Last revised on June 20, 2010
This page summarizes the key highlights from our Privacy Policy. 1. Personal information collected We collect information: • When you register an account to become a markoblad.com user (“User”), such as your name, e-mail, employer, country, and a password. • When you add to your profile with further information about yourself or your private contacts, join or post to markoblad.com Groups, Answers and other Member-to-Member communication. • We use cookies and other technologies to recognize you, customize your experience, and serve advertisements. • Like all websites, we automatically receive from your internet use information like your IP address, the URLs of sites from which you arrive or leave the markoblad.com website, your type of browser, your operating system, your mobile provider, your mobile device, and your ISP. • We retain information you provide in connection with third party services available through markoblad.com like surveys and polls or other third party research undertaken with your consent. 2. Uses of personal information We use the information you provide to: • Enable you to run an re-run regressions with markoblad.com; • Administer your account with us and customize the service we provide to you; and to • Send you service or promotional communications through email and notices on the markoblad.com website. Please note that in order to deliver certain services (for example, markoblad.com Premium Services), we may share information with third parties. For example, to process subscription payments made by you, we share some of your information with the payment processing company we use. 3. Your information choices You can: • Review, enhance or edit your personal information through your personal profile page; • Tell us to close your markoblad.com account. 4. Your obligations to other Users. • Do not abuse the markoblad.com service by using it to spam, abuse, harass, or otherwise violate the Terms or Privacy Policy. 5. Important information • Notice of all changes that materially affect ways in which your personal information may be used or shared will be posted in updates to our Privacy Policy. 6. Security • Personal information you provide will be secured with industry standards and technology. Since the internet is not a 100% secure environment, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to markoblad.com. There is no guarantee that information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. • You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your unique password and account information, and for controlling access to your email communications at all times. 7. How to contact us • If you have any questions or comments please email us at admin@statistics.markoblad.com. markoblad.com Privacy Policy Introduction: The mission of markoblad.com (collectively with all subdomains thereunder, “mark.oblad.com”) is to allow you to run and re-run quick regressions. Here are the three main types of information on markoblad.com: Of course, maintaining your trust is our top concern, so we adhere to the following principles to protect your privacy: • We do not rent, sell, or otherwise provide your personally identifiable information to third parties for marketing purposes. • We do not share any information you have not chosen to display on your markoblad.com profile to other parties, unless compelled by law, or as necessary to enforce our Terms or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of markoblad.com, its Users, and the public. • All information that you provide will be protected with industry standard protocols and technology. 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. By continuing to use the markoblad.com service after notice of changes has been sent to you or published on the markoblad.com website, you are consenting to the changes. Please read this policy and send us questions, concerns and suggestions at admin@statistics.markoblad.com. What markoblad.com’s Privacy Policy Covers: 1. Information collected by markoblad.com. 2. How markoblad.com uses your information. 3. Your information choices. 4. Your obligations as a User. 5. Important information regarding service eligibility and US Department of Commerce Safe Harbor certification. 6. Security. 7. How to contact us. 1. Personal Information Collected The mission of markoblad.com is to allow you to run and re-run quick regressions (“Services”). By joining markoblad.com, you voluntarily and willingly provide us certain information, including personally identifiable information, which we collect in order to provide the Services. If you have any hesitation about providing information to us and/or having your information displayed on the markoblad.com website or otherwise used in any manner permitted in this Privacy Policy and the Terms, you should not become a member of markoblad.com; and, if you are already a member, you should close your account. We collect your personal information in the following ways: A. Registration In order to become a User, you must provide us the following information to create an account: name, email address, country, and password. Like other passwords, you should choose one that is known only by you. You acknowledge that this information is personal to you, and by creating an account on markoblad.com, you allow others, including markoblad.com, to identify you. B. Profile Information Once you become a User, you may provide additional information in the account section . Providing additional information about yourself beyond what is minimally required at registration is entirely up to you, but providing additional information enables you to derive more benefit from markoblad.com. Any information you provide at registration or in the account section may be used by markoblad.com as described in the Terms and this Privacy Policy, including for the purpose of serving advertisements through the service. If you decide not to share certain information, you may not receive the full benefit of being a markoblad.com User. C. Customer Service We may collect information through the markoblad.com website in order to, among other things, accurately categorize and respond to customer inquiries and investigate breaches of our terms. D. Site Usage We may collect information about the fact that you use certain features and functionality of markoblad.com, interact with third party platform applications, click on ads, or participate in research initiatives like polling and surveys on markoblad.com. E. Cookies Like most websites, we use cookies and