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Privacy Policy

Creative Writing Resources to Inspire!

We are thrilled that you are interested in using www.imagineforest.com, a brilliant site for inspiring writers to find inspiration and write stories. This policy explains the privacy rights of Imagine Forest ("us", "we", "our" and terms of similar meaning) members and explains what we do with the information you give us.

By accepting the Privacy Policy in registration or by visiting and using the Site, you expressly consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to our Terms and Conditions.

In this Privacy Policy, we use the term "Member" to describe a registered user of the Site. Together with members, people who browse our Site without becoming Members are called "Users".

Table of content:

  1. What Information we collect and how we collect it
  2. Google Analytics
  3. Advertisements
  4. About Cookies
  5. What Imagine Forest does with the information?
  6. How long will the data be stored for?
  7. Links to third party websites
  8. Information Sharing and disclosure
  9. Use of third-party plugins and apps
  10. Blog disclosure
  11. Social Media
  12. Guest bloggers
  13. Ideas Wizard App
  14. Opting out of our communications
  15. Confidentiality and Security
  16. Requests for information
  17. Requests to delete data
  18. Changes to this Privacy Policy
  19. Complaints
  20. Questions and Suggestions

What Information we collect and how we collect it:

When any user creates an account on imagineforest.com, we ask them to select a username, password and provide an email address. We also ask for what age group the user belongs in. This information is needed to determine whether we need parental or guardian consent for any website activity. If the member is aged 12 or under, we require parental or guardian consent before they can start using the Imagine Forest website. This consent is obtained through a verification email, where the parent or guardian must consent to the child using the site. If they do not give their consent, the child cannot login or use Imagine Forest.

Once they have created their account, they can start using Imagine Forest straight away with no additional information needed. However, if they want to gain the ‘verified’ badge, they will have to complete their profile. Completing their profile involves adding a profile picture. To protect members we have provided them with a choice of Imagine Forest exclusive avatars to use. They will also have to provide their country, and favourite book, also add a short bio and verify their email address. This information is needed to create personalised experience for the user in the form of rewards and emails and to recommend writing resources based on favourite books.

We collect information relating to demographics and interests of the user to provide them with a more personalised experience and develop website features that the user is likely to enjoy.

Further to this, we collect information on the types of books that the member may create on the Imagine Forest website. All books that members create are either private, for friends only or for your class members and teacher (school accounts). Members aged 13 and over and with a regular user account can also create public books. Public books can be read by other members of Imagine Forest who are also aged 13 or over. No book by members aged 12 and under is ever made public on Imagine Forest. This means only the writer themselves can read their own stories, or their friends (which they added via the unique friend code) can read them. If you have a student account, your teacher and classmates will be able to read and comment on your books.

Finally, we also record a members IP Address into our database. This is very important because we want to avoid spam and make sure no fake member accounts are created using the same IP address.

Google Analytics

Our website uses Google Analytics, this tool helps us to record information on how many users we get in a month, weekly and so on. It also allows us to determine the most popular pages on our website and see how long a user spends on our site and where most of our users are based in the world. This information is generated by a “Cookie” (more details in the next section) and also collects a user’s “IP address”(this is not visible to anyone apart from Google). Google may share this data with a third-party where required by law. Further information about Google’s privacy policy may be obtained from https://policies.google.com/privacy.

You can opt-out of Google Analytics by following these instructions provided by Google: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/181881

Advertisements

Imagine Forest uses advertisements to support the costs of operating the website, such as costs for hosting, servers and domain renewal.

Throughout the site you may notice third-party advertisements or promotion banners. These adverts have been provided by Google Adsense.

Google AdSense is a tool that allows website publishers to deliver advertisements to site visitors in exchange for revenue calculated on a per-click or per-impression basis. To do this, Google uses cookies (see our Cookie Policy) and tracking technology to deliver ads personalised to a website user/visitor.

These technologies gather personal information from users and their devices, including information about IP addresses and user location, as well as behavior information such as websites visited, products viewed or purchased, and other personal preferences.

Please note, third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's previous visits to your website or other websites. This means that cookies can be placed on the user’s device from outside the Imagine Forest website. And when they visit another website after Imagine Forest that cookie will continue to be tracked. Please see the privacy policies for each website you visit for details on how they process cookies, and user data.

