Ziff Davis Media : Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Ziff Davis Media Privacy Policy

Last Updated: February 14, 2008

Ziff Davis Media Inc. (together with its direct and indirect parent and subsidiary entities, "Ziff Davis") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy describes the ways that personally identifiable and anonymous information about our online users, event registrants and print subscribers is gathered, our information sharing practices, and how online users and print subscribers may request changes to the way this information is shared.

Please note that we updated this Privacy Policy as of February 14, 2008.

Please also note that Enterprise Media Group, Inc., doing business since August 2007 as Ziff Davis Enterprise, is an independent party and is not related to us. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any information collected or possessed by Ziff Davis Enterprise. Please contact Ziff Davis Enterprise or view its applicable privacy policy if you have any questions about information collected or possessed by Ziff Davis Enterprise.

Personally Identifiable Information We Collect

We collect personally identifiable information when you provide it to us, such as when you subscribe to our magazines (either directly with us or through another company such as a subscription agency), sign up for email newsletters, enter a contest, register for site membership or an online event, participate in surveys, attend face to face events, or otherwise communicate with us. Several of the services that we offer, including but not limited to file downloads, message boards, webcasts and online trade shows, require registration as a condition of use; when you register with or sign into one of our sites you are no longer anonymous. We may also receive information about you from other sources and add it to the information you have provided to us.

Information You Volunteer and How It Is Displayed to Others Online

Ziff Davis is not responsible for the information you volunteer about yourself in the course of discussions in our forums, chat rooms, or other forms of publicly accessible interaction, or information that you choose to make public in your member profile. As a member, you can view, correct or change your publicly available information at any time via your member profile page. It may take a brief period of time for any corrections or changes to be publicly displayed or implemented throughout our systems. To view or change your profile, please follow the link for the site from which you registered:

Profile information is currently not retained for Ziff Davis's blogs, including DL.TV, Cranky Geeks, Appscout, GearLog, Technoride, What's New Now, or GoodCleanTech.

For privacy information, related links, and contact information for Ziff Davis magazines and events, please see "Mailing Lists" below.

What We Provide to Third Parties

Statistical Reports and Analysis

Naturally, the aggregate statistics that describe our print and online audience, which is often based on the information you provide when you subscribe, register, or browse our sites, help us sell advertising and otherwise publicize Ziff Davis and its brands.

Mailing Lists

We make email and postal lists of our customers available on a rental basis, to carefully screened providers of quality goods and services. Many customers appreciate the offerings they receive, but here's what to do if you don't wish for us to share this information:

If you are a subscriber to a Ziff Davis magazine and would prefer that your contact information not be provided to third parties, please log in and change your preferences at http://subhelp.ziffdavis.com. (If you are a new subscriber, your information may not be immediately available at this URL - please allow up to 4 weeks from placing your subscription order for processing.)
If you are a registered user of our other sites, you can change your preferences via the profile page links shown above. It may take a brief period of time for any changes to be implemented throughout our systems.
If you are a registered user of PC Magazine PCMagCasts, please send an email with your preference request to pcmagcast@ziffdavis.com. Please see below for details on privacy policies for PCMagCasts.
If you are a registered attendee of DigitalLife events, please send email with your preference request to info@digitallife.com. Please see below for details on Ziff Davis event privacy policies.

Any mailing sent to our lists is reviewed before it is sent, and when we rent our mailing lists, we typically monitor them to help ensure they are used only for the approved purpose.

Ziff Davis also provides profile reports on specific companies, based on subscriber-reported and publicly available data, to carefully screened providers of quality goods and services. These include contact information for the company and its key personnel.

Email and Postal Mail Deployment, Data Analysis and Other Data Services

We provide customer lists and other information to third party companies who provide specialized services, such as email message deployment, merge-purge (identifying and removing duplicate addresses), postal mailing, subscription fulfillment, customer service and telemarketing, research, statistical analysis, hosting and other data and transaction processing. These companies work on our behalf and we do not provide our lists or other data to them for their own, permanent use. Please note that we may provide certain personal information (including credit card information) directly to third parties solely for the purpose of processing sales of subscriptions or other services through our sites, and that such third parties' collection and use of that information shall be governed by such third party's own privacy policy. In addition, we may enter into agreements with certain reputable third parties to "enhance" the data they already possess about certain individuals, as a result of which if such a third party already possesses certain personally identifiable information about you, we may provide that third party with other personally identifiable information about you in our possession.

