Privacy Policy
At Brepols Publishers, we consider the protection of privacy to be of the highest importance. We therefore do all that is needed to inform respect, and give control over what happens with data to the clients and users of our products, services and websites. We want to process and use your data safely and respectfully in order to offer the best service and experience.
This guide to our Privacy Policy is designed to provide you with information about how we process your data when you are using our products, services, and websites. Such usage might include the purchase of a volume or e-book, the use of our databases, training and seminar materials, software or other services, and a visit to one of the following websites: about.brepolis.net, brepols.net, brepolis.net, brepolsonline.net, perspecti.net, corpuschristianorum.org, harveymillerpublishers.com.
Please take the time to read our Privacy Policy carefully, together with our terms and conditions of sale and/or service, and other terms and conditions that may apply.
1. Who is the processor of your personal data?
Brepols Publishers N.V./S.A. Begijnhof 67, 2300 Turnhout, registered at the C.B.E. under the number 0463.139.762, is responsible for processing the data of its website users, clients and final users of its products and services.
All personal data is processed in compliance with the Belgian Act of 8 December 1992 on the protection of privacy in relation to the processing of personal data, and with the European Directive 95/46/EC of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. As of 25 May 2018, these will be replaced by the European Regulation 2016/679 of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, which repeals Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).
In line with the legislation now in force, the Belgian Commission for the Protection of Privacy is notified about any direct marketing activities, whether partially or fully automatized.
2. Which personal data does Brepols Publishers process, and how does it collect this information?
We process personal data that you have communicated to us, that we have obtained through your use of our product or services (including by end-users), or that we have obtained from third parties. Personal data described hereunder and collected via these different channels is saved in our files or databases.
Depending on the website or services provided, you are invited to share with us personal data including your surname, first name, title, invoice and/or delivery address, encrypted password and phone number. Our server registers the IP-addresses, periods when you were connected on our websites, browser, language, visited pages, clicked links, operating system, and view logs.
Your invoicing and payment data are registered as well. We register the time and the bank account number from which the payment was received.
When using Brepols Payment Portal, we register data related to the transaction and data related to the credit card needed to ensure the optimal progress of the transaction. Please note that we do not register or retain the credit card number, expiry date nor CVC code.
- When making an order on www.brepolsonline.net, you are redirected to the secure platform of Stripe, San Francisco, USA, and the privacy policy of Stripe thus applies: https://stripe.com/en-be/privacy
- For orders on storypublishers.be Stripe is also used as the default payment provider. For payments using the Belgian payment method Bancontact, the payment provider is Mollie (based in the Netherlands), which is subject to its own company privacy policy: https://www.mollie.com/legal/privacy
- The processing of other credit card payments is handled by Worldline (Chaussee de Haecht 1442, 1140 Brussels, Belgium) via its secure platform, which is subject to its own company privacy policy: https://worldline.com/nl-be/compliancy/privacy.
Brepols Publishers does not retain credit card numbers. We collect and use only the personal data that is needed to ensure the correct performance of the contract and an efficient performance of transactions, in order to ensure clients can follow up on their payments, and for legal reasons.
The website of Brepols Publishers uses cookies. The cookies serve only to identify the browser used, in order to make the user traceable during the time he visits the website. Users of websites are free to refuse cookies through their browser settings, but they will then not be able to use some applications.
We collect personal data in writing (via an order form, our webshop, form available on our websites) or by phone (for example, when you place an order). Where relevant, we register your occupation or your fields of interest. We collect your data when you register as a user on our webshop, when you subscribe to one of our newsletters, when you ask for information or participate in certain actions, and when we enter into a (pre-)contractual relationship.
We can request other data if it is required in order for us to provide you with our services. We also collect data about the use that you make of our services and websites (cf. point 5).
We can also use data bought at specialized companies, of persons that are not clients yet, with as purpose to offer to those persons a relevant offer of products and services.
3. For which purposes does Brepols Publishers process your data?
We use your personal data for the purposes specified in the authorization to which you agreed and/or in our Privacy Policy.
Your personal data is used to enable an efficient communication once you have placed an order, to provide you with information for which you have asked, and to provide you with adequate information about our products, services, and special offers or discounts (direct marketing).
In addition, we use personal data when it is needed to enter into or to perform an agreement. This is the case when you wish to buy, pay for, and have delivered one of our products or services, for example, or when you wish to publish your work with us.
