Privacy Policy.
Scope
This
Privacy Policy describes how we
handle your personal information for
our services on the websites.
It applies generally to the .com
website and content and other
related websites where this policy
appears in the footer of the page.
Some -branded websites or
websites we operate may be governed
by separate privacy policies. The
policy that applies on any of our
domains or subdomains is always the
policy that appears in the footer of
each website.
Our
subsidiaries’ and joint ventures’
privacy practices are similar to
those described in this Privacy
Policy. Subject to the requirements
of applicable law, we strive to
provide a consistent set of privacy
practices throughout the global
trading community. By accepting the
Privacy Policy and the User
Agreement in registration, you
expressly consent to our collection,
storage, use and disclosure of your
personal information as described in
this Privacy Policy. This Privacy
Policy is effective upon acceptance
for new users and is otherwise
effective on August 13, 2008.
Collection
You
can browse our sites without telling
us who you are or revealing any
personal information about yourself.
Once you give us your personal
information, you are not anonymous
to us. If you choose to provide us
with personal information, you
consent to the transfer and storage
of that information on our servers
located in the United States.
We may
collect and store the following
personal information:
-
email address, physical
contact information, and (depending
on the service used)
sometimes financial
information, such as credit
card or bank account numbers;
-
transactional information
based on your activities on
the sites (such as bidding,
buying, selling, item and
content you generate or that
relates to your account);
-
shipping, billing and other
information you provide to
purchase or ship an item;
-
community discussions, chats,
dispute resolution,
correspondence through our
sites, and correspondence
sent to us;
-
other information from your
interaction with our sites,
services, content and
advertising, including
computer and connection
information, statistics on
page views, traffic to and
from the sites, ad data, IP
address and standard web log
information;
-
additional information we
ask you to submit to
authenticate yourself or if
we believe you are violating
site policies (for example,
we may ask you to send us an
ID or bill to verify your
address, or to answer
additional questions online
to help verify your identity
or ownership of an item you
list);
-
information from other
companies, such as
demographic and navigation
data; and
-
other supplemental
information from third
parties (for example, if you
incur a debt to , we
will generally conduct a
credit check by obtaining
additional information about
you from a credit bureau, as
permitted by law).
Marketing
We
don't sell or rent your personal
information to third parties for
their marketing purposes without
your explicit consent. We may
combine your information with
information we collect from other
companies and use it to improve and
personalize our services, content
and advertising. If you don't wish
to receive marketing communications
from us or participate in our
ad-customization programs, simply
indicate your preference in My
or by following the directions
provided with the communication or
advertisement.
Use
Our
primary purpose in collecting
personal information is to provide
you with a safe, smooth, efficient,
and customized experience. You agree
that we may use your personal
information to:
-
provide the services and
customer support you request;
-
resolve disputes, collect
fees, and troubleshoot
problems;
-
prevent potentially
prohibited or illegal
activities, and enforce our
User Agreement;
-
customize, measure and
improve our services,
content and advertising;
-
tell you about our services
and those of our corporate
family, targeted marketing,
service updates, and
promotional offers based on
your communication
preferences; and
-
compare information for
accuracy, and verify it with
third parties.
Our
Disclosure of Your Information
We may
disclose personal information to
respond to legal requirements,
enforce our policies, respond to
claims that a listing or other
content violates the rights of
others, or protect anyone's rights,
property, or safety. Such
information will be disclosed in
accordance with applicable laws and
regulations.
We may
also share your personal information
with:
-
Members of the Inc.
corporate family—like
PayPal, Skype or
Shopping.com—to provide
joint content and services (like
registration, transactions
and customer support), to
help detect and prevent
potentially illegal acts and
violations of our policies,
and to guide decisions about
their products, services and
communications. Members of
our corporate family will
use this information to send
you marketing communications
only if you’ve requested
their services.
-
Service providers under
contract who help with our
business operations (such as
fraud investigations, bill
collection, affiliate and
rewards programs and co-branded
credit cards).
-
Other third parties to whom
you explicitly ask us to
send your information (or
about whom you are otherwise
explicitly notified and
consent to when using a
specific service).
-
Law enforcement or other
governmental officials, in
response to a verified
request relating to a
criminal investigation or
alleged illegal activity. In
such events, we will
disclose information
relevant to the
investigation, such as name,
city, state, zip code,
telephone number, email
address, User ID history, IP
address, fraud complaints,
and bidding and listing
history.
-
VeRO Program
participants under
confidentiality agreement,
as we in our sole discretion
believe necessary or
appropriate in connection
with an investigation of
fraud, intellectual property
infringement, piracy, or
other unlawful activity. In
such events, we will
disclose name, street
address, city, state, zip
code, country, phone number,
email address and company
name.
-
Other business entities,
should we plan to merge with
or be acquired by that
business entity. (Should
such a combination occur, we
will require that the new
combined entity follow this
privacy policy with respect
to your personal information.
If your personal information
will be used contrary to
this policy, you will
receive prior notice.)
Without limiting the above, in an
effort to respect your privacy and
our ability to keep the community
free from bad actors, we will not
otherwise disclose your personal
information to law enforcement,
other government officials, or other
third parties without a subpoena,
court order or substantially similar
legal procedure, except when we
believe in good faith that the
disclosure of information is
necessary to prevent imminent
physical harm or financial loss or
to report suspected illegal activity.
