Privacy Policy

At Plotagon®, we respect your privacy and your rights to control your personal data. This privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) explains the data we collect from you, either directly or indirectly, when you use the Plotagon® website (the “Website”) and Plotagon®’s software for desktops, tablets and mobile handsets including Plotagon® Story, Plotagon® Education and Plotagon® Studio (the “Software”) as well as any other service provided by Plotagon®. (the Website and the Software are collectively referred to as the “Services”). The Privacy Policy also explains how your personal data is used and the reasons why we need to use your personal data. By personal data we mean any data that can be used to identify you or that can be linked to you. In this Privacy Policy we also explain the different choices you have about the personal data we collect when using the Services.

Unless stated otherwise in this Privacy Policy, the same conditions shall apply for Plotagon® Story, Plotagon® Education and Plotagon Studio.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand how Plotagon® may collect, use and share your personal data. Please note that this Privacy Policy only concerns the processing of Personal Data for which Plotagon® is the “Controller” (as defined in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), i.e. where we have decided the purposes (why the data is collected) and means (which data is collected, for how long it is stored, etc.) of the processing of the Personal Data.

This Privacy Policy is designed to give you full transparency regarding our data handling practices.

Unless otherwise stated, Plotagon Production AB is the data controller for personal data we collect through the Services subject to this Privacy Policy. If you have questions regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal data stored with us, including a request for access rectification or deletion, or you object to certain uses, please feel free to contact us e.g. by sending an email to privacy@plotagon.com or write to us at:

Plotagon Production AB Wallingatan 18 114 46 Stockholm Sweden

The personal data we collect

Depending on how you use the Services and what plan you sign up for, you may be required to provide certain personal data from various sources:

Information that you provide voluntarily

Profile Information: When you register a Plotagon® account, you will need to provide your email address, a username (which may be your real name or a pseudonym), your age and choose a password. In addition, if you purchase a premium subscription (Plotagon® Education or Plotagon® Studio), you will need to provide your real name, billing address and payment verification information. Payment information: If you pay for your use of the Services and/or additional content you will be asked to provide certain personal data so that we can complete your purchase. In order to do so we collect your name, phone number (optional), email address, delivery/shipping address, and payment information. Optional Data: When setting up your user profile in Plotagon® you may, depending on the service you are using, choose to provide us with additional personal data such as:

  • your real name
  • a profile picture
  • profile description

None of this profile information is mandatory, and any information you do provide may be deleted, edited, changed or amended by you at any time by altering your profile information. All such voluntary information is hereinafter referred to as ”Optional Data”.

Information provided when communicating with us: You may provide us with certain personal data if you choose to contact us by email, use any of the web forms on the Website, or contact us by mail or other offline means. Survey Information: If you participate in any survey, you will provide certain personal data as part of your response, unless you respond anonymously.

Voluntary information provided by teachers and school administrators as part of Plotagon® Education

Students: If you are a student using Plotagon® Education as part of your school’s educational plan we will only store the email address and password that your teacher/school administrator provides us with when setting up your account. Automatically collected information

There is certain information that we collect automatically as the result of your use of the Services. We may, for example, collect information about the type of device you use to access the Services, the operating system and version, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your general geographic location, as indicated by your IP address, your browser type, the webpages you view on our websites, whether you interact with content available on our website and how as well as information collected through cookies and similar technology, as described in the section Cookies and Logs below.

We may also collect metadata associated with your use of the Software, which may include content creation date, formatting information; location information such as country, region and city (geotags).

Information received from other sources

We may receive information about you from other sources, including third parties, such as partners with whom we conduct joint marketing activities. We may also receive information about you from social media platforms, for instance, when you interact with us on those platforms. We protect data obtained from third parties according to the practices described in this Privacy Policy and we also apply any additional restrictions imposed by the source of data.

