Privacy |
How We Collect and Use Information * Cookies. We use “cookies” to keep track of some types of information while you are visiting our website or using our services. Cookies are very small files placed on your computer, and they allow us to count the number of visitors to our website and distinguish repeat visitors from new visitors. They also allow us to save user preferences and track user trends. We rely on cookies for the proper operation of our website; therefore if your browser is set to reject all cookies, the website will not function properly. Users who refuse cookies assume all responsibility for any resulting loss of functionality. We do not link the cookies to any PII. * Web Beacons. “Web beacons” (also known as “clear gifs” and “pixel tags”) are small transparent graphic images that are often used in conjunction with cookies in order to further personalize our website for our users and to collect a limited set of information about our visitors. We may also use web beacons in email communications in order to understand the behavior of our customers. We do not link the web beacons to any PII. * Information About You. When you register or subscribe to any of our services, we collect a wide variety of information about you. For our Singles service, for example, you provide us with answers to our proprietary questionnaire, and we use your answers to build a personality profile for you and to match you with other compatible singles. Your individual responses to the questions about your personality in our questionnaire will be held strictly confidential, while other information about yourself (such as first name, occupation, height, etc.) will be used to build your “about me” profile which will be visible to users of the website. For interactive content and community services such as Advice where you may choose to have a public profile, we may display your information to other community members and visitors. You may choose to provide us with your photo(s) or video(s) and by providing us such content, you agree that we may make them available to your matches and users of Balleballe Group’s services. Except as otherwise stated in this privacy statement or otherwise with your consent, we do not disclose your PII to your matches, other users of our services or visitors to our websites. * Purchase Information. To process purchases, we may require your name, address, phone number, email address and credit card information. Such information is used primarily to process your order but may also be used as otherwise described herein. Credit card transactions are processed through industry standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and/or strong encryption (3DES) by a third party service provider, which only uses your information for that purpose. * E-mails and Other Communication. We require an e-mail address from you when you register for and/or purchase our services. We use your e-mail for both transactional (e.g., order confirmation, refund and renewal processing, notification of matches for our Jodiyan service) and with your consent, promotional (e.g., newsletters, new product offerings, special discounts, event notifications, special third-party offers) purposes. E-mail messages we send you may contain code that enables our database to track your usage of the e-mails, including whether the e-mail was opened and what links (if any) were clicked. If you would rather not receive promotional e-mails from us, please see the section below labeled “Choice/Opt-Out”. We reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to the Balleballe Group’s services, such as service announcements and administrative messages, without offering you the opportunity to opt out of receiving them. With your consent, we may also contact you by telephone (including via calls and/or text messages to any wireless number you may provide to us) solely in connection with Balleballe Group’s services. If you would rather not receive telephone calls or text messages from us, you may change or delete your number from your account preferences page(s), or ask to be removed from our contact list if you receive a call or text message from us. We fully comply with the requirements of the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act. * Public Forums. We make discussion boards available to our users and visitors. Any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose any PII. Please consult the community guidelines for each Balleballe Group discussion board when posting comments on them for other specific information. * Use for Research. In addition to the uses outlined above, by using our site, you agree to allow us to use the information from you and your experiences on an anonymous basis to continue our research into successful relationships. This research, conducted by psychologists and behavior research scientists, may be published in academic journals. However, all of your responses will be kept anonymous, and no PII will be published. You can find out more about the standards we follow in conducting scientific research by clicking here. Disclosure of Your Information to Third Parties * Disclosure By Law. You acknowledge and agree that we may disclose information you provide if required or permitted to do so by law, at the request of a third party, or if we, in our sole discretion, believe that disclosure is reasonable to (1) comply with the law, requests or orders from law enforcement, or any legal process (whether or not such disclosure is required by applicable law); (2) protect or defend Balleballe Group’s or a third party’s, rights; or (3) protect someone’s life, health or safety, such as when harm or violence against any person (including the user) is threatened. * Disclosure to Protect Abuse Victims. Notwithstanding any other provision of this privacy statement or our Terms and Conditions of Service, we reserve the right, but have no obligation, to disclose any information that you submit to the Services, if in our sole opinion, we suspect or have reason to suspect, that the information involves a party who may be the victim of abuse in any form. Abuse may include, without limitation, elder abuse, child abuse, spousal abuse, neglect, or domestic violence. Information may be disclosed to authorities that we, in our sole discretion, deem appropriate to handle such disclosure. Appropriate authorities may include, without limitation, law enforcement agencies, child protection agencies, or court officials. You hereby acknowledge and agree that we are permitted to make such disclosure. * Disclosure to Trusted Third Parties By Us. We may share your information with third parties, but not in a manner that would reveal your identity. We may share your PII, sometimes in conjunction with your non-PII, with service providers that may be associated with us (including our affiliates) to perform functions on our behalf. For example, outsourced customer care agents or technology assistants may need access to your information to perform services for you on our behalf. Your information will be treated as