Comrite Privacy Policy

Information you share with us is used for Comrite’s internal business purposes. Comrite is not in the business of selling information about you. This notice tells you what information we collect, steps we take to protect and secure it, how we use and share the information, and finally, how you can access that information or contact us with questions or concerns.

Information We Gather

• Comrite collects personal information that you provide when you register with us, use Comrite products or services available on the Comrite Site (the “Service”) or post content on a Comrite Blog site as a guest with authoring rights.
• Comrite may also collect personal information you provide to us when you enter any promotions or sweepstakes offered on the Comrite site.
• Comrite may aggregate your information with information from other users (without personally identifying you) and share it with our business partners or others.
• Comrite may also collect information about your transactions with us and with some of our business partners. This information might include information necessary to process payments due to us from you such as your credit card number.
• Comrite automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, cookies, and the pages you request.

How we use IP Address Information

• Comrite may occasionally obtain IP addresses from users depending upon how you access our web site. IP addresses, browser and session information may be used for various purposes, including to:
  • Diagnose and prevent service or technology problems reported by our users or engineers that are associated with the IP addresses controlled by a specific web company or ISP.
  • Estimate the total number of users visiting Comrite from specific geographical regions.
  • Help determine which users have access privileges to certain content, services or resources that we offer.
  • Monitor and prevent fraud and abuse.
  • Deliver more relevant advertisements to you.
• Comrite may display your IP address to the owners or maintainers of certain Comrite journals when you post to those journals and the owner or maintainer has enabled functionality on the site for this purpose.

How we use Cookies

• A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier that is sent to your browser from a web site’s computers and stored on your computer’s hard drive.
• You can configure your browser to accept all cookies, reject all cookies, or notify you when a cookie is set, however, if you configure your browser to reject cookies, you may not be able to use Comrite products or services that require you to “sign in” and you may not be able to take full advantage of all offerings on the Comrite site.
• Comrite uses its own cookies for a number of purposes, including to:
  • Require you to re-enter your Comrite password after a certain period of time has elapsed to protect you against others accidentally accessing your account contents.
  • Keep track of preferences you specify while you are using Comrite’s services.
  • Estimate and report our total audience size and traffic.
  • Conduct research to improve Comrite’s content and services.
• Comrite lets other entities that show advertisements on some of our web pages set and access their cookies on your computer. Other entities’ use of their cookies is subject to their own privacy policies, and not this policy. Advertisers or other entities do not have access to Comrite’s cookies.

Special Rules Information Relating to Children

• The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) requires that we inform parents and legal guardians about how we collect, use, and disclose personal information from children under 13 years of age. Comrite is not directed at children under 13 years of age but, we recognize that with proper adult supervision some parents might permit their children to visit Comrite and use our Service. COPPA requires that we obtain the consent of parents and guardians in order for children under 13 years of age to use certain features of Comrite.
• When your child attempts to register and/or provide personal information to Comrite, we require a parent or legal guardian to:
  1. complete the registration;
  2. review our privacy policy and to submit a valid credit card number to verify that the child’s parent or guardian knows about and authorizes our information practices related to children protected by COPPA; and
  3. verify through the use of an email confirmation and second authorization that the parent or guardian consents to the Terms of Service and this privacy policy.
• Once parental notice and consent has been verified, the information we collect will be treated the same as information collected from any other user of Comrite. Without verified parental notice and consent, we will not knowingly collect personal information relating to children under 13 years of age, and if we learn that we have inadvertently collected such information, we will promptly delete it.

How Parents can Access their Children’s Personal Information

In compliance with COPPA, a parent or legal guardian may request from us to review, delete or stop the collection of personally identifiable information relating to their child or any child in their legal custody who is under 13 years of age. You may do so in one of two ways.

If you know the user name and password, follow the instructions below regarding Changing your Preferences and Personal Information, or you may contact us by letter, phone or email using the address information provided at the bottom of this page.

If you request that no further information about your child be collected or used, we will be required to terminate your child’s ability to use any part of the Service that requires a user to “sign in.”

How we Use, Share and Disclose Information We Collect

• Comrite does not share personal information we learn about you from your use of the Service or this web site with others except as described in this policy. We do not share your information with unrelated third parties for their direct marketing purposes.
• When you provide personal information through using the Service you are however sharing your personal information with Comrite, organizations that may hold a majority interest in Comrite, their divisions or subsidiaries and, Comrite and any of its divisions or subsidiaries. The use of your personal information by these organizations is subject to this policy.
• We do not share your information with unrelated third parties for their direct marketing purposes. However, Comrite may display targeted advertisements based on personally non-identifiable information (such as browser type and IP address) and/or personal selection (See the Section entitled “Third Party Advertising” below for more information on how your information is shared with advertisers).
• Comrite may use your personal information where it is necessary for us to complete a transaction, to operate or improve Comrite and related products and services, to do something that you have asked us to do, or tell you of products and services that we think may be of interest.
• Comrite may use your email address to contact you with required email messages about the Service.
• Where you are contacted with an offer or service based on information you have shared with Comrite, we will do our best to provide you with an opportunity to opt-out of receiving such further communications at the time you are contacted.
• When you post a message, your Comrite ID or alias that you are posting under may be visible to other users.
• When you post a message on Comrite Blog Sites, you have the ability to post a message which may include personally identifiable information about yourself; consequently, you should understand that if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return, and we cannot be responsible for the use of any information you post publicly.
• Comrite does or may share personally identifiable information about you under the following circumstances:
  • In the course of operating our business it may be necessary or appropriate for us to provide access to your personal information to others such as our service providers, contractors and select vendors so that we can operate the Service and our business. Where practical, we seek to obtain confidentiality agreements that are consistent with this policy and that limit others’ use or disclosure of the information you have shared.
  • We may transfer personal information to certain advertising partners that you have explicitly requested to receive information from. It will be clear at the point of collection who is collecting the personal information and whose privacy statement will apply.
  • We may share your personal information to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims, if in our judgment, disclosure is required or appropriate in such circumstances.
  • We may share your personal information if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Comrite’s terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
  • As we continue to develop our business, we might also sell all or part of our business. In such transactions, personally identifiable information you have shared with us is generally one of the business assets that may be transferred. The transferred personally identifiable information will remain subject to the promises made in this privacy policy or subsequent policies to which you have consented.