How we use your personal data

Plotagon® uses personal data to provide you with the Services, which includes using data to improve and personalize your experience. We also use the data to communicate with you, for example, to inform you about new software and security updates.

In short, Plotagon® uses personal data for the following general purposes:

  • Providing the Services
  • Providing customer support
  • Software/service improvements
  • Business Operations
  • Communication, Marketing and Advertising
  • Security, Safety, and Dispute Handling

Providing the Services

We use personal data to provide, operate, support and improve the Services we offer to ensure that our customers can create stories and other content as seamlessly as possible. Your personal data will also be used in order for you to communicate with other Plotagon® users and to identify you as the creator of the animated stories that you share, the comments that you post and/or the other contributions that you make when using the Services. This processing is necessary for the performance of the agreement we have with you.

Providing customer support

We use personal data to respond to customer enquiries, provide customer care and support services. Such support includes but is not limited to technical support. This processing is necessary for the performance of the agreement we have with you, as well as to serve our legitimate interest.

Software/service improvements

We continually use personal data for research purposes and to develop and improve the Services, including maintaining and improving the performance of the Software and the Website as well as developing and adding new features or capabilities. This processing is necessary to serve our legitimate interest.

Business Operations

We use personal data to aggregate business information that enables us to operate, protect, make informed decisions, and report on the performance of our business. This processing is necessary to serve our legitimate interest.

Communication, Marketing and Advertising

We use the personal data we collect to deliver and personalise our communications with you. For example, we may contact you by email or other means of electronic communication to inform you about new features or services, security or software updates, invite you to take part in a survey. This processing is necessary to serve our legitimate interest.

In addition, we may disclose personal data when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with Plotagons rights or property, other Website or Application users or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities. This processing is necessary to serve our legitimate interest.

Special note for Plotagon® Education users

If you are a student using Plotagon® Education, please note that your name and email address will only be shared amongst teachers/administrators of the same group.

Our legal basis for processing personal data

Plotagon® uses the following legal grounds to ensure lawful processing of your personal data:

Performance of a contract

The use of your personal data described in this policy is generally necessary in order to perform the agreement you have with us. Amongst others this means that we may need to process your personal data to give you access to the Services, to register and maintain your account, to enable payment services, to help with support issues and to make sure that the Services perform as intended or to respond to your requests.

Legitimate interests

We may use your personal data for our legitimate interests. For example, we rely on our legitimate interest to analyse and improve the Services and related content, to send you notifications about software updates or information about improvements of the Services or to use your personal data for administrative, fraud detection or legal purposes.

How we may share your personal data

General

We do not sell or share any personal data about you to or with any person or organization except (a) as authorized by you (e.g. in relation to user generated content), (b) as set forth in the relevant portion of the Services or in any agreement between us, (c) in connection with providing various products or Services to you, either directly or through one or more third parties (such as cloud based storage partners and payment partners), (d) as may be required by law or court order, or (e) as otherwise set forth herein.

Aggregated Data

We may aggregate your personal data with similar data relating to other users of the Services in order to create statistical information regarding the Services and its use, which we may then share with third parties or make publicly available. However, none of this information would include any email address or other contact information, or anything that could be used to identify you individually.

In the context of a business transfer:

We may share your personal data in the event of a corporate reorganization (e.g. all or substantially all of the assets) relating to Plotagon® are transferred or sold to another entity.

To protect legitimate interests:

We may disclose your personal data if we feel this is necessary in order to protect or defend our legitimate rights and interests, or those of our users, employees, directors or shareholders, and/or to ensure the safety and security of the Services.

For how long we store your personal data

Plotagon® will store your personal data for as long as we deem it necessary to provide the Services to you and to comply with applicable laws (including those regarding document retention), resolve disputes with any parties and otherwise as necessary to allow us to conduct our business. All personal data we retain will be subject to this Privacy Policy.

