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Published October 14, 2008
This policy describes the ways LabRoots collects, stores, uses and protects your personal information. This Privacy Policy is a part of the LabRoots Authorized User Agreement (the "User Agreement"), and you accepted this policy when you registered for access to LabRoots website (the "Site") and agreed to the terms and conditions of the User Agreement. LabRoots may amend this policy from time to time by posting a revised version on the Site, and without giving you notice, so please check this policy each time you visit the Site and note the date of publication.
This privacy policy covers the site www.labroots.com. Because we want to demonstrate our commitment to our users' privacy, we have agreed to disclose our privacy practices and have them reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe through the TRUSTe Web Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to enable individuals and organizations establish trusting relationships based on respect for personally identifiable information by promoting the use of fair information practices. The TRUSTe program only covers information collected through the Site, and does not cover information that may be collected through software downloaded from the Site.
We participate in the EU Safe Harbor Web Privacy Framework as set forth by the United States Department of Commerce. As part of our participation, we have agreed to TRUSTe dispute resolution for disputes relating to our compliance with the Safe Harbor Privacy Framework.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement or any complaints regarding our compliance with the Safe Harbor Web Privacy Framework, you should first contact Labroots by email at privacy@labroots.com. If you do not receive acknowledgment of your inquiry or complaint, or it is not satisfactorily addressed, you should then contact TRUSTe through the TRUSTe Watchdog Dispute Resolution Process at www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php. TRUSTe will serve as a liaison with the Site to resolve user concerns. For information about TRUSTe or the operation of TRUSTe's dispute resolution process, visit their website. The TRUSTe dispute resolution process is conducted in English.
Information Collection
Registration:
In order to become a LabRoots user, you must first create an account on this Site. To create an account you are required to provide the following information: name, email address, country, ZIP/postal code, your primary scientific discipline, a brief summary of your professional background (current occupation and networking objectives), and you must choose a password.
Profile Information:
Once a user, you may provide additional information in the Profile section describing your skills, professional experiences, and expanding on your networking objectives. Providing additional information beyond what is required at registration is entirely optional, and enables you to better identify yourself and find opportunities on the Site.
Invite Others:
If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend's name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. LabRoots stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email. Your friend may contact us at privacy@labroots.com to request that we remove this information from our database.
You may also choose to manually enter or upload data about your contacts into your private "My Contacts" section of the Site. All information entered in your "My Contacts" section can only be viewed by you and is not searchable by other Site users without your permission. All information that you enter or upload about your contacts will be covered by the same terms of this privacy policy that cover your own personally identifiable information.
Cookies & Log Files:
Like most websites, this Site uses cookies and web log files to track site usage. A cookie is a tiny data file that resides on your computer and allows us to recognize you as a user when you return to the Site using the same computer and web browser. Like the information you enter at registration or in your Profile, cookie and log file data is used to customize your experience on the Site. However, if your browser settings do not allow cookies, you will not be able to use our Site.
One type of cookie, known as a "persistent" cookie, is set when you log in to your LabRoots account. The next time you visit the Site, the persistent cookie will allow us to recognize you as an existing user so you will not need to re-enter your password before using the Site. In order to access or change any of your private information (like a credit card number), you must log in securely by re-entering your password even if your computer contains your persistent cookie. If you log out of the Site you will need to re-enter your password the next time you visit the Site in order to log in to your account. Another type of cookie, called a "session" cookie, is used to identify a particular visit to the Site. Session cookies expire after a short time or when you close your web browser.
Due to Internet communications standards, when you visit our Site we automatically receive the URL of the site from which you came and the site to which you are going when you leave. We also receive the Internet protocol (IP) address of your computer (or the proxy server you use to access the World Wide Web), your computer operating system and type of web browser you are using, as well as the name of your Internet service provider. This information is used to analyze overall trends to help us improve our Site and its operation. The link between your IP address and your personally identifiable information is never shared with third-parties without your permission or except in accordance with applicable law.
Information Use
LabRoots is an online service dedicated to helping scientific professionals more effectively connect with one another. The personally identifiable information you choose to provide on this Site for your profile is used to help you describe yourself to other users. Other information that does not personally identify you as an individual, is collected through data mining technology from the Site in order to create a symantic comparison for relevant content (such as, by way of example, patterns of Site usage) and is exclusively owned by LabRoots. This information can be used by LabRoots in such manner as LabRoots, in its sole discretion, deems appropriate, including advertising targeted to generic users with profiles of similar content and/or similar patterns of Site usage.
