Privacy Policy

Liberty Fund, Inc. (“Company,” “Us,” or “We”) respects your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy.

This policy describes the type of information we may collect from you or that you may provide to us when you visit the website https://sozbun.libertyfund.org/ (our “Site”) and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information.

This policy applies to information we collect:

  • On this Site
  • In email, text, or other electronic messages between you and this Site.
  • Through the Community Platform available on this Site.
  • Through Online Submissions to the Liberty Fund facilitated through our dedicated email address listed on the Site.

It does not apply to information collected by:

  • Us offline or through any other means, including on any other website operated by us or any third party; or
  • Any third party, including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link or be accessible from or through the Site.

Please read this policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies or practices, your choice is not to use our Site. By accessing or using this Site, you agree to this privacy policy. This policy may change from time to time (see Changes to Our Privacy Policy, below). Your continued use of this Site after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates.

Children Under the Age of 16

Our Site is not intended for children under 16 years of age. No one under age 16 may provide any information to or on the Site without verification of parental consent. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If you are under 16, do not use or provide any information on this website or through any of its features, register on the Site, make any purchases through the Site, use any of the interactive or public comment features of this Site, or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or user name you may use. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 16 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 16, please contact us at info@libertyfund.org.

Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Site, including information:

  • By which you may be personally identified, such as name, shipping and billing address, email address, telephone number (“personal information”);
  • That is about you but individually does not identify you, such as purchase information.
    • Please note, we solely use order information to fulfill orders placed through the site. Payment information is processed via a third-party service, Stripe. We do not store any payment information in our database. Our checkout form sends payment information directly to Stripe’s servers, without storing that data in our server. After a successful charge, Stripe sends us an anonymous token, which we store, that uniquely identifies each transaction.
  • About your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Site, information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and usage details.

We collect this information:

  • Directly from you when you provide it to us.
  • Automatically as you navigate through the site. Information automatically collected may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies.

Information You Provide to Us

The Information we collect on or through our Site may include:

  • Information that you provide by filling in forms on our Site. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our Site, posting material, making a purchase, or requesting further services. We may ask you for information when you report a problem with our Site.
  • Records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses), if you contact us.

You also may provide information, content, or other materials to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on areas of the Site, including, but not limited to, forums, chat features, or otherwise transmitted to other users of the Site or third parties (collectively, “User Contributions”). Your User Contributions are posted and/or transmitted to others at your own risk. Your User Contributions may be made freely available to other users of the Site. We cannot control the actions of other users of the Site with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee who will have access to or can view your User Contributions.

Information We Collect Through Automatic Data Collection Technologies

As you navigate through and interact with our Site, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

  • Details of your visits to our Site, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Site.
  • Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.

The information we collect automatically is only statistical data and does not include personal information. We may use automatic data collection technologies to gather information about your online activities on our Site over time for behavioral tracking. This helps us improve our Site and deliver a better and more personalized service, including enabling us to:

  • Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
  • Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Site according to your individual interests.
  • Speed up your searches.
  • Recognize you when you return to our Site.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

  • Cookies (or browser cookies): A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Site.
  • Google Analytics: This third party service is used to help us understand how our customers use the site, along with our online educational resource sites (OLL, Econlib, Adam Smith Works, and Law & Liberty). Data retention for our analytics accounts are set to retain information for 14 months.

More information is available here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

  • Facebook Pixel: Conversion tracking is used to analyze the value of advertising facilitated through Facebook by reporting the actions individuals take after viewing an advertisement. No personal information is contained in or collected as result of this.

You can opt out of targeted advertising here: https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads.

How We Use Your Information

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:

  • To present our Site and its contents to you.
  • To provide you with information, products, or services that you request from us.
  • To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it.
  • To provide you with notices about your account.
  • To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection.
  • To notify you about changes to our Site or any products or services we offer or provide through it.
  • To allow you to participate in interactive features on our Site.
  • For order fulfillment and shipping, which is handled by our third party warehouses – Ingram (U.S., Canada, South/Central America and Caribbean), and Gazelle Academic Services (International).

