Scope
This
Privacy Policy describes how we handle your personal information for
our services on the bharathbazaar websites. It applies generally to the bharathbazaar.com
website and content and other related websites where this policy
appears in the footer of the page. Some bharathbazaar-branded websites or
websites we operate may be governed by separate privacy policies. The
policy that applies on any of our domains or subdomains is always the
policy that appears in the footer of each website.
Our
subsidiaries’ and joint ventures’ privacy practices are similar to
those described in this Privacy Policy. Subject to the requirements of
applicable law, we strive to provide a consistent set of privacy
practices throughout the global bharathbazaar trading community. By accepting
the Privacy Policy and the User Agreement in registration, you
expressly consent to our collection, storage, use and disclosure of
your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. This
Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance for new users and is
otherwise effective on August 13, 2008.
Collection
You
can browse our sites without telling us who you are or revealing any
personal information about yourself. Once you give us your personal
information, you are not anonymous to us. If you choose to provide us
with personal information, you consent to the transfer and storage of
that information on our servers located in the United States.
We may collect and store the following personal information:
email
address, physical contact information, and (depending on the service
used) sometimes financial information, such as credit card or bank
account numbers; transactional information based on your
activities on the sites (such as bidding, buying, selling, item and
content you generate or that relates to your account); shipping, billing and other information you provide to purchase or ship an item; community discussions, chats, dispute resolution, correspondence through our sites, and correspondence sent to us; other
information from your interaction with our sites, services, content and
advertising, including computer and connection information, statistics
on page views, traffic to and from the sites, ad data, IP address and
standard web log information; additional information
we ask you to submit to authenticate yourself or if we believe you are
violating site policies (for example, we may ask you to send us an ID
or bill to verify your address, or to answer additional questions
online to help verify your identity or ownership of an item you list); information from other companies, such as demographic and navigation data; and other
supplemental information from third parties (for example, if you incur
a debt to bharathbazaar, we will generally conduct a credit check by obtaining
additional information about you from a credit bureau, as permitted by
law).
Marketing
We
don't sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their
marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We may combine your
information with information we collect from other companies and use it
to improve and personalize our services, content and advertising. If
you don't wish to receive marketing communications from us or
participate in our ad-customization programs, simply indicate your
preference in My bharathbazaar or by following the directions provided with the
communication or advertisement.
Use
Our
primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you
with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. You agree
that we may use your personal information to:
provide the services and customer support you request; resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems; prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and enforce our User Agreement; customize, measure and improve our services, content and advertising; tell
you about our services and those of our corporate family, targeted
marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your
communication preferences; and compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third parties.
Our Disclosure of Your Information
We
may disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements,
enforce our policies, respond to claims that a listing or other content
violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property, or
safety. Such information will be disclosed in accordance with
applicable laws and regulations.
We may also share your personal information with:
Members of the bharathbazaar Inc. corporate family—like
PayPal, Skype or Shopping.com—to provide joint content and services
(like registration, transactions and customer support), to help detect
and prevent potentially illegal acts and violations of our policies,
and to guide decisions about their products, services and
communications. Members of our corporate family will use this
information to send you marketing communications only if you’ve
requested their services. Service providers under
contract who help with our business operations (such as fraud
investigations, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs and
co-branded credit cards). Other third parties to whom
you explicitly ask us to send your information (or about whom you are
otherwise explicitly notified and consent to when using a specific
service). Law enforcement or other governmental
officials, in response to a verified request relating to a criminal
investigation or alleged illegal activity. In such events, we will
disclose information relevant to the investigation, such as name, city,
state, zip code, telephone number, email address, User ID history, IP
address, fraud complaints, and bidding and listing history. bharathbazaar
VeRO Program participants under confidentiality agreement, 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. In such events, we will disclose name, street
address, city, state, zip code, country, phone number, email address
and company name. Other business entities, should we
plan to merge with or be acquired by that business entity. (Should such
a combination occur, we will require that the new combined entity
follow this privacy policy with respect to your personal information.
If your personal information will be used contrary to this policy, you
will receive prior notice.)
Without
limiting the above, in an effort to respect your privacy and our
ability to keep the community free from bad actors, we will not
otherwise disclose your personal information to law enforcement, other
government officials, or other third parties without a subpoena, court
order or substantially similar legal procedure, except when we believe
in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to
prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected
illegal activity.