Labroots Communications:
LabRoots will communicate with you through email and notices posted on the Site. These include a series of up to five welcome emails which help inform new users about various Site features. Please be aware that you will continue to receive certain emails from LabRoots relating to the proper functioning of your account, such as email notices when another user sends you an invitation. LabRoots may send you promotional information unless you have opted out of receiving such information. If you wish to opt-out of receiving promotional emails, please send a request to privacy@labroots.com.
Customized Content:
Information you provide at registration or in your Profile section is also used to customize your experience on the Site. For example, based on the discipline you enter in your Profile, you will receive targeted news, publications, event notices, job postings, and advertisements that may be of particular interest to you.
Information Sharing
Sharing Information With Third Parties:
LabRoots takes the privacy of our users very seriously. We will never sell, rent, or otherwise provide your personally identifiable information to any third parties for marketing purposes. We will only share your personally identifiable with third parties to carry out your instructions and to provide specific services. For instance, we use a credit card processing company to bill users for purchases made on the Site. These third parties do not retain, share, or store any personally identifiable information except to provide these services and are bound by strict confidentiality agreements that limit their use of such information.
LabRoots offers a "public profile" feature that allows users to publish portions of their Profile, including "name", but not "email address" to the public Internet. Users may opt-out of this feature, however we do not warrant how third-party search engines will update their cache.
We may provide aggregated data about Site usage to third-parties for such purposes as we deem appropriate, in our sole discretion. We may segment our users by role (i.e. particle physicist, research assistant), field of science, geographic location, and company/university affiliation. If you would like to be excluded from the aggregated data we use to generate research or reports about our users' activities on the Site, please send a request to privacy@labroots.com.
Partnering with Other Companies to Offer Combined Services:
LabRoots may partner with other online services to offer you a variety of services. Whenever we offer such combined services it will be your choice to make use of such services or not. In these cases, your personally identifiable information will only be passed from LabRoots to the partner if you choose to use the combined service.
Communications Between Users:
Many emails you initiate through the Site (for example, an invitation sent to a non-user), will list your email address and name in the header of the message. Emails you initiate may also provide aggregate information about your network (for instance, how many people are in your network), but will never list the people to whom you're directly connected. Other communications that you initiate through the Site (for example, a request for contact), will list your name as the initiator but will not include your personal contact information. Your contact information will only be shared with another user if both of you have indicated that you would like to establish contact with each other.
If you use a bulletin board, discussion forum ("Q & A forum") or blog on this Website, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicitated messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums.
Legal Disclaimer:
It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information in accordance with applicable laws. We will disclose such information wherein we have a good-faith belief that it is necessary to comply with a court order, ongoing judicial proceeding, other legal process served on LabRoots, or to exercise our legal rights or to defend against legal claims.
Accessing and Changing Your Account Information
You can review the personal information you provided us and make any desired changes to the information, or to the settings for your LabRoots account, at any time by logging in to your account on the Site and editing the information on your Profile page. You can also close your account through the Site. If you close your Labroots account, we will remove your name and other personally identifiable information from our publicly viewable data. We may retain certain data contributed by you if it may be necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, or for legitimate business purposes, such as analysis of aggregated, non-personally-identifiable data, account recovery, or if required by law. All retained data will continue to be subject to the terms of this Privacy Policy. To request that we close your account and remove your information from the Site, please send your request to privacy@labroots.com. Please send your request using an email account that you have registered with LabRoots under your name. [Greg: what if the user no longer has an email account registered in the user's name with LabRoots?] You will receive a response to requests sent to privacy@labroots.com within three business days after we receive your request.
Security
In order to secure your personal information, access to your data on the Site is password-protected.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes to this Privacy Policy, the home page and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email or by means of a notice on our home page.
Questions or Comments
If you have questions or comments about this privacy policy, please email us at privacy@labroots.com or write to LabRoots, Inc., 18340 Yorba Linda Blvd., Suite 107 PMB 427, Yorba Linda, CA 92886.
