Last Updated on 2/2/2009
Our Commitment To Privacy
Welcome to Watercooler, the leading online fan communities for TV and Sports entertainment. Your privacy is very important to us. All Watercooler employees and founders make it our highest priority to keep the information that our users entrust in us safe.
We operate under high standards for keeping your privacy, as well as those of your colleagues and company community, safe. We operate under the following guiding principles:
Any sensitive information that you provide will be secured with top industry standard protocols and technology
Your privacy remains strictly under your control
We will never disclose your personally identifiable information to any third parties for marketing purposes unless you instruct us to
To better protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we make it available on our homepage and permanently at the following URL: http://www.watercooler-inc.com/privacy. This notice may be updated from time to time to reflect our continuing efforts to protect our users' privacy. You will always be able to find the latest version posted on our website.
The
Information We Collect
1) Watercooler Applications on Partner-Operated Websites
In order to use Watercooler applications on partner-operated websites (e.g., Facebook, Friendster, etc.), you must 1) be a registered member of a partner site, and 2) install a Watercooler application in your partner site account. By installing our applications on your partner site account, you agree to the partner site's terms of service, which allow application developers like Watercooler to store certain information about you. The application developer terms of service vary from partner to partner in this regard.
When you install a Watercooler application in your partner site account, we assign you a unique identifying number and allow you to choose a default display name, which we retain. Your display name serves as your publicly visible identity within all websites and applications that serve Watercooler's products. This includes but is not limited to Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, Friendster, Bebo, and Watercooler's TVLoop.com and FanSection.com websites. Your display name is editable at any time by going to your profile page within your Watercooler application.
2) Watercooler Applications on Watercooler-Operated Websites
In order to use Watercooler applications on Watercooler-operated websites , you must first complete the registration form and create a user name and password. During registration you are required to give contact information such as your name and email address. We use this information to contact you when another user interacts with your profile, or to update you with your friends' activities in our applications.
You have the option to provide demographic and professional information (such as education, interests, and resume) to us; we encourage you to submit this information so other users can interact with your profile.
If you choose to send an invitation to a friend to join a Watercooler website, or if you choose to forward a video, quote, quiz, or other Watercooler asset to a friend, you may choose to enter your friends' email addresses manually or import them from your email provider using a tool provided by Watercooler. Watercooler will automatically send your friend an email inviting him or her to visit the website to become a member or see the asset you sent them. Additionally, Watercooler stores this information in your account on your behalf so that you can easily forward Watercooler assets to your friends at a later date.
Your friend may contact us at privacy@watercooler-inc.com to request that we remove this information from our database.
All information that you enter or upload about your contacts will be covered by the same terms of this privacy policy as cover your own personally identifiable information.
Service-Related Announcements
We will send you strictly service-related announcements on rare occasions when it is necessary to do so. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send you an email.
Generally, you may not opt-out of these communications, which are not promotional in nature. If you do not wish to receive them, you have the option to deactivate your account.
You will not receive any promotional emails attempting to sell you goods or services. Only system-related announcements will be sent to your email account.
Web Site Usage
Like most web sites, Watercooler uses cookies and web log files to track site usage. A cookie is a tiny data file which resides on your computer which allows Watercooler to recognize you as a user when you return to our site using the same computer and web browser. Unfortunately, if your browser settings do not allow cookies, you will not be able to use our applications. Like the information you enter at registration or in your Profile, cookie and log file data is used to customize your experience on the web site.
Log Files
As is true of most Web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data.
We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users' movements around the site to improve our service, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole.
We do link this automatically-collected data to personally identifiable information. IP addresses are only tied to personally identifiable information in the event we try to identify possible fraudulent activities.
We use a third-party tracking service, Google Analytics, that uses cookies to track non-personally identifiable information about visitors to our site in the aggregate. We use this service to capture usage and volume statistics to help us improve the Watercooler service.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user's computer for record-keeping purposes. We use cookies in our applications. We do link the information we store in cookies to personally identifiable information you submit while on our site.
