Primedia Consumer Privacy Policy

Primedia and its family of consumer publications and web sites are strongly committed to protecting your privacy and providing a safe online experience for all of our users and subscribers while offering the highest quality publications and services to them. Because we gather certain types of information about and from users and subscribers so that we can fulfill your requests and better serve your needs, we feel you should fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the collection and use of this information. This privacy statement discloses what information we gather, how we use it, how to correct or change it, and what steps we take to safeguard personal information provided to us both online and offline. Please note that some of our websites are subject to separate privacy policies. We encourage you to always check the privacy policy on each website you visit to be sure you understand the privacy policy governing that site. Please read the complete Online Privacy Policy below, as well as our Terms and Conditions of Use, and contact us if you have any questions.

What Information Do We Collect About You?

Information Users Volunteer
Subscriptions and Orders
Information Collected Automatically
Other Information

What Do We Do with Information We Collect?

How Do We Share Personal Information?

Primedia and Its Agents
Participating Vendors
Credit Card Companies
Advertisers, Sponsors and Promotional and Business Partners
Important Note

Contact Information

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU?

You can visit our websites, read articles and other materials, and check on offerings without giving us any personally identifiable information. So that we can provide our users and subscribers with the most efficient and enhanced, personalized service, we request information about you in certain circumstances, and also collect certain information automatically. We also use contact lists and other information we may obtain from third parties. For the convenience of our customers and to better serve you, a customer account includes all the collected personal information we may have, but you can update or correct your contact information or change your preferences about receiving offers and information from us or third parties at any time.

Information Users Volunteer

We collect personally identifiable information, such as names, mailing addresses, and/or e-mail addresses, when you subscribe to one of our magazines or place an order (see the section below for more information on subscriptions and orders), or through optional, voluntary registration at one of our web sites. Occasionally, we may also request demographic information, such as age, gender, hobbies or interests. Often this additional information is optional or requested anonymously in connection with a survey. Website visitors may register to receive one of our e-mail updates, or to enter online contests and sweepstakes, and we may offer offline contests and sweepstakes as well. Registration may also be required to participate in message boards, bulletin boards, or chat rooms at our websites, and may be requested in connection with certain surveys.

Sometimes registration can be accomplished by submitting only a user name and password. Other types of offerings require submission of additional information. The information we collect may include your e-mail address, name, address, phone number, age, gender, hobbies, family information, and similar demographic information or information related to your interests. For example, our automotive publications and websites may ask about the type of car you drive. Registration forms will indicate what information is required and what information (if any) is optional. This information may be collected during registration on a site or in connection with specific activities, for example, signing up for a newsletter, entering a sweepstakes or contest, or answering a survey.

Subscriptions and Orders

If you wish to subscribe to one of our publications or place an order for products or services online, you must generally establish a credit card account with us or our vendors. In addition to the customary information needed to fill your order (full name, address, ship-to name and address, gift information, etc.), subscriptions and orders necessitate collection of additional personal information, such as your credit card number and credit card expiration date. Most of our websites allow visitors to subscribe to our publications online, and some sites also offer areas where you may purchase items online. We offer online and offline subscribers a "bill me" option if they do not wish to use a credit card, but visitors should check online stores to see if other payment options are permitted for online store purchases apart from credit cards.

Information Collected Automatically

We also may collect your IP address, browser type, domain name, access times and referring website address. This helps facilitate your online experience at our websites. In addition, we use cookies to track usage patterns at our site and to control the display of ads, as well as to offer other functionalities (such as screening for age, helping to track items in your shopping basket at sites which offer online shopping opportunities, and "recognizing" you to speed up your log-in when you visit our sites). See below for more detail on cookies.

Other Information

We conduct market research in an effort to continually improve our publications and websites and may purchase lists of potential subscribers or customers from third parties. Those lists may include information on current subscribers or customers. This information is included in our database. That helps us, for example, minimize multiple mailings and e-mailings, and provide information tailored to your interests.

WHAT DO WE DO WITH COLLECTED INFORMATION?

We use information you provide to fulfill your requests and improve our publications, products and services. We may, from time to time, produce reports for advertisers, sponsors and vendors containing anonymous, aggregate information about our users and subscribers, such as demographic, age and online usage information. This allows us to provide content and offers that are most relevant to our subscribers and users and to work more closely with advertisers. We do not include any personally identifiable information of our users in these reports.

We use personal information so that we may display or send custom, personalized content to our website visitors and to send newsletters, mail, e-mails, features, promotional material, surveys and other updates, information or offers to our users and subscribers. A user may, at any time, opt out of receiving such information. We also use collected information to evaluate and administer our products and services, fulfill customer requests, like subscription and other orders, respond to any problems that may arise, such as magazine delivery failures, difficulties in navigating our sites or accessing certain features, as well as to gauge user trends to determine what products and services are most popular with users.

We allow users of our website to send articles or links by email to other parties who may be interested in them. We do not retain any email addresses (unless you are a member who already has voluntarily provided your email address) of either the sender or recipient of such articles or links after they are sent, and do not share "send a friend" e-mail addresses with third parties.

