Privacy Policy

Updated: 2022-05-09

This Privacy Policy tells what we do with your private information. (We wrote it in simple English. That makes it easier to understand, especially if you don't read English well.) If you want to use SooSL, you must accept this policy. If you don't accept the policy, you must not use SooSL.

See also our License and Terms of Use.

What is SooSL?

SooSL is software for deaf people. Hearing people can use it too, to learn a sign language. 

SooSL is really two programs that work together: SooSL Web and SooSL Desktop. SIL International developed SooSL. SIL's headquarters is 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road, Dallas TX 75236, USA; https://www.sil.org.  SIL is an international organization that helps deaf people use their sign languages better. (It also does many other things.)

How does SIL help deaf people? One way is by making SooSL. With SooSL, deaf people can:

• Create dictionaries about sign languages with SooSL Desktop on their computer. 
• Publish SooSL dictionaries with SooSL Web. 
• Some dictionaries available in SooSL Web are public. Everyone can see them.
• Other dictionaries are private. Only some people can see them. (The people who created them decide who can see them.)

What do special words mean in this Privacy Policy?

When we say “we”, “us” or “our”, we mean SIL International. Sometimes we just say “SIL”.

When we say “SooSL”, we mean all these things:

• The SooSL website (https://soosl.net). This includes any URLs that it may redirect to, including SooSL Web (https://web.soosl.net)
• The SooSL Desktop software that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. (You can download it from the SooSL website.)

When we say “you” or “your”, we mean anyone who uses SooSL. Some users only read dictionaries; other users create them.

When we say “dictionary creators” or “creators”, we mean people who use SooSL Desktop to make sign language dictionaries.

Why this privacy policy? What does it include?

Sometimes, when you use SooSL, we will collect personal information about you. Personal information is any information about you. It includes information that someone can use to identify who you are. In this policy, we tell you: 

• what information we collect,
• what we do with it,
• how we protect it, and
• what rights you have.

This policy is a legal agreement between you and us. If you want to use the SooSL website or send us information from SooSL on your computer, you must accept this policy. If you don’t accept it, you must not use this website or send information to us.

See also the general privacy policy for SIL software.

This policy does not apply to everyone. It is only about you, us and people we ask to help you. We can’t control what anyone else does. For example, we may suggest that you use other websites or software. We may give you links to them. When you use those links, you will leave SooSL. Please notice when you do so. If you give personal information to other websites or software, other people are responsible for that information. We are not. They should have their own privacy policies. Please read them. 

Sometimes we combine your information with other people’s information. For example, we might count how many users we have from each country, or how many total hours people use the website each month. This combined information is not personal information. It doesn’t tell anything about you individually. This policy doesn’t say anything about this combined information. For example, we will sometimes report this combined information to other people, but they can’t use it to hurt you.

If you have questions about this policy or about how we use your information, please contact us. 

What personal information do we collect? How do we use it?

We collect several types of information about you. In general, we use this information to help you use SooSL. Here are more details:

• Information from your browser as you use the SooSL website. For example: IP address, browser type and version, operating system type and version, which pages you visit, how long you visit, etc. We do this to find out how people are using the website. Mostly, we are interested in statistics about all users, not information about individual people. However, if you try to use the website wrongly (see the Terms of Use), we may use this type of information to stop you.
• Your login information on the SooSL website. For example: your user name, password, real name, and email address. We use your login information to communicate with you, to let you see private dictionaries, and to control who can upload a dictionary. You don’t have to create an account or log in. If you don’t, you will still be able to see public dictionaries, but we won’t let you see private dictionaries or upload new versions of a dictionary. If you want to see private dictionaries or upload a dictionary, you must create an account and give us your login information. You must also tell us what private dictionaries you want to see. Then we will tell your real name, email address and username (but not your password) to the people who made those private dictionaries. They will decide if you can see their dictionary and if you can upload a new version. 
• Information about dictionary creators who publish their dictionaries on the SooSL website. If you create a dictionary with SooSL and want to publish it on the SooSL website, we need to know more information about you. We need this information to communicate with you about your dictionary, to decide if we will publish it, and to publish it the way you want. We do not share this information with other people except as necessary to do what you want. You decide whether to share this information with other users. (If you want to share information about yourself, you put it inside the dictionary project itself with SooSL Desktop, under “About dictionary”.)
• Information about SooSL on your computer. If SooSL Desktop does not work correctly on your computer, it will try to collect information about your computer and how you are using SooSL. It will show you what information it has collected, and ask you if it can send that information to us. We use that information only to fix the problem and to help you use SooSL better. 
• Information about how you use SooSL on your computer. SooSL Desktop software on your computer may collect general information about how you use SooSL, such as when you use it, or what written languages you use in your dictionaries. We use this information to improve SooSL. We may combine this information with information from other users, to report how people are using SooSL. We do not report any information that would identify you. If you don’t want SooSL to send us this information, you can tell it not to when you send us feedback or an error report from inside SooSL.
• Any other information you tell us. You can send us information from SooSL on your computer, through the SooSL website, or by email. We may store that information so we can help you better. We do not tell it to other people, except for people who are helping us help you.

