qtCritique Privacy Policy

The boring lawyer stuff.

2023-08-15

Your privacy is important to us at qtCritique. Unlike some other websites, we are not in the business of selling personal information. We are in business to provide a seamless, fun, and effective critique sharing service, and that’s it. To put it more bluntly, we don’t want your personal information and wouldn’t distribute it even if we had it.

That being said, some information is still required in order for the site to function properly and for the experience to be as efficient for you, the user, as possible.

We only collect personal information that is relevant to the purpose of our website. This information allows us to provide you with a customized and efficient experience.

Information you provide to qtCritique

  1. Registration: In order for you to use the qtCritique website, you must complete a registration form. On this form you will be asked to provide a username and email address.

    We do not require your full name. A nickname or partial name is sufficient as long as the name you provide does not violate our Terms of Use. This name will be displayed on your profile page and near any activity or comments you provide.

    Your email address, on the other hand, must be authentic. This is how we verify your identity, keep others from hacking your account, and communicate with you, with your consent. Your email address is never shared with any other member or third party.

  2. User Profile: Each member of qtCritique has the option to maintain a profile page. This allows members to share more detailed information about themselves, if they so choose. This information will be viewable by other members of the site, but not by non-members. Please do not include any information you are not comfortable sharing.

    Some information, such as your critique and submission histories and scores are always viewable by other members.

qtCritique members have the right to edit, update, access, or remove personal information at any time, or if you terminate your registration with qtCritique.

If you delete your account, or your account is removed by us, it will be immediately removed from the website. But the critique activity of your submissions will be retained in the records of those individuals who critiqued your work, so those members can retain the credit they earned for performing those critiques. Though the actual body text of the submissions will be removed. Your personal data, though deleted from the system, will remain in our backups until the backups expire and are overwritten by new backups. This is usually a seven-day process.

Uploading Submissions for Critique

  1. The author(s) of each submission retain all rights to all posted materials. qtCritique makes no claims on the copyright, and will not copy, post or distribute submitted materials in any way, except to facilitate the on-site critiquing process. Authors may delete their submission at any time.

  2. Members may not post another person's writing as their own, or without the permission of the legitimate author(s).

  3. When posting material to the public section, other qtCritique members will have access to that submission, allowing them to read and critique it. Anyone without an account, or not signed into an account, will not have access to submissions in the public section.

  4. When posting material to a private group, only other members of that group will have access to the submission, allowing them to read and critique it.

  5. For materials written solely or partially by AI, a statement of AI involvement must be included in the introduction or in the body of the submission.

Automatic Information Collected

  1. Traffic Data: qtCritique receives and stores certain types of information whenever you interact with us. We will automatically receive and record certain "traffic data" in our server logs from your browser including your IP address, qtCritique cookie information, and the page you requested. qtCritique uses this traffic data to help diagnose problems with its servers, analyze trends, and administer the website. This does not involve collecting any of your personal information.
  2. Device Data: qtCritique may collect information about the device you're using to access qtCritique, its operating system, unique device identifier, and crash data. This data is again used to help us diagnose problems with the site and analyze trends. This does not involve collecting any of your personal information.

Communications

  1. Emails: qtCritique is very concerned about your privacy and we will never provide your email address to a third party or other qtCritique members. qtCritique will send out emails for housekeeping purposes only, such as when you request a password reset, or if you have enabled activity notifications, etc. We will never send you promotional emails. You can disable notifications for different types of events in the "Email Preferences" section of your account settings page.

  2. Direct Messages: qtCritique provides a system that allows members to communicate with each other via direct message. Direct messages may be monitored from time to time by qtCritique staff, in order to identify and prevent spam. No personal information is ever collected from these direct messages. You can stop using qtCritique direct messages at any time, or report abuse of direct messages to us.

    You are entirely and solely responsible for any information that you disclose or share through qtCritique. We strongly recommend that you use extreme caution when sharing any personal information with other users on any service, including qtCritique. qtCritique, or any of its representatives, is not responsible for any information that you disclose to other users through qtCritique.

    qtCritique monitors the usage of its messenger service to improve its service, but does not read private messages exchanged between users, unless a user has been reported for inappropriate behavior as outlined in our Terms of Use. If we receive such a report, we will only review the allegedly inappropriate communications that have been reported in order to determine whether they violate our Terms of Use and what actions we will take in response to the conduct (if any), including possibly terminating users.

Cookies

We use cookies because we need a way to associate your browser with your account, but we never store any personal information in them. (more about cookies)

Security

Your qtCritique login and password are stored on our system. The password is encrypted so no one (not even us) can read it. This is how we protect your password, even if our system is hacked. Though no amount of security can protect against all data breaches, everything that can be done is done to protect your account. These safeguards help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the appropriate use of data, but NO GUARANTEE CAN BE MADE THAT YOUR INFORMATION AND DATA WILL BE SECURE FROM INTRUSIONS AND UNAUTHORIZED RELEASE TO THIRD PARTIES.

It is also your responsibility to protect your qtCritique login and password information on your end.

Children Under 18 Years of Age

You must be 14 years or older to register and to use the qtCritique website. As a result, qtCritique does not specifically collect information about children. If we learn that qtCritique has collected information from a child under the age of 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. Minors between the ages of 14 and 18 are required to ask and receive permission from a legal guardian before using qtCritique or sending information about themselves or anyone else over the Internet.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

qtCritique may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time, at its sole discretion. Use of information we collect now is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is used. If we make changes to the Privacy Policy, we will notify you by posting an announcement on the qtCritique website so you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances if any, it is disclosed.