SYNC2IT PRIVACY POLICY
http://www.sync2it.com/common/policy.php
Last updated - 30 November 2005
Privacy Policy
This
statement discloses the privacy practices for the Sync2It Web
site. Questions regarding this statement should be
directed to Sync2It.com by e-mail: admin@sync2it.com
1. Description of Service
Sync2It (www.sync2it.com) is a free service designed
for synchronizing "Bookmarks" (also called "Favorites" or just "Links")
across browsers on one or several computers connected to the
Internet. (Subscriptions are available for those desiring to sync more than 100 bookmarks)
2. Notification
Sync2It will notify you via e-mail or in our
news page of any changes to this Privacy
Policy.
3. Personal
information
There are
three types of registration information collected by
Sync2It:
- Your name (or nickname/alias if desired) -- this is
used to identify yourself to other Sync2It
members, if you choose to publish bookmarks.
If you do not
publish any Collections of bookmarks, no other user can see any details
about
you.
-
Your e-mail address
-- this is your unique user name or ID. We have a strict
anti-SPAM policy. (see item 6 below.)
-
Profile information
-- this includes your mailing address, phone number, age,
and gender. You do not need to specify this
information. If you do enter this information, it will be
used internally for statistical purposes. We will not pass this
information to other
parties.
Under no circumstances
will Sync2It authorize outside access to your private information,
unless Sync2It is legally obligated to do so. Your bookmarks are stored
in a secure data center, and hosted on a dedicated server and backed up daily. Every attempt is made to safeguard
your personal information but will not be held responsible
for the accidental or deliberate release of your personal bookmarks or other information by unscrupulous individuals.
4. Bookmarks Your
bookmarks are private -
If you publish certain sub-sets of your bookmarks as "collections", these
bookmarks become available to other Sync2it users only if you choose
to make them public.
Publicly accessible pages that you and other users have bookmarked are spidered periodically for freshness. These websites will appear in our search results or in the top lists using only their publically available name and description information extracted from the site's <meta> and <title> and <description> tags. There is no way to trace the bookmark back to you as a user.
The ticker, toplists, and our search feature only looks at sites that meet the following criteria:
- The bookmark must have a URL of the form 'http://...'. So no FTP, TELNET, or MAILTO: links will appear in the ticker or in the search engine.
- The bookmark must not have a question mark '?' in it. Almost all password-based or session-based web sites use the question mark to identify the user.
- The page referenced by the bookmark must be accessible to our site. The software on our web site tries to connect to the page to get its title. If it cannot connect (because it's on an internal network, behind a firewall, or password protected) it won't show up on the ticker or in the search engine.
- The document's title is used on the ticker, not the name used when you bookmarked the site, so there is no way to trace the bookmark back to you.
- The document's <meta> description tag is used to describe the site, there is no connection between you and the url listed in the search engine.
Bookmark 'clustering' relies on the tendency that all of us have to store our bookmarks in folders using an appropriate folder names for organizing websites according to a logical scheme. These common folder names, that numerous other users have also chosen to store the same bookmark in, are upgraded to 'bookmark clusters' and made searchable by the search engine and cluster ticker pages. No personal information is contained in any cluster or link that is traceable to you in any way.
5. Security - All of our servers are running
in a tier one data-center with 24 hour security. Only authorized
system support personal have access these machines. All data
used by Sync2It is kept on a dedicated database server. Please keep
in mind however that data transmitted across the Internet is inherently
insecure when using http. Sync2It provides an SSL encryption feature for browsing your bookmarks securely while on the website. (https://www.sync2it.com/common/login.php)
6. No Spam!
- Sync2It will never send unsolicited commercial email advertising using the email address
provided for your account.
Note: Relationship or Transactional E-mail
By registering with Sync2It.com, you are granting us your "affirmative consent" to send follow-up email related to your account.
Such emails might include, but are not limited to, a password reminder if requested, a subscription confirmation email,
a subscription renewal reminder or a reply to a technical support question initiated by you. Generally, users will receive only one email
from us, a confirmation email, thanking you for subscribing and therefore helping to support our service, or a reminder
that your subscription is about to expire. Other than that, Sync2It is here to serve you, not
annoy you with unwanted email.
Sync2It will *not* release your e-mail address to any outside agency, unless we
are legally obligated to. *** Your e-mail
address is not for sale. ***
7. Update
Our site provides you the ability to change and modify information
you've previously provided. Visit http://www.sync2it.com/common/profile.php
to change your profile. Visit http://www.sync2it.com/common/removeuser.php to remove all your
information from this system.
8. No hidden functionality! - Sync2It products do exactly what they say they do, and no more. Our
bookmark synchronizer will NOT access any other
information on your computer. See our 'No Spyware' Policy
- Toolbar - In order to calculate the penetration ratio for websites that you visit and display this information to you, it is necessary for the BookmarkSync toolbar to send the url of the webpage you are visiting to our server. This is exactly the same mechanism that is used by other major toolbars to provide you with real-time feedback about the websites you are visiting (like Pagerank [tm]). A simple script looks up that url in our database and returns the penetration ratio in the form of a small graphic element back to the toolbar. At no time is the url associated with you personally in any way. No information about your browsing activity is stored on our server other than the url which is used to calculate our 'penetration ratio' and to generate our popular sites pages.
9. Cookies -
A cookie is a small
data file that certain Web sites write to your hard drive when you
visit them. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read
cookie files created by other sites. Sync2It uses permanent cookies
in only two instances, and then only if you are a registered user:
we store your email address to track your session, and, if you allow
us to, we store your password to make logging in easier.
10. Notification of changes - If, in
the future, we change our privacy policy with respect to the way
that we use the Personally Identifiable
Information that we collect from you, we will notify you by
email of these changes. You can always check our privacy statement
for any future changes.
