Last Revised: Jan 30, 2023

Note about GDPR and CPRA (Jan 30, 2023): For applicable locations related to the GDPR (EU) and CPRA (California) laws, we only use Non-Personalized Advertisements as implemented by Google AdSense. Our privacy policy will be updated as more information and guidance is made available about GDPR and CPRA. Currently, some cookies are still required for advertisements (e.g. for fraud prevention), and we don't currently have a way for the user to pay for access to the website without advertisements. We are looking into an easier way for the user to opt-out of the use of cookies, but for now you may either disable cookies via your browser, or avoid using the website.

We take privacy very seriously, and if you are reading this, you probably do as well. First of all, you should know that except for the trusted services that we use for hosting our site (WebSiteSource.com), managing our newsletter (MailChimp), processing payments (ClickBank, Gumroad, PayPal, Etsy), publishing ads (Google and Media.net), analyzing traffic (Google Analytics), and filtering blog comment spam (Automattic.com), no outside party will have access to your personal information unless you publish it yourself by adding it to a blog comment for example. We do not share personal information or email lists with third parties beyond those specifically named, and then only for the purposes required to perform the intended function (such as processing the payment, subscribing to the newsletter, or using the website). See below for more specifics.

Vertex42 LLC owns and runs the website Vertex42.com, so when we say "we", "us", or "our" we mean this site as well as the associates, employees, partners, and affiliates who help run this website and deliver the Content to you. If you have objections to this Privacy Policy, you should not access or use this site. On this page we will explain

• What personal information is collected (or not collected)
• How the information is used
• Who has access to the information
• Our email newsletter opt-in and opt-out policy
• Guidelines for children's privacy

Newsletter Subscriptions

Our newsletters are opt-in and completely optional. Online visitors who choose to be on our mailing lists and/or receive periodic email announcements provide their name and email address. We use a confirmed opt-in subscription process to prevent a person from subscribing someone without their permission. Anyone who wishes to can choose to be removed from our mailing list at any time, by using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the newsletter(s), or contacting Vertex42.com directly and asking to be removed.

We use MailChimp.com to manage and send newsletters. We do not share or sell our email lists and we do not store these lists outside of the MailChimp system.

See the MailChimp.com Privacy Policy for more information.

Cookies

Our site uses 'cookies' to manage your session on our site. Cookies are an industry standard and most major web sites use them. A cookie is a small text file stored on your computer, but is not stored on our website. Cookies help to save your personal preferences from one visit to the next (such as remaining logged into a website), make advertising more relevant, prevent pop-ups from being displayed too often, etc. Learn more about cookies used by Google.

Cookies on our site are used for Advertising and Web Analytics (see these sections below for more information). We also uses cookies for logging into our blog, but only authors and administrators can log in. Cookies may also be required for viewing the videos that we have embedded from youtube.com.

You can remove or clear cookies from your computer via your browser (typically accessed via your browser's settings or tools menu). You can also disable all cookies via your browser, but this might cause this and other websites to stop working (such as not being able to log in, embedded videos not working, etc.).

Advertising

We use third-party advertising companies (Google and Media.net) to serve ads when you visit our website. We use advertising to fund this website, and that is why you can download so many useful templates for free. These advertisers may use technology such as cookies when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers information including your web request, IP address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request, and the browser you used to visit our site.

This information is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing San Diego real estate ads to someone in San Diego, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing car ads to someone who frequents car sites) or changing the amount of ads displayed.

Media.net Ads: The ads served by media.net on our site are context-only (such as displaying calendar ads on a page that is about calendars), meaning that they are not using your personal information or visit history to display the ads on our site. You can view their privacy policy at https://www.media.net/privacy-policy

Google AdSense Ads: Google uses cookies to serve ads on our website, and some of these cookies are required even when ads are non-personalized (e.g. for frequency capping, aggregated reporting, and to combat fraud). To learn how Google manages cookies and data in its ads products, click here.

