At Consumer Search Guide (“Consumer Search Guide, “we,” “us,” or “our”), we understand the importance of maintaining your privacy, and we therefore strive to provide our service with your protection in mind. This Privacy Policy applies to your use of our service whether accessed via computer or mobile device (the “Service”) on our owned and operated websites, mobile applications, and other properties on which a link to this Privacy Policy is provided (collectively, “Consumer Search Guide Pages”). This Policy does not apply to third-party properties, or Consumer Search Guide properties that contain other privacy policies.
This Privacy Policy contains the following sections:
Summary
Your Acceptance
Information We Collect
Our Information Use
Information Sharing and Disclosure
Cookies and Web Beacons
Accessing, Reviewing and Changing your Personal Information
Confidentiality and Security
Third-Party Practices
Regarding Children
Additional Terms
If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact us.
1. SUMMARY
This Privacy Policy explains and describes how Consumer Search Guide collects, uses, shares, and discloses information collected via our Service and/or Consumer Search Guide Web Pages. Although we urge you to read through the entire Privacy Policy for a full understanding of our practices, the following bullets provide a brief summary of some of the central features of our privacy practices:
We collect Non-Personal Information and Personal Information (each defined below) from you in two ways: information that you give to us, or information that we collect from your use of our Service.
We may share your Personal Information with third-parties in many situations, including as necessary to provide you with aspects of our Service, or in our discretion to third-parties for our or their own purposes. To learn more about our rights to share your information, please see Information Sharing and Disclosure below.
You can review and update your Personal Information by contacting us at [email protected].
We use commercially reasonable efforts to secure your information, but we cannot guarantee, nor should you expect, that your information will remain secure at all times and in all circumstances.
We have special concerns about the privacy of users who are minors (users under the age of 18), as further addressed in the Regarding Children section below. Our Service and Consumer Search Guide Web Pages are not directed to children under 13.
California Residents Privacy Policy
2. YOUR ACCEPTANCE
In accessing the Service and/or the Consumer Search Guide Web Pages, you accept all the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy. Accordingly, we ask that you bookmark and periodically review this Privacy Policy to ensure continuing familiarity with the most current version. If you do not agree with the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy we request that you immediately cease using and accessing the Service and/or the Consumer Search Guide Web Pages.
3. INFORMATION WE COLLECT
Consumer Search Guide collects information from you in two ways: information you give to us, and information that we gather from your use of our Service, each as more specifically described below. Such information is made up of “Personal Information” and “Non-Personal Information.”
“Personal Information” means information that you provide to us that personally identifies you, such as your first and last name, email address, physical address, telephone number, billing information, or social security number.
“Non-Personal Information” means information that does not specifically identify you.
Information you give to us.
We collect information that you give to us. For example, our Service may require that you register for a Consumer Search Guide Account (as defined in our Terms of Service) to receive certain features of our Service. Such registration may include your disclosure to us of Personal Information. We may also receive information from you if enter our promotions or sweepstakes, or if you participate (i.e., providing postings or other correspondence) in chat rooms, message boards, news groups and other community services available to you through the Service. Postings, activities, correspondence, and any content therein that you enter into the Service are governed by our Terms of Service. We may save any such postings or comments made to our Service.
Businesses who wish to partner with us, advertise with us, be included in our business listings, or participate in our Service in any other way may be asked to provide information such as a business name, website URL, telephone number, physical address, email address, description of business, service areas, business category and/or keyword information, credit card information, and other contact information (collectively, “Business Information”). Business Information may also include a business’s opt-in to receive additional information regarding services that we or our Partners may provide. Some Business Information may be Personal Information. If this information is collected by us or our partners via telephone, you acknowledge that we or our partners may be recording your telephone call for our training or quality control purposes during such call.
Information we gather from your use of our Service.
We, like many websites and applications, collect information about what parts of our Service you use and how you use them. Information we may gather includes, but is not limited to:
Computer or browser information such as your system activity, the domain name of the web site from which you linked to our Service and/or the Consumer Search Guide Web Pages, the time and duration of your use of our Service and any queries, browser type, and browser language.
Device information such as your hardware model, operating system, operating system version, mobile device type, unique identifiers from your computer or mobile device, application download information, and/or IP address.
Location information such as your geolocation when you use our Service from a mobile device and/or mobile application. We may ask for you to manually provide precise location information or to enable your mobile device to send us precise location information.