Disclosure of Information

We may disclose aggregated information about our users, and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction.

We may disclose personal information that we collect or you provide as described in this privacy policy:

  • To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
  • To a buyer and other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by us about our Site users is among the assets transferred.
  • To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it.
  • For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
  • With your consent.

We may also disclose your personal information:

  • To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.
  • To enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes.

If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Liberty Fund, Inc., our customers, or others.

Your State Privacy Rights

State consumer privacy laws may provide their residents with additional rights regarding our use of their personal information. To learn more about California privacy rights, see the California Residents Privacy Rights section below.

Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah each provide their state residents with rights to:

  • Confirm whether we process their Personal Information.
  • Access and delete certain Personal Information
  • Data Portability
  • Opt-out of personal data processing for targeted advertising and sales.

Colorado, Connecticut, and Virginia also provide their state residents with the rights to:

  • Correct inaccuracies in their personal information, taking into account the information’s nature processing purpose.
  • Opt-out of profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

To exercise any of these rights please email us at info@libertyfund.org.

California Residents Privacy Rights

This section is our Privacy Notice for California Residents (“Notice”) and applies to visitors, users, and others who reside in the State of California (“consumers,” or “you/your”) and use our Services. This notice is provided to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Rights Act of 2018 and the California Privacy Rights Act (“CCPA” and “CPRA”, respectively) and any terms defined in the CCPA/CPRA have the same meaning when used in this Notice.

Scope

This California Notice applies to the Personal Information we collect, online, about California consumers, including Personal Information that we collect from users of our Site.

This California Notice does not address or apply to:

  • Our handling of Personal Information that is exempt under Section 1798.145 of the CCPA;
  • Personal information we collect about employees, contractors, or job applicants or other individuals who are not California residents; or
  • Personal information we collect about individuals acting in their capacity as representatives (“B2B contacts”) of our customers, perspective customers, vendors and other businesses that we conduct business with, to the extent we use their personal information only in the context of conducting our business relationship with the respective business.

Information We Collect

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

Personal Information does not include:

  • Publicly available information from government records.
  • Deidentified or aggregated consumer information.
  • Information excluded from the CCPA/CPRA’s scope, like:
    • Health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (“CMIA”) or clinical trial data;
    • Personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (“GLBA”) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (“FIPA”), and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

We collect different types of information from users, and we use and/or disclose this information for different business purposes. The chart below identifies the Personal Information we may collect and for what business purpose the information is collected. Within the last 12 months, we may have collected the following categories of personal information either directly or indirectly from you:

Category Examples of Personal Information Collected Collected?
A.  Identifiers Name, mailing address, email address, gender, and telephone number; financial payment information; IP address YES
B.  Personal Information categories listed in the California Customer Records Statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)) Name, signature, Social Security number, address, telephone number, driver’s license or state identification card number, education, employment, employment history, bank account number or any other financial information. Some personal information included in this category may overlap with other categories YES
C.  Protected classification characteristics under California or Federal law Age (40 years or older), national origin, citizenship, marital status, sex, veteran or military status. NO
D.  Commercial information. Records of personal property, products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies NO
E.  Biometric Information 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. NO
F.  Internet or other similar network activity Browsing history, search history, information on a consumer’s interaction with a website, application, or advertisement. NO
G.  Geolocation Data Physical location or movements NO
H.  Sensory Data Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information NO
I.  Professional or employment-related information Current or past job history or performance evaluations NO
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)). 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. NO
K.  Inferences Drawn from other personal information Profile reflecting a person’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes. NO

 

Use of Personal Information

We may use or disclose the personal information we collect for one or more of the following business purposes:

  • To fulfill or meet the purpose you provided in the information.
  • To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us.
  • To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
  • To respond to law enforcement requests and as required by applicable law, court order or governmental regulations.
  • To evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by us is among the assets transferred.
  • For any other purpose allowed by law.