web log files to track site usage and trends, to improve the quality of our service, to customize your experience on markoblad.com, as well as to deliver third-party advertising to Users both on and off the markoblad.com site. A cookie is a tiny data file that resides on your computer, mobile phone, or other device, and allows us to recognize you as a User when you return to the markoblad.com website using the same computer and web browser. You can remove or block cookies using the settings in your browser, but in some cases that may impact your ability to use markoblad.com. One type of cookie, known as a “persistent” cookie, is set once you’ve logged in to your markoblad.com account. The next time you visit the markoblad.com website, the persistent cookie will allow us to recognize you as an existing User so you will not need to log in before using the Services. In order to access or change any of your private information (like a credit card number) or to send a message to another User, however, you must log in securely again with your password even if your computer contains your persistent cookie. Another type of cookie, called a “session” cookie, is used to identify a particular visit to the markoblad.com website. Session cookies expire after a short time or when you close your web browser. In the course of serving advertisements or optimizing the Services to our Users, we may allow authorized third parties to place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. Any information provided to third parties through cookies will not be personally identifiable but may provide general segment information for greater customization of your user experience. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. markoblad.com does not store unencrypted personally identifiable information in the cookies. F. Advertising and Web Beacons To support the Services we provide at no cost to our Users, as well as provide a more relevant and useful experience for our Users, we serve our own ads and also allow third party advertisements on the site. These advertisements are targeted and served to Users, by both markoblad.com and other companies, called ad networks. Ad networks include third party ad servers, ad agencies, ad technology vendors and research firms. Advertisements on markoblad.com may be targeted to Users who fit a certain general profile category or may be based on anonymized information inferred from a User’s profile (e.g., industry, compensation bracket, gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, religion, or other aspects of your life) in addition to a User’s use of the markoblad.com site. To increase the effectiveness of ad delivery, we may include a file, called a web beacon, from an ad network within pages served by markoblad.com. The web beacon allows the ad network to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for advertisers. Web beacons also enable the ad networks to serve ads to you when you visit other websites. Because your web browser must request these advertisements and web beacons from the ad network’s servers, these companies can view, edit or set their own cookies, just as if you had requested a web page from their site. G. Log files, IP addresses and information about your computer and mobile device Due to the communications standards on the internet, when you visit the markoblad.com website we automatically receive the URL of the site from which you came and the site to which you are going when you leave markoblad.com. markoblad.com also receives 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, email patterns, mobile device operating system (if you are accessing markoblad.com using a mobile device), as well as the name of your ISP or your mobile carrier. We use this information to analyze overall trends to help improve the service. The linkage between your IP address and your personally identifiable information is not shared with third parties without your permission, except as described in Section 2.G (“Compliance with Legal Process”), below. H. Linked Accounts If you link your markoblad.com account to another account or service, or use other, third-party sites or services in conjunction with your markoblad.com account, we may collect information related to your use of third party sites and services accessed through markoblad.com or when you access markoblad.com through a third-party site or service. I. Rights to Access, Correct and Eliminate Information About You You have a right to access, modify, correct and eliminate the data you supplied to markoblad.com. If you update any of your information, we may keep a copy of the information that you originally provided to us in our archives for uses documented in this policy. You may request deletion of your information at any time by emailing admin@statistics.markoblad.com. We will respond to your request within 30 days. 2. Uses of personal information A. Consent to markoblad.com Processing Information About You The information you provide to markoblad.com may reveal, or allow others to identify, your nationality, ethnic origin, religion, gender, age, geography, or other aspects of your private life. By providing information to us for the purposes of creating your User account or adding any additional details to your markoblad.com profile, you are expressly and voluntarily accepting the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy and markoblad.com’s Terms that allow markoblad.com to process information about you. Supplying information to markoblad.com, including any information deemed “sensitive” by applicable law, is entirely voluntary on your part. You have the right to withdraw your consent to markoblad.com’s collection and processing of your information at any time, in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy and the Terms, by changing your settings, or by closing your account, but please note that your withdrawal of consent will not be retroactive. B. markoblad.com Communications As described in the Terms, we will communicate with you through email and notices posted on the markoblad.com website or through other means available through the service, including mobile text messages. We may send you a series of emails that help inform new Users about the features of the Services, and we will also send you service messages relating to the functioning of the Services. We may also send you messages with promotional information directly or on behalf of our partners, unless you have opted out of receiving promotional information. You can change your e-mail and contact