Last Updated on: 17/05/2023

This California Privacy Rights Act (“Act”) supplements and should be read in conjunction with the privacy policies of the product sites listed below (“Privacy Policies”):

https://www.nature.com/info/privacy
https://www.springer.com/gp/privacy-policy
https://www.biomedcentral.com/privacy-statement
https://www.scientificamerican.com/page/privacy-policy/

For a full list of Springer Nature-owned platforms that this Act may apply to, please click on the link directly below. 
www.springernature.com/gp/products

This Act applies solely to California consumers and addresses personal information we collect online and offline. 

This Act uses certain terms that have the meaning given to them in the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 and its implementing regulations (the “CPRA”). 

We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at our discretion and at any time. When we make changes to this privacy policy, we will post the updated notice on the website and update the notice's effective date. Your continued use of our website following the posting of changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes.

1. NOTICE OF COLLECTION AND USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may collect (and may have collected during the 12-month period prior to the effective date of this Statement) the following categories of personal information about you: 

• Identifiers: identifiers such as a real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier (such as a device identifier; cookies, beacons, pixel tags, mobile ad identifiers and similar technology; customer number, unique pseudonym, or user alias; and other forms of persistent or probabilistic identifiers), online identifier, internet protocol address, email address, telephone number, account name, classifications under California or federal law (e.g. race, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, gender, gender identity) and other similar identifiers. 
• Additional Data Subject to Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80: credit card number, debit card number, bank account information and other financial information.
• Commercial Information: commercial information, including records of products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, and other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies.
• Online Activity: Internet and other electronic network activity information, including, but not limited to, browsing history, search history, and information regarding your interaction with websites, applications or advertisements.
• Employment Information: professional or employment-related information 
• Education Information: education information that is not publicly available personally identifiable information as defined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. Sec. 1232g; 34 C.F.R. Part 99)
• Internet or other similar network activity: Browsing history, search history, information on a consumer's interaction with a website, application, or advertisement.
• Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law: Age (40 years or older), race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, religion or creed, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy or childbirth and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, veteran or military status, genetic information (including familial genetic information).
• Biometric information: Genetic, physiological, behavioral, and biological characteristics, or activity patterns used to extract a template or other identifier or identifying information, such as, fingerprints, faceprints, and voiceprints, iris or retina scans, keystroke, gait, or other physical patterns, and sleep, health, or exercise data.
• Sensory Data: Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information. 
• Geolocation Data: Physical location or movements. 
• Inferences: inferences drawn from any of the information identified above to create a profile about you reflecting your preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.

We may use (and may have used during the 12-month period prior to the effective date of this Statement) your personal information for the purposes described in our Privacy Policies and for the following business purposes specified in the CPRA (“Business Purposes”): 

• Performing services, including maintaining or servicing accounts, providing customer service, processing or fulfilling orders and transactions, verifying customer information, processing payments, providing advertising or marketing services, providing analytics services, or providing similar services;
• Auditing related to counting ad impressions to unique visitors, verifying positioning and quality of ad impressions, and auditing compliance with this specification and other standards;
• Short-term, transient use, including, but not limited to non-personalized advertising shown as part of a consumer’s current interaction with the business;
• Helping to ensure security and integrity to the extent the use of the consumer’s personal information is reasonably necessary proportionate for these purposes;
• Debugging to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality;
• Undertaking internal research for technological development and demonstration;
• Undertaking activities to verify or maintain the quality or safety of a service or device that is owned, manufactured, manufactured for, or controlled by us, and to improve, upgrade, or enhance the service or device that is owned, manufactured, manufactured for, or controlled by us;
• Providing advertising and marketing services, except for cross-context behavioral advertising, to the consumer, provided that for the purpose of advertising and marketing, a service provider or contractor shall not combine the personal information of opted-out consumers which the service provider or contractor receives from or on behalf of the business with personal information which the service provider or contractor receives from or on behalf of another person or persons, or collects from its own interaction with consumers 

Data Retention
We strive to keep our processing activities with respect to your personal data as limited as possible. In the absence of specific retention periods set out in this policy, your personal information will be retained only for as long as we need it to fulfill the purpose for which we have collected it and, if applicable, as long as required by legal, regulatory or industry retention requirements.

