CLICKSHARE SERVICE
CORP.
POLICY ON PRIVACY AND
PERSONAL INFORMATION USE
Also view
CORPORATE PRIVACY SYNOPSIS
This
document describes Clickshare Service Corp.'s consumer-privacy policy and
practice. We share your intense interest in this subject. Thank-you for taking
a few moments to read about the our commitments to you. The document (a) states
our guiding principles, (b) explains the concept of choosing your Clickshare
Service Provider, who manages your privacy and personal information, (c) outlines
how information is collected in The Clickshare Service; and, (d) explains how
information may be optionally shared.
A.
CLICKSHARE’S GUIDING PRINCIPLES
1. The
Clickshare Service respects the need to balance privacy with effective commerce
and is based upon two principles:
·
Consumers
should have ultimate control over the use and sharing of knowledge such as
their name, address, viewing, purchasing habits and other unique personal
details, and should be able to forbid and block such sharing if they wish.
·
Consumers
should be able to selectively share, freely or for compensation, such knowledge
about themselves with service providers and merchants if they wish to do so to
for reasons such as to achieve a faster, better or more customized experience.
2. Clickshare does not solicit or
receive any information which identifies you by name, address or other details
from any source except your designated Clickshare Service Provider.
This information, if provided with your
permission by your Clickshare Service Provider, may be used according to your
instructions to customize or simplify your web-browsing experience. This
information is routinely purged from Clickshare’s systems shortly after you
complete an online session. Clickshare maintains no permanent records of this
information.
B. CHOOSING
A CLICKSHARE SERVICE PROVIDER
3. You may
choose to join Clickshare through many different sponsors, including ISPs,
phone companies, banks, retailers, credit-card issuers, publishers or web
sites. We call these partners "Clickshare Service Providers," or
CSPs.
4.
Individual consumer preferences and expectations about personal privacy vary
within a range defined by Clickshare's two guiding privacy principles. For this
reason, Clickshare creates a marketplace in which you are free to:
·
Choose among
many Clickshare Service Providers to entrust your personal account information
·
Specify and
negotiate with your chosen provider how and if they will collect, keep and
share personal information about you.
5. After you
have made your choice, and you have arranged with your CSP for an acceptable
payment account, you may purchase information or other digital services from
multiple websites with one ID, one password, one account and one bill. Only
your home-base, sponsoring CSP ever needs to learn the your name or address or
billing-account details.
6. Except
for the HOME.CLICKSHARE.COM website, Clickshare's home-based sponsoring
partners are independent affiliates of Clickshare Service Corp. These
Clickshare Service providers establish their own privacy policies for their
consumer customers. These policies are audited by Clickshare Service Corp. and
conform to Clickshare's terms of service requirements for Clickshare's
partners.
C. THE
COLLECTION OF INFORMATION
7. Clickshare Service Corp. will
maintain billing records of websites which you have visited during a
Clickshare-enabled session. These records contain, among other things, an
access data and time, a resource location and
identifier, price information and a
unique alpha-numeric identifier. Only your Clickshare Service Provider
knows that this one-time alpha-numeric identifier refers specifically to you.
We create this “anonymous” identifier so that your Clickshare Service Provider
can accurately bill you for purchases.
8. We do not provide these billing
records to any third party other than to your Clickshare Service Provider. You
are responsible for instructing your Clickshare Service Provider regarding the
use of this aggregated, anonymous purchase information.
Clickshare
Service Corp.'s partner CSPs, including HOME.CLICKSHARE.COM, agree that:
·
If a CSP
collects uniquely identifying billing, demographic or other information about
you, the CSP will provide an easily-available explanation of why the
information is being collected and for what it will be used. The CSP will also
give the consumer an opportunity to expunge any collected information if the
consumer does not agree to its use.
·
When your
close your account with a CSP or otherwise un-enroll from The Clickshare
Service, you will be asked if you would like information collected by your CSP
which unique identifies you to be delelted from a permanent databases under the
CSP's control.
·
You must be
affirmatively asked to "opt-in" before the CSP begins to use The Clickshare
Service to share any unique identifying knowledge about you with any third part
or affiliate of Clickshare Service Corp.
9.