Of course, we use personal information to allow you to subscribe online or to make product purchases at certain of our websites. Rest assured that we and our technical and fulfillment agents and consultants follow careful procedures to safeguard credit card data in connection with your transactions.

HOW DO WE SHARE PERSONAL INFORMATION?

Personal information is available to Primedia and its technical and fulfillment agents and consultants who make this site and our publications, products and services available to you. Anonymous information is available to our advertisers, sponsors and promotional and business partners. We share your personal information with third parties only as described below.

Primedia and Its Agents. Primedia may access both anonymous, aggregate demographic data and any personal information you provide for internal marketing purposes, including sending you notices of subscription renewal deadlines, new publications, services or products we offer likely to be of interest, and filling subscription and other orders. To facilitate subscriptions and orders, Primedia will cache your order information, and create an authorization with a merchant account (i.e., your credit card company). There are many companies who may be required to assist Primedia in making its publications, products and web sites available to you. Web host firms, technical and database consultants, advertising agencies, and fulfillment firms, including firms assisting us in offering contests and promotions, may have access to personally identifiable information in the course of making our products and services available. All companies working for Primedia must comply with our information collection, use and disclosure policies, and are not permitted to sell your information to third parties or to use it except as authorized by us and you, or as permitted or required by law.

Participating Vendors. Some of our sites offer opportunities to make purchases online from special participating vendors. On sites with online purchase opportunities for products and merchandise, we will also give participating manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers or distributors the order information and authorization for the merchant bank. Any time you order from a participating vendor, that vendor will automatically have all the information related to the order. Participating vendors may use that information to advise you directly of other products and offerings that they provide. Primedia is not responsible for their privacy policies, and urges you to inquire about their information practices. In addition, all vendors will receive the same anonymous, aggregate data that our advertisers do.

Credit Card Companies. As in any transaction, your credit card company will have all relevant information about the name of the vendor, item(s) purchased, and date and total cost. Primedia will not otherwise provide any personal data to your credit card company.

Advertisers, Sponsors and Promotional and Business Partners. We share anonymous, aggregate demographic information (such as gender, age, income, hobbies, interests, etc.), and anonymous information obtained from cookies and similar technologies, with our advertisers, sponsors, promotional and business partners, and with participating vendors at sites offering online sales opportunities. No personally identifiable information is disclosed to any of these third parties in providing these reports. Credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and passwords are not shared with advertisers, sponsors or promotional partners, and are only shared with specific vendors with whom you place an online order.

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

Offline and online contact information is handled differently. As is customary in the publications business, offline contact information is shared with third parties who may send you offers or information about their products or services. You must opt-out if you do not wish to receive information from us or third parties by mail.

Your e-mail address is not shared with third parties unless you opt-in to receiving information from third parties. In other words, we may extend e-mail offers to users or subscribers on behalf of our business partners about a particular product or service that may be of interest to you, but only if you have indicated that you would like to receive those offers. If you wish to receive such offers, we do not share or disclose your name or e-mail address to those business partners, but will send you the information or offers on their behalf. As result, although Primedia may receive a fee from our business partners for this service, Primedia sends all the offers so that your personal information is never shared with any outside third party. Of course, you may opt out of receiving those offers at any time.

Sometimes we will give you the opportunity to opt in to receive e-mail offers from third parties not affiliated with Primedia. If you decide to accept these offers, we will provide, with your consent, your contact information to the third party. At our websites, visitors will also have opportunities to sign up directly with certain advertisers and sponsors to enter contests or sweepstakes, receive e-mail updates, or to receive information directly from them. Third party vendors and advertisers will also use technical and other consultants. We urge visitors to carefully review the privacy policies of these firms. Primedia is not responsible for the privacy policies and procedures of any third party.

You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose information, personal or otherwise, online in any community area (whether through Primedia's websites or any other service available online), that information can be collected and used by others. For example, if you use chat, forums, bulletin boards or message boards, or if you post personal information online (such as your e-mail address), you may receive unsolicited messages from others. Primedia has no control over this use of your personal information.

Important Note

We reserve the right to use or disclose any information without notice or consent as needed to satisfy any law, regulation or legal request; to conduct investigations of consumer complaints or possible breaches of law; to protect the integrity of our site and our property; to protect the safety of our visitors or others; to fulfill your requests; or to cooperate in any legal investigation.

HOW DO WE USE COOKIES?

Your Web browser offers so-called "cookies" which, if you allow their use, store small amounts of data on your computer when you visit a website. Cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information about you and therefore cannot be used to identify you personally. Cookies assist us in tracking which of our features you like best. Cookies also enable us to customize our content according to your preferences. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying your browser and our websites are viewable even if you disable the cookie function on your browser. However, if you disable cookies, some advanced and customized features or offerings will not be available to you. Our third party advertisers may also use cookies.

HOW DO WE USE WEB BEACONS?

Some of our Web pages may contain electronic images known as Web beacons, which are also called single-pixel gifs. These images allow us to count users who have visited those pages and to deliver co-branded services. We also may include Web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or newsletters in order to count how many messages have been opened and acted upon. Web beacons are not used to access your personally identifiable information but they are a technique we use to compile aggregated statistics about our website usage. Web beacons collect only a limited set of information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the Web beacon resides. Some of our Web pages may also contain Web beacons placed there by our advertising partners to help us determine the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns.

