The Effective Date of this Privacy Policy is June 8, 2009.
This Privacy Policy only applies to the Simon and Schuster Pulse It program available at www.simonandschuster.com/pulseit, which is operated by the Simon & Schuster Digital Group, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. ("S&S," "we," "us" or "our"), or other interactive features or downloads available through the site that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, "Site"). This Privacy Policy only covers information collected at the Site and does not cover any information collected at any other web site or offline by S&S (unless specifically stated). This Privacy Policy explains S&S' information collection practices at the Site, such as the types of information S&S collects regarding visitors to the Site and how we may use that information. Please review this Privacy Policy carefully. In addition, please review the Site's Terms of Use, which governs your use of the Site.
If you have any questions regarding this updated Privacy Policy, please contact us by e-mail at privacyadministrator@simonandschuster.com.
If you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Site.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. THE INFORMATION THE SITE COLLECTS AND HOW S&S USES THAT INFORMATION
(a) Information You Provide To The Site2. DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION
(b) Public Areas and Information in Your Public Profile
(c) Information You Provide About A Third Party
(d) Information Third Parties Provide About You
(e) Information We Collect As You Access And Use The Site
(a) When You Post Information to a Third Party Web Site3. NOTICE TO PARENTS
(b) When You Agree To Receive Information From Third Parties
(c) Third Parties Providing Services on our Behalf
(d) Contests and Promotions
(e) Administrative and Legal Reasons
(f) Business Transfers
1. THE INFORMATION THE SITE COLLECTS AND HOW S&S USES THAT INFORMATION
(a) Information You Provide To The Site
In order to register for an account and participate on the Site, you must be a teenager living in one of the fifty United States or the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) between the ages of fourteen (14) and eighteen (18). The Site may ask you to provide personally identifiable information, which is information that could be used to contact you or identify you personally, such as your name, birth date, mailing address, e-mail address or phone number (“Personal Information”) and other information about you, such as demographic information (your age, gender, postal code or similar information) or certain information about your reading habits, preferences and interests. The Site may collect Personal Information and other information about you at various places and forms on the Site, including registration forms, your personal profile page, when you submit a question to us, or when you otherwise communicate or interact with us. If we combine demographic or similar information with the Personal Information we collect, we will treat it as Personal Information under this Privacy Policy.
We may use any information we collect through the site including your Personal Information: (1) to allow you to participate in the Public Areas (defined below) and other features of the Site; (2) provide you with information or services that you have requested or agreed to receive; (3) to process your registration with the Site including verifying that your e-mail address is active and valid; (4) to improve the Site or our services; (5) to contact you with regard to your use of the Site and, in our discretion, changes to the Site policies; (6) to ship you a prize from a Promotion (defined below) that may be offered in connection with the Site (7) for internal business purposes; and (8) for purposes disclosed at the time you provide your Personal Information or with your consent.
Please note that information submitted to the Site via a "contact us" or other similar function may not receive a response. We will not use the information provided to contact you for marketing purposes unrelated to your request unless you agree otherwise.
(b) Public Areas and Information in Your Public Profile
If you register to join the Site ("Member"), you create a public profile that includes information such as your photo, username, city/state, bio (including activity on the Site) and interests (if you choose to provide them) as well as other information that you choose to post publicly (“Profile”). Your Profile does not include your e-mail address, date of birth or the number and street portion of your mailing address. The Site may publicly post information about your activity on the Site as a Member, including, without limitation, information about the when you last logged into the Site; when you joined the Site; links to web pages you provide; RSS feeds you choose to post; which books you are currently reading; when you updated your Profile; and a list of your book reviews, discussion posts, blog posts and "favorites" (including links to each of those items). By default, your Profile is viewable by all members of the Site. If you prefer, you can configure your Profile to be viewable only by your friends on the Site (choose My Home -> Edit My Profile -> Privacy -> Only My Friends).
The Site contains several public areas to which you can contribute your original text and other content including, without limitation, the Books section (which includes book ratings and comments); the Blog section (where you can submit blog posts); the Message Boards section (which includes a variety of different online discussions); and the public portion of your Profile (collectively, "Public Areas").
