Privacy Policy

No sale of personal information

StampData will not sell or give out personal information to any third party. We reserve the right to sell or give out anonymous or aggregate information.

Private collections and images

StampData allows you to keep text and images about some or all of the objects in your collection private, or visible only to other StampData members.

Although we will use industry-standard practices to keep this information private, we cannot make a 100% guarantee of privacy. If accidental exposure of any collection information would be damaging, do not record it on this website.

StampData reserves the right to review all private data for conformance to the terms of service.

Financial information

Financial transactions are handled via PayPal; StampData does not store credit card or bank account numbers.

Legal caveat

StampData is subject to US law enforcement, and may be required to cooperate.

Terms of Use

No information from children

Although we encourage budding philatelists to browse StampData, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) places serious limits on the information we can collect from children under 13. Therefore, children under 13 may not become members of StampData or otherwise contribute. Minors 13 and older may participate with the permission and supervision of their parent or guardian,

Copyright

There are several classes of copyright protection in StampData.

The factual information in StampData involves no creative input, and is therefore not copyrightable. This includes things like the issue date of a stamp, its color, denomination, and so forth. Textual descriptions may or may not be copyrightable; 'hands holding globe' or '200th anniversary of the birth of Rowland Hill' is too generic to be copyrightable, while 'hands cradling globe, symbolizing universal harmony' goes beyond the minimal literal description, and is copyright the writer.

For contributions that are copyrightable, you agree to license those contributions under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. You retain copyright, and are free to re-use your material elsewhere, including commercial uses.

Images of stamps are typically either in the public domain, or copyrighted by a government, postal administration, or in some cases the stamp designer and/or engraver, and are here used under the fair-use provisions of US copyright law. We take the position that accurate scans or photographs of stamps do not confer any additional copyright; likewise, physical ownership of the stamp does not matter to the copyight on images of the stamp. However, we do want to respect people's wishes, and will generally take down images upon request by the creators. (As part of tracking provenance, the software will include links back the original locations of uploaded images if possible.)

Most of the material in published stamp catalogues, including their numbers and price information, is copyright the publishers. Including a small part of this information, in private notations, is acceptable fair use, but if you do this, you may not share it with anybody, including other StampData members. StampData may summarily delete copyright violations at any time.

Commercial use

Stamp dealers have been an integral part of the hobby from the earliest days, and StampData encourages their participation, for instance to upload images of material in stock. Dealers are also encouraged to be good citizens and not spam every member with advertising.

Other terms

Harassment or abuse of other users is not allowed.

Profile information may not be deceptive or misleading.

Vandalism or other malicious alteration of the data is not allowed.

You may not use StampData for any illegal activity.

StampData may, at any time, disable or terminate the membership of anyone who violates the terms of service, or disrupts the site in some other way. Paid members may receive a prorated refund of their membership fee, at StampData's discretion.

Credits

Image cropping is thanks to Deep Liquid's Jcrop.