In order to comply with the Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, we also may provide to other companies lists of customers who have opted-out of email promotion for Ziff Davis or other products, so these customers can be suppressed from mailings those companies send on Ziff Davis's behalf. In addition, if you unsubscribe from a mailing we send to our own list on behalf of a third party, your removal instruction may also be supplied to the third party and added to their own suppression file.

Ziff Davis Magazines, Seminars, Events, Sites and Other Publications and Services

As a Ziff Davis customer, you can also expect to receive relevant email and postal offers for Ziff Davis publications, seminars, events, web sites and other services. From time to time we are also able to secure and offer to our customers specially-negotiated discounts and new products from other leading companies. If you would prefer not to receive such mailings in the future, you can change your preference via the links in the previous section titled "Mailing Lists."

Change of Ownership of Ziff Davis Properties

The mailing list(s) associated with Ziff Davis properties may also be subject to transfer to another company in the event of a change of ownership (as was the case in July 2007 when we sold the assets of our Enterprise Group to a third party).

Anonymous Information We Collect

Cookies

As you probably know, cookies are small pieces of information that many Web sites store on your computer's hard drive when you visit them. They don't tell us who you are unless you've specifically given us personally identifiable information. Cookies stored on your hard drive by a Ziff Davis site are not accessible to other sites.

Like many other web sites, Ziff Davis sites use cookies to improve your experience with our online content. For example, we may use a cookie to identify members so they don't have to re-enter a user ID and password when they wish to download a utility or post to a discussion. As another example, cookies can be used to control the number of times you see advertisements, like pop-ups. By allowing us to better understand how users interact with the site over time, cookies also help us improve your experience and deliver more relevant content to you. Cookies may be created directly by our sites for these purposes, or by third-party companies operating on our behalf. However, our cookies do not contain any information that is, in itself, personally identifying. For more information and to opt-out of cookies we use to track how you interact with our sites, please click here.

Some of our advertisers and content providers occasionally serve you cookies as well. We do not have control over cookies placed by advertisers and content providers. You need not have cookies turned on to visit our sites, though cookies may be required in order for you to participate in certain areas. If you choose to become a member of a Ziff Davis web site, you must have cookies enabled to access any member related pages (i.e., Discussion Boards, Member Profile pages, Search for a Member).

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but allow you to modify security settings so you can approve or reject cookies on a case-by-case basis.

Pixel Tags

Like many web sites, Ziff Davis may also use pixel tags, also known as clear gifs, beacons, spotlight tags or web bugs, to improve our understanding of site traffic, visitor behavior, and response to promotional campaigns, as a supplement to our server logs and other methods of traffic and response measurement. Pixel tags are sometimes used in conjunction with small Javascript-based applications, also for the purpose of traffic measurement. We may also implement pixel tags provided by other companies for the same purpose. You can disable pixel tags by changing your browser settings to omit images and disable Javascript; or there are commercial software packages available that can omit pixel tags and most advertisements.

Online Ad Serving

Ziff Davis uses Doubleclick, Advertising.com and other third-party advertising service companies to serve advertisements when you visit our sites. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, or any other personally identifiable information you've provided us) about your visits to our and other web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. For this purpose, these companies may monitor our sites using cookies and pixel tags for the purpose of reporting web site traffic, statistics, advertisement data and/or other activities on our sites. The information collected through the use of these pixel tags is not personally identifiable. For more information about Doubleclick's information collection practices, and to know your choices about not having this information used by DoubleClick, click here. And for more information about Advertising.com's information collection practices, click here.

Several companies provide email deployment services for our email messages. The personally identifiable information (such as e-mail addresses) that we provide to these vendors for the purposes of e-mail deployment is used by them only for that purpose and not for any other business activity. These vendors may also create their own cookies on your computer, for the purpose of tracking your interaction with the email messages you receive.

Some of our advertisers use third-party companies to serve their advertisements on our sites and, in some cases, in our HTML-formatted newsletters. Often, these third-party advertising companies employ cookie and pixel tag technologies to measure the effectiveness of Web and e-mail advertisements. We do not give any personally identifiable information to them as part of this relationship. Use of their tracking technology is subject to their own privacy policies. For more information about the privacy policies of the third-party advertising providers including information on how to opt out of their tracking methods, click here.

PC Magazine PCMagCasts, Online Expos and Learning Centers

PC Magazine PCMagCasts produce and host sponsored webcasts and online trade shows for a variety of companies (or Sponsors). All data collected during the registration process and the actual event will be shared with those Sponsors. This data is governed by the individual Sponsor's privacy policy (except as noted in the following sentence) and may be used by the Sponsor for follow-up purposes. Ziff Davis will have the same access to this data as the Sponsors, and this Privacy Policy continues to govern how Ziff Davis uses the data. For details on how PCMagCast Sponsors use the information you provide, please contact the Sponsor directly.

