Privacy Statement
We gather certain types of information about the visitors to the Edmunds Automotive Network (Edmunds.com, Inside Line, CarSpace and AutoObserver.com, and any other Web site that we identify as a part of the Edmunds Automotive Network), and we believe our visitors should fully understand how we obtain and use that information. This Privacy Statement discloses what information we gather on these Websites and how we use it. (Accordingly, this Privacy Statement is not applicable to information that we obtain through any other business activities.)
If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Statement, you should contact us though our Contact Us
form.
Your Personal Information
The submission by you to us of personally identifiable information (e.g., your name, your address, your e-mail address, your telephone number) is required in order for you to receive services, products or information you request from either us or companies with which we do business. (We refer to such personally identifiable information, as well as any other information that you voluntarily provide to us about yourself on the Edmunds Automotive Network that we combine with your personally identifiable information, as your "Personal Information.") Your Personal Information will be shared between us and those companies, and may also be disclosed to other entities who work with us or those companies to fulfill your request. In addition, if you provide your Personal Information through the use of our Dealer Locator service (described below) to obtain price quotes for vehicles, your Personal Information may be provided by us to the manufacturers of those vehicles (and/or their affiliates and agents), who may use that information to contact you. Edmunds cannot control, and is not responsible for, the manner in which any of such companies or other entities use your Personal Information.
In addition, in order to become a member of the Edmunds Automotive Network you are required to provide Personal Information to us, and additional Personal Information may be provided by you — either at the time you become a member or, at your election, at any later time — as a part of your member "profile." In certain locations on the Edmunds Automotive Network where we obtain your Personal Information we may include "check boxes" (or another process) for the purpose of soliciting your consent to receive special offers and/or other information from us and other entities selected by us. By either "checking" those boxes, or leaving these check boxes "checked" (or otherwise providing your consent) you are choosing to receive commercial communications from us and/or those other entities, and you will be consenting to our providing that information to those other entities. In that event, you may receive information from us or from other companies by e-mail, U.S. mail or other means. However, you will have the opportunity at any time to "opt-out" of receiving future commercial communications from us (on behalf of itself and/or those other entitles) either (i) by modifying your Membership account, (ii) by following the instructions located at the bottom of the e-mail we send you, (iii) by sending a request to us through our Contact Us form, or (iv) by sending us a request by mail to 1620 26th Street, Suite 400 South, Santa Monica, California 90404; attention: Customer Service. (Please note that opting-out through these means will not affect the right of those other entities to send communications to you independently of us.)
If you do not give your consent, either in the manner described in the preceding paragraph or in another
manner, your Personal Information will not be shared by us with other entities, except as follows: We may
disclose whatever information we may have or know about you, including your Personal Information, without first
notifying you or obtaining your consent, to third-party service providers who assist us to improve our data or
our services or to better understand their value to our visitors or to the companies with which we do business;
or to other third parties if we determine that disclosure of such information: (i) is or may be required by law
or legal process; (ii) is or may be reasonably necessary to enforce the Edmunds Automotive Network Membership Agreement or Visitor Agreement, or to take appropriate
action if a visitor is determined by us to have violated either of those agreements; or (iii) is or may be
reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of our company, the Edmunds Automotive Network,
our visitors or other individuals or entities. We may also disclose to third parties portions of the Edmunds
Automotive Network's log files that show which "Internet service provider" a visitor has used or other visitor
information. That information may enable third parties to discover, through that Internet service provider, the
identity of a visitor.
While we will not use your Personal Information to send you commercial emails unless you have given us your
consent, we may use both your Personal Information and other information we may have about you (such as your IP
address) or your use of the Edmunds Automotive Network (such as which pages you have visited) to customize or
enhance your experience on the Edmunds Automotive Network, including the display of advertisements. In addition, and as described in greater detail in
our Membership Agreement, if you are a
member of the Edmunds Automotive Network we may send you certain administrative and service messages in
connection with our Community Services; you cannot opt out of receiving those communications.