We will send you a reminder by email if you have not accessed your Plotagon® account during a two (2) year period. If you have not accessed your account within ninety (90) days after receiving such notification, your account and related personal data will be permanently deleted, unless we are legally required to retain the information for a longer period of time.

If you have a question about a specific retention period for certain types of personal data we hold about you, please send an email to privacy@plotagon.com.

International transfers of personal data

The personal data that we collect about you may be processed (and stored) in the region where you reside, for example in the EU or in any other country where Plotagon® or its affiliates, subsidiaries or service providers are located or maintain facilities. Before transferring personal data outside of the EU/EEA, Plotagon® will ensure adequate mechanisms to protect personal data when it is transferred internationally, for example by using the Standard Contractual Clauses as approved by the European Commission.

Cookies and Logs

A cookie is information a website places on your computer’s hard drive so that the website is able to remember your preferences and/or which pages you visited on the website and make your visit more efficient and enjoyable. Plotagon® may use cookies to determine the number of unique visitors to the Service over a given period, or to remember user account details, etc. so that the need for multiple log-ins is eliminated. It may combine information collected through cookies to any personal data submitted online when using the Service to help personalize a user’s access to and use of the Service. Cookies may be disabled on your computer by indicating this in the preferences or options menus in your browser. Plotagon® may collect data in the form of logs. Log data collected on web servers supplies Plotagon® with aggregate information about the number of visits to different pages on the Service and other navigational data. Further information is available at https://aboutcookies.org.

Your rights to your personal data

We do our best to give you as much choice as possible regarding the amount of personal data you provide to us, and the control you have over that information.

You can do this in the following ways:

  • By asking for a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
  • By informing us of any changes to your personal data, or letting us know if you wish to correct any of the personal data we hold about you;
  • In certain situations, you can ask us to erase, block or restrict the personal data we hold about you, or object to particular ways in which we are using your personal data; and
  • In certain situations, you can also ask us to send the personal data you have given us to a third party.

Where we process your personal data based on legitimate interest, you have the right to object at any time to that use of your personal data.

We rely on you to ensure that your personal data is complete, accurate and up to date. Most of the personal data you provide to us can be accessed, removed and/or updated by logging in to your Plotagon® account in the sServices. You can also inform us of any changes to or faults in your personal data by contacting privacy@plotagon.com.

If you ask us to delete your account (either via the Settings page in the Services or by email), we will do so within a reasonable period of time, but we may need to retain some of your personal data in order to satisfy our legal obligations, or where we have a legitimate reason for doing so.

Plotagon® is always committed to handle any request, complaint or concern that you may have about our use of your personal data in a lawful, fair and transparent way. If, however, you believe that we have not been able to assist with your complaint or concern, you may have the right to file a complaint with the data protection authority (if any) or supervisory authority in your country of residence.

Security and data breaches

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage. Your personal data is stored in a secure manner on protected equipment. For example your data is protected with encryption, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS), during transition over the Internet. Only a limited number of personnel have access to our equipment and only persons with a legitimate reason have access to your personal data. Unfortunately, the transmission of your personal data via the internet is not completely secure. While we will endeavour (through the use of appropriate security measures) to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of such data when it is transmitted to us via the internet. We also ensure that our third-party data centre vendors provide adequate security measures.

Specific requirements for children residing in the United States

Please note that the following Section only applies to users in the United States.

You acknowledge that the Services are not intended for use if you are under thirteen (13) years of age unless you are using our educational software Plotagon® Education and have been given access thereto as part of your school’s educational plan. If you are under thirteen years (13) of age and are using Plotagon® Education in the United States, you shall further ensure that the consent of your parents or legal guardians has been obtained by your school as described below, in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”).

Plotagon is required under COPPA, with limited exceptions, to obtain verifiable parental consent in order to collect, use, or disclose personal data from you, if you are under 13 years of age (a “Child”). COPPA allows your school to obtain consent for the online collection of personal data from you and other children who are students at your school. If you are a Child who wants to use our Educational Plan, you must first obtain an account from your school.