We use the non-personalized ads setting in Google AdSense so that non-personalized ads are shown to users where GDPR and CPRA applies. See Personalized and Non-Personalized Ads at support.google.com.

You may opt out of the use of the DoubleClick cookie by visiting the Google Advertising Privacy Policy.

Ezoic Ads: See Ezoic's privacy policy to learn how they user information to serve ads.

Web Analytics

We measure visitors to our website using Google Analytics, a service that transmits website traffic data to Google servers in the Unites States. Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. We use reports provided by Google Analytics to help us understand website usage trends and to make improvements to our site.

Website traffic data includes information such as the number of times a link was clicked, IP addresses, browser types, access times, how people arrived at our site and so on. For example, if you find our site through a search engine, the logs will show that a visitor clicked through to our site from that search engine. General aggregate site statistics may be provided to potential advertisers and link partners (such as number of visitors per month from the US). These statistics cannot be used to identify an individual, since they do not include any personal information.

You can learn more about Google Analytics, or you may opt-out of using Google Analytics cookies by using the Google Analytics Opt-Out Add-on for your browser.

We use the 'Anonymize IP' setting in Google Analytics (click here for more info).

Ezoic.com uses web analytics to help determine what ads to include on our website. Please read Ezoic's privacy policy to learn how they use information.

Purchases and Donations

Vertex42 itself does not process payments or store credit card information. All transactions are handled by third-party services, including ClickBank.com, PayPal.com, Gumroad.com, or Etsy.com.

If you use one of these services to purchase a Vertex42 product, please review their privacy policy to learn more about their privacy practices and how they use your information.

Information We Collect and Why: Vertex42 may maintain a record of sales made Clickbank.com or PayPal.com, including the customer's name, email address, order number, and location (state/country). This information is used to verify purchases when a customer contacts us for technical assistance, to request a refund, to obtain a new copy of their purchased file(s), or for other legitimate interests.

Vertex42 does not keep an independent record of sales made through Etsy.com or Gumroad.com because these services handle 100% of the order fulfillment process, including delivery of the purchased files.

Data Retention: Our record of sales may be kept for an indefinite period of time so that we can verify the customer's purchase when they contact us for support as described above.

Information Sharing: We don't share your information for marketing purposes. Basically, we would only share your personal information for very limited reasons and in limited circumstances, as follows:

A) ClickBank, PayPal, Gumroad, Etsy. We may be required to share information with the service through which you place your order, to provide you with customer support and comply with our obligations under the service's privacy policy and terms of use.

B) Compliance with laws. We may collect, use, retain, and share your information if we have a good faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to: (a) respond to legal process or to government requests; (b) enforce our agreements, terms and policies; (c) prevent, investigate, and address fraud and other illegal activity, security, or technical issues; or (d) protect the rights, property, and safety of our customers, or others.

Information Removal: For purposes of the EU data protection law, Vertex42 is a data controller of your personal information. If you contact us to access, correct or delete personal information held by the above mentioned third-party services, we will either contact the service for assistance, or request that you send a request directly to that service.

Public Comments

Our blog allows comments to be added by users. Comments are not anonymous. Information that you include in these comments becomes public information (including the name and comment you provide) and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose any personal information. Submitting a comment requires providing your name and email address. WordPress also stores your IP address. The IP address is stored because our anti-spam plugin uses the IP address to help identify spam comments. The email address is not displayed, but the email address and IP address is stored with your comment in the WordPress database.

We use the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin by Automattic.com to filter comment spam. This service uses the information you provide in your comment to detect and identify spam. See the Automattic.com privacy policy.

You may contact Vertex42 if you wish to have your comment(s) removed for any reason. Please provide us with enough information to identify your comment(s) for removal.

Email You Send Us

When you send us email, it is stored in our mail server and the Google email accounts we use for communication. We keep records of emails to aid in communication, legal purposes, tax purposes, etc.

