Policies
Privacy Policy
Last Updated on 12/7/2007
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 have been certified by the industry's leading privacy association, TrustE (see TrustE section below), who has undertaken a rigorous review of Watercooler's privacy policies, as laid out in this document. We operate under the following guiding principles:
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 a default display name, which we retain. Your display name serves as your publicly visible identity within all websites that serve Watercooler applications. Your display name is editable at any time by going to your profile page within your Watercooler application. By default, we assign your display name to be your first name only.
Watercooler abides by the terms of service of all partner sites. If you have any questions about your privacy, please contact privacy@watercooler-inc.com. Watercooler takes your privacy very seriously and will respond to all inquiries promptly.
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 use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend's name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. Watercooler stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our referral program.
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 you 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.
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.
Our Commitment To Children's Privacy
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.
TrustE Privacy Policy Certification
Watercooler-inc.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build user's trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the Web site www.watercooler-inc.com. Because this Web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact Customer Support at support@watercooler-inc.com. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily address, you should contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns.
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
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 have been certified by the industry's leading privacy association, TrustE (see TrustE section below), who has undertaken a rigorous review of Watercooler's privacy policies, as laid out in this document. 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 a default display name, which we retain. Your display name serves as your publicly visible identity within all websites that serve Watercooler applications. Your display name is editable at any time by going to your profile page within your Watercooler application. By default, we assign your display name to be your first name only.
Watercooler abides by the terms of service of all partner sites. If you have any questions about your privacy, please contact privacy@watercooler-inc.com. Watercooler takes your privacy very seriously and will respond to all inquiries promptly.
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 use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend's name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. Watercooler stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our referral program.
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 you 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.
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.
Our Commitment To Children's Privacy
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.
TrustE Privacy Policy Certification
Watercooler-inc.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build user's trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the Web site www.watercooler-inc.com. Because this Web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact Customer Support at support@watercooler-inc.com. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily address, you should contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns.
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