We will not collect additional categories of personal information or use the personal information we collected for materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.

Sharing Personal Information

We may disclose and have disclosed, in the past 12 months, Personal Information to third parties for a business purpose as set forth above and in this Privacy Policy. In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have not sold Personal Information. We do not share your Personal Information as defined under Cal. Civ. Cd. 1798.140(ah).

Data Retention

We will retain your personal information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes stated in this Notice, unless otherwise extending the retention period is required or permitted by law or subject to our retention policies as may be in place from time to time. The data storage period may vary with scenario, product, or service.

Your Rights and Choices

The CCPA and CPRA provide consumers (California residents) with specific rights regarding their personal information. This section describes CCPA/CPRA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.

Access to Specific Information and Data Portability Rights

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer 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 (also called a data portability request).
  • If we disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, a list of the disclosures made identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient obtained.

Correct/Rectify Personal Information

You have the right to rectify (correct, update, or modify) the personal information we collect about you. After making such a request, we will take commercially reasonable efforts to correct inaccurate personal information within 45 days of receiving the request. In the event an extension is needed, we may take an additional 45 days when reasonably necessary. In this case, we will provide you a notice of extension within the first 45-day period.

Deletion Request Rights

You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer 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 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, specifically if you previously provided informed consent and deleting that information may seriously impair or render impossible the research’s achievement.
  • 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 personal information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

Exercising Access, Rectification, Data Portability, and Deletion Rights

To exercise the limitation, access, rectification, data portability and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by:

Emailing us at info@libertyfund.org.

Only you or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information.

You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

  • Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative.
  • Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you. Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

Response Timing and Format

We will try our best to respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to 90 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. If you have an account with us, we will deliver our written response to that account. If you do not have an account with us, we will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option. Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding the receipt of the verifiable consumer request’s receipt. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable. For data portability requests, we will select a format to provide your personal information that is readily useable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another and should allow you to further transmit information if you desire.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive or unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

Non-Discrimination

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA/CPRA rights. Based solely on the exercise of your CCPA/CPRA rights, we will not:

  • Deny you goods or services
  • Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties
  • Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services
  • Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services

Individuals in the European Economic Area

Under the European Union’s (“EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), individuals in the European Economic Area have additional privacy rights:

  • Right to Be Informed. Individuals have the right to transparency regarding our collection of personal data.
  • Right of Access. Individuals have the right to know exactly what information is held about them and how it is processed.
  • Right of Rectification. Individuals will be entitled to have personal data rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • Right to Erasure. Also known as the “right to be forgotten,” this refers to an individual’s right to having their personal data deleted or removed without the need for a specific reason as to why they wish to discontinue.
  • Right to Restrict Processing. An individual’s right to block or suppress processing of their personal data.
  • Right to Data Portability. This allows individuals to retain and reuse their personal data for their own purpose.
  • Right to Object. In certain circumstances, individuals are entitled to object to their personal data being used.
  • Rights regarding Automated Decision-Making and Profiling. The GDPR has put in place safeguards to protect individuals against the risk that a potentially damaging decision is made without human intervention.

To exercise the above rights, please contact us at the information provided below. We will consider and process your request within a reasonable period of time. Please be aware, under certain circumstances, the GDPR will limit your exercise of these rights.

Accessing and Correcting Your Information

You have the right to request personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. Users can request a copy of this information by sending an email to info@libertyfund.org.

If you request we delete your User Contributions from the Site, copies of your User Contributions may remain viewable in cached and archived pages, or might have been copied or stored by other website users.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on this Site. If we make material changes to how we treat our users’ personal information, we will notify you by email to the email address specified in your account or through a website notice on the Site home page. The date the privacy policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date active and deliverable email address for you, and for periodically visiting our Site and this privacy policy to check for any changes.

Contact Information

To ask questions or comment about this privacy policy and our privacy practices, contact us at: info@libertyfund.org.