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ZooBid Privacy Policy
We Respect Your Privacy.
We respect the privacy of all our users. Your personal information is never divulged to third parties or any other outside organizations without your explicit consent. You should familiarize yourself with ZooBid's Privacy Policy and the manner in which we use and protect the personal information you supply to us upon registration at ZooBid.
If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy, please E-mail ZooBid at privacy@ZooBid.com.
You may obtain additional information about our privacy policies and the security of your personal information by contacting thawte, which verifies security and privacy of commercial websites. For more information on thawte, please go to www.thawte.com.
Overview
The privacy practices of this statement apply to our services available under the domain of www.ZooBid.com (hereinafter the "website" or the "Site"). By registering with ZooBid as a user, you hereby agree to the terms and conditions of ZooBid's Privacy Policy as stated herein. If you are not in agreement with the policies stated in our Privacy Policy, we ask that you do not use or access ZooBid's website. This Privacy Policy outlines the personal information ZooBid collects from its registered users and what we do with that information.
ZooBid has developed a comprehensive Privacy Policy to inform you in detail about ZooBid's practices so that users may have the information they need to proceed with safety and security. When you accept the Privacy Policy and the User Agreement upon registration, you expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to the terms of the ZooBid User Agreement. This Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance in registration for new registering users, and is otherwise effective on March 30, 2005.
1. No Minors Allowed on ZooBid.
Minors (children under the age of eighteen) may not use ZooBid without adult supervision, and may not use ZooBid or its services without express written permission from a parent or legal guardian. We request that minors do not provide any personal information to ZooBid.
2. What Information Do We Collect?
Why do we collect personal information about our users? Our main reason is to provide our users with increased safety and security as you use our site. The only personal information we collect from you is that which we need to attain this goal.
Users may browse ZooBid's site without identifying yourself or disclosing any personal information about yourself to us. Upon registration, you are required to provide us with certain personal information about yourself. From that point on, your identity is revealed to us. Upon your election to register with ZooBid and use its services, will require your identity and contact information, as well as billing and shipping information and any other information required on our registration form. Some fields on the registration form are indicated as required fields, and some are indicated as optional. You have the option to refuse to divulge any of this information. If you decline to reveal this information, your registration will be refused and you should not avail yourself of any/all of ZooBid's services. Additionally, ZooBid may require certain additional information from you, for instance if you register with ZooBid from a free E-mail service (eg. Hotmail, Juno or Yahoo) or if you are registering with ZooBid as a seller of any item.
Your credit card information, together with other financial information provided by you, is used by ZooBid in order to verify certain information about you, such as your name and address, and also to bill you for services used on ZooBid. Some information is tracked automatically as you use our site. This information is used to protect the privacy and security of all ZooBid users, and also helps our research personnel to make improvements to our site and to better keep track of our users' demographics and other behavior. This includes, but is not limited to the following:
* The URL from which you entered the ZooBid site;
* The URL to which you go after leaving ZooBid;
* Information about your computer's operating system and browser;
* Your Internet Protocol (IP) address.
ZooBid uses "http cookies" on certain of the pages of the site. Cookies are small electronic files which are stored on your computer's hard drive. These cookies are used by ZooBid to track activity of our users, as well as to simplify your browsing experience, for example by allowing you to enter your ZooBid password less frequently each time you browse. Cookies are also necessary in your "MyZooBid" section, enabling us to track and simplify your user experience while on ZooBid. Certain pages on ZooBid's site will not be accessible unless the user elects to accept cookies for that page. At all times, you are free to instruct your browser not to accept any particular cookie. In such cases, you will not be able to access the page in question. There may also be cookies placed on ZooBid's site by third parties. For example, if you view a web page that was created by another ZooBid user, the creator of that site may have embedded cookies into it. ZooBid cannot control third party cookies. If you feel that you do not wish to allow certain cookies, you are always free to reject that cookie, which action will prevent you from accessible the page containing that particular cookie. You will still be able to browse other pages which may not contain that third party cookie. Please note: all bidders, buyers, and sellers on ZooBid are required to accept ZooBid cookies in order to gain access to the bidding, buying or selling services offered therein. These cookies allow us to track the bidding, buying and selling behavior of all ZooBid users. ZooBid also collects comments about you submitted by other ZooBid users. These comments are posted in ZooBid's feedback area.
