Welcome to Diagonals Literary Festival!

This page describes the privacy policies and practices of Diagonals Literary Festival (collectively referred to as “we,” “us” or “our” in this policy) as to the information we collect from you when you use our website, products or services.

1. Personal Information We Collect

Your online security using our website and services is of paramount importance to us. This is why, In general, we avoid collecting any sensitive information about you and collect only the information that is truly necessary for the functioning of our website and to provide our services to you as well as to protect our business and the rights and safety of others.

We collect information about you in two ways:

1. automatically

This means that when you enter our website, certain information about your device, like your device’s IP address, is being collected automatically.

2. manually

This is when you manually reveal information to us, for example, when you contact us, register for an account or make a submission.

This information can include your name (your actual name or your pseudonym), email address as well as any other information that you voluntarily provide, like a few personal details about yourself or your social media accounts.

3. from other service providers

For example, third-party analytics applications, payment processing vendors (Stripe, PayPal) or other third-party vendors utilized to provide our services to you.

2. How We Use Your Personal Information

We use your personal information to:

1. maintain our services or to fulfill or meet the reason for which you have provided the information. For example, processing submissions and communicating with you;

2. process your requests, purchases, transactions and payments and prevent transactional fraud;

3. manage your account, which includes identifying and authenticating you when you return to our website;

4. send you marketing information about our services, products or events;

5. for internal administrative and auditing purposes;

6. if necessary, to comply with our legal obligations or to exercise or defend our rights, including complying with law enforcement or government authority requests and participating in compliance audits;

7. if necessary, to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities, fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person or to otherwise enforce this Privacy Policy, including as to access to, or the integrity and/or security of our services.

3. How We Disclose the Personal Information We Collect

We generally do not disclose any of your personally identifiable information to anybody or anything, except when absolutely necessary. For example:

1. in instances where we offer paid products and/or services within our services, we may utilize the services of third-party payment processors for payment processing, namely Stripe and PayPal. It’s important to note that we do not store or collect your payment card details. Instead, this information is directly provided to our third-party payment processors, whose handling of your personal information is governed by their respective Privacy Policies. These payment processors strictly adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), as overseen by the PCI Security Standards Council—a collaborative effort involving major brands like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. These standards are designed to ensure the secure handling of payment information.

2. under specific circumstances, we may need to disclose your personal information in good faith as required by law or in response to valid requests from public authorities, such as a court or government agency as well as to law enforcement.

This would be done only if we believe that such an action is strictly necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation, protect and defend the rights or property of our company, prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the service, protect the personal safety of users of the service or the public, and protect against legal liability.

4. Tracking Techniques and Technologies

We and our third-party business partners use various tools and technologies such as cookies, pixels and web beacons (collectively, “Tracking Technologies”) to collect data when you interact with our products and services, including our websites and email communications. Some of these technologies store data in the browser or on your device. Other technologies may use network-related or other information to recognize your device, for example, its IP address.

Our products and services use Tracking Technologies, for example, when you first request a web page and data is then stored on your computer or other device so the website can access personal information when you make subsequent requests for pages from that product or service. We may also use these technologies to save your preferences, consent, and choices; determine if you opened or interacted with our emails or newsletters; conduct research; maintain registration information; and store information you may want to retrieve on a regular basis. Additionally, we may use these technologies to collect analytics and measure the use of our Products and Services.

Opting Out of Third-Party Tracking Technologies

There are various ways through which you can opt out of certain third-party tracking technologies, including tools provided within your device or browser, which may include an option that allows you to refuse the placement of certain Tracking Technologies.

5. GDPR

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we may process personal information under the following legal conditions:

1. you have provided explicit consent for the processing of personal information for one or more specific purposes;

2. provision of personal information is necessary for the performance of an agreement with you and/or for any pre-contractual obligations thereof;

3. processing personal information is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which our company is subject;

4. processing personal information is necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person;

5. processing personal information is related to a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in our company;

6. processing personal information is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by our company.

6. Your GDPR Rights

If you are situated in the European Economic Area (EEA), the UK or Switzerland, you have certain rights under GDPR. You have the right to:

1. access your personal information;

2. request rectification, correction or update of the personal information we hold about you;

3. request deletion of your personal information;

4. object to our use of your personal information;

5. restrict or limit our use of your personal information;

6. request the transfer of your personal information;

Please note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

7. withdraw your consent where you have provided it at any time;

Please note that in order for you to assert these rights, we may need to verify your identity to confirm your right to access your personal information. This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. In order to verify your identity, we may need to gather more personal information from you than we currently have.

If you have accepted our use of cookies and other tracking technologies, we will collect your information in accordance with this Privacy Policy based on your affirmative informed consent, which you may withdraw at any time. If you have not accepted, then we only collect your personal information based on our legitimate interests.

7. CCPA

We collect information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is capable of being associated with or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or device (“personal information”).

