Privacy Statement
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Effective on: 9/19/11
Briefing.com has been awarded TRUSTe's Privacy Seal signifying that this privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with TRUSTe's program requirements including transparency, accountability and choice regarding the collection and use of your personal information. TRUSTe's mission, as an independent third party, is to accelerate online trust among consumers and organizations globally through its leading privacy trustmark and innovative trust solutions.
If users have questions or concerns regarding this statement, they should first contact Cassandra Bayna by writing cbayna@briefing.com or calling 312-670-4463 x248. If they do not receive acknowledgment of their inquiry or their inquiry is not satisfactorily addressed, they should then contact TRUSTe through the
TRUSTe Watchdog Dispute Resolution Process. TRUSTe will serve as a liaison with the Web site to resolve users concerns. By displaying the TRUSTe trustmark, Briefing.com has agreed to notify users of:
Information Collection and Use
Information Collection Briefing.com is the sole owner of the information collected on www.briefing.com. Briefing.com collects information from our users at several different points on our Web site. We do not share, sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties
for unknown reasons.
Registration Briefing.com has a
free non-subscription area within the Investor service which does not require registration of any kind as well as a free mobile version of the Investor service which does not require registration of any kind. Any user is free to access this area of the Web site or the Investor mobile site without submitting any personal contact information. Briefing.com also has
several subscription areas in the site as well as a mobile site which subscribers may access. In order to use these subscription areas
in the Web site or the subscription-based mobile site, a user must first complete a registration form. During registration a user is required to give contact information (such as name and e-mail address). We use this information to contact the user about services on our site for which he has purchased a subscription to access; and unique identifiers (such as, username and password). We request information from the user on our subscriber form. A user must provide contact information (such as name, e-mail, and mailing address) and financial information (such as credit card number, expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes. If we have trouble processing an order, the information is used to contact the user. If you choose to send a gift subscription, we will ask you for the gift recipient’s contact information (such as name, e-mail, and mailing address). We will send the gift recipient an e-mail notifying them that a gift subscription has been ordered for them. Briefing.com stores this information as part of the subscription.
If a gift subscription recipient does not wish to have their information stored by Briefing.com, they have the option to de-activate their account. For more information, please see the Choice and Opt-out sections.
Information Use Profile
We store information that we collect through log files, clear gifs, and/or third parties to create a profile of our users. The profile is used as a whole, rather than individually to track user preferences, but not individual patterns of use. We do not share your profile with other third parties.The ads appearing on this Web site are delivered to users by DoubleClick, our Web advertising partner. Information about users' visit to this site, such as number of times they have viewed an ad (but not user name, address, or other personal information), is used to serve ads to users on this site. For more information about DoubleClick, cookies, and how to "opt-out", please click here.This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by Briefing.com only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site. Use of Briefing.com's subscription services requires the use of persistent cookies. To activate persistent cookies, Briefing.com servers will forward a piece of information to the user's hard drive for storage. By allowing this cookie to be "set", users do not have to log in a password to Briefing.com more than once and their personal preferences will be saved, thereby making for a better site experience.
Users of Briefing.com's free Investor area may reject the cookie and still continue to use the
free Investor portion of the site. Also, some Briefing.com business partners make use of cookies on our site (for example, advertisers). However, Briefing.com has no access to or control over these cookies once permission has been given for them to be set.
Like most standard Web site servers we use log files. This includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user's movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses, etc. are not linked to personally identifiable information. We use a tracking utility called WebTrends that uses log files to analyze user movement. These log files are not tied to the user’s personal information.
DoubleClick, our third party advertising company, employs a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs), 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 movements of Web users. The main difference between the two is that clear gifs are invisible on the page and are much smaller, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Clear gifs are not tied to users' personally identifiable information.
Clear
gifs can "work with" existing cookies on a computer if they are both from the same Web site or advertising company. That means, for example, that if a person visited "www.companyX.com", which uses an advertising company's clear gif, DoubleClick would match the clear gif's identifier and the advertising company's cookie ID number, to show the past online behavior for that computer. This collected information would then be given to DoubleClick. To learn more about our advertising company's use of clear gifs, please go to
www.DoubleClick.com In addition, we use clear gifs in our HTML-based e-mails to let us know which e-mails have been opened by the recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. If users would like to opt-out of these e-mails, please see the Opt-out section.
Communications from the Site
Special Offers and Updates
We will occasionally email information on products, services, and special deals
for users who opt-in to receive them. Out of respect for the privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see the Choice and Opt-out sections.