If you submit book reviews, book ratings, book comments, blog posts, votes, forum messages, tags (your description of particular content), suggestions, photographs, text or other content to Public Areas ("User Content"), it may be published online or offline in any media or format (currently existing or hereafter developed). Other members of the Site will have access to your User Content and may have the ability to share it with third parties across the Internet. S&S may use your User Content, or any portion, for advertising, marketing, publicity and promotional activities. For the full terms and conditions regarding User Content you submit to the Site, please review the Site's Terms of Use.
Please note that S&S cannot ensure the security of any information you choose to make public and cannot ensure that parties who have access to such publicly available information will respect your privacy. Therefore, do not include Personal Information in your Profile, User Content, a Public Area or any message that you send using the Site. For example, do not disclose your real name, e-mail address, phone number or physical address. The Site is an online community only – do not use it to arrange a physical meeting with another member. See the Terms of Use and About/Rules of the Road for more information about appropriate uses of and content for the Site.
(c) Information You Provide About A Third Party
If you send someone else a communication from the Site, such as sending information about a book to a friend, the information you provide (names, e-mail addresses, etc.) is used on a one-time basis to facilitate the communication, and is not saved nor used by us for any other marketing purpose unless we obtain consent from that person or we explicitly state otherwise. Please ensure that each person to whom you send an e-mail from the Site is someone that you know personally and that you believe is not opposed to receiving the message.
(d) Information Third Parties Provide About You
We also may, from time to time, supplement the information we collect with information about you from affiliates or third parties in order to enhance our ability to serve you. We may combine the information we receive from those other sources with information we collect through the Site. In those cases, we will apply this Privacy Policy to any Personal Information received, unless otherwise specifically disclosed by us at the time you provide your Personal Information.
(e) Information We Collect As You Access And Use The Site
In addition to any Personal Information or other information collected by the Site, we and our third-party service providers may use a variety of technologies that automatically or passively collect certain web site usage information whenever you visit or interact with the Site ("Site Usage Information"). Site Usage Information may include browser type, operating system, the page served, the time, and the preceding page view, among other information. We may use Site Usage Information for a variety of purposes, including enhancing or otherwise improving the Site. In addition, your IP address or some other unique identifier for the particular device you use to access the Site (any, a "Device Identifier"), as applicable, may be collected. A Device Identifier is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer, your cell phone, or other device (any, a "Device") used to access the Site, and our computers identify your Device by its Device Identifier. Site Usage Information collected may be non-identifying or may be associated with you. If it is associated with you, it will be treated as Personal Information. The methods that may be used to collect Site Usage Information include the following:
Cookies. A cookie is a data file placed on a Device when it is used to visit the Site. Cookies may be used for many purposes, including, without limitation, tracking user preferences and web pages visited while using the Site. You may disable cookies using your browser's preferences, but some features of the Site may not function properly.
We may share non-personally identifiable information, such as aggregated user statistics, with third parties. We do not share your Personal Information with third parties for those third parties’ marketing purposes unless you consent to such sharing at the time you provide your Personal Information. We may share the information we have collected about you, including Personal Information, as disclosed at the time you provide your information and as described in this Privacy Policy and in the following circumstances.
(a) When You Post Information to a Third Party Web Site
The Site may allow you to share certain information with third party web sites by posting to your account on those third party web sites. For example, you could choose to share with your Facebook profile certain information about your activity on the Pulse It Site. Note that only Pulse It members can actually view the content on the Pulse It Site, including your User Content.
(b) When You Agree To Receive Information From Third Parties
You may be presented with an opportunity to receive information and/or marketing offers from one or more third parties. If you agree at that time to have your Personal Information shared, your Personal Information will be disclosed to that third party (or parties) and will be subject to the privacy policy and practices of that third party. We are not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of third parties and, therefore, you should review the privacy policies and practices of third parties prior to agreeing to share your information. If you later decide that you no longer want to receive communication from a third party, you will need to contact that third party directly.
(c) Third Parties Providing Services on our Behalf
We may use third party vendors to perform certain services on behalf of the Site, such as hosting the Site, designing and/or operating the Site's features, tracking Site analytics, enabling S&S to send you e-mail, or performing other administrative services. We may provide these companies with access to user information, including Personal Information, to carry out the services they are performing for you or for S&S.