Please see the Cookies and Web Beacons section below for more information regarding what cookies are and how you can manage them as part of your use of our Service. We may also use unique identifiers, Flash cookies, web beacons, web server log information, or other technologies to collect information about you. In addition to the information that we collect from you for our own Service, we may collect information from you for third parties for purposes such as ad targeting, optimization and reporting.
4. OUR INFORMATION USE
We collect information from you and our other users to administer our business activities and to measure and improve our Service. Information is also used to fulfill your requests, conduct research, and develop new services and/or offer additional products and services to our visitors. For example, Consumer Search Guide may use your IP address to determine which language to use to provide you with Internet search results, or to advise you how far a particular vendor is from your location. In addition, information collected from end-users may be used in aggregate form to, among other things, determine the total number of end-users who are using our Service, prepare utilization reports for our Partners (as defined below), diagnose and fix compatibility problems or other problems with our Service, and perform statistical analyses to enable us to build higher quality, more useful online services. We may use your information to process account transactions that you request or authorize, to make you aware of new or other services that we offer, or to help conduct surveys to assess and improve our Service. The information collected from end-users also allows us to deliver search results pages that are as responsive as possible to an individual end-user’s particular search query of the content of the page such end-user is viewing (for example, serving results in the end-user’s native language and tailored to the end-user’s country of connectivity). We may use the information collected from you to show advertising and promotions tailored to your interests. If you submit a request for information about Consumer Search Guide through our web site, we may use your e-mail address to assist you with any issues you may have or to send you an e-mail that gives you the opportunity to elect to receive periodic e-mail alerts from Consumer Search Guide regarding developments at the company. In addition, if you elect to receive promotional information from Consumer Search Guide when you create a Consumer Search Guide Account, we will use the information you provided to Consumer Search Guide during the Consumer Search Guide Account creation process to send you only promotions that will be most relevant to you.
We may also use your e-mail address to send you important notices. Because this information is important to your use of our Service, you may not opt out of receiving these communications.
We use Business Information to create accounts for businesses, to include businesses in our listings, to communicate changes to the Service, to improve the Service, to provide anonymous reporting for our internal purposes and for reporting to third-parties, and to market Consumer Search Guide products and services, and those of of our Partners to such businesses. Businesses should note that certain Business Information will be displayed within a business’s ad copy and/or business listing on the Service. Businesses may edit their information by contacting our Client Services department at [email protected] or as we otherwise provide as part of our Service.
We may combine your Personal Information that we have with other information that we obtain from business partners or other companies. We may also combine your Personal Information with Non-Personal Information. If we do so, the combined information will be treated as Personal Information for as long as it remains combined.
5. INFORMATION SHARING AND DISCLOSURE
In providing our Service to you, we may find it necessary or beneficial to share your information with our partners, including our advertising, services and content partners (collectively, “Partners”) or allow such Partners to gather information directly from you.
Some of this information that you provide to us or our Partners may include your Personal Information. We may share your Personal Information with third parties in certain circumstances including the following situations:
Consent: We will share Personal Information with third-parties when we have your consent to do so.
Partners: We provide your Personal Information to Partners who work with us to provide our Service, or provide services outside of and/or unrelated to the Consumer Search Guide Web Pages or Service. Our Services with which our Partners may assist us include among other things, communicating with you about new or existing Consumer Search Guide or third-party services, creating or maintaining our databases, researching or analyzing our users, or processing payment card information.
Affiliates: We may share your Personal Information with any and all of our Affiliates. “Affiliates” means any entity controlled by, controlling, or under common control with Consumer Search Guide. Our Affiliates will use and distribute your information in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.
Legal Issues: Consumer Search Guide will use your Personal Information to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims. We will also use or share your Personal Information in order to prevent, or take action regarding any illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our Terms of Service, or as otherwise required by law even without a subpoena, warrant, or court order.
Acquisition or Merger: If in the future we sell or transfer our assets or portions of our business, or if we experience a change in control, reorganization or liquidation, we may transfer information to our successor or buyer, subject to the terms of this Privacy Policy.
