|
Overview
The privacy practices of this statement apply
to our services available under the domain and sub-domains of
www.autocastle.com.
By visiting this website you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of
this Privacy Policy.
As described below, as part of the normal business operation ,
your information is collected by us, disclosed to third parties and used by
third parties and us which is a nature of classifieds business . This Privacy
Policy describes the information we collect about you and what may happen to
that information. Although this policy may seem long, we have prepared a
detailed policy because we believe you should know as much as possible about
AutoCastle's practices so that you can make informed decisions.
By accepting the Privacy Policy and the User Agreement in
registration, you expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your
personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into
and subject to the terms of the AutoCastle User Agreement. This Privacy Policy
is effective on April 15th, 2002 for new registering users.
Table of Contents
-
Age Limitation.
Children are not eligible to use our services and we ask that minors (under the
age of 18) do not submit any personal information to us. If you are a minor -
use this service only in conjunction with your parents or guardians.
-
Information We Receive/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 that most likely meet your needs, and to customize our
service to make your experience easier.
In general, you are able to browse our website without revealing any personal
information. Once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous
to us. If you choose to use our services, we may require you to provide contact
and identity information, billing information, shipping information and other
personal information as indicated on the forms throughout our site. Where
possible, we indicate which fields are required and which fields are optional.
You always have a choice of not providing us with information about yourself by
not using particular services or features.
In some scenarios we may require some additional financial information, such
as, but not limited to: if you are registering bid, buy, or registering to sell
on our site. We use your financial information, including credit card
information to verify your name, address, and other information, as well as to
bill you for your use of our services.
We automatically track certain information based upon your behavior on our
site. We use this information to do internal research on our users'
demographics, interests, and behavior to better understand and serve you and
our community. This information may include the URL that you just came from
(whether this URL is on our site or not), which URL you next go to (whether
this URL is on our site or not), what browser you are using, and your IP
address.
We use data collection devices such as "cookies" on certain pages of our site
to help analyze our web page flow, measure promotional effectiveness, and
promote trust and safety. "Cookies" are small files placed on your hard drive
that assist us in providing customized services. We offer certain features that
are only available through the use of a "cookie". We also use cookies to allow
you to enter your password less frequently during a session. Cookies can also
help us provide information that is targeted to your interests. 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 in that case you may not be able to use
certain features on our site and you may be required to reenter your password
more frequently during a session.
Additionally, you may encounter "cookies" or other similar devices on certain
pages of our site that are placed by third parties. For example, if you view a
web page created by a user, there may be a "cookie" placed within that web
page. We do not control the use of cookies by third parties.
If you choose to bid, buy or sell on our site, we collect information about
your bidding, buying and selling behavior. We also collect other users'
comments about you in our feedback area.
If you establish a credit account with us to pay the fees we charge, we collect
some additional information, including a billing address, a credit card number
and a credit card expiration date and tracking information from checks or money
orders.
If you choose to post messages in our chat rooms or other message areas or
leave feedback for other users, we will collect that information you provide to
us.
If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails or letters, or if other
users or third parties send us correspondence about your activities or postings
on the site, we may collect such information into a file specific to you.
If you register for AutoCastle on another web site or use a web site providing
a service for AutoCastle or a web site that helps facilitate your activity on
AutoCastle, that web site may provide personal information about you and your
transactions back to AutoCastle.
-
Our Use of Your Information.
We use your information to facilitate the services you request. We use
information in the file we maintain about you, and other information we obtain
from your current and past activities on the site, to resolve disputes,
troubleshoot problems and enforce our User Agreement. At times, we may look
across multiple users to identify problems or resolve disputes, and in
particular we may examine your information to identify users using multiple
User IDs or aliases.
If you choose to list an item for sale( or bidding) on our site or open a
credit account, or otherwise provide us with your credit card information, we
use your address and billing information to bill you and provide associated
support.
You agree that we may use personally identifiable information about you to
improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyze site usage, improve
our content and product offerings, and customize our site's content, layout,
and services. These uses improve our site and better tailor it to meet your
needs.
You agree that we may use your information to contact you and deliver
information to you that, in some cases, are targeted to your interests, such as
targeted banner advertisements, administrative notices, product offerings, and
communications relevant to your use of the site. By accepting the User
Agreement and Privacy Policy, you expressly agree to receive this information.
If you do not wish to receive these communications, we encourage you to opt out
of the receipt of certain communications by sending us a descriptive/specific
e-mail notice. (At the present time automated system is being created for an
easier way to opt out of specific features).
Due to the existing regulatory environment, 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 Policy. By way of
example (without limiting the foregoing), we may be forced to disclose
information to the government or third parties under certain circumstances,
third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private
communications, or users may abuse or misuse your information that they collect
from our site. Therefore, 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.
-
Our Disclosure of Your Information.
As our policy dictates, we can sell or rent any personally identifiable
information about you to any third party as part of being in online classifieds
business where main goal is to connect people for compensation.
Advertisers.
We aggregate (gather up data across all user accounts) personally identifiable
information and disclose such information in a non-personally identifiable
manner to advertisers and other third parties for other 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 not disclosed to marketing advertisers ever.
AutoCastle Community.
Throughout the site, you are identified by your User ID. If you select your
email address as your User ID you will disclose your email address to other
users and third parties. As a result, other users and third parties might send
you unsolicited email and be able to personally identify all of your public
activities on the site. Although our pages are coded with robot exclusion
headers, others may illegally attempt to automatically collect your email
address from our site. Even if your User ID is not your email address, your
User ID can be used to identify you and your activities throughout the site.
Other people can see your bids, items that you have purchased in the past, your
feedback rating and associated comments, your postings on the site, and so on.
