Ziff Davis, Inc. Privacy Policy
Ziff Davis, Inc. Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy describes what information Ziff Davis and certain third parties gather, how we collect it, our information sharing practices, how users may change the way their information is collected and more.
What we collect:
Part 1- 'Personal Information'
Personal Information generally means information which might reasonably be used to specifically identify you and may include information such as your name, address, age, credit card details, email and phone number. We collect such personal information when you provide it to us, such as when you:
- Subscribe to the PC Magazine Digital Edition
- Register with any of our Ziff Davis B2B sites including Toolbox.com
- Purchase software license or a product
- Sign up for email newsletters or white papers
- Enter a sweepstakes
- Register for site membership including My IGN
- Participate in surveys
- Create a profile or
- Otherwise communicate with us.
Several of the services that we offer require registration as a condition of use. We may also receive personal information about you from other sources and add it to the information you have provided to us.
Please note that Ziff Davis is not responsible for the information you volunteer about yourself in the discussions in our forums, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, or other publicly accessible interaction, or information that you choose to make public in your member profile or other areas that allow users to upload or post content. We discourage users from posting personally identifiable information in this fashion, and any personally identifiable information you post to these areas is not covered by this Policy. You can change your publicly available information at any time via your profile page.
Part 2- Other Information We Collect:
Web Beacons are electronic files that allow a web site to count users who have visited that page or to access certain cookies. When you receive email messages or newsletters from us, we may use web beacons, customized links or similar technologies to determine whether the e-mail has been opened and which links you click in order to provide you more focused e-mail communications or other information.
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies contain information that can later be read by a Web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Like many other web sites, Ziff Davis sites use cookies to enable you to sign in to our services and to help personalize your online experience. We may use a cookie to identify members so they do not have to re-enter a user ID and password when they wish to download a utility, post to a discussion, or sign into an account. As another example, cookies can be used to control the number of times you see advertisements, like pop-ups. By allowing us to better understand how users interact with the site over time, cookies can also help us improve your experience and deliver more relevant content to you. Cookies may be created directly by our sites for these purposes, or by third-party companies operating on our behalf.
Pixel Tags, also known as clear gifs, beacons, spotlight tags or web bugs, are a method for passing information from the user's computer to a third party Web site. Used in conjunction with cookies, Ziff Davis may use pixel tags to improve our understanding of site traffic, visitor behavior, and response to promotional campaigns. Pixel tags are also used as a supplement to our server logs and other methods of traffic and response measurement, and are sometimes used in conjunction with small Javascript-based applications. We may also implement pixel tags provided by other companies for the same purpose. We use clear gifs in our HTML based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by recipients.
You need not have cookies turned on to visit all of our sites, though cookies may be required in order for you to participate in certain areas. If you choose to become a member of certain Ziff Davis websites, you must have cookies enabled to access any member related pages (i.e., Discussion Boards, Member Profile pages, Search for a Member).
IP Addresses are a unique string of numbers that identifies each computer attached to the Internet. We use IP Addresses to analyze trends, administer our web sites, track users' movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses that we collect are sometimes linked to personally identifiable information. We use registration and email addresses that you provide together with IP Addresses and other information we collect as described in this policy, to understand our customer base and to market services and products to our customers.
Third Parties. To improve the quality of the some of our services, we may supplement the information we collect with information from third parties. For example, if you access My IGN (my.ign.com) or IGN content through third party services (such as Roku or Hulu) through a third-party connection or log-in, we may also collect your user ID and/or user name associated with that third-party service, or any information you have made public in connection with that service or which the third party shares with us.
What We Provide to Third Parties:
Statistical Reports and Mailing Lists The aggregate statistics that describe our online audience, which are often based on the information you provide when you subscribe, register, or browse our sites, help us sell advertising and otherwise publicize Ziff Davis and our brands. In addition, we make certain information such as the name of our users, their mailing address, phone number, email addresses, and – in certain circumstances – their employer's name, company size and other industry data available on a rental or other basis (e.g. sale) to third party providers of goods and services. To learn how you can make choices about how this information is used or shared, please visit the How You Can Change or Control What is Collected section below.
