LiveJournal Privacy Policy

Information you share with us is used for LiveJournal's internal business purposes. LiveJournal is not in the business of selling information about you. This notice tells you what information we collect, steps we take to protect and secure it, how we use and share the information, and finally, how you can access that information or contact us with questions or concerns.

Information We Gather

• LiveJournal collects personal information that you provide when you register with us, use LiveJournal products or services available on the LiveJournal Site (the "Service") or post content on a LiveJournal Blog site as a guest with authoring rights.
• LiveJournal may also collect personal information you provide to us when you enter any promotions or sweepstakes offered on the LiveJournal site.
• LiveJournal may aggregate your information with information from other users (without personally identifying you) and share it with our business partners or others.
• LiveJournal may also collect information about your transactions with us and with some of our business partners. This information might include information necessary to process payments due to us from you such as your credit card number.
• LiveJournal automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, cookies, and the pages you request.

How we use IP Address Information

• LiveJournal may occasionally obtain IP addresses from users depending upon how you access our web site. IP addresses, browser and session information may be used for various purposes, including to:
• Diagnose and prevent service or technology problems reported by our users or engineers that are associated with the IP addresses controlled by a specific web company or ISP.
• Estimate the total number of users visiting LiveJournal from specific geographical regions.
• Help determine which users have access privileges to certain content, services or resources that we offer.
• Monitor and prevent fraud and abuse.
• Deliver more relevant advertisements to you.
• LiveJournal may display your IP address to the owners or maintainers of certain LiveJournal journals when you post to those journals and the owner or maintainer has enabled functionality on the site for this purpose.

How we use Cookies

• A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier that is sent to your browser from a web site's computers and stored on your computer's hard drive.
• You can configure your browser to accept all cookies, reject all cookies, or notify you when a cookie is set, however, if you configure your browser to reject cookies, you may not be able to use LiveJournal products or services that require you to "sign in" and you may not be able to take full advantage of all offerings on the LiveJournal site.
• LiveJournal uses its own cookies for a number of purposes, including to:
• Require you to re-enter your LiveJournal password after a certain period of time has elapsed to protect you against others accidentally accessing your account contents.
• Keep track of preferences you specify while you are using LiveJournal's services.
• Estimate and report our total audience size and traffic.
• Conduct research to improve LiveJournal's content and services.
• LiveJournal lets other entities that show advertisements on some of our web pages set and access their cookies on your computer. Other entities' use of their cookies is subject to their own privacy policies, and not this policy. Advertisers or other entities do not have access to LiveJournal's cookies.

Special Rules Information Relating to Children

• The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA") requires that we inform parents and legal guardians about how we collect, use, and disclose personal information from children under 13 years of age. LiveJournal is not directed at children under 13 years of age but, we recognize that with proper adult supervision some parents might permit their children to visit LiveJournal and use our Service. COPPA requires that we obtain the consent of parents and guardians in order for children under 13 years of age to use certain features of LiveJournal.
• When your child attempts to register and/or provide personal information to LiveJournal, we require a parent or legal guardian to:
1. complete the registration;
2. review our privacy policy and to submit a valid credit card number to verify that the child's parent or guardian knows about and authorizes our information practices related to children protected by COPPA; and
3. verify through the use of an email confirmation and second authorization that the parent or guardian consents to the Terms of Service and this privacy policy.
• Once parental notice and consent has been verified, the information we collect will be treated the same as information collected from any other user of LiveJournal. Without verified parental notice and consent, we will not knowingly collect personal information relating to children under 13 years of age, and if we learn that we have inadvertently collected such information, we will promptly delete it.

How Parents can Access their Children's Personal Information

In compliance with COPPA, a parent or legal guardian may request from us to review, delete or stop the collection of personally identifiable information relating to their child or any child in their legal custody who is under 13 years of age. You may do so in one of two ways.

If you know the user name and password, follow the instructions below regarding Changing your Preferences and Personal Information, or you may contact us by letter, phone or email using the address information provided at the bottom of this page.

If you request that no further information about your child be collected or used, we will be required to terminate your child's ability to use any part of the Service that requires a user to "sign in."