We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. A session ID cookie expires after you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser's "help" file.
We use session cookies to confirm that users are logged in. As a convenience feature, we offer an option that will remember your login information for a period of two weeks. This login information is encrypted and set in a persistent cookie so you don't have to enter it more than once. Persistent cookies also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site. If you reject cookies, you will not be able to sign in to use our site.
Other third-parties may place advertisements and cookies on web-pages within our applications and websites. Other companies. use of their cookies is subject to their own privacy policies, not this one.
Third Party Advertising
We use third-party advertising companies to serve and display advertising in our applications. These companies may use personal information, such as gender or age, or other information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to the application or other websites, such as time of day of the login, IP address or information about the internet service provider or, in order to provide advertisements on our applications and website about goods and services that may be of interest to you.
Cookie Opt-Out
We allow each user to opt out of our ad-serving cookies, so that no unique information or number is associated with the end user.s computer browser. Blocking and/or opting out of cookies do not stop advertisements from being served to your computer; rather, it prevents data from being associated with the end user.s browser. Please note that if you choose an opt-out cookie, we will be unable to recognize your browser from one visit to the next, and you may therefore receive the same ad multiple times.
Click here for the ad-serving cookie opt-out
All other cookies associated with your browser will remain intact and your opt-out will be effective for the entire life of your browser on your hard drive or until you delete the cookie file from your hard drive. This opt-out process will erase the cookie ID but not the cookie.
The Way Your Information Is Visible
The primary purpose
of entering data into Watercooler is to build your Watercooler profile. Your
profile is meant to be shared with fellow fans.
As a user, you have control over how much information you choose to
share with other fans.
We use non-identifying and
aggregate information to better design our website and to share with
advertisers. For example, we may tell an advertiser that X number of
individuals visited a certain area on our website, or that Y number
of men and Z number of women filled out our registration form, but we
would not disclose anything that could be used to personally identify
any individual. Certainly these advertisers will never receive your
personal contact information.
Finally, we never use or share
the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways
unrelated to the ones described above. In the event that we do for
some unforeseen and unanticipated event in the future, we will give
you an opportunity to opt-out of such secondary uses.
Our
Commitment To Data Security
We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
Watercooler employs protected facilities, data encryption on your stored
personally identifiable information, firewalls, intrusion detection,
and many other security measures to protect your data. We have
invested many capital and human resources into our infrastructure to
secure the data of our users and will continue to make additional
technology investments.
If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can send email us at support@watercooler-inc.com
Use Of Bulletin Boards
If you use a bulletin board or blog in our applications, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums. We do not recommend posting personally identifiable information on the Bulletin Board.
Protecting the privacy of
the very young is especially important. For that reason, we never
collect or maintain information at our website from those we actually
know are under 13, and no part of our website is structured to
attract anyone under 13. How
You Can Access Or Correct Your Information 1) Watercooler Applications on Partner-Operated Websites You can access all
your personally identifiable information that we collect online and
maintain by clicking on and editing your profile within our applications. If your personally identifiable information
changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may update it by
making the change online or by removing our application from your partner site account. 2) Watercooler Applications on Watercooler-Operated Websites You can access all
your personally identifiable information that we collect online and
maintain by clicking on and editing "My Profile" and
"Settings". If your personally identifiable information
changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may update it by
making the change online or by contacting us through the methods
indicated in the "How To Contact Us" section. Privacy
Policy Updates If
we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to
this privacy statement on the home page, and 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 by means of a notice on our home
page. Legal
Responsibilities Disclosure We
reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable
information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is
necessary to protect our rights or comply with a judicial proceeding,
court order, or legal process served on our Web site.
How
To Contact Us
We
dedicate resources to helping you contact us if you have questions
about your privacy and personally identifiable information. You can
contact us by emailing our Customer Support support@watercooler-inc.com,
or by contacting us by postal mail at the contact information listed
below. Watercooler
Incorporated 153
Castro Street 3rd Floor Mountain
View, CA 94041