Newsletter
If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletters,
they must opt-in to receive them and we ask for contact information such as name and e-mail address. Out of respect for our users privacy we provide a way to opt-out of these communications. Please see the Choice and Opt-out sections.
Service Announcements
We send out service-related emails when it is necessary to do so. For instance, if
we are experiencing technical difficulties or if we have implemented
new enhancements to our users' service, we may send an
e-mail notification. Generally, users 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 de-activate your account. For more
information, please see the Choice and Opt-out sections.
Customer Service We send all new members a
confirmation e-mail to verify password and username after
registration. We also communicate with users on a regular basis to
provide requested services as well as to notify users of issues relating to their account.
We reply via e-mail or phone, in accordance with the user's
preferences. Generally, users 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 de-activate your
account. For more information, please see the Choice and Opt-out
sections.
Sharing
Legal Disclaimer
Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our Web site.
Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable)
We share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. This is not linked to any personally identifiable information.
Third Party Advertisers
Briefing.com shares Web site usage information about users with a
reputable third party DoubleClick for the purpose of targeting our Internet banner advertisements on this site and other sites. For example, DoubleClick uses cookies and clear
gifs on this site, which allow them to recognize a user's cookie when a user visits this site. The information they collect and share through this technology is not personally identifiable. For more information about our third-party advertiser or for choices about not having this anonymous information used please click here.
These are the instances in which we will share users' personal information:
We share personal
information with Investor's Business Daily. As part of a free
trial to Briefing.com, new users are offered the opportunity to
also take a free trial subscription to IBD. If a reader opts-in
for this service, their name, mailing address and phone number
are shared.
We use an outside credit card processing company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
Service Providers
We may license content from other third parties such as Capital IQ, Deutsche Borse, FactSet, Wall Street Horizon and Retail Metrics for the benefit of our readers. We do not share any information with our third party content providers.
Business Transitions
In the event Briefing.com goes through a business transition, such as a merger, being acquired by another company, or selling a portion of its assets, users' personal information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred. Users will be notified via prominent notice on our Web site for 30 days prior to a change of ownership or control of their personal information. If as a result of the business transition, the users' personally identifiable information will be used in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection they will be given choice consistent with our notification of changes section.
Choice/Opt-out Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional
communications may opt-out of receiving these communications by managing their
e-mail preferences within their service under Account Settings. Alternatively, all emails have a "remove me" link at the
very bottom of the email which will automatically remove the email address
associated with that particular email offering. OR the user may contact us at
800-752-3013 or 312-670-4463; service@briefing.com or by writing to us at:
401 N Michigan Avenue Suite 2910 Chicago, IL 60611 to opt-out.
Links This Web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we, Briefing.com, are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by Briefing.com. Logging in with Facebook Connect
You can log in to our site using Facebook Connect. This service will authenticate your identity and provide you the option to share certain personal information with us such as your name and email address to pre-populate our sign up form. Services like Facebook Connect give you the option to post information about your activities on this Web site to your profile page to share with others within your network.
Surveys From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. The requested information typically includes demographic information (such as income and online trading habits). This anonymous survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site. Though we may use an intermediary to conduct these surveys, they may not use users' personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
Security
This Web site takes every precaution to protect our users' information. When users submit sensitive information via the Web site, their information is protected both online and off-line.When our registration form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number) that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL. While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Chrome, FireFox, and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when users are just 'surfing'. While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job [for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative] are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use password-protected screen-savers when they leave their desk. When they return, they must re-enter their password to re-gain access to user information. Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. At the time of hire, as well as any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our users' information is protected. Finally, the servers that store personally identifiable information are in a secure environment, in a state-of the-art co-location locked facility. If users have any questions about the security at our Web site, users can send an e-mail to service@briefing.com.
Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating Personal Information If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as zip code, phone, e-mail or postal address), or if a user no longer desires our service, we provide a way to correct, update or delete/deactivate users' personally identifiable information. This can be done by e-mailing our Customer Support at service@briefing.com. Or
users may contact us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed below. We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
Notification of Changes If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.If, however, we are going to use users' personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify users via e-mail. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. However, if users have opted out of all communication with the site, or deleted/deactivated their account, then they will not be contacted, nor will their personal information be used in this new manner. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices that do not affect user information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice on our Web site notifying users of the change. In some cases where we post a notice we will also e-mail users, who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices.
Contact Information If users have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at: Phone: 800-752-3013 or 312-670-4463
Fax: 312-670-5761 E-mail: service@briefing.com Postal Address: 401 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 2910, Chicago, IL 60611 Web Site URL: www.briefing.com
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