Users may opt out of personalised (or targeted) Google advertising by visiting Ads Settings.

About Cookies

Cookies are small files delivered to your computer that assist us in providing our services. Cookies will be used on the Site to allow you to enter your password less frequently during a session, to help us with data collection on the Site to help analyse our web page flow, measure promotional effectiveness, and promote trust and safety, to offer certain features that are only available through the use of a cookie and to allow us to provide information that is targeted to your interests. Cookies are very commonly used on the internet, and if you have cookies disabled in your browser you may not be able to use the Site properly.

You can find the full list of cookies we collect on our cookies page.

What Imagine Forest does with the information?

Our primary purpose in collecting personal information from you is to provide functionality and features that improve your experience, and make our service safer and easier to use. We do our best to only collect personal information about you that we consider necessary for that.

Imagine Forest uses the email address provided at registration to notify members that their account on imagineforest.com has been created and later on to notify members of any activity they are missing out on. This includes “we miss you” emails if the member has been inactive for 30 days and by default, notification emails weekly with a summary of missed activity on their account. During registration to the site, we also ask users if they would be interested in receiving our newsletters. If they select yes, then we add their email and other details provided to our monthly newsletter mailing list on our email system, “MailChimp”.

All members registered on Imagine Forest will be added to MailChimp by default when they complete registration. We do this so we can send any important emails regarding Imagine Forest. For example any changes to our privacy policy or terms and conditions in the near future.

Upon activation of an account, the information submitted will be used by Imagine Forest to allow the registered user to participate on the imagineforest.com website, such as write books and add friends to their friends list. Throughout the site, the user is identified by their registered username, accompanied by a picture of their avatar. Both the username and avatar picture will be displayed to other users who are adding them as friends via their unique friend code.

We also use the information that you give to us (including your contact information such as email address) to make our Services the best possible experience for you. For instance, we may use your information to:

  • Improve our service or website
  • Manage your account and your queries
  • Carry out market research and quality assurance
  • Contact you with important service announcements
  • Customise the information you receive from us

If you do not want your data to be used in any of the ways mentioned above, please email us ([email protected]) your request and we will process it within one month of receiving the request.

How long will the data be stored for?

Any data collected on Imagine Forest members will be kept in our database for 12 months. If the member does not engage with Imagine Forest in this time, we will permanently delete all their data after 12 months from all our databases. By “engage”, we mean opening any email, clicking on links in emails and logging into the site.

Before deleting their data we will send out a couple of emails to warn the member that they will be removed from our database if they do not act now. After the member has been removed from our databases, they are free to sign-up to Imagine Forest again, as a new member.

Links to third party websites:

The Site may include links to other Web sites or resources over which imagineforest.com does not have control ("External Web Sites"). Even though we do not intend to include any external Web Site links, there may be some included in the blog section of our website. Such links do not establish an endorsement by imagineforest.com of those External Web Sites. You acknowledge that Imagine Forest is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and further agree that Imagine Forest is not responsible for the content of such External Web Sites. Your use of External Web Sites is subject to the terms of use and privacy policies located on the External Web Sites.

Information Sharing and disclosure:

Imagine Forest does not share, rent, trade or sell personally identifying information about our members, with third parties for their promotional purposes. Imagine Forest makes every reasonable effort to disallow and discourage members from sharing personally identifying information through website features and the friend system. The only information that can be openly shared are usernames and the member’s avatar (normally on the leaderboard page). Stories are only available privately or for friends/classmates (or your teacher) to read. Similarly book comments can only be seen by your friends, classmates or teacher on the site and are not public. However, comments made on the Imagine Forest blog will be public to all users and visitors. Comments made on other pages of the site, such as the Lessons page are only visible to friends/classmates and no external users.

Use of third-party plugins and apps:

Imagine Forest aims to avoid using unnecessary third-party plugins and apps, unless for security purposes or to offer certain features to both members and users. The following are examples of third-party apps used on the site. Please, read these carefully:

Blog disclosure:

If you use the blog on this Web site, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of this blog, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. Though we moderate the blog comments, we are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in the Imagine Forest Blog.

We also use a third-party commenting system on the blog called, “Disqus”. Therefore any comments you make on our blog posts, may also be available in the Disqus community. Your use of this commenting system is subject to the terms of service and privacy located on their website and by commenting on our blog you agree to these.

