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Trading Places:
The ABCs of Home Exchange
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Privacy Statement for HomeExchange.com™
HomeExchange.com™ (the "Club") has created this Privacy Statement (the
"Privacy Statement") as part of our commitment to helping our members better understand
what information we collect about them and what we may do with that information. This
Privacy Statement is incorporated into and subject to the terms of the Club's Terms and
Conditions.
The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices.
1. Your Use of other Members' Information
By accepting this Privacy Statement, you agree that, with respect to other members'
personally identifiable information that you obtain through the Services, the Club
hereby grants to you a license to use such information only for: (a) Club related
communications that are not unsolicited commercial messages, and (b) any other purpose
to which such member expressly agrees after complete disclosure of the purpose. In all
cases, you must give members an opportunity to remove themselves from your database. In
addition, under no circumstances, except as defined in this Privacy Statement, may you
disclose personally identifiable information about another member to any third party
without our consent and the consent of such other member after adequate disclosure. The
Club and our members do not tolerate spam. Therefore, without limiting the foregoing,
you are not licensed to add a Club member to your mail list (email or physical mail)
without their express consent after adequate disclosure.
2. Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Profile
Following registration, you can review and change the information you submitted during
registration. For instructions on how to do so, visit the Help section of the Website.
If you change your password and email address we will retain a record of your old
password and email address. You can also change your registration information such as:
name, address, city, state, zip code, country, phone number, postings and saved search
criteria.
Upon your notification, we will remove your membership from our active databases as
soon as reasonably possible in accordance with our policy and applicable law. To learn
how to hide or remove your profile so that others cannot view it, visit the Help
section of the Websites.
We will retain in our files information you have requested be removed from our active
databases for certain purposes, such as to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems and
enforce our terms and conditions. Further, such prior information may never be
completely removed from our databases due to technical and legal constraints, including
stored ‘back up' systems. Therefore, you should not expect that all
of your personally identifiable information will be completely removed from our
databases in response to any request you may submit.
3. Information We Collect
Our primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide you with a smooth,
efficient, and customized experience. This allows us to provide services and features
and to customize our service to make your experience better. You agree that we may
feature members' postings, including your postings, in, among other places, editorials
and newsletters that we may periodically send out to our members. The only information
which will be posted is the information which you choose to display when you create
your posting. Your postings can be viewed by other members and the general public and
we cannot prevent third parties from copying and displaying information which is
posted. While we cannot prevent such actions by third parties, the content of our
Website is copyright protected and it is our policy to prosecute any such improper
copying of information which you have posted. To the extent you do not want certain
information to be viewed, do not place that information on your posting. We may,
through agreements with other websites, allow your listing information to be posted on
such websites. Such postings will not include any of your contact information, nor will
we allow those websites or their users to contact you directly, but we will instead
have those users re-directed to our Website and/or your listing on this Website. Please
note that your personally identifiable information will be stored and processed on our
computers in the United States. The laws regarding the handling of personal data in the
United States may differ from the laws of other countries but, as we explain below, we
will hold and transmit your information in a safe, confidential and secure
environment.
4. Use of “Cookiesâ€
We use data collection devices such as "cookies" on certain pages of our Website.
"Cookies" are small files placed on your hard drive that assist us in providing
customized services. We also offer certain features that are only available through the
use of a "cookie." Cookies can also help us provide information which is targeted to
your interests. We use this information to determine our members' demographics,
interests, and behavior to better understand and serve you and our community. This
information may include the URL of the website that you visited prior to our Website
(whether this is on our site or not), the URL of the website you next go to (whether
this URL is on our site or not), what browser you are using, and your Internet Protocol
("IP") address. 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. We may use a third party advertising company to
serve ads on our behalf across the Internet. That advertising company may also collect
anonymous information about your visits to our Website. This is primarily accomplished
through the use of a technology device, commonly referred to as a Web beacon, cookie or
an action tag, which is placed on various Web pages within our Website or in an HTML
e-mail that allows the third party advertising company to collect anonymous
information. There may also be a number of services offered by external service
providers that help you use our Website. If you choose to use these optional services,
and in the course of doing so, disclose information to the external service providers,
and/or grant them permission to collect information about you, then their use of your
information is governed by their private policies, if any.
Some of the third party advertisers that we use have their own privacy policies and may
allow you to opt out of having your information collected as discussed above.
5. Our Use of Your Information
We use information in the files we maintain about you, and the other information we
obtain from your current and past activities on the Website to resolve disputes,
troubleshoot problems and enforce our Terms and Conditions. At times, we may review the
data of multiple members to identify problems or resolve disputes. In addition, there
may be instances arising out of a verified exchange that one party to the exchange may
have an urgent need for the other exchange member’s contact
information. In those instances, we may, in our sole and absolute discretion, provide a
member's contact information to the other member of such verified
exchange. You agree that we may use personally identifiable information about you to
improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyze Website usage, improve our
content and product offerings, and customize our Website's content, layout, and
services. These uses improve our Website and may better tailor them to meet your needs.