In cases where you elect to charge ZooBid fees to your credit card, we collect certain additional information, including billing address, credit card details, and information to track bank checks and Money Orders.
In the case of users of ZooBid chat or feedback areas, information we collect in such instances is retained and may be used to resolve disputes between users, provide better customer support to users, and to rectify any problems as allowed by law. Any E-mails or physical correspondence sent to ZooBid by you may be collected in a specific personal file.
3. How ZooBid Uses Your Information.
Your ZooBid information is used to help us provide the services you desire. The personal information gathered may be maintained in a file and may be used for any of the following reasons:
* In dispute resolution;
* To encourage and ensure fair and safe trading practices;
* To collect fees owed;
* To measure users' interest in ZooBid's products and services;
* To troubleshoot problems;
* To make users aware of promotions and special offers, and to keep users apprised of new developments at ZooBid;
* To personalize your recurring ZooBid visits;
* To help find errors, fraud and/or criminal activity, and to protect ZooBid and all its users against such errors, fraud and/or criminal activity;
* To ensure that users of ZooBid are in compliance with the terms of our User Agreement;
In the case of users with multiple ID's, ZooBid may check personal information to identify users who are operating on ZooBid using multiple ID's.
If you elect to list an item for sale on ZooBid, or if you use a credit card to set up a ZooBid user account, ZooBid uses your address and billing information to bill you and to provide support for your account.
4. How Your Information May Be Disclosed By ZooBid.
It is ZooBid's policy not to divulge in any way the personal information you provided upon registration. However, there are certain situations in the normal operation of business where ZooBid may disclose certain information. Some of these situations, without limit, are enumerated as follows:
A) To Advertisers.
ZooBid accumulates data from our users which is regularly submitted to third parties for their marketing purposes. This information can not be used by the recipient/s of the information to identify you personally.
B) Within the ZooBid Community.
Once you register with ZooBid and become a member, your User ID becomes available to all other users of ZooBid, and all your activities on ZooBid will be traceable through your User ID. The following information about you will be available to all users of ZooBid:
* Your past bidding history on ZooBid;
* All items that you have previously bought through ZooBid's website;
* Your ZooBid rating as determined by other ZooBid users in the Feedback area, together with any comments other users have filed about you;
* Postings that you have made to ZooBid's site in the past.
If there is any connection between your name and your User ID on ZooBid, other ZooBid users will be able to identify and follow your activities on ZooBid. Although we institute precautions against theft of your E-mail by third parties, it is possible for individuals to illegally circumvent ZooBid's security and privacy precautions and make attempts to obtain E-mail addresses and other personal information from users. To limit this, we have instituted ways for you to change or make additions to the user information you submit to ZooBid.
ZooBid users may also access your User ID and other related personal information in the following circumstances:
* If you buy or sell and item on ZooBid, other users are able to see your E-mail address and shipping information; and
* We reserve the right to send notices to any ZooBid user and to the ZooBid community at large, in connection with activity on ZooBid that is deemed suspicious or which is suspected of violating either ZooBid's User Agreement or Privacy Policy.
C) To External Service Providers.
External service parties are any of the various entities that offer services through ZooBid to users, such as escrow services, listing agents, authentication/verification services, and companies that are involved in mediation, shipping, handling or packaging. If you elect to use any of these services provided by third parties, their individual privacy policies will determine what they will do with your information.