Public Postings; User Reviews: As noted in this Privacy Policy, we may store, display, sell, and/or transfer any comments or postings you make within public forums that we provide as part of the Service. If you voluntarily disclose Personal Information as part of such posting, that information may appear on our Service or we may sell or otherwise transfer that Personal Information to third-parties. Please be aware that such publicly-displayed information can also be collected and used by others without our control. We cannot control who reads your review or what other users may do with the information you voluntarily provide using the community services, so we encourage you to exercise discretion and caution with respect to your Personal Information. The information presented in the community service areas reflects the views of the individual users or hosts and does not necessarily reflect our views or the views of any of our affiliates.
Business Information: We may sell or otherwise distribute to third parties any Business Information that you provide to us as we determine in our sole discretion, regardless of whether such Business Information is Personal Information or Non-Personal Information. Your termination of any services with Consumer Search Guide or our Partners will not result in your deletion of your Business Information, nor will we necessarily discontinue our use, sale or distribution of your Business Information following your termination except as required by law. We will not provide your credit card information to any third party except as necessary to provide or assist our Service. Please contact us at [email protected] to initiate any deletion and prevent our further use or distribution of your Business Information.
We reserve the right to share your Non-Personal Information publicly and with others. Examples of public information disclosures include providing anonymous reports to our Partners, such as the number of users who searched for “used cars” or how many users clicked on a particular listing or advertising on our Consumer Search Guide Web Pages. Other areas include postings on chat rooms, message boards, and other public forums within our Service. Such postings may appear on third-party websites or when searches are posted on the subject of your posting. In addition, some of the Non-Personal Information is provided to our Partners for uses such as calculating amounts owed by or to such Partners, or helping such Partners improve their services, amongst others.
Transfers of your information shall at all times be in accordance with applicable law. Consumer Search Guide disclaims any liability or obligation as a result of any third party actions or omissions concerning your information, including those occurring as a result of our sharing and disclosure pursuant to this Section 5. We urge you to contact third parties directly with any issues you may have concerning their use of your information. Please see Third-Party Practices below for more information on third-party use of your information.
6. COOKIES AND WEB BEACONS
When you visit a Consumer Search Guide Web Page and/or Service, a cookie that uniquely identifies your browser may be sent to your computer or mobile device. A “cookie” is a small file containing your preferences that is sent to your browser and sent back by your browser each time your browser accesses our servers. Cookies that we may use may only be read by the server that placed them there. We use cookies to improve the quality of our Service (for example, by fulfilling your language, filtering and other preferences) and to better understand how people interact with our Service (for example, by tracking user trends and patterns of how people search). Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some aspects of the Service may not function properly without cookies. If you would like more information about cookies and how to control and delete cookies in various browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome, please click here.
We currently use the services of web analytics companies to help us measure the effectiveness of our Service, including the advertising on the Service. To do this, we allow the web analytics companies to include Web beacons and cookies on the Consumer Search Guide Web Pages. The type of information collected via such Web beacons and cookies includes search terms, search parameters, click-throughs by users, and other similar information. By supplementing our records, this information helps us learn things like user preferences, popular search categories, click-through rates, how to improve our Service, and what kinds of offers our users like to see. Although our web analytics companies log this information on our behalf, we control how that data may be used.
Most, if not all, of the advertisements appearing on the Service are delivered to you by one of our Web advertising partners (“Ad Serving Partners”). In the course of delivering such advertisements, our Ad Serving Partners may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser, or place web beacons, JavaScript or other similar technologies on our Service for the purpose of collecting information. Thereafter, information about your visits to the Service, such as your search terms or phrases or the number of times you have viewed an advertisement (but not your name, address, or other Personal Information), is used to deliver targeted advertisements to you, a practice commonly known as “behavioral advertising.” The information collected by our Ad Serving Partners through cookies, web beacons or other similar technologies is anonymous, and our Ad Serving Partners are not authorized to collect any Personal Information about you. For more information about cookies please click here. To “opt-out” of receiving cookies from certain of our Ad Serving Partners, please click here.
7. ACCESSING, REVIEWING AND CHANGING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
If you have a Consumer Search Guide Account with us, you have the ability to review and update your Personal Information online by clicking on a “My Account” link (or similar link) on the Service and logging into your Consumer Search Guide Account. You can also review and update your Personal Information by contacting us at [email protected]. Generally, we will not modify your Personal Information because it is very difficult to verify your identity remotely. You must promptly update your Personal Information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it. Upon your request, we will close your Consumer Search Guide Account and remove your Personal Information from view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your Consumer Search Guide Account activity and in accordance with applicable law. We do retain Personal Information from closed Consumer Search Guide Accounts to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our terms and conditions, and take other actions permitted by law.
