This policy is effective as of March 1st, 2008

WidgetBuddies Philosophy

We made WidgetBuddies to allow you to most conveniently connect with people you know, through our widgets and service.  We want you to have control over whom your information is shared with, while working to give you the maximum benefit by facilitating your connections and information that would be of interest to you.

WidgetBuddies's Privacy Policy

WidgetBuddies's Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we collect and use the personal information you decide to share, and help you make informed decisions when using WidgetBuddies, located at www.WidgetBuddies.com and its directly associated domains (collectively, "WidgetBuddies" or "Website")

By using or accessing WidgetBuddies, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact our privacy staff at privacy@WidgetBuddies.com.

The Information We Collect

When you visit WidgetBuddies you provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected by us and Web Site use information collected by us as you interact with our Web Site and Service.

When you register with WidgetBuddies, you provide us with certain personal information, such as your name, your email address, your telephone number, your address, and other personal or preference information that you provide to us.

When you enter WidgetBuddies, we collect your browser type and IP address. This information is gathered for all WidgetBuddies visitors. In addition, we store certain information from your browser using "cookies." A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. We use session ID cookies to confirm that users are logged in. These cookies terminate once the user closes the browser. By default, we use a persistent cookie that stores your login ID (but not your password) to make it easier for you to login when you come back to WidgetBuddies. You can remove or block this cookie using the settings in your browser if you want to disable this convenience feature.

When you use WidgetBuddies, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features. In most cases, we retain it so that, for instance, you can return to view prior messages you have sent or easily see your friend list. When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.

You post User Content (as defined in the WidgetBuddies Terms of Use) on the Site at your own risk.  Though we take reasonable security precautions, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other Users with whom you may choose to share your pages and information. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content.

Any improper collection or misuse of information provided on WidgetBuddies is a violation of the WidgetBuddies Terms of Service and should be reported to privacy@WidgetBuddies.com.

If you choose to use our invitation service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for information needed to send the invitation, such as your friend's email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email or instant message inviting him or her to visit the site. WidgetBuddies stores this information to send this one-time invitation, to register a friend connection if your invitation is accepted, and to track the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us at info@WidgetBuddies.com to request that we remove this information from our database.

WidgetBuddies may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the WidgetBuddies service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.

By using WidgetBuddies, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.

Children Under Age 13

WidgetBuddies does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for WidgetBuddies or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to or on WidgetBuddies. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at info@WidgetBuddies.com.

Children Between the Ages of 13 and 18

We recommend that minors over the age of 13 ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet.

Use of Information Obtained by WidgetBuddies

When you register with WidgetBuddies, you create your own profile. Your profile information, as well as your name, email and photo, are displayed buddies and new potential buddies to enable you to connect with people on WidgetBuddies. We may occasionally use your name and email address to send you notifications regarding services offered by WidgetBuddies that we think you may find valuable.

Profile information is used by WidgetBuddies primarily to be presented back to and edited by you when you access the service and to be presented to others permitted to view that information by your privacy settings.

Profile information you submit to WidgetBuddies may be available to users of WidgetBuddies who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (friends of friends). Your name, network names, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the WidgetBuddies network and those limited pieces of information may be made available to third party search engines. This is primarily so your friends can find you and send a friend request. People who see your name in searches, however, will not be able to access your profile information unless they have a relationship to you (friend, friend of friend, member of your networks, etc.) that allows such access based on your privacy settings.

WidgetBuddies may send you service-related announcements from time to time through the general operation of the service.

WidgetBuddies may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like a band or movie and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you WidgetBuddies. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they're more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don't tell the movie company who you are.

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, WidgetBuddies Platform developers and other users of WidgetBuddies, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links).

Because of the voluem fo information which we collect or process, we make no warranties or assurances that mistakes will not sometimes occur in processing the information collected, and no such warranties or assurances should be inferred by you.

Sharing Your Information with Third Parties

WidgetBuddies is about sharing information with others — friends and people in your networks — while providing you with privacy settings that restrict other users from accessing your information. We allow you to choose the information you provide to friends and networks through WidgetBuddies. Our network architecture and your privacy settings allow you to make informed choices about who has access to your information. We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We generally attempt to share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you. For example:

1. •We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the WidgetBuddies service or using the WidgetBuddies name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.
   

2. •We may offer stores or provide services jointly with other companies on WidgetBuddies. You can tell when another company is involved in any store or service provided on WidgetBuddies, and we may share customer information with that company in connection with your use of that store or service.
   

3. •If the ownership of all or substantially all of the WidgetBuddies business, or individual business units owned by WidgetBuddies.com, were to change, your user information may be transferred to the new owner so the service can continue operations. In any such transfer of information, your user information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy.
   

When you use WidgetBuddies, certain information you post or share with third parties (e.g., a friend or someone in your network), such as personal information, comments, messages, photos, videos, Marketplace listings or other information, may be shared with other users in accordance with the privacy settings you select. All such sharing of information is done at your own risk. Please keep in mind that if you disclose personal information in your profile or when posting comments, messages, photos, or other items , this information may become publicly available.

Links

WidgetBuddies may contain links to other websites. We are of course not responsible for the privacy practices of other web sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by WidgetBuddies.

Changing or Removing Information

Access and control over most personal information on WidgetBuddies is readily available through the profile editing tools. WidgetBuddies users may modify or delete any of their profile information at any time by logging into their account. Information will be generally updated immediately. Individuals who wish to deactivate their WidgetBuddies account may do so by sending email to info@widgetbuddies.com.  Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of WidgetBuddies.

Where you make use of the communication features of the service to share information with other individuals on WidgetBuddies, however, (e.g., sending a personal message to another WidgetBuddies user) you generally cannot remove such communications.

Security

WidgetBuddies takes appropriate precautions to protect our users' information. If you have any questions about the security of WidgetBuddies Web Site, please contact us at privacy@WidgetBuddies.com

Terms of Use, Notices and Revisions

Your use of WidgetBuddies, and any disputes arising from it, is subject to this Privacy Policy as well as our Terms of Use and all of its dispute resolution provisions including arbitration, limitation on damages and choice of law. We reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use at any time. Non-material changes and clarifications will take effect immediately, and material changes will take effect within 24 hours of their posting on this site. If we make changes, we will post them and will indicate at the top of this page the policy's new effective date. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or through notice on our home page. We encourage you to refer to this policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current privacy policy. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.

Contacting the Web Site

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at privacy@WidgetBuddies.com.