MessageSystems.com US-EU Safe Harbor Self Certified Privacy Policy

Summary

This policy covers customer information gathered by Message Systems, Inc. ("we" or "us") through the messagesystems.com website. We are committed to protecting the privacy of all those who provide us with personal information while using our website. We may use personal information to contact you to offer you additional products or services (including announcements about new products, featured editorial content, co-sponsored products, events, special sales and promotions, and more) that we believe would interest you.

We allow you to opt-out of communications from us both globally or specific only to a certain type of communication. If you opt-out, we will not contact you.

If we maintain information about you as a result of your use of our website and/or services, we will provide you with access to the information that we have collected and retain; however, we may not be able to provide you with all collected data or historical data if it is impracticable for us to do so, and we will not be able to provide you with de-identified data – in other words, where we have used information we have collected but deleted or obscured your identity, and aggregated that with other data, we have no way of providing you (or anyone) with the data that is specifically related to you.

We will correct, amend, or delete any information that we find to be inaccurate.

We anticipate that this policy will change from time to time, and we expressly reserve the right to change the policy when we find it to be appropriate. The changes to this policy will be effective as of the time they are posted on our website; however, we will provide electronic notice to you of such changes (which notice may be by email or website message) and, if you make an election upon receipt of such notice, you may opt-out of future communications and such changes will not be effective in respect to you. If you do not elect to out-out, the changes will be deemed accepted by you and unless they state otherwise, shall be retroactive and effective from the time you began your use of our website and/or services.

This section is a summary of the main features of our privacy policy. The complete statement of our privacy policy is below and is longer and authoritative. We encourage interested users to read the complete policy statement available directly below.

I. INTRODUCTION

A. What this Privacy Policy Covers

This policy covers customer information gathered by www.messagesystems.com, including all sub-domains (collectively, the "Site"). By using our website, you consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information as described in this privacy policy.

B. General Approach to Privacy

We are committed to protecting the privacy of all those who provide us with personal information while using our websites.

C. Safe Harbor Privacy Statement

For personal information about our customers subject to EU data protection laws that we receive from Member States of the European Union, we have committed to handling such personal information in accordance with the Safe Harbor Principles. Additional information about the Safe Harbor program is available at the U.S. Department of Commerce's website at http://www.export.gov/safeharbor.

We process customer information in our facilities in the United States. All customer information subject to this privacy policy is collected in the United States, obtained through websites in the United States, or obtained in other countries and transferred to the United States. Regardless where it originated, all customer data subject to this policy receives the same level of privacy protection as described in this policy statement.

D. Children.

Our websites are not intended for use by children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly solicit data online from, or market online to, children under the age of 13. If we learn that we have obtained personally identifiable information online in error about a child under the age of 13, we will delete that information as soon as we can. We encourage parents to supervise their children so that they do not disclose any personal information about themselves in any of our public discussion areas. We cannot prohibit minors from visiting this website. We must rely on parents, guardians and those responsible for supervising children under 13 to decide which materials are appropriate for such children to view and/or purchase. Pursuant to 47 U.S.C. Section 230 (d), as amended, we hereby notify you that parental control protections (such as computer hardware, software or filtering services) are commercially available that may assist you in limiting access to material that is harmful to minors. Information identifying current providers of such protections is available on the two websites GetNetWise (http://kids.getnetwise.org/) and OnGuard Online (http://onguardonline.gov/). Please note that we do not endorse any of the products or services listed at such websites.

E. Openness and Changes to this Policy.

This privacy policy describes the processing of most personal information by the Site. This policy covers personal information about subscribers, customers, registrants, website visitors, and others. This policy supersedes other privacy policies used by the Site.

F. Privacy Policy Changes and Updates.

Your continued use of the Site, our applications or services constitutes your acceptance of this privacy policy, including any changes, unless you elect to terminate such use and opt-out of communications. We do not expect to change our respect for the wishes and the privacy of our customers. However, new laws, other events, new products and services, and changes to our business structure could require change in our policy. We expect that any policy changes will be consistent with Safe Harbor standards and other legal requirements. When we make changes, we will post them promptly on the Site, and give you electronic notice via either email or internal message on the Site. You are responsible to periodically check your email and/or messages, including any spam folders or filters. We expect that any changes we make will apply retroactively to personal data collected and maintained prior to the effective date of the change. When we make a change, we will update the date and version number of the privacy policy. We will summarize changes in the Policy History section at the end of the policy. We maintain an archive of superseded policies that we will make available upon request.

