Privacy Policy and Use of Information
Effective as of June 30, 2010
Dow Jones & Company Inc. and its affiliates (“Dow Jones”) are committed to maintaining the privacy of personal information that you provide to us when using AllThingsD.com. This Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information received about you when you visit AllThingsD.com.
1. LINKS TO OTHER WEB SITES
We may make content or services from other Web sites including our affiliated or co-branded Web sites available to you from links located on AllThingsD.com. These other Web sites are not subject to this Privacy Policy. We recommend that you review the privacy policy at each such Web site to determine how that site protects your privacy.
2. INFORMATION WE COLLECT
General. When you use certain features of this site, we may collect personally identifiable information from you that may include your name and email address. We do not, however, knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13.
Web Site Usage Information. We automatically collect IP addresses and Web site usage information from you when you visit AllThingsD.com. This information helps us evaluate how our visitors use and navigate our Web sites on an aggregate basis, including the number and frequency of visitors to each Web page, and the length of their visits.
Surveys. We may conduct occasional surveys and other customer research. These are entirely voluntary and you may decline to participate.
Registration. We require that anyone who wishes to comment about articles featured on the site or about other comments posted on the site will have to register, even though the site is free. And every comment will be signed with the commenter’s full registered name. Now, we’re not idiots. We know some people will register with fake names, and we don’t have the resources or inclination to try and verify every name. But we figure we’ll get a fairly high percentage of real names behind the comments, which is way better than just using anonymity or screen names.
Our comment tool is provided by a third party online comment system called Disqus. Disqus is a third party application that allows visitors to post comments on AllThingsD.com and connect those and other comments across multiple websites. You may use your AllThingsD, Disqus, or certain select social media accounts to log-in and post comments on AllThingsD.com. When you log in and post a comment on AllThingsD.com, Disqus will collect information about your visit to this and other Disqus partner sites, including information that you post and your IP address. If you opt to use your AllThingsD.com account to post comments, we will share your AllThingsD account name and email address with Disqus to enable commenting with the Disqus tool. If you register with and use Disqus, Disqus may collect and use additional information from and about you. This policy does not apply to, and we are not responsible for, Disqus’ collection or use of your information. We encourage you to review Disqus’ privacy policy to learn more.
3. HOW WE USE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT
We may use information in the following ways:
For the purposes for which you specifically provided the information including, for example, to send emails that you have requested and to post your responses to articles.
To send you email notifications about our new or existing products and services, special offers, or to otherwise contact you.
To enhance or develop features, products and services.
To provide advertisers and other third parties with aggregate information about our user base and usage patterns.
To allow us to personalize the content and advertising that you and others see based on personal characteristics or preferences.
We may combine the information that we collect from you on AllThingsD.com with information that you provide to us in connection with your use of our other products, services and Web sites.
We use third-party network advertisers, such as DoubleClick, to deliver ads to you on our behalf. We may also use third-party service providers to contact you on our behalf, or facilitate some aspects of our Web site services, or fulfill your requests. These network advertisers and service providers may be supplied with or have access to your personally identifiable information solely for the purpose of providing these services to us or on our behalf.
Except as specifically set forth in this Privacy Policy, we will not share your personally identifiable information outside of Dow Jones, unless you opt in to having your personally identifiable information shared with a company that is not affiliated with us.
We may disclose and use personally identifiable information to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, enforce our Terms of Service (for example, when necessary to protect our or a third party’s intellectual property or proprietary rights), or to alert you to changes in our policies or agreements that may affect your use of our Web site. We may also disclose personally identifiable information when we, in our sole discretion, believe it is necessary or appropriate, in connection with a sale or transfer of some or all of our assets in the Web site, or when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires us to do so.
4. YOUR ABILITY TO CHOOSE
You can let us know that you do not wish to receive information about new features and special offers from AllThingsD.com at the time you sign up for email services. You can also change your email settings by clicking here or by contacting us at help@AllThingsD.com.
5. COOKIES
Some of the advertisers and Web analytics firms used on this site may place “tracking cookies” on your computer. These are small text files that can tell such companies what you are doing online, even though they usually don’t record your name or other personally identifiable information. These cookies are used by these companies to try and match ads to a user’s interests. They are used all over the Web. But we want you to know how to get rid of these tracking cookies if you like. Here are links to pages where you can opt out of the cookies set by one of our ad placement contractors and our analytics contractor:
If you would like more information about this practice or to opt out of having this information used by third-party ad servers that are part of the Network Advertising Initiative to provide targeted ads, please visit: http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp.
We’d prefer a totally opt-in system, but, as far as we know, the ad industry doesn’t have a practical one as of now.
If you want to clean out all tracking cookies from all your Web sites, here are links where you can download three programs that can clean out tracking cookies:
- http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad-aware_se_personal.php
- http://www.spybot.info/en/download/index.html
- http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/spysweeper/
You can also change the preferences or settings in your Web browser to control cookies. The Help menu on the menu bar of most browsers will tell you how. In some cases, you can choose to accept cookies from the primary site, but block them from third parties. In others, you can block cookies from specific advertisers, or clear out all cookies.
Not all cookies are tracking cookies. Like most other Web sites, ours may place cookies on your computer, in addition to any placed by advertisers. But ours aren’t “tracking cookies.” They merely do things like save your registration information, if you choose to register. They do not tell us what you do or where you go online.
6. SECURITY
The personally identifiable information we collect about you is stored in limited access servers. We will maintain safeguards to protect the security of these servers and your personally identifiable information.
7. REVIEW AND CORRECTION
If you would like to review, change or delete your email preferences or the name that you provided to us for email services, you can click here or contact us at help@allthingsd.com.
8. TRANSFER TO THE U.S. OR OTHER COUNTRIES
Your information may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country where Dow Jones has facilities, and by using our Web site, you consent to the transfer of information outside of your country.
9. POLICY MODIFICATIONS
When we make any material change to this Privacy Policy, we will inform you by updating the Policy’s date.
This Privacy Policy was last updated on June 30, 2010.