Before an Educational Plan account is provided to a school, we require that the school (a) obtains verifiable parental consent with regard to every Child that will use the Services, (b) consents (on behalf of the parents/legal guardians) to the collection, use and disclosure of personal data of the Child, through the Services, in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the consent form made available by Plotagon® and (c) agrees (on behalf of the parents/legal guardians) that the Child’s online activities are subject to the Terms of Use. As required under COPPA, we allow parents/legal guardians certain choices regarding the personal data submitted by their children. Parents/legal guardians should make any permitted requests with the school and have the school, as the parent’s/legal guardian’s agent, pass on those requests to Plotagon®. We may rely on the instructions that we receive from the school that we reasonably believe are given by a Child’s parent to the school. For example, if a representative from the Child’s school contacts us and provides the account information we request, we may assume that the person calling is acting on behalf of the Child’s parent.

We provide parents/legal guardians the following choices with respect to the collection, use, retention and disclosure of personal data. A Child’s registration information is always accessible to him/her. A parent/legal guardian has the right to review his/her Child’s personal data, which the parent can obtain by contacting his/her Child’s school. After reviewing the Child’s personal data, the parent/legal guardian may ask us to update or delete the Child’s personal data by requesting such changes through the Child’s school.

If a parent/legal guardian chooses to prohibit any future collection, use or disclosure of the Child’s personal data, the parent/legal guardian may do so by terminating the Child’s account through the school, and requesting the deletion of the Child’s personal data through the school. Upon receiving such request from the Child’s school, we will delete the Child’s account information from our live databases and all the information and data stored for such account. Plotagon® will not have any liability whatsoever for any termination of the account or related deletion of the Child’s personal data. When we delete personal data, it will be deleted from our active databases but may remain in our archives.

Our policy on student data

Please note that the following Section only applies to users in the United States.

We acknowledge that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1232g (“FERPA”) primarily applies to schools that receive funding from the U.S. Department of Education and that Plotagon® will be indirectly affected by the FERPA regulatory framework when providing services to educational institutions in the US.

As required of such schools under FERPA, as an administrator or teacher under an Educational Plan, You agree that You have obtained valid student and parental consent to disclose personally identifiable information to us.

Plotagon® makes the following commitments to schools regulated by FERPA: Plotagon® will protect the confidentiality of any student data and/or personally identifiable information provided to us or any of our representatives. We further acknowledge that we will review and comply with all information security programs, plans, guidelines, standards and policies that apply to our work as a result of the FERPA regulatory framework and will implement and maintain any other reasonable and appropriate security procedures and practices necessary to protect personal data and/or student information from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, disclosure or loss.

Plotagon® specifically agrees with schools regulated by FERPA to:

  • use personable identifiable student data for no purpose other than in connection with providing the Services for a legitimate and educational interest;
  • use reasonable methods, consistent with reasonable industry standards to protect student data from re-disclosure and not to share the student data received under this Agreement with any other entity without the prior written approval of the school responsible under FERPA;
  • not to copy reproduce or transmit student data except as necessary to provide the Services in furtherance of a legitimate and educational interest;
  • notify the Chief Information Officer for the school responsible under FERPA without undue delay that it has experienced a data breach, breach of security or unauthorized acquisition or use of student data;
  • to maintain sufficient backup copies of data files in case of customer system failure or any other unseen event resulting in loss of student data;
  • to, upon request of the school responsible under FERPA, promptly provide the school responsible under FERPA with any specified portion of the student data; and
  • to, upon request of the school responsible under FERPA, promptly return and/or erase applicable portions of the student data.

Changes and Updates to this Privacy Policy

Occasionally we may, in our discretion, make changes to the Privacy Policy. If we make material changes to the Privacy Policy, we will provide you with prominent notice as appropriate under the circumstances.

Last amended: May 23, 2018