II. NOTICE (of Information Collection)

A. Collection from you.

We collect personal information about customers by lawful and fair means, and in most cases, directly from customers themselves. In general, that means that we collect personal information about you when you provide it. The other instances when we collect information about you that may not come directly from you or that you may not provide, are described below. This list illustrates activities that result in information collection. The details will change and evolve over time. We may collect personal information about you if you do any of the following:

• Participate/register on our website, either as a user, or as a guest, or using a mobile application.
• Use our website to communicate with or otherwise interact with other users, advertisers, consumers, or other persons who are permitted to interact with and use our website, or mobile applications.
• Participate in any contests, surveys, user panels, focus groups or other interactive services on our website or in our mobile applications.
• Visit or participate in forums or other discussions that we host or sponsor.
• Submit your contact information to us for the purpose of being contacted regarding our products and/or services.

B. Personally Identifiable Information.

We collect:

• Your contact information including your name, physical address, mailing address, email address, and phone and fax numbers.
• Your demographic and survey information: Job function, title, topics of interest, purchasing plans, responses to surveys solicited online and offline, and information solicited through online registration forms.
• Your history as our customer, including your order and payment history, email and websites usage, promotional history and response.
• All content posted in public areas (including but not limited to online forums, comments on blog posts or articles, and other community areas). In order to maintain standards for online conduct in public areas we sponsor, we will remove an inappropriate posting when we find it.

C. Anonymous Information.

We Collect:

• If your browser is set to permit them, we may use electronic files that are stored in your computer memory and/or on your hard drive known as "cookies" and other Internet technologies to hold certain information based on how you use our website or mobile application and information you have placed in forms and in other locations – we do this to enrich your online experience by managing our websites and mobile applications. Cookies are used to identify members so that they don't have to re-enter their usernames and passwords. Cookies may also be used to tailor and if applicable limit the number of advertisements you see while on our Site. By allowing us to understand how you use our Site over time, cookies can help us provide you with a better, more relevant online experience. The cookies we store on your computer are not intended, designed or permitted to be accessible on any other companies' websites. Most browsers allow you to modify your security to accept or reject cookies. You need not accept cookies to visit our Site, but without them, your access to some areas may be limited and custom navigation may not be available to you.
• Some advertising on our Site may be provided by outside companies. If these ads set cookies, these cookies can be accessed only by the advertisers who set them; we do not have access to cookies that we did not set.
• Pixel Tags. Like many websites, we may use pixel tags, also known as web beacons, clear gifs, or web bugs. Pixel tags help us improve our understanding of our web traffic and visitor behavior, as well as gauge the response to our promotional efforts. This information is non-personally identifiable and is used for an aggregate picture of how visitors use our Site. Pixel tags can record your Internet protocol address, your browser, and certain other information that may be present in an Internet packet when the image is called for presentation. If you wish, you may disable pixel tags by setting your browser to omit images and disable Javascript.
• Online Ad Serving. We use industry-standard, third party advertising service companies to serve advertisements when you visit our Site, use our mobile applications, open our emails, or otherwise interact with us. These companies may use cookies, pixel tags, and other methods to collect information (typically not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to our Site and other websites to provide you with relevant advertisements about products, services, and events during your visit to our Site. They can also provide us with aggregate pictures of traffic patterns, help us improve website experience, help advertisers better understand our services, and monitor advertising efforts. You can learn how to opt out of third-party advertisers' tracking methods in conjunction with links, online ads, etc. by visiting the advertisers' websites.

D. Purpose.

We collect personal information to provide products and services that customers request, including delivery of electronic communications, downloadable content and related customer service. We may use personal information to contact customers or prospective customers to offer additional products or services (including announcements about new products, featured editorial content, co-sponsored products, events, special sales and promotions, and more) that we believe would be of interest.

We also use personal information to manage our business, Site, mailing lists, events, discussion forums, surveys, and other operations; to conduct financial or circulation audits of our activities; to process payments; and for other purposes appropriate for the conduct of our business.

We use aggregate data for research and research products (e.g. reports and white papers).

E. Third Party Disclosure of Customer Information; Data Retention

i) Agents and Contractors

We share personal information about customers with other companies we hire to provide us with specialized services including customer service, credit card processing, banking services, email and electronic communications delivery, research, statistical analysis, list cleansing, email deployment, telemarketing, consulting and other information services. We may also hire outside auditors, lawyers, consultants, subscription circulation auditors, and others to assist us. These companies can only use and disclose personal information we disclose to them in accordance with our instructions and consistently with this privacy policy.

ii) Partners, Sponsors, and Others

We do not share personal information with other companies, unless such personal information was collected in connection with a joint marketing event with such other company, such as a co-authored whitepaper, joint webinar or other co-hosted event. In such circumstances, we only deal with third party companies whom we believe share our commitment to privacy and who will keep your information secure. You can opt-out of these disclosures – see the section below on "Choices".