The following is a list of categories of personal information which we may collect or may have been collected from California residents within the last twelve (12) months.

Please note that the categories and examples provided in the list below are those defined in the CCPA. This does not mean that all examples of that category of personal information were in fact collected by us, but reflects our good faith belief to the best of our knowledge that some of that information from the applicable category may be and may have been collected. For example, certain categories of personal information would only be collected if you provided such personal information directly to us.

Category A: Identifiers
Examples: A real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, Social Security number, driver’s license number, passport number or other similar identifiers.
Collected: Yes

Category B: Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e))
Examples: A name, signature, Social Security number, physical characteristics or description, address, telephone number, passport number, driver’s license or state identification card number, insurance policy number, education, employment, employment history, bank account number, credit card number, debit card number, or any other financial information, medical information or health insurance information
Collected: No

Category C: Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law
Examples: Age (40 years or older), race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, religion or creed, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy or childbirth and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, veteran or military status, genetic information (including familial genetic information)
Collected: No

Category D: Commercial information
Examples: Records of personal property, products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies
Collected: Yes

Category E: Biometric information
Examples: Genetic, physiological, behavioral, and biological characteristics, or activity patterns used to extract a template or other identifier or identifying information, such as fingerprints, faceprints, and voiceprints, iris or retina scans, keystroke, gait, or other physical patterns, and sleep, health or exercise data
Collected: No

Category F: Internet or other similar network activity
Examples: Browsing history, search history, information on a consumer’s interaction with a Website, application or advertisement
Collected: Yes

Category G: Geolocation data
Examples: Physical location or movements
Collected: No

Category H: Sensory data
Examples: Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory or similar information
Collected: No

Category I: Professional or employment-related information
Examples: Current or past job history or performance evaluations
Collected: No

Category J: Non-public education information (per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. Section 1232g, 34 C.F.R. Part 99))
Examples: Education records directly related to a student maintained by an educational institution or party acting on its behalf, such as grades, transcripts, class lists, student schedules, student identification codes, student financial information, or student disciplinary records
Collected: No

Category K: Inferences drawn from other personal information
Examples: Profile reflecting a person’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes
Collected: No

Personal information does not include:

1. publicly available information from government records;
2. deidentified or aggregated consumer information;
3. Information excluded from the CCPA’s scope, like certain health or medical information and other categories of information protected by different laws.

Sources of Personal Information

We obtain the categories of personal information listed above from the following categories of sources:

1. directly/manually from you. For example, when you fill out and submit one of the submission forms found on our website;

2. automatically from you. For example, through the use of cookies;

3. from other service providers. For example, third-party analytics applications, payment processing vendors (Stripe, PayPal) or other third-party vendors utilized to provide our services to you.

By obtaining information from these diverse sources, we aim to enhance the quality and effectiveness of the services we provide to you on our platform.

8. How We Use Your Personal Information for Business Purposes

We may use or disclose the personal information we collect with specific categories of third parties. These include service providers, data aggregators, payment processors, our affiliates, our business partners or third-party vendors to whom you (or an authorized individual) give permission for us to disclose your personal information in connection with the products or services we provide to you for one or more of the purposes described in Section 2.

We will not collect additional categories of personal information or use the personal information we collect for materially different, unrelated or incompatible purposes without updating this Privacy Policy.

In instances where we disclose personal information for business or commercial purposes, a contractual agreement is established. This agreement outlines the specific purpose of the disclosure and mandates the recipient to maintain the confidentiality of the personal information while restricting its use solely to fulfill the terms of the contract.

Sharing or “Selling” of Personal Information

As defined in the CCPA, “sell” and “sale” mean selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring or otherwise communicating orally, in writing or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to a third party for valuable consideration. This means that we may have received some kind of benefit in return for sharing personal information, but not necessarily a monetary benefit.

Please note that the categories listed below are those defined by the CCPA. This does not mean that all examples of a particular category of personal information were in fact shared (“sold”), but reflects our good faith belief to the best of our knowledge that some of that information from the applicable category may be and may have been shared (“sold”).

We may share (“sell”) and may have shared (“sold”) in the last twelve (12) months the following categories of personal information:

1. Category A: Identifiers;

2. Category B: Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e));

3. Category D: Commercial information;

4. Category F: Internet or other similar network activity.

9. Your CCPA Rights

The CCPA provides California residents specific rights regarding their personal information. If you are a resident of California, you have the following rights:

1. the right to notice;

You have the right to be notified which categories of personal information are being collected and the purposes for which the personal information is being used.

2. the right to request;

Under CCPA, you have the right to request that we disclose information to you about our collection, use, sale, disclosure for business purposes and share of personal information. Once we receive and confirm your request, we will disclose to you:

– The categories of personal information we collected about you;

– The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you;

– Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information;

– The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information;

– The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you;

– If we “sold” your personal information or disclosed Your personal information for a business purpose, we will disclose to you the categories of personal information categories sold as well as the categories of personal information categories disclosed.