Information You Share on
Your
User ID is displayed throughout
(and so available to the public),
and is connected to all of your
activity. Other people can see your
bids, purchases, items for sale,
storefronts, feedback, ratings and
associated comments. Notices sent to
other community members about
suspicious activity and policy
violations on our sites refer to
User IDs and specific items. So if
you associate your name with your
User ID, the people to whom you have
revealed your name will be able to
personally identify your
activities.
If
you access our sites from a shared
computer or a computer in an
internet café, certain information
about you, such as your User ID,
activity or reminders from , may
also be visible to other individuals
who use the computer after you.
Using
Information from
enables you to share personal and
financial information to complete
transactions. We encourage you to
disclose your privacy practices and
respect the privacy of other users.
We cannot guarantee the privacy or
security of your information and
therefore we encourage you to
evaluate the privacy and security
policies of your trading partner
before entering into a transaction
and choosing to share your
information. To help protect your
privacy, we allow only limited
access to other users' contact,
shipping and financial information
to facilitate your transactions.
When users are involved in a
transaction, they
may have access to each other's
name, User ID, email address and
other contact and shipping
information. In all cases, you must
give other users a chance to remove
themselves from your database and a
chance to review what information
you have collected about them.
You
agree to use user information only
for:
-
transaction-related
purposes that are not
unsolicited commercial
messages;
-
using services offered
through (e.g.
escrow, insurance, shipping
and fraud complaints), or
-
other purposes that a user
expressly chooses.
Cookies
We use
"cookies" (small files placed on
your hard drive) on certain of our
pages to help analyze our web page
flow; customize our services,
content and advertising; measure
promotional effectiveness, and
promote trust and safety. For more
information about why we use cookies,
see
Cookies, Web Beacons, and Your
Privacy.
A few
important things you should know
about cookies are that:
-
We offer certain features
that are available only through
the use of cookies.
-
We use cookies to help
identify you and maintain
your signed-in status.
-
Most cookies are "session
cookies," meaning that they
are automatically deleted
from your hard drive at the
end of a session.
-
You are always free to
decline our cookies if your
browser permits, although
doing so may interfere with
your use of some of our
sites or services.
-
You may encounter cookies
from third parties on
certain pages of the sites
that we do not control. (For
example, if you view a web
page created by another user,
there may be a cookie placed
by that web page.)
No
Spam, Spyware or Spoofing
We and
our users do not tolerate spam. Make
sure to set your notification
preferences so we communicate to you
as you prefer. You are not licensed
to add other users, even a user
who has purchased an item from you,
to your mailing list (email or
physical mail) without their express
consent. To report -related spam
or spoof emails to , please
forward the email to us. You may not use
our communication tools to send spam
or otherwise send content that would
violate our User Agreement. We
automatically scan and may manually
filter messages to check for spam,
viruses, phishing attacks and other
malicious activity or illegal or
prohibited content, but we do not
permanently store messages sent
through these tools. If you send an
email to an email address that is
not registered in our community (via
Refer-a-Friend or other tools), we
do not permanently store that email
or use that email address for any
marketing purpose. We do not rent or
sell these email addresses.
Account Protection
Your
password is the key to your account.
Use unique numbers, letters and
special characters, and do not
disclose your password to
anyone. If you do share your
password or your personal
information with others, remember
that you are responsible for all
actions taken in the name of your
account. If you lose control of your
password, you may lose substantial
control over your personal
information and may be subject to
legally binding actions taken on
your behalf. Therefore, if your
password has been compromised for
any reason, you should immediately
notify and change your password.
Accessing, Reviewing and Changing
Your Personal Information
You
can see, review and change most of
your personal information by signing
on to . Generally, we will not
manually modify your personal
information because it is very
difficult to verify your identity
remotely. You must promptly update
your personal information if it
changes or is inaccurate. Once you
make a public posting, you may not
be able to change or remove it. Upon
your request, we will close your
account and remove your personal
information from view as soon as
reasonably possible, based on your
account activity and in accordance
with applicable law. We do retain
personal information from closed
accounts to comply with law, prevent
fraud, collect any fees owed,
resolve disputes, troubleshoot
problems, assist with any
investigations, enforce our User Agreement, and take
other actions otherwise permitted by
law.
Security
Your
information is stored on our servers
located in the United States. We
treat data as an asset that must be
protected and use lots of tools (encryption,
passwords, physical security, etc.)
to protect your personal information
against unauthorized access and
disclosure. However, as you probably
know, third parties may unlawfully
intercept or access transmissions or
private communications, and other
users may abuse or misuse your
personal information that they
collect from the site. Therefore,
although we work very hard to
protect your privacy, we do not
promise, and you should not expect,
that your personal information or
private communications will always
remain private.
Third
Parties
Except
as otherwise expressly included in
this Privacy Policy, this document
addresses only the use and
disclosure of information we collect
from you. If you disclose your
information to others, whether they
are bidders, buyers or sellers on
our sites or other sites throughout
the internet, different rules may
apply to their use or disclosure of
the information you disclose to them.
does not control the privacy
policies of third parties, and you
are subject to the privacy policies
of those third parties where
applicable. We encourage you to ask
questions before you disclose your
personal information to others.
General
We may
amend this Privacy Policy at any
time by posting the amended terms on
this site. All amended terms
automatically take effect 30 days
after they are initially posted on
the site. In addition, we will
notify you through the Message
Center. If your questions are not
answered online, you may write to us
at: Inc. Attn: Legal - Global
Privacy Practices, 2145 Hamilton
Avenue, San Jose, California 95125,
or using the
Contact Us form.