Email Deployment, Data Analysis E-Commerce and Other Services We provide customer lists, email addresses and other information to third party companies and contractors who provide us with specialized services, such as email message deployment, merge-purge (identifying and removing duplicate addresses), subscription fulfillment, and customer support and service, research, statistical analysis, data and website hosting and other data and transaction processing. These companies work on our behalf and we do not provide our lists or other data to them for their own, permanent use. Those service providers will be permitted to obtain only the personal information they need to deliver the service. They should also maintain the confidentiality of the information and are prohibited from using it for any other purpose.
Please note that we engage third party service providers for the purpose of processing sales of subscriptions, to fulfill your orders for product purchases, to honor your request to be removed from promotional mailings, or other services. These service providers have access to or are provided with certain personal information (including credit card information) in order to provide us with the applicable service.
Webcasts At times we produce and host sponsored webcasts for a variety of companies (“Sponsors”). Data collected during the registration process and the actual event may be shared with those Sponsors and others, and is governed by our policy and the third party's privacy policy and may be used by us and the Sponsor for follow-up purposes.
Contests/Sweepstakes Data collected during the registration for contests and sweepstakes is used by us and may be shared with sponsors. Please read the contest rules carefully before you submit your data.
Co-Branded Sites and Services When you use a co-branded service (a service operated with a service or site partner of Ziff Davis), or register or otherwise provide information on a co-branded site, you grant us permission to pass the information collected back to that service or site partner. Use of your information by such partners is subject to their privacy policies as well as ours.
White Papers/Other Sponsored Downloads Ziff Davis hosts product listings and offers informational downloads for a variety of third party vendors. When registration is required in order to receive or view the download, some or all data collected during product registration and/or Ziff Davis web site registration may be shared with the vendor (and other third parties).
Ecommerce When shopping on certain of our sites or pages, users may need to provide personally identifiable information necessary to fulfill an online order, including name, billing address, shipping address, telephone number, email address, credit card number (with expiration date), and any of the above information needed to send a package to a gift recipient. If a user creates an account, the credit card information above will not be stored under their account. When placing an order, credit card information may be either temporarily stored on a Ziff Davis server and then immediately transferred to a secure server of a PCI compliant third party or will be immediately entered onto a secure server of a PCI compliant third party. We partner with a number of third parties to process and fulfill orders, send transactional emails, and ensure delivery of downloads and packages. While these third parties may have access to personal information in order to perform their duties, they are not permitted to use it for other purposes.
What Third parties and Ziff Davis May Collect:
Online Ad Serving. Ziff Davis and some of our advertisers use third-party advertising service companies to serve advertisements when you visit our sites. Often, these third-party advertising companies employ cookie, pixel tag and other technologies to measure the effectiveness of Web and e-mail advertisement and to create a record of interaction with our site content that they use in conjunction with their advertising which appears on other sites, or for reporting web site traffic, statistics, advertisement data and/or other activities on our sites. We will also engage third party providers to assist with the segmentation of this data. The specific providers we use are subject to change. As of the date of the posting of this policy, some of the current providers include DoubleClick, Omniture SiteCatalyst, comScore, and Google Analytics (for information about how to opt out of tracking methods for these entities and others click here).
What Ziff Davis does with the Information it Collects
Personal Information. How we use personal information is described in the Section What We Provide to Third Parties.
Emails. We use email addresses to send offers of services or products (and as set forth in the Section What We Provide to Third Parties). Any recipient will be able to unsubscribe from receiving these emails.
Other Information: Ad Serving and Ziff Davis. At times we display ads both on our network of owned and operated web sites and on non-Ziff Davis web sites. When you visit one of our web sites or view ads that we serve off of our network elsewhere on the Internet, you may see multiple kinds of ads, such as text ads next to search results and graphical ads shown on web pages. Sometimes these ads are based on the content of the page on which they appear. Other times these ads are generated by matching the ad to your interests as inferred from your browsing activities collected online. Either way, Ziff Davis tries to show you relevant ads, and to do so, we may use information we know or receive about you like your gender, location or interests.