3. the right to say no to the sale of personal information (opt-out);

You have the right to direct us to not sell your personal information. To submit an opt-out request please contact us.

4. The right to delete personal information;

You have the right to request the deletion of your personal information, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your request, we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies. We may deny Your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service providers to:

– complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you;

– detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities;

– debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality;

– exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law;

– comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.);

– engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent;

– enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us;

– comply with a legal obligation;

– make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which You provided it.

5. the right not to be discriminated against. 

You have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising any of your consumer’s rights, including by:

– denying goods or services to you;

– charging different prices or rates for goods or services, including the use of discounts or other benefits or imposing penalties;

– providing a different level or quality of goods or services to you;

– suggesting that You will receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

10. Exercising Your Rights Under CCPA

In order to exercise any of your rights under the CCPA, and if you are a California resident, you can contact us at contact@diagonalsliteraryfestival.com. Only you (or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf) may make a verifiable request related to your personal information.

For your request, you must provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify that you are the person (or an authorized representative) whose personal information we have collected as well as describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate and respond to it.

If we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request or confirm that the requested personal information relates to you, we will not provide the information to you.

When we verify that the requested personal information relates to you (or an authorized representative), we will send it to you (or delete it if this is what you have requested) within 45 days of receiving your email. The time period can be extended if this is reasonably necessary for us to respond accurately to your request.

Any disclosures we provide to you will only cover the 12-month period preceding your request.

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

You have the right to opt-out of the “sale” of your personal information. Once we receive and confirm a verifiable request from you (or an authorized representative), we will stop “selling” your personal information if we have been doing so. To exercise your right to opt-out, please contact us at contact@diagonalsliteraryfestival.com.

Do Not Track (California Online Privacy Protection Act)

Our service does not acknowledge or respond to Do Not Track signals.

However, some third-party websites may monitor your browsing activities. If you are visiting such websites, you can set your preferences in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked. You can enable or disable DNT by visiting the preferences or settings page of your web browser.

11. Sensitive Personal Information

If you send or disclose any sensitive personal information to us or the public through our services, you consent to our processing and use of such sensitive personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you do not consent to our processing and use of such sensitive personal information, you must not submit such content to our services and you must contact us to make us aware immediately.

12. Opting Out of Marketing Communication

If you do not wish to receive future marketing emails from us, click on the link titled “unsubscribe,” which can be found at the bottom of the every marketing email you receive from us. Note, however, that you may continue to receive certain communications from us that are necessary for the provision of our products and services, such as to update you about the status of your submission or to respond to any inquiry.

13. Retention

We will retain personal information from or about you as reasonably necessary and proportionate to achieve the purpose(s) for which the personal information was collected or processed as outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law.

14. Data Protection

The safety of your personal information is of paramount importance to us. To insure top security, we implement physical, technical and organizational security measures designed to safeguard personal information. These measures aim to protect your personal information we collect from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. Please be aware that despite our efforts, no measures can guarantee absolute security.

15. Third-Party Links

Our services may contain links to third-party websites and applications. Any access to and use of such linked websites and applications is not governed by this Privacy Policy but is instead governed by the privacy policies of those third-party websites and applications. We are not responsible for the information practices of such third-party websites and applications. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party websites or applications that you choose to visit.

16. Social Media

If you choose to interact with our products and services on third-party social media company platforms such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), Pinterest, Bluesky and Mastodon, we may receive personal information that the social media companies make available to us, including personal information about your activities and contacts on those platforms.

Additionally, if you have an account with a social media company you may have agreed to allow them to use tools, features or other technologies that collect personal information about your activities across the internet, including in connection with your use of our products and services. Some social media companies also will enhance or personalize your experience on our products and services, such as through technologies that enable you to easily share content from our products and services on their platforms.

We encourage you to review the privacy policies of the social media companies you engage with as we are not responsible for their privacy practices or their collection and use of your personal information.

17. Children’s Data

The Services are not intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13 (under 16 for those located in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland) and we do not target the Services to such children. If you are under 13 years of age, or if you are under 16 years of age and are located in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, do not provide personal information to Diagonals Literary Festival without providing us with consent from your parent or legal guardian. If we discover that any child under the age of 13 or a child from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland under the age of 16 has provided us with personal information and without consent from a parent or legal guardian, we will delete that child’s information as soon as possible.

California residents under the age of 18 can request the removal of information they have publicly posted. If you are a California resident, you can request the removal of such information at contact@diagonalsliteraryfestival.com.

Keep in mind that your request does not necessarily guarantee complete or comprehensive removal of information posted on our website and that the law may not permit or require removal in certain circumstances.

18. Contact Us

You can always reach out to us at contact@diagonalsliteraryfestival.com.

19. Updates

Diagonals Literary Festival is constantly developing and so there may be changes to this Privacy Policy which are going to be reflected on this page. Please check back periodically so that you stay updated.

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