FindLaw Statement of Online Privacy Practices
Scope
Your privacy is important to FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business, and we go to great lengths to protect it. This Privacy Statement applies to the online collection of personal information via websites and mobile applications operated by FindLaw and its worldwide affiliated companies and subsidiaries. This Statement does not apply to information collected in any other way, including offline.
This website may contain links to sites maintained by others. This Privacy Statement does not reflect the privacy practices of those sites.
Highlights
What personal information is collected and how is that information used?
- We collect information about our users in three ways: directly from the user (for example, when ordering a product, registering an account, or signing up for a newsletter), from our web server logs, and through cookies.
- We use the information primarily to provide you with a personalized Internet or mobile application experience that delivers the information, resources, and services that are most relevant and helpful to you.
- We do not share with others any of the information you provide, unless we say so in this Privacy Statement, or when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.
How is my personal information protected?
- We have implemented certain appropriate security measures to help protect your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.
- We store the information about you in a data center with restricted access and appropriate monitoring.
- We use intrusion detection and virus protection software.
- Despite these measures, we cannot guarantee that unauthorized persons will always be unable to defeat our security measures.
Who has access to the personal information?
- We will not sell, rent, or lease mailing lists or other customer data to others, and we will not make your personal information available to any unaffiliated parties, except our approved agents and contractors, or as otherwise described in this Privacy Statement.
- We rely on some of our affiliates for support of the products and services we offer, and we share some of our back-office functions with other Thomson Reuters companies; our affiliates are all required to preserve the confidentiality of any personal information they may access.
- We will not disclose any personal information or information about your usage of our websites or mobile applications to unaffiliated third parties, except as necessary to service the account, to enforce the terms of use, to meet our obligations to content and technology providers, or as required by law.
How may I correct, amend, or delete my personal information, or update my preferences?
- You may cancel your registration or update your preferences at any time.
- If you do not want to receive information about our products or services, please update your account preferences (where available), check the appropriate box when registering and/or utilize the "unsubscribe" mechanism within the communications that you receive from us.
- If you have any additional questions or concerns related to this statement and/or our practices, email us.
Full Privacy Statement
What personal information does FindLaw collect and how do we use it?
We collect information about our users in three ways: directly from the user, from our web server logs, and through cookies. We use the information primarily to provide you with a personalized Internet experience that delivers the information, resources, and services that are most relevant and helpful to you. We don't share any of the information you provide with others, unless we say so in this Privacy Statement, or when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.
User-Supplied Information
When you register for our services or order products via our site, we ask you to provide some personal information, for example, your name, address, phone number, email address, payment card information, and/or certain additional categories of information resulting from use of our websites and services, such as research requests. We keep this information in a contact database for future reference, as needed. We may use certain information you provide to offer you products and services that we believe may be of interest to you. If you don't wish to receive such offers, you may opt out (unsubscribe) as described below.
- FindLaw Directory promotions: Email wld.update@thomson.com; include your name and contact information, and a message saying you'd like to stop receiving promotional materials
If you contact us for customer support, we may ask you to provide information about your computer or about the issues you are trying to resolve. This information is necessary to help us answer your questions. We may record your requests and our responses for quality control purposes.
Some FindLaw websites make chat rooms, forums, message boards, or news groups available to you. Please remember that any information disclosed in these areas is public. You should exercise caution when disclosing personal information in these areas. Please do not submit any confidential, proprietary or sensitive personally identifiable information (e.g. Social Security Number; date of birth; drivers license number; or credit card, bank account or other financial information) (collectively, “Sensitive Information”). If you submit any Sensitive Information, you do so at your own risk and we will not be liable to you or responsible for consequences of your submission.
Websites that FindLaw hosts for law firm and attorney customers may allow you to submit information to the law firm via a contact form or online chat. Any information that you voluntarily submit through the site may be shared with and stored by FindLaw so that FindLaw may provide services to the law firm or attorney. Please do not submit any Sensitive Information through the website contact form or online chat.
Additionally, FindLaw offers legal professionals the ability to provide personal information for inclusion in the FindLaw Lawyer Directory. If you submit your information, know that:
- It must be accurate, complete, and current. It will be distributed to third parties in multiple formats (including online), and you will not be compensated by FindLaw in any way for its use.
- FindLaw has no control over how third parties use your profile information; these third parties may contact you for any purpose, including marketing.