If you do not want us to store your email message or you do not want your email stored on Google servers, you should avoid contacting us, or request that we delete your message after reading it. We will normally happily comply to such a request, but if we feel there is an important reason to maintain a record of the message, we will not be obligated to remove it unless required to by law.

We treat all communication from customers regarding orders or technical assistance as private and confidential.

If you send us unsolicited email, we are under no obligation to keep the information confidential or private. If you specifically want us to keep email communication confidential, you should include a clear confidentiality notice with your email. However, unless we have previously signed a non-disclosure agreement, we may not be legally obligated to maintain confidentiality.

Information Used to Improve User Experience

In some cases, we may collect information to help improve the experience of users on our site. This might include completing anonymous polls or surveys, rating pages or content that you like, sharing content via social media, or submitting a search.

The surveys we use do not contain or request information that we could use or recognize as personally identifiable information from end users. Demographic information might include age, profession, interests, favorites, etc. This information would be used to help us know how best to tailor our content to the interests of our users.

Information from anonymous surveys might be shared or published, but only on an aggregate basis (meaning statistics like 65% of our users are female). This information cannot be used to identify you.

We do not collect sensitive personal information such as race, religion, or political affiliations. We do not collect sensitive information such as social security numbers and birth dates.

The above pertains to our own data handling procedures. We also work with a company called Ezoic to improve reader experience on the site. See Ezoic's privacy policy to see how they handle data.

Scholarship Applications

Applications for scholarships require a student to list their name, age, email, city of residency, school name, and other personal information necessary for scholarship selection. Personal information submitted via scholarship applications will not be published without the written permission of the scholarship winners. However, non-personal information such as ideas for templates or ideas for ways to use spreadsheets in education may be used and summarized and shared publicly by us without specific attribution.

Our scholarships are only available to people residing in the United States.

Microsoft Office Add-ins

The Mini Calendar and Date Picker add-in does not collect personal information.

The Vertex42 Template Gallery add-in does not collect personal information.

Google Drive Apps

If you choose to install the Vertex42 Template Gallery add-on apps for Google Docs and Google Sheets, the add-ons require access to your Google Drive to be able to copy the template files that you request into your Google Drive account. No user data is stored or shared by Vertex42 through these apps. These apps are only a convenient way to browse and makes copies of templates created by Vertex42. These add-ons are not required. Instead, you can access the templates for Google Sheets and Google Docs directly via links listed on Vertex42.com.

When you make a copy of a Google Sheets or Google Docs template created by Vertex42, Vertex42 does not maintain any link or access to the copy that you make. You maintain control over the privacy of your documents on Google Drive. See the Google Drive Terms of Service if you have questions about their privacy policy.

Children's Guidelines

Children's privacy is a major concern to us.

See the sections above to learn what type of information is used on this site and by third parties, such as cookies, ip addresses, and the info in a typical browser request, which may be used by third party advertisers as "persistent identifiers." If you are concerned about the use of persistent identifiers, please only access this website with a browser that blocks the use of cookies and limits what information your browser sends automaticaly to websites.

We do not knowingly collect other personal information from children under the age of 13. If we learn that we have personal information on a child under the age of 13, we will delete that information from our systems.

We encourage parents to go online with their kids. Here are a few tips to help make a child's online experience safer:

• Teach kids never to give personal information, unless supervised by a parent or responsible adult. This includes name, address, phone, school, etc.
• Know the sites your kids are visiting and which sites are appropriate.
• Look for Web site privacy policies.
• Know how your child's information is treated.

Check out the FTC's site for more tips on protecting children's privacy online.

External Links

We link to many other websites, but we are not responsible for the privacy policies on other websites.

Privacy Policy Revisions

We may occasionally revise this policy by updating this page. We encourage you to visit this page periodically to see how Vertex42.com is protecting your privacy.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions or comments about our privacy policy, we can be reached via email.