preferences at any time by logging into your account and changing your setting related to your email notification choices. If you wish, you can also opt-out of receiving promotional emails by sending a request to markoblad.com customer service at admin@statistics.markoblad.com. Please be aware that you cannot opt-out of receiving service messages from markoblad.com. Also, if we send communications to you via the carrier service with which you have a mobile communications subscription or otherwise have access, you understand you will pay any service fees associated with your receipt of messages on your mobile device (including text messaging charges). C. Customized Content We use information provided to us (or to third parties with whom it offers combined services) to customize your experience on our website. D. Sharing Information with Third Parties markoblad.com takes the privacy of our Users very seriously, and we do not sell, rent, or otherwise provide your personally identifiable information to third parties for marketing purposes. Further, we will only share your personally identifiable information with third parties to carry out your instructions or to provide the Services or information unless compelled by law, or as necessary to enforce our Terms or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of markoblad.com, its Users, and the public. For example, we use a credit card processing company to bill Users for subscription fees. These third parties do not retain, share, or store any personally identifiable information except to provide these services, and they are bound by confidentiality agreements limiting the use of your information. markoblad.com does not warrant how often third-party search engines will update their caches, which may contain old public profile information. We may provide aggregated anonymous data about the usage of the Services to third parties for purposes that we deem, in our sole discretion, to be appropriate, including to prospective advertisers on markoblad.com. E. Working with Third Parties to Offer Services. We collaborate with third parties to offer services and functionality using markoblad.com developer tools such as our application programming interfaces (“APIs”). These third parties are either partners (“markoblad.com Partners”) with whom we have negotiated an agreement to provide services (“Combined Services”), or developers (“Platform Developers”) who have agreed to our API terms in our developer signup flow to build applications (“Platform Applications”). Both the negotiated agreements and our API terms and conditions contain restrictions on access, storage and use of your information. If you choose to use Combined Services or a Platform Application, you may be asked to confirm acceptance of the privacy policy and/or user agreement of the markoblad.com Partner or Platform Developer, which have not necessarily been reviewed or approved by markoblad.com. It is your choice whether or not to make use of Combined Services or Platform Applications and whether to proceed under any third party terms. Also, despite our agreements and technical steps taken to restrict access to and avoid possible misuse of information we may not screen or audit all Combined Services or Platform Applications. We also cannot guarantee that any markoblad.com Partner or Platform Developer will abide by our agreement. You agree that your use of Combined Services or Platform Applications is on an “as is” basis and without any warranty. If you or other Users of markoblad.com use or interact with any Combined Service or Platform Application, the markoblad.com Partner or Platform Developer may access and share certain information about you with others, such as your profile information. However, because a Combined Service or Platform Application can make calls on behalf of the User interacting with it to access non-public information, the level of detail accessible by the Combined Service or Platform Application through markoblad.com is constrained by the same settings that govern visibility of your data to that User on markoblad.com. For example, assuming you have not already given a Platform Developer’s application permission to access your information, your non-public profile information should not be visible to someone using the same Platform Application if it is not otherwise accessible to that person on markoblad.com. Please also note that because of our relationship with certain markoblad.com Partners and Platform Developers, permission to access certain account information may be automatically granted to provide the combined services or functionality. To revoke permission granted to a Combined Service or Platform Application at any time, please email admin@statistics.markoblad.com. Note, however, that even if you revoke the permission granted a third party, your connections, other members of your network, or other Users of markoblad.com may still be using the Platform Application, so the Platform Application or Combined Service may still have access to certain information about you. To report any suspected misuse of information, contact markoblad.com’s customer service. markoblad.com is not responsible for your use of or inability to use any Combined Service or Platform Application, including the content, accuracy, or reliability of applications and the privacy practices or other policies of markoblad.com Partners or Platform Developers. F. Polls and Surveys Polls and Surveys may be conducted by markoblad.com, markoblad.com Users or third parties. As a User, you may be invited to participate in polls and surveys from the markoblad.com website. Your selection may be random, or it may be based on your non-personally identifiable information. Whether or not you decide to participate in a poll or survey is completely up to you. Some third parties may target advertisements to you on the results page based on your answers in the poll. Further, markoblad.com or third parties may follow up with you regarding your participation. We may use third parties to deliver incentives to you to participate in surveys or polls. If the delivery of incentives requires your contact information, you may be asked to provide personally identifiable information to the third party fulfilling the incentive offer, which will only be used for the purpose of delivering incentives and/or verifying your contact information. It is up to you whether you provide this information, or whether you desire to take advantage of an incentive. We will not disclose any personally identifiable information to any