PC Magazine PCMagCasts also automatically receive and record information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Internet connection speed, Internet connection duration, and media player (e.g., Real Media, Windows Media) information. This is done in conjunction with our broadcast providers. Your data is collected and retained by the providers for the purposes of delivering PCMagCast content appropriately, traffic reporting, and enabling re-registration for future events. In addition, the providers use cookie technology to identify you as a registered user of the PCMagCast service.

If you have any questions about PCMagCasts, please contact pcmagcast@ziffdavis.com.

Ziff Davis Events

Ziff Davis events, such as DigitalLife®, are produced for a variety of companies (or Sponsors). All data collected during the registration of such events may be shared with those Sponsors. This data is governed by the individual Sponsor's privacy policy (except as noted in the following sentence) and may be used by the Sponsor for follow-up purposes. Similarly, Ziff Davis will have the same access to this data as the Sponsors, and this Privacy Policy continues to govern how Ziff Davis uses the data. For details on how event Sponsors use the information you provide, please contact the Sponsor directly.

If you have any questions regarding DigitalLife, please contact info@digitallife.com.

Contests and Sweepstakes

Ziff Davis publications and web sites periodically conduct contests and sweepstakes. If you choose to enter, the data you provide will be subject to the official rules of the specific contest, as well as this Privacy Policy. Data collected during the registration for such contests and sweepstakes may be shared with sponsors. Please read the contest rules carefully before you submit your data.

Co-Branded Sites and Services

When you use a co-branded service within our network of sites, or register or otherwise provide information on a co-branded site, you grant us permission to pass the information collected back to that service or site partner. Use of your information by such partners is subject to their applicable privacy policies.

White Papers and Other Sponsored Downloads

Ziff Davis hosts sponsored product listings and offers informational downloads for a variety of companies (or Sponsors). When registration is required in order to receive or view the download, all data collected during product registration and/or Ziff Davis Web site registration will be shared with the Sponsor. When shared, this data is governed by the individual Sponsor's privacy policy (except as noted in the following sentence) and may be used by the Sponsor for follow-up purposes. Similarly, Ziff Davis will have the same access to this data as the Sponsors, and this Privacy Policy continues to govern how Ziff Davis uses the data. For details on how Sponsors use the information you provide, please contact the Sponsor directly.

Changing Your Privacy Options

Update Your Registration Information

You can correct or change the information collected during site registration at any time at the profile page links shown above by sending email to the addresses shown above. It may take a brief period of time for any corrections or changes to be publicly displayed or implemented throughout our systems.

Update Your Newsletter Subscriptions

You can opt-in to newsletter mailing lists, or remove yourself at any time through the subscription management page (this page will display all of your newsletter subscriptions) or by following the instructions at the end of the newsletters you receive. Please allow 5-10 business days for changes to take effect.

Update Your Print Subscription Information

You can correct or change your print subscription information at http://subhelp.ziffdavis.com. Please allow 2-4 weeks for changes to take effect.

Security

We use reasonable precautions to keep the personal information you disclose to our magazines and websites secure and to only release this information to third parties we believe share our commitment to privacy. However, we are not responsible for any breach of security or for the actions of these parties.

Children

Ziff Davis web sites are not intended for use by children, especially those under 13. No one under age 13 is allowed to provide any personal information or use our public discussion areas, forums, and chats. Minors under the age of 18 are prohibited from making purchases, including subscriptions, on our sites.

If your children disclose information about themselves in our public discussion areas, they may get unsolicited messages from other parties. Accordingly, you should tell them not to do so.

Compliance with Law

Subject to applicable law, we reserve the right to release information concerning any user of our sites or services when we have grounds to believe that the user is in violation of our Terms of Service or other published guidelines or engages in (or we have grounds to believe is engaging in) any illegal activity, and to release information in response to court and governmental orders, other enforceable requests from government entities, civil subpoenas, discovery requests and otherwise as required by law. We also may release information about users when we believe in good faith that such release is required to protect the rights, property, safety or security of Ziff Davis, any of our users or the public, or to respond to an emergency.

Changes to the Ziff Davis Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy may be modified from time to time. If there is a significant change, we will indicate on our sites that our Privacy Policy has changed.

Questions?

If you have any questions on our Privacy Policy, you can contact us at site_feedback@ziffdavis.com.