Pajoohyar Privacy Policy

Overview

Pajoohyar is a customized version of Zotero. Pajoohyar is an open-source project committed to providing the best research tool available anywhere. Our philosophy is that what you put into Pajoohyar is yours, and one of our founding principles is to make sure you remain in control of your data and can share it how you like — or choose not to share it at all.

We are an independent, nonprofit organization and have no financial interest in your private information. We fund further development by offering additional translators, styles, and courses of learning to novice researchers who find the software useful, not by selling data.

Data We Collect

Pajoohyar is designed as a local program that saves data to your own computer by default, and it doesn’t require sharing any data with us to be usable. However, some of Pajoohyar’s advanced features require you to supply us with information.

• We collect the information you voluntarily provide (e.g., your name and email address) if you create a Pajoohyar account and use optional Pajoohyar services. Pajoohyar can be used without creating an account.
• We collect the library data you upload if you choose to synchronize your library with the Pajoohyar servers. Syncing is entirely optional and is disabled by default.
  We keep a record of the most recent IP addresses used to access your synchronized library in order to let you verify the security of your account.
• We log visits to our website, including IP address and browser, in order to prevent abuse and to diagnose technical issues. We retain these access logs for 90 days.
• We log requests made to our servers by Pajoohyar or third-party software, including IP address and client information, in order to prevent abuse, diagnose technical issues, and assess usage. We retain these logs for up to 90 days.
• We collect error reports that you submit. 
• If you attempt to save something to Pajoohyar and the save fails, we collect information about the failure, including the URL, browser, and version information, so that we can more quickly fix site compatibility issues. We store this information for up to one week. No additional personally identifying information (e.g., username or IP address) is stored, and reports are generally only viewed in aggregate. This error reporting can be disabled in the Pajoohyar and Pajoohyar Connector preferences.

Library Statistics

Pajoohyar anonymizes and aggregates synchronized user and group library data to generate statistics on readership. This anonymized and aggregated data only include publicly available metadata (e.g., publication title and author). This data is never sold or made available in any forms other than ones offered publicly. We may also use this anonymized and aggregated user information for auditing, research, and analysis to operate and improve Pajoohyar services.

Disabling Automatic Requests

You can disable all automatic communication with Pajoohyar servers from the Pajoohyar and Pajoohyar Connector preferences:

• Syncing: Sync preferences → leave unconfigured or disable automatic syncing
• Automatic PDF metadata retrieval: General preferences → disable “Automatically retrieve metadata for PDFs”
  • We do not log any information about the contents of PDF metadata requests.
• Open-access PDF retrieval: General preferences → disable “Automatically attach associated PDFs and other files when saving items”
  • If a PDF can't be saved for an item with a DOI, Pajoohyar will send the DOI to Pajoohyar servers to check for open-access versions. We do not log the contents of these requests. Disabling this preference will disable all automatic attachment saving.
• Broken site translator reporting: disable “Report broken site translators” in the Advanced pane of Pajoohyar and the Pajoohyar Connector
• Translator/style update checking: Advanced preferences → disable “Automatically check for updated translators and styles”
• Pajoohyar update checking: Advanced preferences → Config Editor → set app.update.auto to false
• Automatic update checking is strongly recommended for security and stability reasons.

If automatic syncing or automatic translator/style updates are enabled, Pajoohyar will maintain a persistent connection to Pajoohyar servers when it is open in order to provide immediate updates. You can disable this connection by disabling both of those options or by setting extensions.zotero.streaming.enabled to false in the Config Editor.
If you use the Pajoohyar Connector without having Pajoohyar open, the Connector will make a daily request to Pajoohyar servers for information on available site translators. It will then download translators for the sites you visit. For example, if you load a New York Times article, the Connector will download Zotero’s New York Times translator and cache it. If Pajoohyar doesn’t have a translator for a specific site, no request will be made. No information on the specific pages you visit is transmitted, and subsequent requests won’t be made for the same translator until you restart your browser or the translator is updated. You can avoid these requests by keeping Pajoohyar open while you browse the web.

Permissions Warnings

When using third-party platforms, we request the most restrictive permissions available that still allow Pajoohyar to perform its advertised functions. In some cases, the necessary permissions can sound a bit scary, so we want to explain why they’re necessary.

Pajoohyar Connector

When installing the Pajoohyar Connector, your browser will warn you that the extension can “Read and change all your data on the websites you visit” (or similar). This is the standard permission that browser extensions that run on all pages require. Pajoohyar uses it to determine what content it can save on a given page and update the save button accordingly, as well as to provide advanced features such as automatic proxy redirection and automatic RIS/BibTeX import. No data is stored except when you choose to save a page to either your local or online Pajoohyar library.

Storage Purchases

We send two pieces of personal data to our payment processor at the time of purchase:
your Pajoohyar username, in order to associate your payment with your Pajoohyar account
your email address, so that the payment processor can send you a payment receipt
Pajoohyar does not collect or store your credit card, banking, or other payment information. When you enter your full name, billing address, and account numbers to complete a Pajoohyar purchase, this information passes directly to our payment processor, and it never touches Pajoohyar servers.

Support Interactions

Most Pajoohyar support occurs on the FAQ webpage or call services. You may be asked to submit an error report or debug output to help us troubleshoot problems. These reports contain technical information about your computer, such as your operating system and installed browser extensions, and may include incidental personal information such as URLs of sites you visited before or while generating the report. You can review the output of these reports before submitting them. We don’t store any personal information (username, IP address) that links the report to you. Reports are stored for up to one year.
If you email us, we collect your email address and any other information you provide, and we may store your messages indefinitely to provide context for any future support requests you make.

Third-Party Services Used

Certain operations you perform in Pajoohyar may trigger requests to public third-party services such as Crossref or the Library of Congress for metadata retrieval. These third parties may log your IP address and search terms (e.g., DOI or ISBN) according to their privacy policies, but no other identifying information is provided.
When you save items to or update items in Pajoohyar, Pajoohyar may depend on your settings, connect to the associated sites to download metadata, or save PDFs or snapshots. This is equivalent to loading those sites in your browser, and similar privacy implications apply. 

Backed-up Data

We make regular automated backups to protect against accidental loss of user data. These backups are intended for disaster recovery and would be accessed only in the event of significant data loss. Backups may be retained for up to 6 months.

Legally Compelled Disclosure

We may be legally required to comply with requests for data from law enforcement or government agencies.

Changes

We may update our privacy policies over time. Up-to-date information, including details of new features, will always be available on this page.

Questions

If you have any questions or concerns regarding Pajoohyar’s privacy policies, please ask us by email at info@pajoohyar.ir.