Privacy Policy
1. About this policy
1.1 This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect when you use qootbooks.com or buy from us, why we collect it, who receives it, how long we keep it, and what rights you have over it. It forms part of our Terms of Service, and words defined there have the same meaning here.
1.2 The controller of your personal data is Qoote FZE, Business Centre, Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, reachable at hello@qootbooks.com.
1.3 Purchases are not yet open on the Site, and the Site does not yet offer a news subscription. Until they do, the only personal data we process is described in clauses 2.1 and 2.2.
2. What we collect
2.1 When you visit the Site. Our hosting provider records technical data in server logs, including your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you request, and the date and time of each request. The Site also records page views itself: the page visited, the referring site, any campaign tag in the link, your country and your device type. It does this without a cookie and without storing your IP address. The Site has no forms, accounts or sign-ups.
2.2 When you write to us. Your email address, the content of your message and anything you choose to attach.
2.3 When you place an Order. Once purchases are open, and including when you place an Order by redeeming a Redemption Code, we also collect:
(a) the Checkout Email;
(b) the details of your Order: the Digital Books ordered, the date and time, the amount and currency paid, any tax charged, and the Order ID;
(c) limited payment information from the Payment Provider, such as payment status, card type, the last four digits of the card and the country of issue. We never receive your full card details;
(d) a record of any consent you give at checkout to receive news from us, with its date and the wording you agreed to;
(e) records of the use of each Download Link, such as the time and IP address of each download and the number of downloads;
(f) any information you give us when asking for a Download Link to be resent or sent to a corrected address, or when exercising your rights under clause 9; and
(g) the Redemption Code you used, if any.
2.4 Order ID in your files. Every Digital Book file we deliver carries the Order ID of the Order under which it was supplied. The file does not contain your name or email address; our records link the Order ID to your Order.
2.5 When you subscribe to our news. Once the Site offers a news subscription, we collect the email address you enter, your reply to the confirmation email we send to it, and a record of your consent with its date and the wording you agreed to. We send no news until you confirm. Clauses 3.2, 7.3 and 9.1(e) apply to subscribers as they apply to buyers.
3. Why we use it, and on what basis
3.1 We use personal data only for the following purposes and on the following grounds:
- Delivering your Order, resending Download Links, and putting right anything that goes wrong with an Order. Necessary to perform our contract with you.
- Keeping the accounting and tax records the law requires. Necessary to comply with our legal obligations.
- Preventing fraud and protecting the security of the Site and of Download Links. Necessary to protect our rights and to comply with our legal obligations.
- Enforcing the Licence and protecting the copyright of the Rights Holders, including identifying the Order from which a distributed copy of a Digital Book originated. Necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal rights.
- Sending you news about our books. Your consent, which you may withdraw at any time.
- Answering your messages. Your request, and our contract with you where the message concerns an Order.
3.2 Every news email carries a one-click unsubscribe link, and we stop sending news as soon as you use it.
4. Cookies and tracking
4.1 Our Site uses no cookies and no third-party analytics or tracking; our own cookieless page-view count is described in clause 2.1. Fonts and all other assets are served from our own Site.
4.2 When you pay, the Payment Provider’s checkout may set its own cookies. Those cookies are governed by the Payment Provider’s own policy.
5. Who receives your data
5.1 Service providers. We share personal data with the providers that help us operate: our hosting provider, our backend and data-storage provider, our email provider and the Payment Provider. They process it on our behalf and under our instructions to provide their services to us.
5.2 The Payment Provider’s own use. The Payment Provider also processes some payment data for its own purposes, such as fraud prevention and meeting its own legal and regulatory obligations. For that processing it acts on its own account, under its own privacy policy.
5.3 Copyright enforcement. If a copy of a Digital Book carrying an Order ID is found distributed in breach of the Terms, we may disclose details of the related Order to the affected Rights Holders, our professional advisers and the competent authorities, to the extent needed to protect the rights concerned.
5.4 Authorities and successors. We disclose personal data where the law requires us to, and to a successor to our business if our business is transferred, on terms that protect your data as this Policy does.
5.5 We do not sell personal data.
5.6 Current providers.
- Website hosting — a hosting provider in the United States.
- Backend and data storage — a provider in the United States.
- Edge network — a provider in the United States.
- Email — an email provider in Switzerland.
When a provider changes, we update this list and the date at the top of this Policy.
6. Transfers outside the UAE
6.1 Some of our providers process personal data outside the United Arab Emirates. Where a provider processes your data outside the UAE, we transfer it only as UAE data-protection law permits.
7. How long we keep it
7.1 Order records, including the records of Download Link use described in clause 2.3(e), are kept for seven (7) years from the end of the financial year in which the Order was placed, or for longer where the law requires, for example during a tax audit or claim.
7.2 Server logs are kept by our hosting provider for a limited period under its standard settings.
7.3 News list. Your email address stays on our news list until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove it. We keep the record of your consent for as long as we need it to show that the consent was given. An address that has not confirmed its subscription within thirty (30) days is deleted.
7.4 Messages you send us are kept for as long as needed to deal with them, except that messages about an Order are kept with that Order’s records.
7.5 Page views recorded under clause 2.1 are deleted after ninety (90) days; after that we keep only daily totals.
8. Security
8.1 We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against loss, misuse and unauthorised access.
9. Your rights
9.1 You may ask us at any time to:
(a) give you access to the personal data we hold about you;
(b) correct it;
(c) delete it;
(d) restrict or object to how we use it; or
(e) stop sending you news, by withdrawing your consent. Withdrawal does not affect anything we did before it.
9.2 To exercise any of these rights, email hello@qootbooks.com. We act on requests sent from the Checkout Email or, for a news subscription, from the subscribed address. For any other request we may first ask for information to confirm that you placed the Order concerned, such as its date, its amount and the last four digits of the card used or, for an Order placed with a Redemption Code, that code and the Order date. Before we act on a request to delete your personal data, we send a confirmation message to the Checkout Email or the subscribed address or, if you can no longer receive mail there, ask you for the information described above, and act only once you confirm or we have that information.
9.3 We will act on your request without undue delay. Some rights have limits:
(a) we must keep Order records for the period in clause 7.1 even if you ask us to delete them;
(b) once your email address has been deleted from our operational systems, we can no longer resend your Download Links; and
(c) we cannot remove the Order ID from copies of a Digital Book that have already been delivered.
9.4 If you believe we have handled your personal data wrongly, you may complain to the UAE Data Office or to the data-protection authority competent for you.
10. Children
10.1 The Site is intended for adults. If you are under 18, please ask a parent or guardian to buy for you. We do not knowingly collect personal data directly from children under 18. If we learn that we have done so, we will delete it, except where the law requires us to keep it.
11. Law
11.1 We process personal data in accordance with the data-protection laws of the United Arab Emirates, including Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the Protection of Personal Data.
12. Changes
12.1 We may update this Policy. The version published on this page applies from the date shown at the top. We keep every previous version and will provide any of them on request.