What do we tell other people about you?

Mostly, we only use your information ourselves. We don't tell it to other people. However, in some cases, there are a few things that we tell to other people.

• If you want to see a private dictionary or upload a new version of a dictionary, we share some of your information with the people who created that dictionary. They need your information so they can decide whether to let you use their dictionary. We only tell them the information they need to make that decision. They may decide to tell it to other people; that is their choice. If you don’t want them and others to know about you, we will not let you see their private dictionary or upload a dictionary.
• Other people sometimes help us provide SooSL to you. We sometimes tell them information about you, so they can help you better. They only use it to help you use SooSL. We don’t allow them to tell it to other people or to use it for any other purpose.
• We may also share your information with others if we honestly believe it will protect you or someone else’s safety, or if we need to protect SooSL from someone who uses it wrongly (see Terms of Use).
• The government, courts, or police of a country may require us to tell them information about you. We will do so if they ask and if they have a legal right to see that information.

We do not allow other people to use your information to advertise to you or to sell you something. We do not sell, rent, or lease your personal information to other people.

Where does your information travel? Where do we store it? How do we protect it?

When your information travels to us, it probably will leave your country. It may travel through several countries before it reaches us, and it may be stored in those countries. We have some control over what happens to your information while it travels to us, but not complete control. Some of it may travel by email which is not encrypted and thus not private.

We store your information on several different computer systems, in different countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Romania, and possibly others. The only people who can see it are people who work for SIL International, or people who are helping us help you. We don’t let other people see it. 

We will do reasonable things to protect your personal information, but no security system is perfect. We can’t promise that we will always succeed. If you want to use the SooSL website or send information to us from SooSL software on your computer, you must agree that:

• Security on the internet is not perfect, and there are some things we cannot control.
• We cannot guarantee that other people will not see your information or change it.
• You will not require us to do anything that we don’t promise to do in this policy.

If we learn that someone has broken into our computer systems, and possibly has seen or changed your personal information, we will investigate. If this is a crime, we will cooperate with police while they investigate the crime. If we think others may hurt you because they know your information, or if the law requires, we will tell you by email. We will tell you what happened, how it may affect you, and how you can protect yourself.

When you use SooSL Web, some of your personal information is stored on your own computer. You control this information. There are different ways to store this information. One way is called a “cookie”; another is called “local storage”. The SooSL website may use either type to remember how you work, to give you a more personal experience. You can choose not to let SooSL store this information on your computer, but then you will not be able to log in or see private dictionaries. Information about how you use the SooSL website is stored with your browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, etc.). You can delete browser information by emptying the browser cache, and by deleting cookies and other personal information from inside your browser. 

When you use SooSL Desktop software on your computer, SooSL stores some information about how you use it in its settings files. You can delete that information when you uninstall the SooSL software.

How long do we keep your information?

We will keep your information as long as required so that:

• You can continue using the SooSL website.
• We can fix problems in the SooSL software.
• We can fulfill legal requirements.

