compete

Effective on: August 20, 2007
 

Your privacy is of the highest concern to Compete. This Privacy Policy (the "policy") outlines the types of personally-identifiable information ("personal information") we receive and collect when you use Compete's services available through the Compete web site located at www.compete.com (the "Services"), as well as some of the steps we take to safeguard your personal information.

Compete uses personal information collected through the Services for the purposes of:

• Providing our products and services to users, including the display of customized content, identification and authentication, and contact;
• Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;
• Ensuring the technical functioning of our network; and
• Developing new services.

Compete's services are designed to be anonymous and safe for all users. We make commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that your anonymity is protected.

Information security

We take reasonable security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of personal information. These measures include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security practices.

We restrict access to personal information to Compete employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve our services. We take reasonable efforts to ensure all parties comply with confidentiality obligations.

We store all personal information on our servers in the United States of America.

Data integrity

Compete processes personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected and in accordance with this Policy. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we process is accurate, complete, and current, but we depend on our users to update or correct their personal information whenever necessary.

Information we collect and how we use it:

We offer a number of services that do not require you to register for an account or provide any personal information to us, such as Compete Site Analytics. However, some of our Services will require the provision of certain personal information. In order to provide our full range of services, we may collect the following types of information:

•  Information you provide

   When you sign up for a MyCompete account or other Compete services or promotions that requires registration, we sometimes ask you for personal information (such as your e-mail address and an account password). For certain services, such as our premium offerings, we also request credit card or other payment account information which will be maintained by third party merchant(s) or payment processor(s) in encrypted form on secure servers. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Compete services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information.

  •  MyCompete member e-mail addresses are used to contact members regarding service updates, confirmations, opt-in surveys and select partner offers. If you would like to opt-out of these e-mails, please see the Opt-out section within e-mails you receive from us or manage your e-mail subscriptions by signing into MyCompete by clicking here. You may also contact us using the contact information listed below. If you elect to opt-out of further communications, such opt-out will apply only to marketing messages and not to communications regarding service updates and similar matters.
  •  Compete Blog e-mail updates are administered by a 3rd party service provider. E-mail addresses provided to them via the automated form on the blog are used solely for the purpose of sending you blog alerts.
  •  If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend that you think Compete.com might be of interest to them, we will ask you for your friend's name and e-mail address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time e-mail inviting him or her to visit the site. We store this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time e-mail. We have no intention of annoying you or your friends. Your friend may contact us to request that we remove this information from our database. Please be judicious when providing friends' contact information to our service and do not provide us with such information unless you have your friends' consent to do so.
  •  When you contact us via our Contact form, send e-mail or other communication to Compete, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services.
  •  Third-Party Web Beacons: We use third-party web beacons from Yahoo! to help analyze where visitors go and what they do while visiting our website. Yahoo! may also use anonymous information about your visits to this and other websites in order to improve its products and services and provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by Yahoo!, click here.

•  Cookies and IP Addresses

   To serve you faster and with better quality, we use "cookies" technology. Cookies are small bits of code, usually stored on a user's computer hard drive, which enable a Website to "personalize" itself for each user. We generally use cookies to reduce the time it takes for pages to load on your computer and to assist with customer tracking. Customer tracking (or "click-stream") data collected by us is used to optimize your experience by learning whether or not you successfully used Compete.com. Cookies are not tied to your personal information.

•  Clear Gifs

   We employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons) that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movement of Web users. Clear gifs are not tied to users' personally identifiable information. We also use clear gifs in our HTML-based e-mails to let us know which e-mails the recipients have opened. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications.

•  Log information

   When you use Compete services, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.

•  Click-sharing

   When you download Compete software, including the Compete Toolbar, you will be given the option of enabling click-sharing. Should you opt-in to click-sharing you will begin to anonymously share the addresses of the web pages you visit online. All data is stripped of personally identifiable information before it is transmitted to our servers. Our data collection techniques have been designed to purge personally identifiable information wherever we find it. In addition, as a member of Compete you are assigned a randomly generated user ID ensuring your anonymity. The only contact information associated with your user ID is your registration e-mail, which we only use to send you service updates and other requested communications that you have signed up to receive from us.

   We do not control what information third party websites put into their URLs or where they put it. The URL information we collect and license may sometimes contain personal information about users. However, we make every commercially viable effort to purge personally identifiable information wherever we find it. Compete's software application uses a proprietary rules engine to search through all URLs to strip out any such personally identifiable information before transmitting the data to our databases. To protect your privacy, it's our policy never to disclose or release the contents of individual URLs stored on our servers. Further, all our services aggregate data across all users thereby ensuring that your privacy is protected at all times as such information does not identify you individually.

   To calculate more robust metrics for our users, we also license URL and demographic data (age, gender, household income, geographical location, etc.) from multiple sources including ISPs and ASPs. We honor the privacy of our Members and the privacy policies of our licensors and do not knowingly collect or license personally identifiable information from members or licensors. Again, Compete aggregates data on multiple users before supplying any data, thereby ensuring an individual's privacy.

•  Links

   Compete may present links in a format that enables us to keep track of whether these links have been followed. We use this information to improve the quality of our services.

Third Party Links

This Policy applies to all information that you provide to Compete.com. However, when you visit websites to which Compete.com links, keep in mind you will be interacting with a third party that operates under its own privacy and security policy. If you choose to obtain certain services through a third party site, the data collected by the third party is governed by that third party's privacy policy. A third party site will also have its own policy regarding the use of cookies and clear gifs. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any other service provider from whom you request services.

Information sharing

Compete only shares personal information with individuals outside of Compete as disclosed in this Privacy Policy and in the following limited circumstances:

•  We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, (d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Compete, its users or the public as required or permitted by law, (e) allow service providers and/or vendors to fulfill Services for you on behalf of Compete or (f) pursuant to an acquisition, merger, sale of assets or other business transfer.

A Special Note about Children's Privacy

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Compete services. We do not knowingly collect or use personal information about visitors under 13 years of age. If you are under 13 years of age, you can use the services offered on our website only in conjunction with your parents or guardians.

Changes to this Policy

Please note that this policy may change from time to time. We will post any policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, e-mail notification of policy changes). By using our services, you signify your assent to the Compete's Privacy Statement. Our Privacy Statement will indicate the date it was last updated. Your continued use of our site will signify your acceptance of the changes to our policy.

Questions and Suggestions

If you have additional questions or suggestions, please contact us anytime or write to us at:

Compete Inc.
Four Copley Place, Suite 700
Boston, MA 02116 USA
Attention: Member Services