How we Use, Share and Disclose Information We Collect

• LiveJournal does not share personal information we learn about you from your use of the Service or this web site with others except as described in this policy. We do not share your information with unrelated third parties for their direct marketing purposes.
• When you provide personal information through using the Service you are however sharing your personal information with LiveJournal, organizations that may hold a majority interest in LiveJournal, their divisions or subsidiaries and, LiveJournal and any of its divisions or subsidiaries. The use of your personal information by these organizations is subject to this policy.
• We do not share your information with unrelated third parties for their direct marketing purposes. However, LiveJournal may display targeted advertisements based on personally non-identifiable information (such as browser type and IP address) and/or personal selection (See the Section entitled "Third Party Advertising" below for more information on how your information is shared with advertisers).
• LiveJournal may use your personal information where it is necessary for us to complete a transaction, to operate or improve LiveJournal and related products and services, to do something that you have asked us to do, or tell you of products and services that we think may be of interest.
• LiveJournal may use your email address to contact you with required email messages about the Service.
• Where you are contacted with an offer or service based on information you have shared with LiveJournal, we will do our best to provide you with an opportunity to opt-out of receiving such further communications at the time you are contacted.
• When you post a message, your LiveJournal ID or alias that you are posting under may be visible to other users.
• When you post a message on LiveJournal Blog Sites, you have the ability to post a message which may include personally identifiable information about yourself; consequently, you should understand that if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return, and we cannot be responsible for the use of any information you post publicly.
• LiveJournal does or may share personally identifiable information about you under the following circumstances:
• In the course of operating our business it may be necessary or appropriate for us to provide access to your personal information to others such as our service providers, contractors and select vendors so that we can operate the Service and our business. Where practical, we seek to obtain confidentiality agreements that are consistent with this policy and that limit others' use or disclosure of the information you have shared.
• We may transfer personal information to certain advertising partners that you have explicitly requested to receive information from. It will be clear at the point of collection who is collecting the personal information and whose privacy statement will apply.
• We may share your personal information to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims, if in our judgment, disclosure is required or appropriate in such circumstances.
• We may share your personal information if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of LiveJournal's terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
• As we continue to develop our business, we might also sell all or part of our business. In such transactions, personally identifiable information you have shared with us is generally one of the business assets that may be transferred. The transferred personally identifiable information will remain subject to the promises made in this privacy policy or subsequent policies to which you have consented.

If there is ever a change to how LiveJournal uses or intends to use personal information, we will post that change to this policy and, if the new policy is materially less restrictive than this policy, we will seek your consent.

Third Party Advertising

Advertisements appearing on LiveJournal may be delivered to users by LiveJournal or one of our advertising partners. Our advertising partners may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement. In this way, advertising partners (or "ad networks") may compile information about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw their advertisements and determine which ads are clicked on. This information allows an ad network to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This privacy policy covers the use of cookies by LiveJournal and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

LiveJournal does not share any personally identifiable information with advertisers. LiveJournal may share general demographic information (such as information about members' aggregate interests and occupations) and non-personally identifiable information (such as browser type and IP addresses) with advertisers and partners. If you have a Sponsored+ account or are a Free or Early Adopter account viewing a Sponsored+ account's journal or other content, LiveJournal shares your voluntarily-provided public profile information (such as sex, age, location and interests) and your voluntarily-provided advertising preferences information with advertisers. LiveJournal does not give advertisers access to your private personal account information (such as email address, or, if you have elected to make these private or friends-only in your profile, sex and location). However, by selecting, interacting with or viewing an ad you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will make the assumption that you meet the targeting criteria used to display the ad.

Confidentiality and Security

No data transmissions over the Internet or via wireless networks can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Consequently, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make efforts to ensure security on our systems.

• We use physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect personal information about you.
• Your LiveJournal Account Information is password-protected.
• In certain areas, LiveJournal uses industry-standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions. However, please note that this is not a guarantee that such information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed by breach of such firewalls and secure server software.

If LiveJournal learns of a security systems breach we may attempt to notify you electronically so that you can take appropriate protective steps, however, we will never ask you to submit additional personal information or to verify the status of or information related to your account in any electronic communication email. By using this web site or providing personal information to us you agree that we can communicate with you electronically regarding security, privacy and administrative issues relating to your use of this site. LiveJournal may post a notice on our web site if a security breach occurs. If this happens, you will need a web browser enabling you to view the LiveJournal.com web site. LiveJournal may also send an email to you at the email address you have provided to us in these circumstances, however, we will never ask you to submit additional personal information or to verify the status of or information related to your account in any such email. Depending on where you live, you may have a legal right to receive notice of a security breach in writing. To receive free written notice of a security breach (or to withdraw your consent from receiving electronic notice) you should notify us at privacy@livejournal.com.

Changing your Preferences and Personal Information

• You can edit your LiveJournal Account Information at any time. Most personal information you may provide is entirely optional. For example, to the extent that parents are considering whether to permit their children to use the Service, we do not condition a child's participation based upon their provision of any more personal information than is necessary to operate the Service.
• You can delete your LiveJournal account by visiting our Account Deletion page; however, please note that some personal information, primarily your contact information, may remain in LiveJournal's records to the extent necessary to protect LiveJournal's legal interests or document compliance with regulatory requirements.

Contacting LiveJournal

If you have a privacy concern regarding LiveJournal, or this policy, and if you cannot satisfactorily resolve it through the use of this web site, you should then write to us by email to privacy@livejournal.com.

If you object to any sharing of your personal information that may be permitted under this policy, you may do so by writing us at the above address. We will take reasonable steps to accommodate your requests as they relate to our advertising practices. In some instances, honoring your requests may interfere with or preclude your ability to use the Service or may require us to terminate our relationship with you.

Effective Date: April 17, 2006