2. SOURCES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

During the 12-month period prior to the effective date of this Statement, we may have obtained personal information about you from the following categories of sources:

• Directly from you, such as when you register for our services or subscribe to our newsletters
• Your devices, such as when you visit our website
• Our affiliates
• Vendors who provide services on our behalf 
• Our joint marketing partners
• Our publishing partners
• Data analytics providers
• Government entities
• Operating systems and platforms
• Social networks
• Data brokers
• Institutional customers
• Cooperative Databases

3. SALE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION 

We do not sell your personal information in exchange for monetary consideration.  We may allow certain third parties (such as online advertising services) to collect your personal information via automated technologies on our website in exchange for non-monetary consideration. We share the categories of personal information listed below for online advertising purposes, e-commerce and to provide third-party social network features and functionality on our website. You have the right to opt-out of this disclosure of your information, which may be considered a “sale” under California law, as well as opt out of sharing your personal information, via cookie management in the privacy preference centers of each platform listed above.

That said, due to technical limitations and in the interest of the users, we do not necessarily know the identities of all visitors to our platforms at all times based on the settings they adopt. Your opt-out of cookies setting would only apply to the browser and device you are currently using as we do not make any attempts to link devices you use. If you clear cookies or if you use a new browser or device, your opt-out cookie may no longer be available. As a result, in those situations we may still ask that you authorize the “sale” of your personal information when you visit our platforms, by asking you to accept cookies, within 12 months after you opt-out the “sale” of your information.

During the 12-month period prior to the effective date of this Statement, we may have “sold”, to the extent “sale” under the CCPA is interpreted to include advertising technology activities, the following categories of personal information about you to online advertising services and social networks:

• Identifiers
• Online Activity
• Inferences

Our websites are not directed at minors, and we do not knowingly collect, much less sell, any personal information from minors under the age of 16 through our websites. However, if the parent or the guardian of a minor under 16 years old believes that the minor has provided us with personal information, the parent or guardian of that minor should contact us at customerservice@springernature.com to request the deletion of this information from our files.

4. SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION 

During the 12-month period prior to the effective date of this Statement, we may have shared your personal information with certain categories of third parties, as described below. For specific third party recipients, please see the applicable Privacy Policy.

You have the right to opt-out of this disclosure of your information via cookie management in the privacy preference centers of each platform listed above.

That said, due to technical limitations and in the interest of the users, we do not necessarily know the identities of all visitors to our platforms at all times based on the settings they adopt. Your opt-out of cookies setting would only apply to the browser and device you are currently using as we do not make any attempts to link devices you use. If you clear cookies or if you use a new browser or device, your opt-out cookie may no longer be available. As a result, in those situations we may still ask that you authorize a share of your personal information when you visit our platforms, by asking you to accept cookies, within 12 months after you opt-out.

We may have shared  the following categories of personal information about you for a Business Purpose to the following categories of third parties:

5. CALIFORNIA CONSUMER PRIVACY RIGHTS 

You have certain choices regarding your personal information, as described below.

Access: You have the right to request, twice in a 12-month period, that we disclose to you the personal information we have collected, used, shared and sold (if any) about you during the past 12 months. You may request information predating this period and we must provide it as long as obtaining the information is possible and does not require a disproportionate effort. 

Deletion: You have the right to request that we delete certain personal information we have collected from you. 

Opt-Out of Sale or Share: You have the right to opt-out of the sale or share of your personal information. 

Shine the Light Request: You also may have the right to request that we provide you with (a) a list of certain categories of personal information we have disclosed to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the immediately preceding calendar year and (b) the identity of those third parties.

Correct Inaccurate Personal Information: You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate personal information, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing of the personal information. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to correct the inaccurate personal information as you direct, pursuant to § 1798.130 and regulations adopted pursuant to paragraph (8) of subdivision (1) of § 1798.185.

How to Submit a Request. To submit an access, correction or deletion request or if you have any question about this notice or need to access it in an alternative format due to having a disability, please email us at customerservice@springernature.com or call us at 1-800-777-4643 and indicate what you wish to access and what you wish to have deleted or corrected. 
Please understand that we cannot delete personal information in those situations where our retention is required for Business Purposes as detailed above. In these situations, we will retain your information in accordance with our records retention program and securely delete it at the end of the retention period.

We do not offer financial incentives for the collection, sale, or sharing of personal information, although we may offer individuals the opportunity to receive coupons or discounts via email. If you ask us to delete your information, we will not be able to send you additional coupons or discounts via email, however coupons or discounts sent to you previously will continue to be honored according to their original terms.  We will not discriminate against you if you exercise your rights under CPRA.