Information You Share on bharathbazaar
Your
User ID is displayed throughout bharathbazaar (and so available to the public),
and is connected to all of your bharathbazaar activity. Other people can see
your bids, purchases, items for sale, storefronts, feedback, ratings
and associated comments. Notices sent to other community members about
suspicious activity and policy violations on our sites refer to User
IDs and specific items. So if you associate your name with your User
ID, the people to whom you have revealed your name will be able to
personally identify your bharathbazaar activities.
If
you access our sites from a shared computer or a computer in an
internet café, certain information about you, such as your User ID,
activity or reminders from bharathbazaar, may also be visible to other
individuals who use the computer after you.
Using Information from bharathbazaar
Bharathbazaar
enables you to share personal and financial information to complete
transactions. We encourage you to disclose your privacy practices and
respect the privacy of other users. We cannot guarantee the privacy or
security of your information and therefore we encourage you to evaluate
the privacy and security policies of your trading partner before
entering into a transaction and choosing to share your information. To
help protect your privacy, we allow only limited access to other users'
contact, shipping and financial information to facilitate your
transactions. When users are involved in a transaction, they may have access
to each other's name, User ID, email address and other contact and
shipping information. In all cases, you must give other users a chance
to remove themselves from your database and a chance to review what
information you have collected about them.
You agree to use user information only for:
bharathbazaar transaction-related purposes that are not unsolicited commercial messages; using services offered through bharathbazaar (e.g. escrow, insurance, shipping and fraud complaints), or other purposes that a user expressly chooses.
Cookies
We
use "cookies" (small files placed on your hard drive) on certain of our
pages to help analyze our web page flow; customize our services,
content and advertising; measure promotional effectiveness, and promote
trust and safety. For more information about why we use cookies, see Cookies, Web Beacons, and Your
Privacy.
A few important things you should know about cookies are that:
We offer certain features that are available only through the use of cookies. We use cookies to help identify you and maintain your signed-in status. 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 doing so may interfere with your use of some of our sites or
services. You may encounter cookies from third parties
on certain pages of the sites that we do not control. (For example, if
you view a web page created by another user, there may be a cookie
placed by that web page.)
No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing
We
and our users do not tolerate spam. Make sure to set your bharathbazaar
notification preferences so we communicate to you as you prefer. You
are not licensed to add other bharathbazaar users, even a user who has purchased
an item from you, to your mailing list (email or physical mail) without
their express consent. To report bharathbazaar-related spam or spoof emails to
bharathbazaar, please forward the email to spam@bharathbazaar.com or spoof@bharathbazaar.com.
You may not use our communication tools to send spam or otherwise send
content that would violate our User Agreement. We automatically scan
and may manually filter messages to check for spam, viruses, phishing
attacks and other malicious activity or illegal or prohibited content,
but we do not permanently store messages sent through these tools. If
you send an email to an email address that is not registered in our
community (via Refer-a-Friend or other tools), we do not permanently
store that email or use that email address for any marketing purpose.
We do not rent or sell these email addresses.
Account Protection
Your
password is the key to your account. Use unique numbers, letters and
special characters, and do not disclose your bharathbazaar password to anyone.
If you do share your password or your personal information with others,
remember that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of
your account. If you lose control of your password, you may lose
substantial control over your personal 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
notify bharathbazaar and change your password.
Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information
You
can see, review and change most of your personal information by signing
on to bharathbazaar. Generally, we will not manually modify your personal
information because it is very difficult to verify your identity
remotely. You must promptly update your personal information if it
changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a public posting, you may not
be able to change or remove it. Upon your request, we will close your
account and remove your personal information from view as soon as
reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance
with applicable law. We do retain personal information from closed
accounts to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed,
resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any
investigations, enforce our bharathbazaar User Agreement, and take other actions otherwise permitted by law.
Security
Your
information is stored on our servers located in the United States. We
treat data as an asset that must be protected and use lots of tools
(encryption, passwords, physical security, etc.) to protect your
personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure.
However, as you probably know, third parties may unlawfully intercept
or access transmissions or private communications, and other users may
abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the
site. Therefore, although we work very hard to protect your privacy, we
do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal
information or private communications will always remain private.
Third Parties
Except
as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document
addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from
you. If you disclose your information to others, whether they are
bidders, buyers or sellers on our sites or other sites throughout the
internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the
information you disclose to them. bharathbazaar does not control the privacy
policies of third parties, and you are subject to the privacy policies
of those third parties where applicable. We encourage you to ask
questions before you disclose your personal information to others. |