Interest-based Ads: We use cookies, Javascript, pixel tags and other technology to collect information about your visit (“Online Data”) to our sites and other third party partner websites that we do not own or operate but with whom we have agreements. We analyze what pages you visit on our sites and the third party sites, what products or services you view, and whether you view or click on ads that are shown to you. We use this information to send you interest based ads. All such data is also collected anonymously, and is aggregated with other data we collect and/or similar data collected by partners to create segments, groups of users and certain general interest categories or segments that we have inferred based on (a) demographic or interest data, and a general geographic location derived from your IP address, (b) the pages you view and links you click when using our sites and services and those of our partners, and/or (c) the search terms you enter when using certain search services. We use this information to get a more accurate picture of audience interests in order to serve ads we believe are more relevant to your interests.
We store page views, clicks and search terms used for ad personalization targeting separately from your contact information or other data that directly identifies you (such as your name, e-mail address) which we obtained as described above under Personal Information and in some situations we combine the two sets of data.
We will engage third party providers to assist with the collection, storage and segmentation of this Online Data; and the providers are required to maintain the confidentiality of this information. These efforts do not result in the collection of personally identifiable information such as name or address; and we do not intentionally collect data that we consider to be sensitive such as health or medical information. This data is not sold or transferred to any third party. Except as may be set forth elsewhere in this policy, this Online Data is retained for not more than 180 days after which it shall expire except in certain situations when the same user subsequently visits one of our sites or a partner's site in which event the 180 day period will commence again.
To allow other users to find you. In order to locate My IGN Members that a user may already know in the physical world and/or want to get to know in the online world, we allows users to search for members using information the user already knows, such as username, full name, or gamer profile, and identifies users matching that search information.
How You Can Change or Control what is Collected:
Cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but allow you to modify security settings so you can approve or reject cookies on a case-by-case basis. You may stop or restrict cookies on your computer or purge them from your browser by adjusting your web browser preferences. If you would prefer that we not collect anonymous data that may be used to help determine which advertisements to serve you, opt out by clicking this icon
AdChoices
However, if you 'turn off', purge or disable cookies, although you may still use our websites, you may not be able to use all of the features, functions or services available on our websites. Please click here to learn more about the use of cookies, your opt out choices, and more.
Ziff Davis supports the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising of the Digital Advertising Alliance (for more information click here), and has Evidon Inc.'s assurance platform to comply with these Principles. As part of this service, online ads that we place using behavioral data we collect are expected to be delivered with the Advertising Option Icon (also referred to as the Forward i) or similar icon that helps consumers understand how their data is being used and provides choices for consumers who want more control. Online advertisements on our sites targeted to you based on previously collected online data about you by third parties should also have the Advertising Option Icon. This icon is also at the bottom of each of our web pages. The Advertising Option icon provides information (and links to other information) on online behavioral ads, who is collecting and using your online data, how you can opt out and more.
Pixel Tags. You can disable pixel tags by changing your browser settings to omit images and disable Javascript; or there are commercial software packages available that can omit pixel tags and most advertisements.
Updating Your Registration Information. You can correct or change the information collected during site registration at any time at the profile page links shown below or by sending email to the addresses shown below. Please allow five to ten business days for corrections or changes to be publicly displayed or implemented throughout our systems.
Your Newsletter Subscriptions. You can opt-in to newsletter mailing lists, or remove yourself at any time through the newsletter subscription management page (this page will display all of your newsletter subscriptions) or by following the instructions at the end of the newsletters you receive. Please allow five to ten business days for changes to take effect.