third parties in connection with the conduct of any polls or surveys. Your consent to use any personally identifiable information for the purposes set forth in the poll or survey will be explicitly requested by the party conducting it. G. Compliance with Legal Process It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information, profile information and/or information about your activities as a markoblad.com User when required by subpoena or other legal process, or if markoblad.com has a good faith belief that disclosure is necessary to (a) investigate, prevent or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities or to assist government enforcement agencies; (b) to enforce the Terms, to investigate and defend ourselves against any third party claims or allegations, or to protect the security or integrity of our site; and/or (c) to exercise or protect the rights, property or personal safety of markoblad.com, our Users, employees, or others. H. Disclosures to others We may also disclose your personal information and other information you provide to another third party as part of an incorporation, organization, reorganization or a sale of the assets of markoblad.com or its business, a subsidiary or division. Any third party to which markoblad.com transfers or sells markoblad.com’s assets will have the right to continue to use the personal and other information that you provide to us. 3. Your Information Choices A. Accessing and Changing Your Account Information You can review the personal information you provided to us and make any desired changes to the information you publish, or to the settings for your markoblad.com account including your email and contact preferences, at any time by logging in to your account on the markoblad.com website. Please be aware that even after your request for a change is processed, markoblad.com may, for a time, retain residual information about you in its backup and/or archival copies of its database. B. Default Settings We have established what we believe to be reasonable default settings. We encourage our Users to review their account settings and adjust them in accordance with their preferences. markoblad.com accounts are also defaulted to allow Users to be contacted to participate in polls, surveys and partner advertising. C. Closing Your Account You can close your account through the markoblad.com by emailing admin@statistics.markoblad.com. If you close your markoblad.com account, we will remove your name and other personally identifiable information from our publicly viewable database. If you close your account, we have no obligation to retain your information, and may delete any or all of your account information without liability. However, we may retain certain data contributed by you if markoblad.com believes 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. Information you have shared with others, or that other Users have copied, may also remain visible. markoblad.com disclaims any liability in relation to the deletion or retention (subject to the terms herein) of information or any obligation not to delete the information. markoblad.com does not control when search engines update their cache, which may contain certain public profile information that has since been removed from markoblad.com’s publicly viewable database. D. Memorializing Accounts If we learn that a User is deceased, we may memorialize the User’s account. In these cases we may restrict profile access, remove messaging functionality, and close an account if we receive a formal request from the User’s next of kin or other proper legal request to do so. 4. Your Obligations As a User, you have certain obligations. Some of these obligations are imposed by applicable law and regulations, and others have become commonplace in user-friendly communities of like-minded members such as markoblad.com: • You must, at all times, abide by the terms and conditions of the then-current Privacy Policy and Terms. This includes respecting all intellectual property rights that may belong to third parties (such as trademarks or photographs). • You must not download or otherwise disseminate any information that may be deemed to be injurious, violent, offensive, racist or xenophobic, or which may otherwise violate the purpose and spirit of markoblad.com and its community of Users. • You must not provide to markoblad.com and/or other Users information that you believe might be injurious or detrimental to your person or to your professional or social status. • You must keep your username and password confidential and not share it with others. Any violation of these guidelines may lead to the restriction, suspension or termination of your account at the sole discretion of markoblad.com. 5. Important Information A. Children and Minors Children are not eligible to use our service and we ask that minors (under the age of 18) do not submit any personal information to us or use the service. B. Other Please note that by becoming a User, you have given us your express and informed consent to transfer the data that you provide to us to the United States and to process it in the United States. If Users have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, you should first contact markoblad.com by email at admin@statistics.markoblad.com. C. Changes to this Privacy Policy We may update this Privacy Policy at any time, with or without advance notice. In the event there are significant changes in the way we treat your personally identifiable information, or in the Privacy Policy document itself, we will display a notice on the markoblad.com website or send you an email, as provided for above. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that markoblad.com has about you and your account. Using the markoblad.com Services after a notice of changes has been sent to you or published on our site shall constitute consent to the changed terms or practices. 6. Security Since the internet is not a 100% secure environment, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to markoblad.com. There is no guarantee that information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. It is your responsibility to protect the security of your login information. Please note that emails, instant messaging, and similar means of communication on our site are not encrypted, and we strongly advise you not to communicate any confidential information through these means. 7. How to contact us If you have questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, please email us at admin@statistics.markoblad.com.