Your personal information is not disclosed to these third party outside service providers without your express consent. In case where you do provide your consent, ZooBid may divulge some of your personal information to these third parties for marketing purposes. If you do not wish us to disclose any information to such third parties, you have the choice to either: a)choose the option to decline consent to having your information disclosed, or b)not to retain the services of these third party external service providers. Before you give your consent to these third parties, you should examine closely their individual privacy policies, which exclusively govern how they treat your privacy and the information submitted to them. Please note that ZooBid has no control over these third parties: the privacy of each third party will outline those policies for you, and you are free to accept or reject each/every one.
D) Internal Service Providers.
In certain instances, ZooBid employs the services of certain third parties, referred to herein as "Internal Service Providers" to provide certain services, including, but not limited to, the following services: chat rooms, bill collection, rewards and affiliate programs, search technology and/or co-branded credit card programs. Each of these third party Internal Service Providers has a legal agreement with ZooBid, included in which are confidentiality agreements restricting what these third parties may do with your personal information. In some instances, the third party in question may contact you directly. Any additional information about yourself which you provide to that third party is protected by that entity's privacy policy. Prior to providing any additional information to third party entities, please make sure to read their privacy policy.
E) Other Corporate Entities
ZooBid reserves the right to engage in operations with other corporate entities, which may be subsidiaries or joint ventures with ZooBid. In such cases, ZooBid will share data, including certain personal information provided by you, with those entities. These entities will be bound by confidentiality agreements with ZooBid, and will be bound to protect your information through privacy policies similar to those of ZooBid.
If ZooBid is a party to a corporate merger or acquisition, ZooBid's Privacy policy will remain in effect regarding the disclosure of your personal information.
In any instance where your personal information is used in ways not outlined in this Privacy Policy, you will be informed as outlined in Section 10 ("Notice").
Legal Requests.
Users of ZooBid hereby authorize ZooBid to disclose certain personal information, such as your name, phone number, E-mail address, your ZooBid User ID or past transaction history on ZooBid, when requested by a verified law enforcement or other government official without a subpoena, in cases where ZooBid deems this necessary to prevent harm, financial loss, or to prevent illegal activity. Other than these circumstances, ZooBid will not disclose your information to others in the normal course of business. However, it is important to point out that it is unreasonable for ZooBid users to expect that this personal information will never be disclosed, either deliberately, accidentally, or through the illegal actions of a third party. We make every effort to protect your privacy, but cannot guarantee, nor can you expect, that there will never be any situation/s where your information will not be divulged.
5. Your Use of Other Users' Information.
There are certain situations where you will have access to certain personal information provided by others. For instance, as a seller, you will have access to certain information pertaining to the winning bidder, including their identity, E-mail address, shipping information and other information. As a buyer, you will have access to certain personal information about the seller of the item. This information is made available to you on condition that you do not use this information except to directly conduct within ZooBid, and you hereby agree that you will not use the personal information of any ZooBid user except during the conducting of bona-fide ZooBid business. You further hereby agree that you will not make any such personal information available to any third party for any reason.
In order for buyers and sellers to conduct business on ZooBid, certain personal information supplied by you on registration must be made available to other users of ZooBid. Examples where this may be done are:
* Sellers will have access to certain information about the buyer or eventual bid winner, such as the buyer's User ID, certain contact information including the buyer's E-mail address and shipping information;
* As a buyer, you will have access to certain of the seller's information, including their User ID, and certain contact information, including the seller's E-mail address and shipping information supplied upon registration.
By using ZooBid's services, and thereby accepting the terms and conditions of ZooBid's User Agreement, users agree not to use the personal information of other ZooBid users, supplied in the normal course of ZooBid business, for any purposes other than to conduct business on ZooBid. Users hereby agree not to use other user's E-mail address or other personal information for any illegal purposes, or for any purposes other than the normal operation of trading on ZooBid and its affiliated websites. If users wish to wish the personal information of other users, they must first obtain express written permission to do so. Even if consensual, access to this personal information must always be made available to the owner of the information, who must always retain the right to have themselves removed from any such database/s.