Access to Your Personally Identifiable Information
If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you would like to delete
any of your personally identifiable
information, you may correct, update or delete it by either (i) modifying your Membership account, or (ii)
sending a request to us through our
Contact Us
form.
Your Zip Code
We request your Zip Code in a number of locations on this Web site, including when
you first engage in vehicle research.
Providing us your Zip Code enables us to display to you vehicle selling prices adjusted for your region,
incentive and rebates that apply in your
region, your vehicle's five-year True Cost to OwnSM for your region, and dealer listings specific to
your region. We provide this
information for Zip Codes that are within one of the 50 states or the District of Columbia, but not those in
other U.S. territories or possessions
or for the postal codes of Canada or other countries.
When you first provide your Zip Code to us, whether through the use of one of our applications (such as the
Edmunds.com True Market
Value® tools or Dealer Locator), or in response to a direct request by us that you provide your
Zip Code, we serve a "cookie" to
you that includes your Zip Code. ("Cookies" are described below.) That cookie permits us to recognize your Zip
Code when you use other
applications, or upon your return to the Edmunds Automotive Network, without our having to ask you again for
your Zip Code.
You have the opportunity to change your Zip Code at appropriate times during your visit to the Edmunds
Automotive Network if you want to get
information for a different Zip Code; changing your Zip Code in any application automatically updates your Zip
Code cookie.
Other Cookies
"Cookies" are small data files that many Web sites write to your hard drive when you
visit them. A cookie file contains
information such as a user ID that a site may use to track the pages you've visited. However, the only personal
information a cookie can contain
is information you supply yourself. Cookies served by us don't permit us to read data from your hard drive or
to read cookie files created by
other Web sites.
We use cookies in many ways, including the following:
First Visits: When you first visited the Edmunds Automotive Network, we served a cookie to you. This cookie
resides permanently on your hard drive
(unless you chose to delete it) and enables us to track visitor activity across our Web sites.
Applications: Whenever you use certain applications on the Edmunds Automotive Network, such as Dealer Locator,
we may serve a "session cookie" to
you, which is a cookie that is only used by us during your use of that application. In addition, for some
applications we may serve a cookie to
you that has a longer expiration date. These cookies help us manage our delivery to you of application
information and related content.
Lead Forms: In certain applications, such as Dealer Locator, you may be presented with a form that requests,
among other items, your name and
contact information. When this form is submitted by you the information you provide is stored on our computers,
so that we have a record of what
we have sent to our partners. We also serve a cookie to you that encodes where on our computers that
information is maintained, so that we can
"pre-fill" your name and contact information for you when in the future you call up a similar form. You may opt
to not have this cookie served to
you by deselecting this feature within the application.
Membership Registration: When you register as a member of the Edmunds Automotive Network, we use a cookie to
store your registration information
on your computer if you click the "Remember me" box. We use this cookie to enable you to enter the Edmunds
Automotive Network as a member without
having to sign in each time.
Advertisements: Our advertising results in the serving of cookies that facilitate the delivery and
administration of such advertising. See
"Third-Party Ad Servers" below.
Advertisers: The current Advertising Terms and Conditions for advertisers on the Edmunds Automotive Network
provide that advertisers may write
cookies to our visitors' computers solely for advertising campaign tracking and management purposes, but not
for advertisement "retargeting"
(i.e., for the purpose of targeting advertisements to visitors to an Edmunds Web site when they subsequently
view other (non-Edmunds) Web sites).
Please note that we do not link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information
you submit while on our Web
sites.
Security
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally
accepted industry standards to protect
the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of
transmission over the Internet, or method
of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means
to protect your personal
information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If you have any questions about security on our Website, please use our Contact Us form.
Our Community Services
The Edmunds Automotive Network provide a number of means by which you may communicate
with other visitors and with us.