We can also make use of and process your personal data in order to comply with our legal obligations. In numerous cases, we are legally obliged to keep your personal data and/or to share them with public institutions, for example, in order to comply with general tax or accountancy obligations, or criminal investigation by the police or by a magistrate.
Finally, processing of your personal data might be needed to preserve our legitimate interests. For example, it might be used in order to provide the most efficient service possible, in order to improve the quality of our customer service, and for statistics and internal evaluations, as well as in order to detect any fraud and crimes committed against Brepols Publishers, its employees, clients and suppliers, or within the framework of disputes/ litigations and their handling/management.
4. Does Brepols Publishers share your personal data with third parties?
As a rule, Brepols Publishers uses your personal data exclusively within the company.
We can provide access to certain personal data to third parties who are working on our instructions or who are assisting us in our tasks and our editorial or marketing activities; these include Brepols Publishing Services, IT-service providers, payment service providers, and contract delivery companies. Please note, however, that personal data will only be used by third parties with whom Brepols Publishers has a contractual relationship and access to this data will be strictly limited to the information required in order to accomplish their tasks on our instructions.
We do not transfer collected data to third parties, unless and in so far as it is needed to perform an order or an agreement. In such cases, we mention it explicitly at the time of a specific action or when we are legally obliged to do so, for example, when it is foreseen by a legislation, criminal proceedings, or a court order.
Your personal data will primarily be processed by Brepols Publishers in Belgium or within the European Economic Area (EEA), where data protection laws are aligned with the standards of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In certain cases, your data may be processed in countries outside the EEA. In such instances, Brepols Publishers will assess the risks and strive to implement appropriate safeguards to ensure your data is handled securely and in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
5. Use of anonymized data for reports
Brepols Publishers also makes use of Google Analytics, a system that sends general anonymous reports about the use of the website.
We do not use advanced tracking features such as Advertising Reporting Features, Remarketing, User-ID tracking, or demographic and interest reports. These functionalities are explicitly disabled in our configuration. The data collected is anonymized and does not allow us to identify individual users.
The retention period, which applies to user-level and event-level data associated with cookies and user-identifiers (e.g., User-ID) stored by Google Analytics on its servers, is the default retention period of 26 months. Once this period is passed, data will be automatically deleted.
For more information, please visit the website of Google and the section ‘How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services’, available at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites?hl=en.
6. How long will your personal data be retained?
If you object to the processing of your personal data, we will endeavor to delete it as soon as possible. However, personal data will be kept as long as required for the performance of a contract and/or to comply with a legal obligation and/or the time needed to achieve the specific purposes for which they have been collected. When you chose to use Brepols Payment Portal, the personal data that you give to us will be retained for 3 months.
7. How is your personal data protected?
Brepols Publishers has taken technical and organizational measures to protect files that include your personal data from unauthorized access and/or usage, loss, or theft. Our security measures are regularly re-evaluated and adapted where appropriate to ensure that we can continue to offer a high level of security. All of our employees are bound to process personal data in confidence.
8. Amendments of our privacy policy
It is possible that our privacy policy will be enlarged or adapted in the future, for example, as a consequence of the modification of our products and/or services, through the observations of our clients, or due to legal changes relating to (the protection of) privacy. We will inform you of important changes, if possible personally, and we will ask for consent where needed.
9. How can you manage your personal data?
You can exercise your rights to access, rectify, erase, object to, and/or restrict the processing of personal data, and your rights to data portability at any time and free of charge. You can, for example, always object to the use of your personal data for direct marketing purposes. Please keep us posted and we will take all measures to respect your choices:
- If you have a Brepols account, you can manage, update, or erase data yourself through the ‘Edit profile’.
- Or, you can write to us at: Liesbeth Boonen – Privacy, Brepols Publishers S.A., Begijnhof 67, 2300 Turnhout, Belgium.
- You can also e-mail us at: [email protected].
Every marketing message sent by Brepols Publishers contains instructions for unsubscribing.
Please note that we may reasonably need to verify your identity when your exercise these rights to ensure that no kind of identity fraud is taking place.
If you have any further remarks or queries about our Privacy Policy, you are welcome to address your concerns to:
Ms. Liesbeth Boonen – Privacy
Brepols Publishers S.A
Begijnhof 67,
2300 Turnhout,
Belgium
Finally, if you feel that Brepols Publishers has in any manner violated your privacy, please contact us and we will do everything we can to rectify the alleged violation. If we do not find any satisfactory solution, you still have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.