google API (which includes Google Translate and Google Maps);
send-to-a-friend and invite-your-friends forms you fill out;
the Google Interactive map (if you indicate your approximate location on it); and
email messages which may contain code that allows us to track whether the message was opened and/or links clicked.

Purposes

We collect, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

to respond to or follow-up regarding any comments you submit to us;
to open your membership account;
to authenticate your identity;
to apply our policies, such as minimum age policies;
to process your payments through our third party payment processors;
to facilitate communication and sharing among our members;
to allow members to share comics with their friends and tell their friends about our site;
to track email and site usage statistics;
to link members' Pixton accounts to third party accounts such as Facebook, and to integrate third-party authentication, such as Facebook authentication;
to protect us, you and others from fraud and error and to safeguard our business interests;
to comply with legal and regulatory requirements; and
as part of a sale of any or all of our business.

The above collections, uses and disclosures are a reasonably necessary part of your relationship with us. We might also collect, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

to personalize your experience with us through our website and through our customer service representatives;
to communicate to members news about us and our services;
to allow us and third parties to offer additional or alternate products and services to you;
to evaluate and improve our products and services; and
to invite you to participate in surveys, contests or special events.

You may instruct us to refrain from using or sharing your personal information in any or all of the five ways described above at any time by providing written notification to our Privacy Officer. We acknowledge that the sharing of your personal information in any or all of the five ways described above is at your option and we will not refuse you access to any product or service merely because you have advised us to stop using or sharing your personal information in any or all of the five ways shown. You may also opt out of certain disclosures by logging into your Pixton account, navigating to your Account Settings page, and changing your privacy settings.

If we want to use your personal information for a new purpose, we will disclose this to you and ask for your consent unless the new use is already authorized or required by law.

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of data which are stored on your computer to allow your web browser to remember something about our web site. We use cookies to improve functionality and to provide a customized online experience, for example, to list the contents of a virtual shopping cart or to remember other information so that you do not need to enter it every time you log onto our site. Cookies may also enable us to track and target your interests to enhance your experience on our site. If you don't allow your web browser to use cookies, our site might not function correctly.

Storage in the United States

Some of or all of your personal information may be provided to our service providers in the United States for the purposes described above. Those service providers may store your information on servers located in the United States. Foreign law may require those service providers to disclose your information to governments, courts, law enforcement or regulatory agencies.

Consent

We will obtain your consent to collect, use or disclose personal information except where we are authorized or required by law to do so without consent. For example, we may collect, use or disclose personal information without your knowledge or consent where:

the information is publicly available, as defined by statute or regulation;
we are obtaining legal advice; or
we reasonably expect that obtaining consent would compromise an investigation or proceeding.

Other exceptions may apply.

Your consent can be express, implied or given through an authorized representative such as a lawyer, agent or parent.

Consent may be provided orally, in writing, electronically, through inaction (such as when you fail to notify us that you do not wish your personal information collected/used/disclosed for various purposes after you have received notice of those purposes) or otherwise.

You may withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal, contractual and other restrictions, provided that you give reasonable notice of withdrawal of consent to us. On receipt of notice of withdrawal of consent, we will inform you of the likely consequences of the withdrawal of consent, which may include the inability of us to provide certain services for which that information is necessary.

Limites on Collection of Personal Information

We will not collect personal information indiscriminately but will limit collection of personal information to that which is reasonable and necessary. We will also collect personal information as authorized by law.

Limits for Using, Disclosing and Retaining Personal Information

Your personal information will only be used or disclosed for the purposes set out above and as authorized by law.

We will keep personal information used to make a decision affecting you for at least one year after using it to make the decision, except to the extent that you delete or remove that information yourself. If you choose to end your membership with us, it is your responsibility to delete your information if you do not want us to retain it for this one-year period.

We will destroy, erase or make anonymous documents or other records containing personal information as soon as it is reasonable to assume that the original purpose is no longer being served by retention of the information and retention is no longer necessary for a legal or business purpose. Please note, however, it is sometimes not possible or practical to delete information from all backup media, especially if that media is stored offsite or contains co-mingled data.

We will take due care when destroying personal information to prevent unauthorized access to the information.

Accuracy

We will make a reasonable effort to ensure that personal information we are using or disclosing is accurate and complete.

If you demonstrate the inaccuracy or incompleteness of personal information, we will amend the information as required. If appropriate, we will send the amended information to third parties to whom the information has been disclosed.

When a challenge regarding the accuracy of personal information is not resolved to your satisfaction, we will annotate the personal information under our control with a note that the correction was requested but not made.

Safeguarding Personal Information

We protect the personal information in our custody or control by making reasonable security arrangements to prevent unauthorized access, collection, use, disclosure, copying, modification, disposal or similar risks.

We will take reasonable steps, through contractual or other reasonable means, to ensure that a comparable level of personal information protection is implemented by the suppliers and agents who assist in providing services to us. Some specific safeguards may include:

physical measures such as locked filing cabinets;
organizational measures such as restricting employee access to files and databases as appropriate;
electronic measures such as passwords and firewalls; and
investigative measures where we have reasonable grounds to believe that personal information is being inappropriately collected, used or disclosed.

However, absolute privacy cannot be guaranteed for any comic, private message or other content posted on or shared through Pixton, so we strongly recommend that you do not include sensitive personal information in any online content on or through Pixton.

Also, you might receive messages from third parties. We cannot ensure that these third parties will respect your privacy, so you should be very cautious about sharing any personal information with them.

Providing Access

You have a right to access your personal information held by us.

Upon written request and authentication of identity, we will provide you your personal information under our control. We will also give you information about the ways in which that information is being used and a description of the individuals and organizations to whom that information has been disclosed. We may charge you a reasonable fee for doing so.

We will make the information available within 30 days of receiving a written request or provide written notice where additional time is required to fulfil the request.

In some situations, we may not be able to provide access to certain personal information (e.g., if disclosure would reveal personal information about another individual, the personal information is protected by solicitor/client privilege, the information was collected for the purposes of an investigation or where disclosure of the information would reveal confidential commercial information that could harm the competitive position of us). We may also be prevented by law from providing access to certain personal information.

Where an access request is refused, we will notify you in writing, document the reasons for refusal and outline further steps which are available to you.

Complaints

We will, on request, provide information regarding our complaint procedure.

Any inquiries, complaints or questions regarding this Policy should be directed in writing to our Privacy Officer as follows:

Clive Goodinson
Privacy Officer
Pixton Comics Inc.
P.O. Box 238
Parksville, BC, Canada V9P 2G4
1-888-774-9866
privacy_at_pixton.com

Changes

We may change this policy from time to time. Please check our website frequently for updates to this.