To the extent advertising technology activities (e.g online advertising, e-commerce and related tools) are interpreted  as a “sale” or “share” under the CPRA , please visit the cookie preference center when you first visit a Springer Nature site to opt out of such sales. You have the ability to update your preferences at any time via the "Your Privacy Choices / Manage Cookies" link in the page footer of the same site. We collect pseudonymised or aggregated data, e.g. shortened IP addresses to analyse the use of our websites and, thereby, improve and optimize the websites and to display advertising tailored to your needs. We collect this data (to improve your website experience and to promote our products and services) via an internal cookie management tool.

To submit a request as an authorized agent on behalf of a consumer, please send an email from your own email address to customerservice@springernature.com indicating the name and email address of your agent. We will respond to requests using both your email address and the agent’s email address. The request must provide enough information for us to reasonably verify you are, or are the authorized representative of, the person about whom we collected personal information. For questions or concerns about our privacy policies and practices, please contact us as described in the Contacting Us section of the Privacy Policy  of the website you are visiting.

Verifying Requests. To help protect your privacy and maintain security, we will take steps to verify your identity before granting you access to your personal information or complying with your request.  If you have an account with us, we may verify your identity by requiring you to sign in to your account.  If you do not have an account with us and you request access to or deletion of your personal information, we may require you to provide additional information reasonable enough to verify your identity.  In addition, if you do not have an account and you ask us to provide you with specific pieces of personal information, we may require you to sign a declaration under penalty of perjury that you are the consumer whose personal information is the subject of the request.

Additional Information. If you choose to exercise any of your rights under the CPRA, you have the right to not receive discriminatory treatment by us.  To the extent permitted by applicable law, we may charge a reasonable fee to comply with your verifiable consumer request, if it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

Response Timing and Format: 

We will confirm receipt of your request within ten (10) business days. If you do not receive confirmation within the 10-day timeframe, please contact us again. We endeavor to substantively respond to a verifiable consumer request within forty-five (45) days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to another 45 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

If you have an account with us, we will deliver our written response to that account. If you do not have an account with us, we will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding our receipt of your request. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable. For data portability requests, we will select a format to provide your personal information that is readily usable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance.

Supplemental Notice for residents in Virginia, Colorado, and Connecticut

Depending on where you reside, you may also have additional legal rights with respect to your personal information. While some of these rights apply generally and are already available to you under the GDPR, certain rights apply in limited cases. Consistent with applicable laws, this Supplemental Notice provides a way to exercise such rights for residents of Virginia, Colorado, and Connecticut.
 
The laws of Virginia, Colorado, Utah and Connecticut grant some or all of the following rights to consumers who reside in those states:

• The right to request information about the personal information that we have collected about that customer in the 12 months preceding the customer’s request (including the categories of information collected, the source of that information, the business purpose of that collection, the categories of third parties with whom that information is shared, and the specific pieces of personal information collected about that particular customer);
• The right to receive requested information in a readily-usable format if provided electronically;
• The right to request that we delete any personal information about the consumer that we have collected (although we may be entitled to retain some information for certain purposes);
• The right to opt-out of “sales” of personal information to third parties, the sharing of personal information with third parties for targeted advertising purposes, and/or the processing of personal information for targeted advertising purposes;
• The right to update or correct any personal information which is out of date or incorrect; and
• The right to be free from discrimination based on your exercise of your privacy rights.

To exercise your rights pursuant to this Supplemental Notice, please contact us as follows:
Call us at 1-800-777-4643
Write to customerservice@springernature.com

You can also manage your cookie preferences by visiting our Privacy Preference Center by clicking the “Your Privacy Choices / Manage Cookies” link in the footer of this page.

We cannot respond to your request to access or delete information unless we are able to both verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you and/or your household. If you have an account on any of our sites or platforms, we will verify your identity by having you log in to your account. If you do not have an account on our sites or platforms, we will attempt to verify your request by asking you to provide identifying information that we will match to information in our files. We will only use information you provide in your request for the purpose of verifying your identity or authority to make the request. You can also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. Your agent will need to provide a Power of Attorney authorizing the agent to act on your behalf, or will need to complete the same verification procedures that would be required for a request submitted by you directly, and provide information that allows us to verify your authorization. If you would like to appeal a decision related to a request to exercise your rights under this Supplemental Notice, please contact us at the phone numbers, or email address listed above.