Privacy Policy - JASP - Free and User-Friendly Statistical Software

Your privacy is critically important to us. At JASP, we have a few fundamental principles:

We only collect a bare minimum of data necessary to provide certain services (e.g., the newsletter) to existing JASP users, to those who have expressed an interest in using JASP in the future, and to those who are likely to benefit from using JASP in their profession.
We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

We are the team behind JASP, a free statistical software with a state-of-the-art graphical user interface that features classical as well as Bayesian analyses. Our main goal is to help statistical practitioners reach maximally informative conclusions with a minimum of fuss (read more about our mission). JASP is completely open-source, which means that you can freely download and look at the code (see our GitHub repository).

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you:

Use our website (jasp-stats.org);
Use our forum;
Subscribe to our newsletter.

Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our website, the newsletter, and the forum collectively as “Services.”

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

Note that this privacy policy does not apply to the JASP software itself. We do not collect any user data via the JASP software. That means that we neither have nor store any data of you using JASP.

Please also note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to any of our other products or services that have a separate privacy policy (i.e., JASP workshops).

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better. We collect information in two ways: if and when you provide (1) information to us, and (2) automatically through operating our Services.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. These are the two ways in which you may provide information to us:

Basic Account Information. We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account on our forum. For example, we require individuals who sign up for an account to provide a username and email address–and that’s it. You may provide us with more information–such as your name–but we don’t require that information to create your account.
Public Profile Information. If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. Your public profile is just that–public–so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
Subscribing to our newsletter. In order to send you emails, we obviously need your email address. We do not ask for anything else when you want to subscribe to our newsletter. Note, however, that these email addresses are stored on the servers of Mailchimp, which is the service that we use to create and send out our newsletters. Note that mailchimp is a US-based company. Check this link to find out more about how Mailchimp stores their data.
Communications with us. You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, communicate with the JASP team about a support question, or post a question about your site in our public forums.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically. This collection of information occurs via the built-in analytics system of Mailchimp, and Matomo, a website analytics service that we use to collect data from visits to jasp-stats.org. Data collected via Matomo are stored on the same server as jasp-stats.org, which is hosted by Dreamhost. Click here for a full list of what information is tracked by Matomo and here for the privacy policy of Dreamhost.

Log Information. Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services–for example, when you visit jasp-stats.org.
Usage Information. We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that visitors perform on jasp-stats.org. We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, newsletter opens, button clicks) along with information about your device (e.g., mobile screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
Location Information. When you visit jasp-stats.org, we may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions. However, note that we anonymize these data as far as possible. For instance, IP addresses are stored in the form of 192.168.xxx.xxx, that is, with the last 6 numbers anonymized. This prevents anyone who has access to these data (including us) to reliably track down your exact location.
Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and e-mails. Our services use cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences, as well as track and understand e-mail campaign effectiveness and to deliver the best possible content. For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see here for information on WordPress.com. WordPress is the content management system that jasp-stats.org is based on. Our cookie use is thus standard WordPress for the most part. Besides that, our website analytics software Matomo also uses cookies. Find out more about how Matomo uses cookies here.

How We Use Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and as follows:

To provide our Services–for example, to set up and maintain our Services in the most useful way;
To further develop our Services–for example by adding new features that we believe our users will enjoy or will help them to use JASP more efficiently for educational purposes;
To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use, and which gives us implications towards the further development of JASP as a software;
To monitor and protect the security of our Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of the JASP team and others; and
To communicate with you about offers and promotions offered by JASP and others we believe will be of interest to you, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on the development of JASP.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We do not sell our users’ private personal information.

Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them. That means, for instance, that neither of these people are allowed to use your information in any other way than the ways described in the previous section.
Third Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to require information about you in order to provide their services to us. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (e.g., Mailchimp) and those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers). We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
As Required by Law: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
To Protect Rights and Property: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of JASP, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that JASP goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties in case you explicitly allowed us to do so.
Aggregated and De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services.
Published Support Requests: And if you send us a request (for example, via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms such as our GitHub page), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like your public profile, posts, other content that you make public on your website, and your “likes” and comments on other websites that use our Services, are all available to others–and we hope you get a lot of views! We provide a “Firehose” stream of public data (like posts and comments) from sites that use our Services to provide that data to Firehose subscribers, who may view and analyze the content, but do not have rights to re-publish it, publicly. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

Limit the Information that You Provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information.
Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving newsletters from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages.
Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: We aim to fully respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services and select the appropriate privacy settings wherever possible. For instance, our website analytics software Matomo will not track you in case your browser indicates that you do not wish to be tracked. Furthermore, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using our Services, with the drawback that certain features of our Services may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

If you want to make sure that Matomo will not track any of your activities, you may opt out of tracking below:

Other Things You Should Know

Transferring Information

JASP is a worldwide product. By accessing or using the Services or otherwise providing information to us, you consent to the processing, transfer, and storage of information in and to the U.S. and other countries, which may have rights and protections that are different from those in your home country.

Third Party Software

If you’d like to use third party software like plugins with our Services (such as rollApp), please keep in mind that when you interact with them you may provide information about yourself to those third parties. We don’t own or control these third parties and they have their own rules about collection, use and sharing of information. You should review their rules and policies when installing and using third party software.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, JASP may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. JASP encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through e-mail or your dashboard). Your continued use of the Services after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your consent to such change.

Change log

May 12, 2018: Release of this privacy policy.

Note: This privacy policy is adapted from Automattic, who were so kind to release their privacy policy under a Creative Commons Sharealike license.