We also provide a number of ways to allow other users to find out more about
you and your site activities, such as our feature that allows users to quickly
see all of the items you are offering at the time. If you are involved in a
transaction, we have a feature that allows other users to view your email
address and obtain your contact information. Further, we may send out notices
to other community members regarding your actions on our site.
External / Internal Service Providers.
4. There are a number of services offered by external service providers that
help you use our site (e.g., co-branded sites, listing agents, escrow,
authentication, mediation, private auto/motorcycle/boat dealerships, auto
repair stations ). If you choose to use these optional services, 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 privacy policy. We may, for your convenience, provide some of your
personally identifiable information to the external service provider offering
such services. However, before we disclose your personally identifiable
information to an external service provider, you will see what data is about to
be sent. To prevent our disclosure of your personally identifiable information
to an external service provider, you can decline such disclosures or simply not
use their services. Because we do not control the privacy practices of these
third parties, you should evaluate their practices before deciding to use their
services.
We may use internal service providers to facilitate our services (e.g., search,
discussion boards, surveys) and therefore we may provide some of your
personally identifiable information directly to them. In some instances, the
internal service provider may collect information directly from you (such as
the situation where we ask a internal service provider to conduct a survey for
us). In these cases, you will be notified of the involvement of the internal
service provider, and all information disclosures you make will be strictly
optional. In all cases, these internal service providers' use of information we
supply them is restricted by confidentiality agreements. If you provide
additional information to an internal service provider directly, then their use
of your information is governed by their applicable privacy policy.
Legal Disclosures.
AutoCastle 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 or other government officials as we, in our sole discretion,
believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud,
intellectual property infringements, or other activity that is illegal or may
expose us or you to legal liability. Further, we can (and you authorize us to)
disclose your User ID, name, street address, city, state, zip code, country,
phone number, email, and company name to AutoCastle Fraud Investigation
participants 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. Additionally, AutoCastle reserves the right
(and you authorize AutoCastle) to communicate any information about you
(including, but not limited to your policy violations, ended items, and item
status) to other users, law enforcement and Fraud Investigation Participants as
we in our sole discretion determine necessary or appropriate to maintain a
level of trust and safety in our community and to enforce our User Agreement,
Privacy Policy and any posted policies or rules applicable to services you use
through our site.
-
Use of Other Users' Information.
In order to facilitate interaction among all AutoCastle community members, our
service allows you limited access other users' contact information. As a seller
you have access to the User ID, email address and other contact information of
the buyer or winning bidder(s), and as a buyer or winning bidder you have
access to the User ID, email address and other contact information of the
seller.
By entering into our User Agreement, you agree that, with respect to other
users' personally identifiable information that you obtain through the site or
through an AutoCastle-related communication or AutoCastle-facilitated
transaction, AutoCastle hereby grants to you a license to use such information
only for: (a) AutoCastle-related communications that are not unsolicited
commercial messages, (b) using services offered through AutoCastle (e.g.
escrow, insurance, shipping and fraud complaints), and (c) any other purpose
that such user expressly agrees to after adequate disclosure of the purpose(s).
In all cases, you must give users an opportunity to remove themselves from your
database and a chance to review what information you have collected about them.
In addition, under no circumstances, except as defined in this Section, can you
disclose personally identifiable information about another user to any third
party without our consent and the consent of such other user after adequate
disclosure. Note that law enforcement personnel, Fraud Investigation program
participants, and other rights holders are given different rights with respect
to information they access.
AutoCastle and our users do not tolerate spam. Therefore,
without limiting the foregoing, you are not licensed to add an AutoCastle user,
even a user who has purchased an item from you, to your mail list (email or
physical mail) without their express consent after adequate disclosure. To
report AutoCastle related spam to AutoCastle, please contact us
support@autocastle.com
.
You may not use the Email This Auction to a Friend service or other email
forwarding services that we offer to send spam or otherwise send content that
would violate our User Agreement.
-
Managing Password Information.
You are responsible for all actions taken with your User ID and password,
including fees. Therefore we do not recommend that you disclose your AutoCastle
password to any third parties. If you choose to share your User ID and password
or your information with third parties to provide you additional services, you
are responsible for all actions taken with your User ID and password and
therefore you should review that third party's privacy policy. 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 for any reason,
you should immediately change your password.
-
Reviewing and Changing Your Personally
Identifiable Information.
We offer you the ability to automatically review and change the information you
submit to us by logging into the site and entering in the new information
yourself. Generally, we will not modify your information based on your request
because it is very difficult to authenticate your account manually. You can
change your user ID, e-mail address, contact information, financial
information, shipping information and user preferences by going to the
preferences section. You must promptly update your information if it changes.
Once posted, you may not be able to change or remove any public postings made
on our site including our chat rooms or other message areas or the feedback
area.
Upon your request, we will deactivate your account, contact
information, billing information, shipping information, and financial
information from our active databases to prevent your information from being
shared with other users. To make this request, email
support@autocastle.com
. Such information will be deactivated as soon as reasonably possible based on
your account activity and in accordance with our deactivation policy and
applicable law.
We will retain in our files information you have requested to remove in some
circumstances, such as to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems and enforce
our User Agreement. Further, such prior information is never 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 your requests.
-
Your Choice To Disclosure.
Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, 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 bidders, buyers or sellers on our site or 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 AutoCastle does
not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the
privacy policies of that third party. We encourage you to ask questions before
you disclose your personal information to others.
-
Security.
AutoCastle uses industry standard practices to safeguard the confidentiality of
your personal identifiable information, including "firewalls" and Secure Socket
Layers. We employ many different security techniques to protect such data from
unauthorized access by users inside and outside the company. However, "perfect
security" does not exist on the Internet.
-
Notice.
We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amend terms on our
site. All amended terms shall automatically be effective 30 days after they are
initially posted on our site.
|