If you don’t use the SooSL website for three years, we may send you an email asking if you want to continue using the website. If we don’t get an answer in one month, we may delete your account and all information about you. You will then lose access to private dictionaries and you will not be able to upload dictionaries.

If we stop providing the SooSL website, we will delete all your personal information, unless a law requires us to keep it.

How can you change or delete your personal information?

If you tell us to change or delete personal information about you, we will do so if we can. However, you need to understand some things about changing or deleting your information:

• We might have to stop you from seeing private dictionaries or from uploading dictionaries.
• We might have to stop publishing your dictionary.
• We might not be able to help you use SooSL.
• Governments or other people might require us to keep some information. If so, we will tell you what information we cannot delete.
• We might have already told your information to other people, in the ways we describe above. If possible, we will ask them to delete that information, but we cannot guarantee that they will do so.

What about privacy of children?

We do not collect personal information about children, unless their parents approve them to create an account on the SooSL website. In that case, we only collect the basic information needed to create an account (real name, email address, username and password). Maybe you think someone under age 18 has sent personal information to us. If it is information that we should not know, please contact us and we will delete it.

What happens when we change this policy?

We may sometimes change this policy. We have the right to do so. We don’t have to ask you first. When we change it, we will change the date at the beginning of the policy. If you want, check this date any time to see if it has changed. We may also tell you about the change in other ways, but we only promise one thing: to change the date above when we change the policy.  

When we change the policy, we will start following it immediately. If you continue to use the SooSL website or send us information from SooSL on your computer after the changes, what happens? It means you agree to the changes. If you don’t agree, you must stop sending us personal information. However, we will still follow the old policy for information we collected before we made the changes.

How can you contact us?

You can contact us in English, Spanish, French, or Romanian. Or, you can send us a video in ASL or International Sign.

What are the laws? What are your legal rights?

The rest of this policy is about laws that apply to us and your personal information. We intend to follow all laws that apply to us and you. You have many legal rights about your personal information. Unfortunately, we have to tell you these rights using legal language. We are sorry that it is harder to understand. If you have questions about your rights, ask us, and we will try to explain them. If you want to use your rights, contact us.

1. You have the right to withdraw consent where you have previously given your consent to the processing of your information; 
2. You have the right to object to the processing of your information if the processing is carried out on a legal basis other than consent; 
3. You have the right to learn if information is being processed by us, obtain disclosure regarding certain aspects of the processing and obtain a copy of the information undergoing processing; 
4. You have the right to verify the accuracy of your information and ask for it to be updated or corrected; 
5. You have the right, under certain circumstances, to restrict the processing of your information, in which case, we will not process your information for any purpose other than storing it; 
6. You have the right, under certain circumstances, to obtain the erasure of your Personal Information from us; 
7. You have the right to receive your information in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and, if technically feasible, to have it transmitted to another controller without any hindrance. This provision is applicable provided that your information is processed by automated means and that the processing is based on your consent, on a contract which you are part of or on precontractual obligations thereof.

In addition, you may have other rights in specific places. It depends on the laws in those places. The next two sections talk about your rights in Europe and in California.

Rights in Europe

Many countries in Europe have a law called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Mostly, it requires things that we have already promised above. Here are the details, in legal language:

1. You have the right to request access to your Personal Information that we store and have the ability to access your Personal Information.
2. You have the right to request that we correct any Personal Information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request us to complete the Personal Information you believe is incomplete.
3. You have the right to request the erase your Personal Information under certain conditions of this Policy.
4. You have the right to object to our processing of your Personal Information.
5. You have the right to seek restrictions on the processing of your Personal Information. When you restrict the processing of your Personal Information, we may store it but will not process it further.
6. You have the right to be provided with a copy of the information we have on you in a structured, machine-readable and commonly used format.
7. You also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time where the Operator relied on your consent to process your Personal Information.
8. You have the right to complain to a Data Protection Authority about our collection and use of your Personal Information. 

For more information, please contact your local data protection authority in the European Economic Area (EEA).

Rights in California

If you live in California, United States of America, the law there gives you rights about “information for marketing purposes”. This is information that other people may use to try to sell you things. We do not share your personal information with other people for marketing purposes. So, California law does not apply to SooSL.

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