Social Media:

Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that this website and its owners participate on are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform respectively.

Users are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate / engage upon them with due care and caution in regard to their own privacy and personal details. This website nor its owners will ever ask for personal or sensitive information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss sensitive details to contact them through email.

We sometimes will share member stories from our library with their username onto social media with a direct link to the story for everyone to read. We will never share anything else relating to the member.

Guest bloggers:

The Imagine Forest blog is open to guest post submissions all year round. Users interested in guest blogging can either complete this form or send us an email. Any data provided, such as full name, email address, bio, website link and social media profiles will be posted on our blog to credit the guest author who wrote the guest post. If your guest post is not successful or not posted live on our blog, we will not keep any data provided unless your guest post is successful.

This data will also be kept in our email provider’s (MailChimp) database for a period of 12 months and used to contact guest bloggers of any guest blogging opportunities regularly. Guest bloggers can easily request to be removed from this database by following the same process as in the below “requests to delete data” section or unsubscribe from the list via the emails sent.

Ideas Wizard App:

The Ideas Wizard app is a mobile app created and owned by Imagine Forest. This app is currently available for download only from the Google Play Store. Once this app is downloaded onto the user’s device, the only data collected is aggregated user data, such as the number of app installs. No personal or sensitive data is ever collected on the Ideas WIzard app. We will never ask for location or access to the user’s storage on the device.

The Ideas Wizard app does allow users to share ideas they have collected via a simple share button. This share button links to external platforms, such as Twitter and WhatsApp. It also links to the Imagine Forest website. Please refer to the privacy policies of these platforms for details on how they collect personal information.

Opting out of our communications:

If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included at the bottom of each newsletter or using the ‘settings’ options in your Imagine Forest member account. You can also email: [email protected], with the word ‘UNSUBSCRIBE’ in the subject line to opt out of all Imagine Forest email communications.

Confidentiality and Security:

Information a member submits to imagineforest.com that relates to his or her account is password-protected. No employee of Imagine Forest nor any automated system will contact a member by email asking for a member’s login details, password or any other personal information related or unrelated to Imagine Forest. If any message claiming or appearing to come from Imagine Forest is sent to you asking for such information, please report it immediately to [email protected].

If there is a personal data breach, Imagine Forest will notify the ICO within 72hrs of the breach occurring. A personal breach refers to the accidental, destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised sharing of, or access to, personal data. If in the case the security breach has a high impact on the user's or member's rights or freedom we will let the individual/s involved know as soon as possible. In all cases, we will keep a written record of all data breaches identified.

If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can send email us at [email protected].

Requests for information:

At any time, members of the site can request a copy of all data we have on them. Any requests for information will be responded to within a month. If we need more time to respond to your request, we will still let you know within in a month of the request being made and the reason why we need more time. All requests for information will be free. However if the request for information is complex and excessive, we may refuse to accept the request. You will receive an email explaining why we have refused your request and you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO is the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.

If you would like to make a request, please either email us: [email protected] or visit the settings page under my profile in your Imagine Forest account.

If you feel the data we have is inaccurate or requires updating, please send us an email to [email protected] and we will update your records within one month of receiving the email. If you keep on requesting changes to your data or your request is excessive, we have the right to refuse your request and will send you an email within a month explaining why it has been refused.

Requests to delete data:

Members of Imagine Forest can delete all data we have on them in two ways. The first way is by deleting their account in the settings area, when they are logged in. And the second way is by sending us an email, requesting to be deleted from Imagine Forest. Once your account has been deleted, you will receive one final “Goodbye” email from us to confirm that all data we have on you will be deleted. Once this request is made, we will delete all data within one month and you will no longer be able to login into your account. At any time you can sign-up and become a site member again.

If deleting your account by email, please send your requests to: [email protected]

Changes to this Privacy Policy:

As Imagine Forest is a fairly new business, we plan to add many features that will keep our members stimulated and interested in the website. These changes may alter the practices of Imagine Forest from time to time. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, send you an email with a link to the updated policy and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

Complaints:

If you have any complaints about the way we use our data or the communications you are receiving from Imagine Forest, please email us using the subject line ‘COMPLAINT’ to [email protected]

Questions and Suggestions:

If you have questions or suggestions, please email Imagine Forest at [email protected]

This Privacy Policy is effective as of August 2017.

Date last updated: 9th July 2021