We share aggregated information about our products, websites, and email newsletters with sponsors to help them manage their business with us.

Many of our products and offerings, including events, are with other companies who are partners or sponsors. When you register for these activities, the names of any partners and sponsors will be clearly visible. We will maintain the personal information you provide when you register for these sponsored programs and we will share it with our partners and sponsors. They may use the information in accordance with their own privacy policies. If you have concerns about how they may use the information you provide, please refer to each partner or sponsor's privacy policy. Unlike other disclosures of information, you cannot opt-out of contacts from partners and sponsors through us. You must contact the partners or sponsors directly.

iii) Other Uses and Disclosures

Our employees and contractors who maintain and provide the services we offer will have access to your personal data. They are permitted to access and use your personal data solely and exclusively in performance of their duties to us and they owe us either direct employment duties, or they have signed confidentiality agreements, such that they are obligated to keep your personal data confidential. We agree and are responsible for any actions or omissions of these employees and contractors.

In addition, we reserve the right to use or disclose personal information to protect the security or integrity of our website and mobile applications; to take precautions against liability; to respond to judicial process; and to provide information to law enforcement agencies or for an investigation on a matter related to public safety; and in general to comply with applicable laws, government requests and court orders.

In the event of a merger, acquisition, corporate reorganization or recapitalization, divestiture, sale of substantially all of our assets, bankruptcy, or other change in control, personal information may be used or disclosed in connection with those activities, which may include the entire transfer of our database of personal information to such successor or assignee entity. We will also make any disclosures required by law. If we discover a security breach, we may disclose personal information about customers to those companies (such as credit card companies or credit bureaus) or government agencies who we believe can take action to prevent, minimize, or remedy any harm from the breach. We may elect to make these disclosures even if we have not received a subpoena, if we believe in good faith that we have a legal obligation to do so, or if we believe that our failure to do so may result in liability to us.

If we receive a subpoena or other legal demand for your personal information, we may endeavor to notify you of the subpoena or demand by contacting you at the current email address that we have for you. However, we cannot promise that we will always be able to send you a notice, that we will attempt to contact you if the email we send fails to get to you, that we will be able to send you the notice before we turn over your information, or that we will resist the request.

In general, we process personal information so that it is not used or disclosed in ways that are incompatible with these purposes. We take reasonable steps to ensure that all personal data we process is reliable for its intended use and is accurate, complete, and current for that purpose.

iv) Retention.

Subject to law (i.e. if a law, rule or regulation provides for a longer period, then we will retain information to comply with law), we retain the following information for up to the following time periods:

1. your personal information, other than payment card industry (i.e. credit card data) – e.g. name, address, phone number, email: during the time you are a customer, and for one (1) year after you terminate your agreement with us or after the last contact with us related to becoming a customer.
2. Payment card industry data: we retain this information only if you specifically elect for us to retain it, and only for the period until you tell us to cease retaining it. We reserve the right not to retain this data.
3. Information relating to your use of the website and our mobile applications that is identifiable to you, e.g. site usage statistics, page views, click throughs and other data that is linked personally to you: during the time you are a customer with us, and one (1) year after you terminate your agreement with us or after the last contact with us related to becoming a customer.
4. Anonymous data, e.g. data that is not tied and does not identify you: during the time you are a customer, and potentially forever.

Even if we are permitted to retain data, or we state we may retain data as provided above, we may nonetheless determine to retain data for periods longer than provided above, if, in our reasonable judgment, we either owe a legal duty to do so, or we feel that deleting such data may subject us to liability or claims, or may impair our making or defense of any claim.

Our permission to retain data does not guaranty that any data will be retained or backed up, and we undertake no duty or obligation to backup, restore, preserve, protect or otherwise maintain data you place on our systems, or that we maintain.

III. CHOICE.

Subject to the last paragraph of this section, we offer users the opportunity to opt-out of being contacted by us. You can choose not to be contacted by electronic communication (email, instant message), telephone, fax or regular mail.