Clickshare pledges to periodically audit the privacy policies of its CSPs and
will deny access to the Clickshare Service to those CSPs who are found not to
follow and honor the privacy and disclosure requirements outlined herein. You
and your CSP are the ultimate custodians of your personal privacy, a
responsibility which Clickshare Service Corp. facilitates and encourages, but
cannot assume.
D. THE
OPTIONAL SHARING OF INFORMATION
10.
Clickshare provides a service for authenticating you, the user among multiple
independent websites and for logging access and billing records and for logging
aggregation of billing and access among those websites.
"Authenticating" means verifying to a website from which you wish to
purchase music, text, video, software or other services that you are a valid
Clickshare user who has the capability to pay for what you buy.
11. In order
to allow access and billing to be attributed by CSPs to their unique users,
Clickshare stores in each record of access to a Clickshare vendor website a
transaction identification number (TIN). This TIN may be used by the consumer's
independent CSP to correlate activity and purchases to its individual
customers' accounts.
12. Using an
"opt-in" process, you may volunteer to your CSP the sharing by that
CSP of knowledge about you, such as your demographic profile, or preferences,
or purchasing history. This knowledge may include your name or credit details.
With your permission, these data may be transmitted by the CSP, via Clickshare
Service Corp., to third-party websites. Absent such an "opt-in" the
Clickshare Service will not permit the sharing via Clickshare of any
identifying information about a consumer who is using the Service for web
access or purchasing.
13. When
"opt-in" details are shared, this information is know to Clickshare
Service Corp. only long enough to transfer it to third-party websites, and the
information is not saved or otherwise independently used by Clickshare.
14. Some
Clickshare Service Providers may request that Clickshare Service Corp. or other
third parties correlate the activities of consumers among multiple websites for
marketing or other purposes. When Clickshare Service Corp. performs such
correlation, it will take care to do so as a contractual agent of one or more
CSPs, and will take reasonable steps to make sure that consumers have been
notified of this practice, consistent with policy expressed in Paragraph No.
11, above, and will refuse to perform such correlation if the policy has not
been followed.
E. SUMMARY
15. To
summarize:
·
Clickshare's
business is to provide an efficient marketplace for the sharing of customers
and information among multiple websites under a service for which Clickshare
generally charges a fee to the vendor when access or transactions occur.
·
Clickshare
is not primarily in the business of identifying or trading upon the habits of
individual consumers, but will facilitate the desire of individual consumers
who voluntarily and knowingly wish to enhance their Internet experience through
the sharing of their personal details and preferences.
·
When
Clickshare is asked by its CSP affiliates to correlate the activities of unique
users among multiple websites, it will do so only as an agent of the affiliates
and only when it is assured that doing so is consistent with the affiliate's
obligations to its consumer users.
F. OTHER THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW
16. “Cookies” are small text files
recorded on a Internet user’s computer by web sites the user visits. Clickshare
Service Corp. does not use “cookies” and The Clickshare Service does not
require cookies to operate. Some of Clickshare’s partners may use cookies.
17. Some Clickshare Service Providers ("CSPs")request that a consumer
submit credit-card information as part of the first-time registration
process to become a Clickshare end user. Clickshare Service Corp. policy
-- and standard policy of the banking and credit-card industries --
requires that CSPs obtain credit-card information only through the use of
a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption link to the user's web browser.
This industry-standard encryption "scrambles" all data (including
credit-card numbers) before it leaves the end-user's computer so that it
cannot easily be intercepted or misused by a third party. CSPs are
expected to employ industry best-practices for the secure handling and
storage of credit-card numbers once obtained via an SSL link. Clickshare
Service Corp., acting as an agent, performs certain user-registration
services for some of its affiliate CCPs and applies the same
industry-standard practices to its obtaining and handling of credit-card
information. Questions about handling of credit-card information should be
addressed to your designated CCP, or to privacy@clickshare.com.
18. If you would like additional
information about personal privacy and The Clickshare Service, and would like
to read a general discussion of online privacy, go to: http://www.clickshare.com/news/shorttopics/.
Clickshare provides a toll-free number for consumers to call with service or
billing questions. The phone number is 1-866-500-2160 and it is answered during
regular business hours (9 a.m. – 5 p.m. U.S. East Coast time) and with
voice-mail after hours. Mail to privacy@clickhare.com is answered
promptly.
19. This
privacy and information-use policy is effective Aug. 28, 2002 and
replaces
any
previous such policies of Clickshare Service Corp.