ZooBid users also hereby agree:
* to not disclose the personal information of other ZooBid users without the express permission of the user/s concerned, except as provided in this section;
* to allow other users of ZooBid to communicate with them through the E-mail address provided to ZooBid upon registration and made available thereafter to other bona fide ZooBid users;
* not to add the addresses or E-mail addresses of other ZooBid users to their address or E-mail address book without the express consent of the user/s in question.
Users of other ZooBid programs may have additional rights regarding access to personal information. Please consult the policy page for that ZooBid program for more details.
Users also hereby agree not to send unsolicited E-mail, or other messages known as Spam, to any other ZooBid user. As stated in ZooBid's Privacy Policy, ZooBid reserves the right to suspend the account and/or cancel the membership of any ZooBid user who transmits Spam or other unwanted E-mail to other ZooBid users over ZooBid's site. Users also hereby agree to use in the appropriate way any E-mail tools provided by ZooBid for the transmitting of electronic data over its network, and agree not to send Spam over any of these E-mail devices. ZooBid does not transfer these E-mail addresses to any third parties, except as provided herein.
If you feel you are the victim of Spam or unwanted ZooBid-related E-mails from other users, please report Spam here.
6. Keeping Your Password Confidential.
You should keep your ZooBid password private and store it where no one can retrieve it without your permission. Your password identifies the user, who is responsible for his/her actions while operating on the ZooBid network. Your password also allows access to your personal information, which information can be changed by anyone who provides the correct password. If you share your password with anyone else other than yourself, you are still responsible for anything that might transpire while using your password and/or User ID. You should therefore exercise extreme caution with regard to sharing your password with anyone else. You should regularly check that your password and User ID are still in good order. Losing your password may cause your personal information to be divulged or accessed without your permission, or even changed, resulting in legal actions being taken against you. A suggestion is to change your password regularly, making it harder to steal or compromise. You may change your password or user information as stated in Section 7 below.
7. Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information.
If you wish to alter or change the personal information you submitted upon registration, you may do so at any time. Your password will give you access to your user information, and you may change any/all of it and resubmit to ZooBid. The old information you previously submitted will no longer be seen, but you cannot erase information that has been publicly posted anywhere on ZooBid, whether by sending an E-mail, listing an item, submitting a bid, talking in a chat room, or anywhere else on ZooBid. You are responsible for making sure that the personal information about you posted to ZooBid is accurate, and make any necessary changes in a prompt and timely fashion. Please make all changes to personal information yourself. ZooBid cannot respond to requests to post changes to personal information since it is difficult for ZooBid to verify the authenticity of such requests. If you want to change some information about yourself, go ahead and do it.
At any time, ZooBid will honor any request to have an account deactivated and your personal information removed from our databases. Please note that even after your account has been deactivated and your personal information is no longer be available to other users of ZooBid, certain information may be retained within our files for internal use in our marketing, legal and database departments, but will no longer be publicly available over ZooBid.
8. Information Given to Other Users.
This Privacy Policy only governs the use and disclosure of personal information supplied by you to ZooBid. We cannot control what may happen to any information you disclose to other people. Caution is the key word. Reveal only the information necessary to conclude your transaction and make a sale or purchase on ZooBid.
9.Safety and Security.
Personal information provided by ZooBid users is stored on computer servers within the United States. Several systems and techniques, both physical and electronic, are employed by ZooBid to establish the highest possible degree of safety and security of your information and all the data on our servers. However, even though we may take several physical and technological precautions, security may be compromised and information may be accessed and misused by unscrupulous users. There is no such thing as "Perfect Security" regarding transactions over the Internet.
10. Notice.
This Privacy Policy may be amended at any time by ZooBid. Amended terms will be posted to ZooBid's Privacy Policy page/s, and users will be notified by the method stipulated upon registration. Changes/amendments to ZooBid's Privacy Policy become effective 30 days from the date of posting.
For more information, please see our A-Z of help topics here: Help topics
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