All promotional and research email messages you receive from us will include an option to opt out of future email communications from the particular business that contacted you. Users cannot opt-out of some uses and disclosures. Opt-outs do not affect our use of personal information to communicate with you on service related issues (for example, notices of changes in terms of service or this policy, notices regarding service unavailability) and in internal management or the disclosure of personal information to third parties who are our agents. These third parties include companies that provide management or operational assistance, lawyers and auditors, and some others that relate to similar types of functions. When we disclose information to third parties who act as our agents, we require them to use and disclose information in accordance with our instructions and consistently with this privacy policy.

IV. ACCESS AND CORRECTION.

We encourage users to keep their contact information up to date.

If we maintain information about you covered by this privacy policy, we will provide you with access to that information and ability to correct it when feasible to do so. We will also correct, amend, or delete any information that we find to be inaccurate, or provide you with the ability to maintain the accuracy of your information.

We may also maintain publicly available or friend-only available content that you have posted. In some cases, we may permit you to modify that information, but in other cases, we may prohibit modification, and either allow the information to be made unavailable via privacy settings, or to change the types of people who can review such information. Examples of instances where we may prevent modification: where we have received a notice that such content infringes a third party's rights, where we have received a "litigation hold" letter, where we believe that we owe a legal duty to retain the original posting, where a law enforcement officer demands that we preserve our records, and in other similar types of circumstances.

Anyone seeking to know if we have information about himself or herself or who want access to (or a copy of) his or her personal information can make a request in writing to:

Privacy Officer
privacy@messagesystems.com

A request should include sufficient identifying information, such as name, address telephone number, fax number, and email address. In some cases, we may ask for a copy of identification (such as a driver's license or other government-issued identification).

We will not normally charge customers who want to inspect or have a copy of the information that we maintain about them. We reserve the right to impose reasonable charges for requests that are very detailed, and for repeated requests and to deny or ignore requests that we deem to be harassing.

A request for correction should identify the contested information; should state whether the information is incorrect, inaccurate, or incomplete; and should state what information should appear in place of the contested information.

We may elect to provide some or all of the personal information that you requested via electronic means, or to provide an electronic view of your data that we retain.

We do not permit modification of anonymous data, or transactional data for payment transactions, nor may you modify data that is generated merely by operation of your interaction with us, such as tracking, web site use or other similar type of automatically collected information.

V. ONWARD TRANSFER

When we disclose your information to a third party outside of the United States, we will require them to represent and warrant to us that they are in compliance with and have either been certified, or self-certify with, the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles or that that they are in compliance with the EU Data Directive. Alternatively, we may enter into a written agreement with such third party requiring that the third party provide at least the same level of privacy protection as is required by the privacy rules set forth herein.

VI. SECURITY

We use reasonable, industry-standard precautions, including appropriate technical, administrative, and physical procedures, to protect personal information from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. Due to the design of the Internet and other factors outside our control, we cannot guarantee that communications between you and our servers will be free from unauthorized access by third parties.

When we share personal information with third parties we hire to help us with our activities, we require that they provide reasonable security for the information. However, we are not responsible for any breach of security by third parties.

VII. DATA INTEGRITY

When we collect information from you, we endeavor to collect only the minimum personal information that we reasonably believe is relevant for the purposes for which it is to be used. In addition, we will undertake reasonable steps to ensure that all data we collect is reliable for its intended use, accurate, complete, and current.

VIII. ENFORCEMENT

We are committed to providing you with a means to ensure that your private data is maintained in accordance with this policy and therefore we provide a readily available and affordable independent recourse mechanism so that your complaints and disputes can be investigated and resolved and if they are not so resolved, we submit to the laws of the United States and of Maryland, and to any remedies and other rights you have under such laws. The independent recourse we have agreed to use, if you so elect, is the Greater Maryland Better Business Bureau.

IX. ACCOUNTABILITY

Message Systems, Inc. is responsible for writing this policy and for compliance with it. The person in the company who is primarily responsible for oversight and compliance is the Privacy Officer. Anyone who has a question, comment, or complaint about this privacy policy should contact the Privacy Officer:

Privacy Officer
privacy@messagesystems.com

A request should include sufficient contact information, such as name, address, telephone number, fax number, and email address.

We promise to make a good faith attempt to resolve any complaint or problem that you bring to our attention.

If you are not satisfied with the response of the Privacy Officer, you can appeal to our General Counsel by sending a written letter to:

General Counsel
7070 Samuel Morse Drive, Suite 150
Columbia, Maryland 21046

legal@messagesystems.com

How to contact us

Address any questions about our privacy policy to:

Privacy Officer
privacy@messagesystems.com