private and confidential by such service providers and not used for any other purpose than we authorize. In addition, with our users’ consent, from time to time we may share PII (such as e-mail or mailing address) about our user base with carefully selected third parties, so they can offer goods and services that we believe may be of interest to our users. If you do not wish to continue to receive offers from our trusted business associates, you can change your e-mail preferences at any time by following the steps outlined in the “Choice/Opt-Out” section below. * Disclosure to Trusted Third Parties at Your Request. When purchasing a Balleballe Group subscription or while visiting our site, unless you opt-out we may provide you with advertisements, promotions, sweepstakes and offers from third party providers of products and services. If you choose to accept any such offers, you may either (depending on the situation) directly provide your information in connection with the offer to such third party provider, or with your consent we will provide your information, including billing information, to the third party provider by pre-populating the offer registration forms. Your information will not be transferred until you actually accept the offer. You may opt-out of the offer at any time up until this point. Please refer to the third party provider’s own privacy policy (provided on the offer pages) if you have any questions regarding how your information is used by such providers. Please be aware that these offers may be presented on pages framed by a Balleballe Group website. We do this to provide a seamless experience. Although these offer pages have the look and feel of our websites, you will be submitting your information directly to the third-party advertiser. You agree that we will not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings, including the sharing of the information you supply to us with third party providers described here, or as the result of the presence of such providers on a Balleballe Group site. * Information Transferred As a Result of Sale of Business. As we develop our business, we may buy or sell assets and, depending on the transaction, your PII may be one of the transferred assets. We reserve the right to disclose and/or transfer PII and non-PII to a third party in the event of a proposed or actual purchase, sale (including a liquidation, realization, foreclosure or repossession), lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, transfer, conveyance or financing of all or any portion of our company or of any of the business or assets or shares of our company or a division thereof in order for you to continue to receive the same products and services from the third party. If this occurs, you will be notified if there are any material changes to the way your PII and/or non-PII is collected or used. We may use third-party advertising agencies or other service providers to serve ads on our website on behalf of Balleballe Group or third-party advertisers (e.g., retailers of goods or services). These companies may employ cookies and web beacons to measure advertising effectiveness. Any information that these third parties collect via cookies and web beacons is completely anonymous. Some of these third-party advertising agencies may be members of the Network Advertising Initiative, which offers you the option to opt out of ad targeting from its member agencies by following the procedures listed here. We will only share your information with third parties in the ways described in this privacy statement or as otherwise required or permitted by law. Our age restrictions for are set forth in each applicable Terms and Conditions of Service. We do not target our sites or services to anyone under the age of majority in their home jurisdiction, and any information we may receive from users we believe to be under the age of majority will be purged from our database. We have extensive security measures in place to help protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information stored in our database. These measures include the use of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and/or strong encryption (3DES) technology during credit card transactions and administrative access to site data, as well as other proprietary security measures which are applied to all repositories and transfers of user information. We will exercise reasonable care in providing secure transmission of information between your computer and our servers, but given that no information transmitted over the Internet can be guaranteed 100% secure, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information transmitted to us over the Internet and hence accept no liability for any unintentional disclosure. Retention and Storage of Your Personal Information We retain your PII for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose(s) for which it was collected and to comply with applicable laws, and your consent to such purpose(s) remains valid after termination of your relationship with us. Your PII may be processed and stored outside of the province in which you reside and/or outside of Canada by us, an affiliate or an unaffiliated service provider for the purposes set out in this privacy statement and, under the laws of these other jurisdictions, in certain circumstances foreign courts, law enforcement agencies or regulatory agencies may be entitled to access your personal information. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of other websites that may be linked to this site or of any third party advertisers. You may use the following options for removing your PII from our e-mail and telephone database if you wish to opt out of receiving promotional e-mails and newsletters: 1. Click on the “unsubscribe” link on the bottom of the e-mail; 2. Send mail to the following postal address letting us know which promotional e-mails (e.g., newsletters, new product offerings, special discounts, event notifications, special third-party offers) you wish to opt-out of: If you have any questions about the practices of this site, or your dealings with any Balleballe Group websites, you can contact: Site Administrator Acceptance of Privacy Statement Your use of our website(s), including any dispute concerning privacy, is subject to this privacy statement and the applicable Terms and Conditions of Service. BY USING OUR WEBSITE, YOU ARE ACCEPTING THE PRACTICES SET OUT IN THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT AND THE APPLICABLE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SERVICE. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement page and any other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, or by other means, such as e-mail, at our discretion. Your continued use of any portion of our website following posting of the updated privacy statement will constitute your acceptance of the changes. Effective Date This privacy statement was last revised on February 1, 2009-02-01 |
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 04 February 2009 14:14 ) |
