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Information Collected Online
Most of the information provided by The Weather Channel is offered without our collecting any personally identifiable information from you. For instance, you can view weather conditions in your hometown or anywhere in the world without providing any personally identifiable information. In order to maximize your experience and to provide you with enhanced products and services, however, The Weather Channel will collect personally identifiable information (e.g., name, e-mail address, etc.) and demographic data (e.g., zip code, gender, birth date, interests, etc.) that you voluntarily supply to us. Although you are not required to disclose any personally identifiable information to us, portions of our Web site and other specialized services may be unavailable to you without such information.
When you make a purchase or sign up for one of our premium services, we will also collect your billing address, phone number, and credit card information. Some other examples of instances when we collect personally identifiable information include when you subscribe to our premium or enhanced services, for example The Weather Channel Alerts (weather information delivered to you via e-mail or text), The Weather Channel Desktop (a software application which you can download to your desktop to receive weather information), and The Weather Channel downloads (software applications you can download to certain wireless devices). Others are when you:
- Complete a survey
- Register for a promotion, contest or sweepstakes
- Make a purchase from our online store
- Send us an e-mail message or complete an inquiry form to receive additional information
- Submit a photo or video to iWitness Weather
- Participate in an online forum or community, or
- Customize the weather.com site.
In the case of participation in a chat session you are not required to provide any personally identifiable information, but we require you to select a user name. Please be aware that chat sessions are monitored and transcripts are posted on the Web site for access by other users. Any personally identifiable information you submit during a chat session, in blog comments, in any other user comment field, or in connection with your content submissions, including photo and video submissions, can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used by other users to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums.
How We Use Your Information
We use the information you provide to help fulfill your request or in connection with the operation of the site, for example to service your account, conduct a transaction that you have requested, display information and advertisements that match your interests and profile, notify you if you've won a contest or sweepstakes. We may also use this information to improve the working of the site or compile demographic statistics about our users and their use of the site. We may on occasion combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from other parties to enhance our ability to market to you those products or services that may be of interest to you.
How We Share Your Information
One of the most valuable assets of our business is you. Except as described below The Weather Channel does not rent, sell or share personally identifiable information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies.
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The Weather Channel and its Affiliates
At various points, we may provide you with the opportunity to opt in to receive special offers from The Weather Channel and its affiliates. If you choose to opt in, The Weather Channel and its affiliates will use your personally identifiable information to inform you of other products or services available from weather.com and its affiliates, including The Weather Channel, LLC and WSI Corporation. These products may include, for example, schedules for special programs on The Weather Channel cable network or offers to purchase a calendar from The Weather Channel.
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Companies Offering Promotions, Products, or Services
At times we will provide you with the opportunity to opt-in to receive promotions, products or services from third party sponsors. With your permission, The Weather Channel will periodically send to you, via e-mail, offers and promotions from our third party sponsors which we select based upon your interests or user profile. We do not share your personally identifiable information with the third party sponsors-we do the mailing for them. You will always have the opportunity, to opt-out of receiving future offers by following the unsubscribe link included with each email. In other instances, we provide you with the opportunity to receive products and services directly from specifically identified third parties through our site. In these instances, you must explicitly consent to receive each offer. When you explicitly agree to receive offers from specific third parties, your personally identifiable information is shared with the specific third party to enable them to provide you with the offer you have requested. We are not responsible for the information collection practices of these third parties, and all information provided is governed by the Privacy Policies of these third parties. You should review the Privacy Policies of these parties before supplying personally identifiable information to them.
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Third-Party Processors
When you submit your personal information on the weather.com Web site, it may be shared with a selected third party in connection with the operation of the site or the provision of services to you("Third Party Processors"). These Third Party Processors may include, for example, companies that operate our online store, that process credit card information or handle shipping for The Weather Channel, that deliver materials to you via e-mail or postal service, and who organize, administer, process, and/or analyze data on our behalf to help us provide more relevant offers to you and to eliminate the delivery of duplicate offers as well as correcting and/or updating users' data based on information we provide them. All personally identifiable information provided to Third Party Processors is used by them only to carry out the service they are providing for The Weather Channel. The data we provide to Third Party Processors is securely stored and maintained by them so that it can be accessed when needed for future purposes, and all such Third Party Processors are contractually bound by us to keep the information confidential.
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Links to Other Web Sites
Like many Web sites on the Internet, The Weather Channel links to pages located on Web sites maintained by various other entities. In some cases you may link to pages of other Web sites that are framed with elements of weather.com such as in the header or footer. The URL will identify the site you are visiting. These sites are not bound by our privacy policy, and we are not responsible for the information collection practices. The Privacy Policies of other organizations may differ from ours, for example, with respect to the level of security, use of cookies, and collection, use and disclosure of personally identifiable information.
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Purchase or Sale of Businesses
The Weather Channel continually looks for ways to improve our business, including purchasing or selling all or part of a business or company. If we buy or sell a business, databases containing personally identifiable information will likely be transferred as part of the sale. If we buy a business, we will honor the requests of that business' former customers regarding their personally identifiable information. If in connection with a sale there will be material changes to the way personally identifiable information is being used, affected consumers will be notified via e-mail and will be given the opportunity to opt-out.