If there is ever a change to how Comrite uses or intends to use personal information, we will post that change to this policy and, if the new policy is materially less restrictive than this policy, we will seek your consent.

Third Party Advertising and Cookies

Advertisements appearing on Comrite may be delivered to users by Comrite or one of our advertising partners (or “ad networks”). Ad networks include third party ad servers, ad technology vendors and/or research firms.

Ad networks may set cookies and/or include a file, called a web beacon, within pages served by Comrite so the networks may provide auditing, research and reporting for advertisers.

• Cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time it sends you an online advertisement.
• Web beacons are typically an invisible image that may be embedded in a web page or in an advertisement. A web beacon’s primary purpose is to count the page’s visitors.

Ad networks may compile information about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw their advertisements and determine which ads are clicked on. This information allows an ad network to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This privacy policy covers the use of cookies by Comrite and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Please note that no personal identifying information you have provided to Comrite is shared with our advertisers as a result of their use of cookies or web beacons.

Opting Out of Ad Network Cookies

Comrite respects our users’ wish for privacy, and understands some users may wish to opt-out and/or manage the cookies set on their computers by these ad networks. To understand how these networks allow you to manage cookies set by them, you will need to visit their respective websites. Ad networks generally provide an opt-out on their websites.

Currently, Comrite has relationships with the following ad networks and other third parties:

Advertising.com (an AOL Company) – http://www.advertising.com/
AdBrite – http://www.adbrite.com/
Blue Lithium (a Yahoo! Company) – http://www.bluelithium.com/
Casale Media – http://www.casalemedia.com/
DoubleClick (a Google Company) – http://www.doubleclick.com/
Google Ad Sense – https://www.google.com/adsense/
Omniture (includes HitBox) – http://www.omniture.com/en/
(HitBox specific privacy policy here: http://www.omniture.com/en/company/acquisitions/visualsciences/privacy/policy/)
Right Media (a Yahoo! Company) – http://www.rightmedia.com/

We will be updating this list as the list of ad networks with which we do business changes.

Comrite does not share any personally identifiable information with advertisers. Comrite may share general demographic information (such as information about members’ aggregate interests and occupations) and non-personally identifiable information (such as browser type and IP addresses) with advertisers and partners. If you have a Plus account or are a Basic or Early Adopter account viewing a Plus account’s journal or other content, Comrite shares your voluntarily-provided public profile information (such as sex, age, location and interests) and your voluntarily-provided advertising preferences information with advertisers. Comrite does not give advertisers access to your private personal account information (such as email address, or, if you have elected to make these private or friends-only in your profile, sex and location). However, by selecting, interacting with or viewing an ad you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will make the assumption that you meet the targeting criteria used to display the ad.

Confidentiality and Security

No data transmissions over the Internet or via wireless networks can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Consequently, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make efforts to ensure security on our systems.

• We use physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect personal information about you.
• Your Comrite Account Information is password-protected.
• In certain areas, Comrite uses industry-standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions. However, please note that this is not a guarantee that such information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed by breach of such firewalls and secure server software.

If Comrite learns of a security systems breach we may attempt to notify you electronically so that you can take appropriate protective steps, however, we will never ask you to submit additional personal information or to verify the status of or information related to your account in any electronic communication email. By using this web site or providing personal information to us you agree that we can communicate with you electronically regarding security, privacy and administrative issues relating to your use of this site. Comrite may post a notice on our web site if a security breach occurs. If this happens, you will need a web browser enabling you to view the Comrite.com web site. Comrite may also send an email to you at the email address you have provided to us in these circumstances, however, we will never ask you to submit additional personal information or to verify the status of or information related to your account in any such email. Depending on where you live, you may have a legal right to receive notice of a security breach in writing. To receive free written notice of a security breach (or to withdraw your consent from receiving electronic notice) you should notify us at webmaster@comrite.com .

Changing your Preferences and Personal Information

• You can edit your Comrite Account Information at any time. Most personal information you may provide is entirely optional. For example, to the extent that parents are considering whether to permit their children to use the Service, we do not condition a child’s participation based upon their provision of any more personal information than is necessary to operate the Service.
• You can delete your Comrite account by visiting our Account Deletion page; however, please note that some personal information, primarily your contact information, may remain in Comrite’s records to the extent necessary to protect Comrite’s legal interests or document compliance with regulatory requirements.

Contacting Comrite

If you have a privacy concern regarding Comrite, or this policy, and if you cannot satisfactorily resolve it through the use of this web site, you should then write to us by email to webmaster@comrite.com.

If you object to any sharing of your personal information that may be permitted under this policy, you may do so by writing us at the above address. We will take reasonable steps to accommodate your requests as they relate to our advertising practices. In some instances, honoring your requests may interfere with or preclude your ability to use the Service or may require us to terminate our relationship with you.

Last updated: April 15, 2009