We may offer sweepstakes, contests, and other promotions (any, a "Promotion") through the Site that may require registration. By participating in a Promotion, you are agreeing to the terms, conditions or official rules that govern that Promotion, which may contain specific requirements of you, including, except where prohibited by law, allowing the sponsor(s) of the Promotion to use your name, voice and/or likeness in advertising or marketing associated with the Promotion. If you choose to enter a Promotion, Personal Information may be disclosed to third parties or the public in connection with the administration of such Promotion, including, without limitation, in connection with winner selection, prize fulfillment, and as required by law or permitted by the Promotion's official rules such as on a winners list.
(e) Administrative and Legal Reasons
We may transfer and disclose user information, including Personal Information, to third parties: (i) in the event we are required to respond to subpoenas or other legal process or if in our good faith opinion such disclosure is required by law; (ii) at the request of governmental authorities conducting an investigation; or (iii) to protect and/or defend the Site's Terms of Use or other policies applicable to the Site or to protect the personal safety, rights, property or security of S&S or any individual. We may also use Device Identifiers, including IP addresses, to identify users, and may do so in cooperation with copyright owners, Internet service providers, wireless service providers or law enforcement agencies in our discretion. Such disclosures may be carried out without notice to you.
We may share your Personal Information with our corporate parent, CBS Corporation ("CBS"), and other entities affiliated with us for internal reasons, primarily for business and operational purposes. S&S also reserves the right to disclose and transfer all information related to the Site, including Personal Information: (i) to a subsequent owner, co-owner or operator of the Site or applicable database; or (ii) in connection with a corporate merger, consolidation, restructuring, the sale of substantially all of S&S' stock and/or assets or other corporate change, including, without limitation, during the course of any due diligence process.
The intended audience for the Site is teenagers age fourteen (14) to eighteen (18). We do not knowingly collect any Personal Information from children younger than age fourteen (14). We will delete any Personal Information collected that we later determine to be from a user younger than the age of fourteen (14).
You are responsible for maintaining the accuracy of the information you submit to us, such as your contact information provided as part of registration. The Site may allow you to correct or update Personal Information you have provided through a form on the Site or otherwise. If you wish to remove your profile from the Site, you can email S&S and request that your profile be removed from public availability on the Site. S&S will make good faith efforts to make requested changes in our then active databases as soon as reasonably practicable. When you edit your Personal Information or change your preferences on the Site, information that you remove may persist internally for S&S's administrative purposes. Also, please note that it is not always possible to completely remove or delete all of your information from our databases and that residual data may remain on backup media or for other reasons. Also, if you have made any public postings on the Site such as in forums or blogs, these communications cannot generally be removed.
You may cancel or modify your subscriptions to e-mails you have elected to receive from the Site by following the instructions contained within an e-mail you receive from the Site. The Site may also allow you to update your preferences associated with your account by modifying your account settings on the Site. Please note that we reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to your account or use of the Site, such as administrative and services announcements and these transactional account messages may be unaffected if you choose to opt-out from marketing communications.
5. THIRD PARTY CONTENT AND LINKS TO THIRD PARTY SITES
The Site may contain content that is supplied by a third party, and those third parties may collect Site Usage Information and your Device Identifier when web pages from the Site are served to your browser. In addition, the Site may contain links to third party web sites that S&S does not control. S&S is not responsible for the privacy practices employed by any third party web site. For example, if you "click" on a link from a S&S partner, the "click" may take you off the Site and onto a different web site. This includes links from sponsors and partners that may reference the Site or the Site's logo as part of a co-branding agreement. These other web sites may set cookies on your Device, independently collect data or solicit Personal Information and may or may not have their own published privacy policies. S&S encourages you to note when you leave our Site and to read the privacy statements of all third party web sites before submitting any Personal Information to those sites.
S&S takes commercially reasonable steps to help protect and secure Personal Information. However, no data transmission over the Internet, wireless transmission or electronic storage of information can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Please note that we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information we collect, and your use our Site and provide us with your information at your own risk.
7. CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY
S&S reserves the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time without notice to you. Any changes will be effective immediately upon the posting of the revised Privacy Policy. However, S&S will not use your Personal Information in a manner materially different than what was stated at the time it was collected without your consent.
If you have questions or comments about our Privacy Policy or our practices, you may contact us by e-mail at Privacy Administrator at privacyadministrator@simonandschuster.com.