This policy covers how Common Area handles personal information. Your personal and area's information will not be rented, sold, or shared with other people or non-affiliated companies. If you have questions, please send them to privacy@commonarea.com.
Personal Information
When you visit Common Area you provide us with two types of information: personal information you choose to disclose when you register with Common Area and Web Site use information collected by us as you interact with our Web Site. When you register with Common Area, you provide us with certain personal information, such as your name, your email address, birth date, mailing address, telephone number, your gender, and any other personal or preference information that you provide to us. When you enter Common Area, the site automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Common Area cookie information, browser type, and the page you request. This information is gathered for all Common Area visitors. In addition, we store certain information from your browser using "cookies." A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. We use session ID cookies to confirm that users are logged in. These cookies terminate once the user closes the browser. By default, we use a persistent cookie that stores your login ID (but not your password) to make it easier for you to login when you come back to Common Area. You can remove or block this cookie using the settings in your browser if you want to disable this convenience feature. When you use Common Area, you may set up your personal or community profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features. In most cases, we retain it so that, for instance, you can return to view prior messages you have sent or easily see your friend list. When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information. You post User Content (as defined in the Common Area Terms of Use) on the Site at your own risk. We cannot control the actions of other Users with whom you may choose to share your pages and information. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content. If you choose to use our invitation service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for information needed to send the invitation, such as your friend's email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email or instant message inviting him or her to visit the site. Common Area stores this information to send this one-time invitation, to register a friend connection if your invitation is accepted, and to track the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us at privacy@commonarea.com to request that we remove this information from our database. By using Common Area, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.
Children Under Age 13
Common Area does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for Common Area or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to or on Common Area. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at privacy@commonarea.com.
Children Between the Ages of 13 and 18
We recommend that minors over the age of 13 ask their parents for permission before sending personal information over the internet.
Use of Information
When you register you create your own profile and privacy settings. Your profile information, as well as your name, email and photo, are displayed to people in the networks and communities specified in your privacy settings to enable you to connect with people on Common Area. We may occasionally use your name and email address to send you notifications regarding new services offered by Common Area that we think you may find valuable. Profile information is used by Common Area primarily to be presented back to and edited by you when you access the service and to be presented to others permitted to view that information by your privacy settings. Profile information you submit to Common Area will be available to users of Common Area who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., community, neighbors). Your name, network names, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Common Area network and those limited pieces of information may be made available to third party search engines. This is primarily so your neighbors can find you and send a friend request. People who see your name in searches, however, will not be able to access your profile information unless they have a relationship to you (friend, member of your networks, etc.) that allows such access based on your privacy settings. Common Area may send you service-related announcements from time to time through the general operation of the service. For instance, if a neighbor sends you a new message or a community leader posts a bulletin, you may receive an email alerting you to that fact. Generally, you may opt out of such emails, though Common Area reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications. Common Area may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like certain local establishments or services and personalizing sponsors, advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you Common Area. We believe this benefits you as discover more about the local area around you and, where there are advertisements, they're more likely to be relevant and interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite restaurant in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a similar one in your town, but we don't tell the restaurant company who you are. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile.
Third Party Sharing
Common Area is about sharing information with other neighbors and people in your networks while providing you with privacy settings that restrict other users from accessing your information. We allow you to choose the information you provide to neighbors and networks through Common Area. Our network architecture and your privacy settings allow you to make informed choices about who has access to your information. We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you. For example:
- The system may aggregate the information you provide and make it available to your neighbors and network members according to your privacy settings. You may set your preferences for your news feed and mini-feed here.
- Unlike most sites on the Web, Common Area limits access to site information by third party search engine "crawlers" (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask). Common Area takes action to block access by these engines to personal information beyond your name, profile picture, and limited aggregated data about your profile.
- We may provide information to service providers to help us bring you the services we offer. Specifically, we may use third parties to facilitate our business, such as to host the service at a co-location facility for servers, to send out email updates about Common Area, to remove repetitive information from our user lists, to process payments for products or services, to offer an online job application process, or to provide search results or links (including sponsored links). In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for use for a limited time in connection with these business activities. Where we utilize third parties for the processing of any personal information, we implement reasonable contractual and technical protections limiting the use of that information to the Common Area-specified purposes.
- We occasionally provide demonstration accounts that allow non-users a glimpse into the Common Area world. Such accounts have only limited capabilities (e.g., messaging is disabled) and passwords are changed regularly to limit possible misuse.
- We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Common Area service or using the Common Area name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.
- If the ownership of all or substantially all of the Common Area business, or individual business units owned by Common Area, Inc., were to change, your user information may be transferred to the new owner so the service can continue operations. In any such transfer of information, your user information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy.
When you use Common Area, certain information you post or share with third parties (e.g., a friend or someone in your network), such as personal information, messages, events, Very Local Item listings or other information, may be shared with other users in accordance with the privacy settings you select. All such sharing of information is done at your own risk. Please keep in mind that if you disclose as personal information, messages, events, Very Local Item listings or other information, this information may become publicly available.
Links
Common Area may contain links to other websites. We are of course not responsible for the privacy practices of other web sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by Common Area.
Deleting Your Account
Individuals who wish to deactivate their Common Area account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available on the site afterward.
Information shared previously will remain on the site.
Security
Common Area takes appropriate precautions to protect our users' information. Your account information is located on a secured server behind a firewall. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card number or your password), we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). (To learn more about SSL, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Sockets_Layer). Because email and instant messaging are not recognized as secure communications, we request that you not send private information to us by email or instant messaging services.
Terms of Use, Notices and Revisions
Your use of Common Area, and any disputes arising from it, is subject to this Privacy Policy as well as our Terms of Use and all of its dispute resolution provisions including arbitration, limitation on damages and choice of law. We reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use at any time. Non-material changes and clarifications will take effect immediately, and material changes will take effect within 30 days of their posting on this site. If we make significant changes in the way we treat personal information, we will post them and will indicate at the top of this page the policy's new effective date. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by sending a notice to the primary e-mail address specified in your Common Area account, or through notice on our home page. We encourage you to refer to this policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current privacy policy. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.