We take your privacy seriously. Please take
a moment to read this privacy policy, which discloses the privacy practices of
the About, Inc. ("About" or "we") websites, including
About.com, About.net, AllExperts.com, CalorieCount.com, ConsumerSearch.com, and
Netplaces.com, as well as our downloadable software applications for supported
devices, including mobile devices (collectively, the "Services").
Specifically, the policy outlines the types of information that may be gathered
when you register for or use the Services, and the ways in which that
information may be used.
The Types of Information We
Collect
Information You Give
Us
To enable you to enjoy certain features of
our Services, we collect certain types of information, including personally
identifiable information. For example, we collect information when you:
- Sign up to receive email
newsletters.When
we send newsletters to subscribers we may allow Advertisers or Partners to
include messages in those newsletters, or we may send dedicated
newsletters on behalf of those Advertisers or Partners. All newsletters
will come directly from About, Inc.: when we do this, we do not share your
email with the respective Advertiser or Partner. To unsubscribe from a
particular newsletters, click the "unsubscribe" link at the
bottom of that email newsletter.
- Register. When you register to
use forums or other Services, we ask you to provide certain information,
which may include your email address, home address, birth year, gender,
health conditions, credit card number and zip code, as well as a password
for your account. We will not provide Advertisers or Partners to this personal information without
your permission.
- Engage in public activities
on the Services. We
offer you opportunities to engage in public activities on the Services
that are designed to be visible to other users and the public at large,
including comments, forums, recommendations, reader reviews, ratings or
any other items that you submit. Any information you disclose in your
public activities, along with your screen name or ID, or any image or
photo, becomes public and may be used by us for online and offline
promotional or commercial uses in any and all media. Information
you submit is not private or confidential, nor is it protected by
attorney-client, doctor-patient, or any other privilege and (regardless of
restrictions we impose in our User Agreement or other policies) it might
be read, collected and used by others, including through third party
search engines which may index the information you post. You
therefore should be aware that any personally identifiable information you
submit there might be read, collected, or used by other users of these
areas, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages, mine your data,
communicate with or market to you in other ways. We are not responsible
for safeguarding the personally identifiable information you choose to
submit in these forums and About.com has no responsibility to publish,
take down, remove or edit any of your public activities or any of your
submissions that are a result of your public activities. For more
information, see the About.com User Agreement.
- Provide Us Your Credit Card
and Billing Information. To enable payment for certain Services, we or a
service or payment provider acting on our behalf may collect and store
billing and credit card information. This information will only be shared
with the third parties who we have hired to perform these tasks.
- Contests, Sweepstakes and Special
Offers. We
may sponsor contests, sweepstakes, or promote special offers on the
Service or on third party sites. If you elect to participate, we may
require personal information from you, including, in most cases, your
first and last name and e-mail address. If this information is also being
collected by a third party (other than our service providers), we will
notify you at the time of collection. If you do not want any personal
information shared, you may always decline to participate in the sweepstakes,
contests, or special offers.
Information We
Collect Using Technology
- Device Information. We may collect
information about the browser, computer, mobile phone, smartphone or other
device you use to access the Services to measure the effectiveness of those
Services.
- Cookies. As further explained in
Section 3, below, we may use cookies, pixel trackers, server logs, and any
Internet technology in order to measure the effectiveness of the Services
and any advertising campaigns, as well as to target meaningful content and
ads to our users.
- Geolocation Data. For certain mobile
applications we offer, we may (or may enable a third party, including an
advertiser) request your geolocation information in order to provide you
with ads, offers, search or other functionality. If you agree to such
collection, we (or the third party) will maintain information regarding
your geolocation and may use it to help enable that functionality, or
other functionality we describe to you in a privacy notice provided with
the mobile application.
- Analytics. We may use third
parties to provide us information, reports and analysis about the usage
and browsing patterns of users of the Services. These reports contain
aggregated data only, and do not identify individual users