You agree that we may use your information to contact you and to deliver information to
you that, in some cases, is targeted to your interests, such as targeted banner
advertisements, administrative notices, product offerings, and communications relevant
to your use of the Websites. By accepting this Privacy Statement, you expressly agree
to receive this information. If you do not wish to receive these communications, you
may opt out of the receipt of certain communications.
6. Our Disclosure of Your Information
Due to the regulatory environment in which we operate, we cannot ensure that all of
your private communications and other personally identifiable information will never be
disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Privacy Statement. By way of example
(without limiting any of the foregoing), we may be required to disclose information to
the government, law enforcement agencies or third parties. Under certain circumstances,
third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private
communications, or members may abuse or misuse your information that they collect from
our Website. Accordingly, although we use industry standard practices to protect your
privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personally
identifiable information or private communications will always remain private.
As a matter of policy, we do not sell or rent any personally
identifiable information about you to any third party. However, the following describes
some of the ways that your personally identifiable information may be used or
disclosed.
Financial Information. Under some circumstances we may require certain
additional information, including but not limited to your credit card billing
information. We use this financial information, including your name, address, and other
information to bill you for use of our services. By making a purchase, or engaging in
any other kind of activity or transaction that uses financial information on the
Websites, you consent to our providing of your financial information to our service
providers and to such third parties as we determine necessary to support and process
your activities and transactions, as well as to your credit card issuer for their
purposes. These third parties may include the credit card companies and banking
institutions used to process and support your transaction or activity. By purchasing,
or registering for, or making reservations for products or services of third parties
offered on the Websites, or by participating in programs offered on the Websites that
are administered by third parties and that require you to submit financial information
in order to use them, you also consent to our providing your financial information to
those third parties. Any of these various third parties may be authorized to use your
financial information in accordance with our contractual arrangements with such third
parties and in accordance with their own privacy policies, over which we have no
control, and you agree that we are not responsible or liable for any of their actions
or omissions. Additionally, you agree that we may use and disclose all information
submitted to such third parties in the same manner in which we are entitled to use and
disclose any other information that you submit to us.
Advertisers. We aggregate (gather up data across multiple members'
accounts) personally identifiable information and disclose such information in a
non-personally identifiable manner to advertisers and other third parties for marketing
and promotional purposes. However, in these situations, we do not disclose to these
entities any information that could be used to identify you personally. Certain
information, such as your name, email address, password, credit card number and bank
account number, are never disclosed to marketing advertisers. We may use third-party
advertising companies to serve ads on our behalf. These companies may employ cookies
and action tags (also known as single pixel gifs or web beacons) to measure advertising
effectiveness.
Legal Requests. The Club cooperates with law enforcement inquiries, as
well as other third parties to enforce laws, such as: intellectual property rights,
fraud and other rights. We can (and you authorize us to) disclose any information about
you to law enforcement and other government officials as we, in our sole discretion,
believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with any investigation of fraud,
intellectual property infringements, or other activity that is illegal or may expose us
or you to legal liability.
7. Regarding Children
Children are not eligible to use our services, and we ask that minors (under the age of
18) not submit any personal information to us.
8. Control of Your Password
You are responsible for all actions taken with your login information and password,
including fees. Therefore we do not recommend that you disclose your password or login
information to any third party. If you choose to share this information with any third
party, you are responsible for all actions taken with your login information and
password, and therefore should review each third party's Privacy Statement. If you lose
control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personally
identifiable information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your
behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised in any way, you should
immediately change your password.
9. Other Information Collectors
Except as otherwise expressly described in this Privacy Statement, this document only
addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that
you disclose your information to other parties, whether they are on our Website or on
other sites throughout the Internet, different rules may apply to their use or
disclosure of the information you disclose to them. To the extent that we use third
party advertisers, they adhere to their own privacy policies. Since the Club does not
control the privacy policies of any third parties, you should investigate their
policies before you disclose your personal information to them.
10. Security
The Club uses industry standard practices, including "firewalls" and Secure Socket
Layers, to safeguard the confidentiality of your personal identifiable information. We
treat data as an asset that must be protected against loss and unauthorized access. We
employ many different security techniques to protect such data from unauthorized access
by others inside and outside the company. Therefore, please exercise caution with
regard to any personally identifiable information you submit for publication by our
service.
11. Notice
We may change this Privacy Statement from time to time based on changes in the law,
your comments, or our need to accurately reflect our data collection and disclosure
practices. We will notify you about significant changes in the way we treat personal
information by sending you a notice via email or by placing a prominent notice on our
Website.
Last updated: 25 July 2009
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