Your Subscription Information. You can correct or change your PC Magazine Digital Edition subscription information and your preferences as to our ability to provide your information to third parties for their own marketing purposes click here. Please allow two to four weeks for changes to take effect (if you are a new subscriber, your information may not be immediately available at this URL – please allow up to four weeks from placing your subscription order for processing). You can correct or change your Toolbox.com subscriptions and preferences using the account settings here. Please note member service-related communications are an integral part of the Toolbox.com service to which you subscribe and you will continue to receive these emails as part of the Toolbox.com service.
Stop Sharing of Lists. Many customers appreciate the offerings they receive from the third party providers of goods and services to whom we provide lists of our customers, but here is what to do if you no longer wish for us to share this information with such providers:
If you are a registered user of our sites, you can change your preferences via the following profile page links: IGN; PCMag.com and the PCMag.com Utility Library; LogicBuy.com and Smart Device Central; one of the Ziff Davis B2B Focus sites; and for a Toolbox.com site, or send an email to ZDLegal1@ziffdavis.com and include 'Privacy Policy' in the subject line. If you provided your contact information to PCMag.com in order to download a white paper, case study or other document provided by a Ziff Davis advertiser or to enter a PCMag.com contest sponsored by a Ziff Davis advertiser, please send an email with your preference request changes to: ZDLegal1@ziffdavis.com and include 'Privacy Policy' in the subject line.
Please allow up to ten business days for any changes to be implemented throughout our systems.
Other Useful Information Regarding Your Privacy
Change of Ownership of Ziff Davis. Some or all personal information maintained by Ziff Davis may be subject to transfer to another company in the event of a change of ownership of Ziff Davis or sale of any part of Ziff Davis.
Security. We believe we use reasonable precautions to keep the personal information you disclose to our websites secure and to only release this information to third parties that share our commitment to privacy. However, we cannot guarantee there will not be a breach and we are not responsible for any breach of security or for the actions of any third parties.
Children. Ziff Davis web sites are not intended for use by children, especially those under 13. No one under age 13 should provide any personal information or use our public discussion areas, forums, and chats. Minors under the age of 18 are prohibited from making purchases on our sites. If, notwithstanding these prohibitions, your children disclose information about themselves in our public discussion areas, consequences may occur that are not intended for children (e.g., they may receive unsolicited messages from other parties).
Links to Other Sites. Ziff Davis web site may contain links to other sites whose information practices may be different from ours. We do not have control over the information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties. You should consult the privacy policy of these other sites to learn how your privacy is protected.
Compliance with Law and Other Terms. Subject to applicable law, we reserve the right to release information concerning any user of our sites or services when we have grounds to believe that the user is in violation of our Terms of Use or other published guidelines or engages in (or we have grounds to believe is engaging in) any illegal activity, and to release information in response to court and governmental orders, other enforceable requests from government entities, civil subpoenas, discovery requests and otherwise as required by law. We also may release information about users when we believe in good faith that such release is required to protect the rights, property, safety or security of Ziff Davis, any of our users or the public, or to respond to an emergency.
International. Ziff Davis operates websites hosted in the United States and, depending on your country of residence, the submission of personally identifiable information to our sites may involve some transfer of personal information to the United States. You understand and consent to having any personal information you provide transferred to and processed in the United States. You should be aware that privacy laws in the United States may not provide protections equivalent to those of your country of residence.
Please visit our Terms of Use page for more information concerning your use of Ziff Davis websites and other services. The Terms of Use are incorporated by reference into this Privacy Policy.
Changes to the Privacy Policy We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time, and all changes will be effective at the time we post them. If we believe there is a significant change, we may indicate on our sites that our Privacy Policy has changed. The then-posted version of the Privacy Policy supersedes all prior versions. Your continued access to or use of any of our sites shall be deemed your acceptance of the Privacy Policy.
We urge you to come back to this web page and review this Privacy Policy regularly so that you remain aware of the terms and conditions that apply to you.
Questions? If you have any questions on our Privacy Policy, you can contact us at ZDLegal1@ziffdavis.com; be sure to include Privacy Policy in the subject line.