WHAT ABOUT THIRD PARTY ADVERTISERS?

Some of the banner ads displayed in our websites are provided by outside companies. These ads contain cookies and may also contain Web beacons. Unlike cookies and Web beacons used by Primedia in content it controls at its Web sites, cookies or Web beacons received with banner ads are collected by our advertisers and we do not have access to this information. We use reputable third parties to serve some or all of the advertisements that are placed within our sites and they may use information (not including personally identifiable information) about your visits to our sites and other sites to assist in serving advertisements to you. They may share anonymous information with their clients such as date/time of the banner ad shown, the specific ad shown, the IP address, etc. DoubleClick is our third party ad server. If you would like to know more about their information gathering practices and "opt-out" procedures, please see http://www.doubleclick.com/us/corporate/privacy.

HOW CAN YOU CONTROL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We believe that choice in how and when you are contacted is key to customer satisfaction, so we offer several ways for you to update your contact information or change your preferences.

1. If you have an online account at one of our websites, you may be able to log on and update or change your contact or account information. Check the site for further information.
2. You may unsubscribe to any of our online e-mail updates by following the unsubscribe instructions in the body of any message.
3. You may write to us and update your contact information or ask that we not share your personal contact information with third parties at: Primedia, Inc., c/o Privacy Coordinator, 745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10151. In those instances, we will retain your information in a "do not promote" file in our database.
4. You may also contact us at privacypolicy@primedia.com.

We will take commercially reasonable steps to implement your opt-out requests promptly, but you may still receive promotional information from us by mail for up to 60 days due to printing and mailing schedules, and up to 10 days for e-mail.

SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt important information, such as your credit card data, in an effort to prevent unauthorized access during transmission of your orders over the Internet. We incorporate standard industry practices internally and with our service providers suitable to the degree of sensitivity of the information involved to maintain the security of your personal information and to avoid its disclosure except as described in this policy.
Your personal information may also be protected by the password you created when you registered at one of our websites where this feature is offered. The confidentiality of any password is yours to protect. You may change it anytime by following the instructions at the website where you registered.
Although we use our best efforts to assure that your data remains secure when maintained by us, security during Internet transmissions cannot be assured. Primedia employees are made aware of its privacy practices through periodic communications and training. We limit access to personal data only to those Primedia employees or agents with a specific need to access or retrieve this information. We store data on multiple service systems, in controlled, secure environments. To maintain the highest level of security, we conduct internal reviews of our security measures on a regular basis. Remember, however, that any personal information you post in chat rooms or message boards is available to anyone.

CHILDREN'S PRIVACY

Most of our publications and web sites are intended for adults. Some web sites and publications, however, are intended for teens 13 and older but may include features or material that may be appealing to children under the age of 13. Primedia is strongly committed to protecting the safety and privacy of children who visit our Web sites. We do not knowingly collect personal information online from children under 13 and have adopted techniques to age-screen users on our teen-oriented sites to ensure compliance with this Privacy Policy and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its accompanying regulations establish United States federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet. Many of our sites include chat rooms, bulletin boards and other features that we believe are unsuitable for children under 13 and which are not necessarily monitored. We encourage all parents to talk to their kids about online safety and to monitor their children's use of the Internet.

LINKS

Primedia may offer links to or from Web sites it controls to other sites within the Primedia family as well as to sites operated by third parties. We offer links to third party sites so that you can conveniently visit our vendors and advertisers or locate other content likely to be of interest. We are not responsible for the content, practices or policies of sites operated by third parties and urge you to inquire about them before providing any personally-identifiable information.

CHANGES IN CORPORATE STRUCTURE

In developing our business, we might sell certain assets, or the company, or parts of it, may be sold, merged or otherwise transferred. In such transactions, user information, whether personally identifiable or otherwise, may be one of the transferred assets.

VISITORS AND SUBSCRIBERS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES

Our websites and the servers that make these sites available worldwide are located in the United States. All matters relating to these sites are governed by the laws of the State of New York in the United States. Any information you provide in subscribing to one of our publications or registering or ordering at one of our web sites will be transferred to the United States. By visiting our sites and submitting information, you authorize this transfer, processing and use.

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy as necessary to protect our users and to comply with a changing environment. We recommend that you check the policy when you visit our site to be sure you are aware of and understand our current policy. If we make material changes to this policy or in how we will use or collect your personally identifiable information, we will prominently post such changes prior to implementing the change. We will not make material changes in how we handle previously collected personal information that have retroactive effect unless legally required to do so, and we will e-mail registered website visitors information on material changes to this policy.

CONTACT INFORMATION

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please e-mail us at privacypolicy@primedia.com. Please include the URL of the Web site and/or name of the publication involved in your request.

Or you can contact us by mail at:

Privacy Coordinator
Primedia, Inc.
745 5th Ave.
New York, NY 10151

Or you can fax us at (212) 745-0131, Att: Privacy Coordinator

Updated July 30, 2002