Many of these are the various communication and personalization tools and services that are part of our
"community" (the "Community Services").
The Community Services include our Forums (the Web's most established automotive message boards), our CarSpace
Email Service, our Dealer Ratings
and Reviews, our blogs located in both Inside Line and CarSpace, and a variety of other features of
CarSpace.
In order to add content to the Edmunds Automotive Network through the Community Services, you must first become a member of the Edmunds Automotive Network and
agree to our Membership Agreement.
(You do not need to register in order to browse or read the content provided by our members.) The Membership Agreement sets
forth a number of information sharing
and disclosure practices for our Community Services, and accordingly supplements this Privacy Statement.
We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or allow such
persons to become members of the Edmunds
Automotive Network. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register as a member or send any information
about yourself to us. In the event
that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13, 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 through our
Contact Us
form.
Visitor-Submitted Content
The Edmunds Automotive Network provides a number of other means by which you may
communicate — with other visitors
and with the Edmunds Automotive Network — that do not require you to become a member of the Edmunds
Automotive Network. This includes our
Vehicle Ratings and Reviews, Letters to the Editors, Success Stories, Help and the submittal to us of a general
question or comment. All of your
communications made to or through those services or through our Community Services are referred to as your
"Visitor-Submitted Content." For
information concerning our use of your Visitor-Submitted Content by us, please see our Visitor Agreement.
Surveys
Occasionally we conduct visitor surveys to better target our content to our audience
or for the benefit of third parties
with whom we do business. Accordingly, sometimes the aggregate survey results are shared with our advertisers
and partners. We never share any
survey information about specific response with any third party unless that individual consents.
Dealer Locator Service
Our Dealer Locator service collects personally identifiable information about you if
you chose to have one or
more dealers contact you. The use of the information obtained by us through your use of these services is
described in other portions of this
Privacy Statement.
E-mail this Page to a Friend
Many of the pages of the Edmunds Automotive Network include a feature that permits
visitors to electronically forward
that page to someone else by clicking on a link. The sender must provide his or her e-mail address, as well as
that of the recipient. The sender's
information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent
the page. Neither the sender's
information nor the recipient's information is used for any other purpose.
Links to Other Web Sites
The Edmunds Automotive Network contains links to many other Web sites not operated by us, including sites where you can obtain automotive products and services. However, this Privacy Policy only applies to the Edmunds Automotive Network and the information we collect, and we are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of any other Web sites. For additional information about those links, please review our Visitor Agreement.
Third-Party Ad Servers
We use DoubleClick Inc., a third-party advertising company, to serve advertisements for the Edmunds Automotive Network. We also sometimes use other third-party advertising companies and advertising networks to serve ads. DoubleClick and these other third-party advertising companies and advertising networks may use information (not including your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number) about your visits to the Edmunds Automotive Network and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. We also may place "Web beacons" on pages of the Edmunds Automotive Network which, in conjunction with cookies utilized by our third-party advertising companies, are used to target advertisements on the Edmunds Automotive Network and other Web sites. Web beacons, sometimes called "pixel tags," are small strings of code that are placed on Web pages. Use of our third party advertising companies' cookies is subject to their own privacy policies. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies to target advertisements to you, you may view DoubleClick's privacy policy or visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp.
Changes to this Privacy Statement
We reserve the right, in our sole discretion and at any time, to change this Privacy Statement. Changes will be effective when made and the updated Privacy Statement is posted on the Edmunds Automotive Network; provided, however, that (i) information collected prior to the time any change is posted will be used according to the provisions of this Privacy Statement that applied at the time the information was collected, and (ii) no such change shall be applicable to any dispute between you and us that arises prior to the time such change is effective. Accordingly, you should visit this page periodically to review its provisions. Your continued use of the Edmunds Automotive Network following the posting of changes to this Privacy Statement will mean you accept those changes.
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Revised January 20, 2010