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Vellum and Privacy

We respect your privacy and care about the security of your personal information. This page describes the ways Vellum and associated websites use information about you and your computer.

Vellum

To assist in development and communications, Vellum will periodically transmit basic data about your computer and how you use the program. Any information that is sent in this manner is anonymous. No identifying information is sent, and Vellum never transmits the contents of any of your books.

On occasion – for instance, when you make a purchase – Vellum may request personal information. Whenever you provide personal information, it is used only for the purpose described. We will never sell any personal information to third parties.

For your protection, Vellum uses secure encryption when transmitting any information.

Usage Analytics

To help us understand broad usage patterns — such as the percentage of users running the latest version of macOS — Vellum periodically sends analytics data. This includes the version of Vellum, the system version, and the language used on your computer. It may also include information about what features in Vellum you’ve used to create your book. What is not included in this data is any personal information, or any content from the books you create with Vellum.

Any information about use of Vellum is anonymized. By design, we are unable to connect analytics data to you or to the information you provide when purchasing.

Current versions of Vellum use PostHog for analytics collection. Previous versions used Microsoft AppCenter.

If you’d rather not share this anonymous information, you can opt out. In Vellum’s Preferences, uncheck Share usage analytics.

Crash Reports

Despite our best efforts, Vellum may crash. If that happens, Vellum will automatically send information about the crash that can help us identify the cause.

A crash report does not contain any identifiable information. After a crash, however, Vellum will ask if you want to provide additional information via our Contact Page. Should you choose to contact us, your email address will only be used for this issue, and will not be used for any marketing purposes.

Current versions of Vellum use Sentry for crash reporting. Previous versions used Microsoft AppCenter.

If you’d rather not share crash reports, you can opt out. In Vellum’s Preferences, uncheck Share usage analytics.

Updates and Announcments

At startup, and periodically afterwards, Vellum will check to see if there is a newer version available. In doing so, Vellum transmits basic system information to determine what versions are compatible with your system. No identifying information is sent.

Vellum will also sometimes display system announcements, such as when a major update to Vellum is available, or when a new version of macOS has compatibility issues. As with the above, Vellum transmits basic system information to determine if there is a relevant announcement to display.

In each of these cases, information is only recorded in short-term web server logs, which are purged after seven days.

Purchasing

Purchasing a license requires that you provide your full name, which will be associated with the license, as well as enough information about your billing address to compute relevant taxes. Your email address is used to deliver an invoice at the time of purchase, and is stored in case you need to recover your license or install on a second computer.

The email address you provide when you purchase is not used for any marketing purposes. Credit card information is used to make your purchase only, and is not stored.

Purchases are handled by Paddle. Customers who purchased before 2020 may have used FastSpring.

Book Credits

Until June 2017, Vellum offered individual book credits as a purchase option. Redemption of a book credit involves registering the book’s title, subtitle, and author on our servers. Content of the book is never transmitted or stored.

This registration only applies to book credits, which have been discontinued. When using a current Vellum Ebooks or Vellum Press package, no information about your books is ever transmitted or stored on our servers.

Websites

To help us understand how visitors come to our website and the pages they view, the vellum.pub and help.vellum.pub websites make use of analytics. Website analytics are provided by GoSquared.

Vellum advertises via Facebook and Google. So that we can gauge the effectiveness of this advertising, the vellum.pub and store.vellum.pub websites include code from these companies that measures whether users visit after seeing an advertisement.

Email List

To receive periodic information about Vellum, you can sign up for our mailing list. This option is presented when using the Vellum Installer, and on the Vellum website.

This is an optional, low-traffic list with a small number of announcements sent each year. Every email sent includes an Unsubscribe link that is processed immediately. The email address you provide will never be sold to any third party.

To measure the effectiveness of announcements sent through this mailing list, our provider will keep track of when you open these emails or click on links inside them. You can disable this tracking by changing your Email Preferences, available via a link at the bottom of each email.

Vellum’s email list is managed by Campaign Monitor.

Questions?

We are happy to answer any questions you may have about your privacy. Just contact us.