By using this site, you signify your assent to the Sunday Times online Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our service. Your continued use of the Sunday Times online following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes.

What personally identifiable information does the Sunday Times online collect from me?

The Sunday Times online collects information in several ways. Some personal information -- such as a name and e-mail address -- is gathered when you register for various services, and more detailed information is collected when we conduct demographic research.

When you are in a section of the Sunday Times online and are asked for personal information, you are sharing that information with the Sunday Times online, its divisions and/or its third party service providers unless it is specifically stated otherwise.

Promotions that run on the Sunday Times online may be sponsored by companies other than the Sunday Times online or may be co-sponsored by the Sunday Times online and another company. Some or all data collected during a promotion may be shared with the sponsor.

Please be aware that the Sunday Times online advertisers or websites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. The information practices of those websites are not covered by this privacy statement.
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How does the Sunday Times use my information?

Our primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide our users, with a better online experience, including interactive communications, online shopping and other services. By knowing a little about you, the Sunday Times online and its partners are able to deliver more relevant advertisements and content, and hence better service to you.

The Sunday Times online delivers targeted advertisements on behalf of advertisers. Advertisers give us an advertisement and tell us the type of audience they want to reach. We take the advertisement and display it to users meeting those criteria. In this process, the advertiser never has access to individual account information. Only Sunday Times online has access to your information. This kind of advertisement targeting is done with banner ads as well as promotional e-mail.

The Sunday Times online conducts research on our users' demographics, interests, and behavior based on the information provided to us upon registration, during a promotion, from our server log files or from surveys. We do this to better understand and serve our users. This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregated basis. The Sunday Times online may share this aggregated data with advertisers or business partners.
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With whom does the Sunday Times online share my information?

As a general rule, the Sunday Times online will not disclose any of your personally identifiable information except when we have your permission or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it or under the circumstances described below.

• Traffic: Web servers serving the Sunday Times online automatically collect information about which pages each user visits and the domain name of visitors. This information is used for internal review, to tailor information to individual visitors and for traffic audits. We also provide this information (as well as information from third-party market researchers) about our users on an aggregated, anonymous basis to our advertisers. Any personally identifiable information provided by subscribers online as part of an online advertising promotion or in order to access a third party service may be provided directly to advertiser or third party concerned.

• Promotions: Many promotions offer opportunities to request additional information from sponsors. When you request more information about a particular promotion, your e-mail address may be shared with the sponsor of that promotion.

• Shopping: If you make a purchase from an online store or merchant, the information obtained during your visit to those stores (including tracking information and cookies as described below as well as the information you give such as your credit card number and contact information) is provided to the merchants. This is to enable transactions to take place.

• Third parties: Online merchants providing services in association with the Sunday Times online have separate privacy and data collection practices. The Sunday Times online has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. For more information regarding the merchant, their store, and their privacy policies, return to that store's home page and click on the appropriate link.

• Editorial: A user's personally identifiable information (e.g., name, e-mail address) may be used by the Sunday Times online for editorial purposes. For example, we may use information provided by you to us as part of an online survey conducted by our editors.

• Legal: The Sunday Times online may also disclose user information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating and of our policies of Terms of use Agreement or may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) the Sunday Times online's rights or property, other Sunday Times online users, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities.

• Statistics and advertisements: The Sunday Times online may perform statistical analyses of user behavior in order to measure interest in the various areas of our site (for product development purposes) and to inform advertisers as to how many consumers have seen or "clicked" their advertising banners. The Sunday Times online also uses demographic information to allow advertising banners on our Web site to be targeted, in aggregate, to the readers for whom they are most pertinent. This means that readers see advertising that is most likely to interest them, and advertisers send their messages to people who are most likely to be receptive, improving both the viewer's experience and the effectiveness of the ads. In this statistical analyses and banner advertisement targeting, we will disclose information to third parties only in aggregate form.

What are cookies and how does Sunday Times online use them?

Cookies are pieces of information a website transfers to a user's hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies make surfing the web easier for you by saving your preferences while you're at our site. We never save passwords or credit card information in cookies. The use of cookies is an industry standard -- you'll find them at most major websites.

In certain areas of the site, the Sunday Times online places a "cookie" on the browser of a Sunday Times online user's computer to store and sometimes track information about you. A cookie can be used to tell when your computer has contacted a Web site; we use the information for purposes such as measuring certain traffic patterns, making sure that you don't see the same ad too many times in a single session, serving personalised content and so on.

Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, note that some parts of the Sunday Times online will not function properly if you refuse cookies. For example, without cookies, you will not be able to set personalized TV Guide preferences. You may occasionally get cookies from our advertisers. The Sunday Times online does not control these cookies. The use of advertising cookies sent by third-party servers is standard in the Internet industry.
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The Sunday Times online also logs IP addresses, or the location of your computer on the Internet. An IP address is a number that's automatically assigned to your computer whenever you're surfing the Web. The Sunday Times online collects IP addresses for the purposes of system administration, to report aggregate information to our advertisers, and to audit the use of our site. When users request pages from the Sunday Times online network, our servers log the users' IP addresses. We do not normally link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, which means that a user's session will be logged, but the user remains anonymous to us. We can and will use IP addresses to identify a user when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our policies or Terms of use Agreement or to protect our service, site, customers or others.
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Users should be aware that when you are on the Sunday Times online, you could be directed to other sites that are beyond our control. There are links to other sites from Sunday Times online pages that take you outside our service, e.g. clicking on a banner advertisement. These other sites may send their own cookies to users, collect data or solicit personal information. The Sunday Times online does not control the privacy policies of our business partners, advertisers, sponsors or other sites to which we provide hyperlinks.

Please keep in mind that whenever you give out personal information online --- for example, via message boards or chat --- that information can be collected and used by people you don't know. While Sunday Times online strives to protect its user's personal information and privacy, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you disclose online and you do so at your own risk.
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The importance of security for all personally identifiable information associated with our users is of utmost concern to us. We exercise great care in providing secure transmission of your information from your PC to our servers. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, Sunday Times online cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.
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E-Mail

Using the e-mail addresses provided when you register for various services, the Sunday Times online may periodically send promotional e-mail to its users about services offered by the Sunday Times online and its advertisers.
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Policies for Individuals Under 13 years of Age

The Sunday Times online encourages parents, teachers and guardians to spend time online with their children and to participate in the activities offered on the sites. No information should be submitted to or posted at Sunday Times online by guests under 13 years of age without the consent of their parent, teacher or guardian.
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By continuing to use the Sunday Times online, you agree to abide by the terms of this policy.