Web Server Logs
When you visit our website, we may track information about your visit and store that information in web server logs, which are records of the activities on our sites. Our servers automatically capture and save the information electronically. Examples of the information we may collect include:
- Your unique Internet protocol address
- The name of your unique Internet service provider
- The city, state, and country from which you access our website
- The kind of browser or computer you use
- The number of links you click within the site
- The date and time of your visit
- The web page from which you arrived to our site
- The pages you viewed on the site
- Certain searches/queries that you conducted via our website(s)
The information we collect in web server logs helps us administer the site, analyze its usage, protect the website and its content from inappropriate use, and improve the user's experience.
Cookies
In order to offer and provide a customized and personal service, we may use cookies to store and help track information about you. Cookies are simply small pieces of data that are sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer's hard drive. We use cookies to help remind us who you are and to help you navigate our sites during your visits. Cookies allow us to save passwords and preferences for you so you won't have to reenter them each time you visit.
The use of cookies is relatively standard. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. However, if you prefer, you can set your browser to either notify you when you receive a cookie or to refuse to accept cookies. You should understand that some features of many sites may not function properly if you don't accept cookies.
Third Party Services
We may use services hosted by third parties, such as Google Analytics, to assist in providing our services and to help us understand our customers' use of our products. These services may collect information sent by your browser as part of a web page request, including your IP address or cookies. If these third party services collect information, they do so anonymously and in the aggregate to provide information helpful to us such as website trends, without identifying individual visitors. Please see "Cookies" in the section above for information on how you can control the use of cookies on your computer.
How does FindLaw protect the personal information that it collects?
We have implemented certain appropriate security measures to help protect your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For example, some of our websites are protected with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. Also, we store the information about you in a data center with restricted access and appropriate monitoring, and we use a variety of technical security measures to secure your data. In addition, we use intrusion detection and virus protection software. However, please note that we cannot guarantee that unauthorized persons will always be unable to defeat our security measures.
Also, please note that we may store and process your personal information in systems located outside of your home country. However, regardless of where storage and processing may occur, we take appropriate steps to ensure that your information is protected, consistent with the principles set forth under this statement.
Who has access to the personal information?
We will not sell, rent, or lease mailing lists or other customer data to others, and we will not make your personal information available to any unaffiliated parties, except as follows:
- To agents and/or contractors who may use it on our behalf or in connection with their relationship with us (for example, we may use third parties to help us with promotional campaigns).
- Information that is submitted through a contact form or online chat on law firm and attorney websites hosted by FindLaw may be shared with or referred to an unaffiliated attorney if that law firm or attorney is unable to assist with your matter.
- As required by law, in a matter of public safety or policy, as needed in connection with the transfer of our business assets (for example, if we are acquired by another company or if we are liquidated during bankruptcy proceedings), or if we believe in good faith that sharing the data is necessary to protect our rights or property.
We also rely on some of our affiliates for support of the products and services we offer, and we share some of our back-office functions with other Thomson Reuters companies. Our affiliates are all required to preserve the confidentiality of any personal information they may access.
We will not disclose any information about your usage to unaffiliated third parties, except as necessary to service the account, to enforce the terms of use, to meet our obligations to content and technology providers, or as required by law. We may also use statistics regarding usage for product development purposes, but we only use those statistics in the aggregate and they don't include any personally identifiable information about individual users.
Your access to some of our services and content may be password protected. We recommend that you refrain from disclosing your username(s) and password(s) to anyone. We also recommend that you sign out of your account or service at the end of each session. You may also wish to close your browser window when you have finished your work, especially if you share a computer with someone else or if you are using a computer in a public place like a library or Internet cafe.
How may I correct, amend, or delete my personal information and/or update my preferences?
You may cancel your registration or update your preferences at any time. If you don't want to receive information about our products or services, please update your account preferences (where available), check the appropriate box when registering, and/or utilize the "unsubscribe" mechanism within the communications that you receive from us.
- FindLaw Directory promotions: Email wld.update@thomson.com; include your name and contact information, and a message saying you'd like to stop receiving promotional materials
Questions?
If you have any additional questions or concerns related to this statement and/or our practices, please email us. Or contact us via the following:
Jon J. Olson
FindLaw Counsel
610 Opperman Drive
Eagan, MN 55123
Telephone +1 651 687 8261
Facsimile +1 651 687 1899
Privacy Statement Changes
If our information practices change in a significant way, we will post the policy changes here. This Privacy Statement was last updated on March 9, 2012.