8. CONFIDENTIALITY AND SECURITY
We recognize our responsibility to protect the Personal Information you entrust to us. We restrict access to Personal Information to Consumer Search Guide employees, contractors, Affiliates, Partners (as described in this Privacy Policy), and agents. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with applicable law to guard your information. While we take precautions against possible breaches in our Service and customer databases, no website or Internet transmission is completely secure. Accordingly, we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss, or other breaches will never occur. Your use of our Service and the Consumer Search Guide Web Pages is at your own risk. We urge you to take steps to protect your Personal Information when you are on the Internet by changing your passwords often using a combination of letters and numbers, and make sure you use a secure Internet browser.
9. THIRD-PARTY PRACTICES
When users submit a search query on our Service, Non-Personal Information, such as IP addresses and search terms or phrases, is transmitted to certain Partners with whom Consumer Search Guide has subcontracted so that those Partners can deliver responsive Internet search results, advertising, or other services and, in some cases, for the internal data reporting purposes of those Partners. Our Partners are obligated by applicable law to protect the privacy of certain types of data; however, we are not responsible for their actions or omissions, including the manner in which they use information that they receive from us. Nevertheless, if you feel that any of our Partners, or any third party who claims association with Consumer Search Guide, is improperly collecting or using information about you, we urge you to contact them directly and also to inform us by e-mailing us at [email protected].
Certain of our Partners who provide or enable any functionality on the Service may also request or require that you download certain software or collect information from you, including Personal Information in order to access such functionality. We are not responsible for the contents of any software download or the privacy practices of our Partners. In addition, any web sites that you click to from one of our Consumer Search Guide Web Pages may have been developed by third-parties over which we exercise no control. Such web sites may send their own cookies to end-users, collect data, or solicit Personal Information from you. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such web sites, including such web sites’ use of any information collected when our end-users click through to such web sites. If you are concerned about the privacy policy of a third party, we strongly encourage you to contact them directly or visit their individual web sites to learn more about their individual privacy policies.
10. REGARDING CHILDREN
COPPA
We comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). For more information about COPPA and children’s privacy, please click here. When we use the term “parent” below, we mean to include legal guardians.
Children under the age of 13
Our Service is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not provide memberships or Consumer Search Guide Accounts to persons under age 13. If you are under the age of 13, you may not give us any Personal Information, and you may not create a Consumer Search Guide Account, register, sign up for or participate in any aspect of our Service. Except as may be required by law, we will not knowingly collect, maintain, or disclose any Personal Information from children under the age of 13.
We do not intentionally gather Personal Information about visitors or end-users who are under the age of 13. If you believe that we have collected Personal Information about a visitor or end-user who is under the age of 13, please contact us at [email protected], and such account and/or Personal Information will be deleted.
Children between the ages of 13 and 18
If you are between the ages of 13 and 18, please be sure to read this Privacy Policy with your parent and get his or her permission before you give us any of your Personal Information, before you use any of our community services and before you sign up or participate in our Service. Do not post your real name on a web site or message board or other community service that we may offer, and never tell anyone online anything private about yourself or your family, including your phone number and address. Use screen names at all times. Some areas of our Service may have special rules for children under the age of 18. When you are in those areas, you must follow those rules.
Information for Parents
We encourage parents to spend time online with their children to become familiar with the types of content available on the internet, including the Consumer Search Guide Web Pages. Parents should regularly oversee their children’s use of e-mail and other online communications and transactional features. Control tools are available from online services and software manufacturers that can help provide a safe online environment for kids.
We do not require a child to disclose more information than is reasonably necessary to participate in the Service as a condition of participation. Parents may request a review and/or removal of their child’s Personal Information at any time by contacting us at [email protected] and providing us with the same screen name, password, and e-mail address that their child submitted. To protect the child’s privacy and security, we will take reasonable steps to verify the parent’s identity before granting him or her access to the child’s Personal Information.
11. ADDITIONAL TERMS
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post any Privacy Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice. Your continued use of our Service after such change has been made will signify your acceptance of such change.
California Privacy Rights Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83
This website does not respond to Do-Not-Track cookies or technology.
California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits end users who are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of Personal Information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send us an e-mail at [email protected].
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us by e-mail at [email protected].