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Other Limitations on Privacy
Other than as set forth above and in this section, you will receive notice from us when information about you might go to third parties, and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information. We may provide personally identifiable information without your permission (i) pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, or orders or otherwise to comply with law; (ii) where The Weather Channel believes the rights, property or an individual's safety or security is at risk; iii) if we find that your actions violate our Legal Restrictions and Terms of Use; or iv) where otherwise required by law.
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E-mail a Friend
If you choose to use our service that allows you to e-mail a page of our site to a friend, in most circumstances we do not have access to and do not collect any personally identifiable information regarding you or your friend. On certain pages of the site, we need to have access to your and your friend's e-mail addresses temporarily to send the e-mail due to technical requirements. This information is deleted as soon as the e-mail is sent and is not used for any other purpose.
IP Addresses, Cookies, Web Beacons, Gifs, and Information Saved by Other Technologies
The Weather Channel and Third Party Processors acting on our behalf use various Internet technologies which help us to manage our site operations and track usage behavior so that we can tailor information and advertisements to make your visits more enjoyable and meaningful. These Internet technologies include:
- IP Addresses: random numbers assigned to individual computers which The Weather Channel uses to administer our Web site and help diagnose problems with our servers.
- Cookies: small electronic files transferred from our Web site to your hard drive. Cookies enable The Weather Channel to recognize repeat visitors, track usage behavior and facilitate your access to and use of our site. Cookies are also used to serve advertisements on our site. If you wish, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a Cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all Cookies. You can do this by resetting your browser (such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer) settings. Each browser is a little different, so look at your browser Help menu to learn the correct way to modify your Cookies. If you turn Cookies off, however, you won't have access to many of the features which make your experience more efficient and some of our services will not function properly.
- Web Beacons (sometimes called single-pixel Gifs): electronic images that allow The Weather Channel to count users who have visited certain Web pages we wish to track. For example, The Weather Channel may include Web Beacons in promotional email messages in order to count how many messages have been opened and acted upon. Web Beacons may also be placed by our advertising partners on The Weather Channel Web pages to help determine the effectiveness of Internet advertising campaigns.
Information that is collected via IP address, Cookie and Web Beacon technologies is not personally identifiable. However, if you choose to provide The Weather Channel with personally identifiable information, this information may be linked to the data stored in these technologies. In addition, we may share aggregate (not individual) site usage statistics and demographic information and other non-personally identifiable information with advertisers and other third parties, but this information will not include any personally identifiable information. Personal information about you as an individual will not be provided to any third party without your consent, except under the circumstances described above in the "Third Party Processors", "Purchase or Sale of a Business" and "Other Limitations on Privacy" sections. The Weather Channel contracts with certain Third Party Processors to track, analyze and report data about the usage of our Web site using these Internet technologies. These Third Party Processors include Omniture, Nielsen, and comScore and its affiliate, Scorecard Research. To obtain information about the privacy and security practices of these companies, use the following links:
Omniture: http://www.weather.com/common/home/modules/privacyOptoutp1.html
Nielsen: http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/privacy/sitecensus.htm
comScore and its affiliate, Scorecard Research: http://www.scorecardresearch.com/Priv.html
Use of Cookie, Web Beacon and Other Technologies by Advertisers, Ad Networks and Ad Serving Networks
The Weather Channel works with a variety of advertisers, advertising networks, and advertising servers including DoubleClick. These advertisers, advertising networks, and advertising servers use various technologies, and technologies from third party companies, including Omniture, to collect event based data in order to send (or serve) relevant ads to users. These technologies may include the placement of cookies or web beacons, the use of unique non-personal identifiers, or the use of other technology on the site, and these technologies may be used to track user behavior and possibly to serve you more relevant ads. These targeted advertisements may appear on the site or on other sites that you visit. This privacy policy does not cover the use of various technologies and technologies from third party companies by advertisers, advertising networks, and advertising servers. You should be aware that The Weather Channel does not have control over these third party technologies or the information contained in them. For more information about how DoubleClick, Omniture, and some of the other ad networks, ad servers, and third party companies use the information collected by cookies on our site and about your option not to accept cookies placed by these companies on our site, please visit the following sites:
http://doubleclick.net/privacy_pilocy,
http://www.omniture.com/en/privacy/policy#optout, and
http://networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.
You should be aware that if you choose to opt out through any of these sites, this does not opt you out of being served advertising. The ads will just not be targeted to you by any party from which you have opted out.
Opting-Out, Corrections and Cancellations
If you receive an offer or promotion from The Weather Channel or a third party related to The Weather Channel you must have opted in. To ensure we have your consent, we make sure that each e-mail sent to you by The Weather Channel presents the additional opportunity to opt-out of receiving future e-mails.
If you have registered with us and have obtained a password, you may reset your password, update your personally identifiable information, correct any information, make changes to your preferences, unsubscribe to any e-mail subscriptions or to opt-out of any services, by accessing your weather.com profile online from the "Weather Tools" section by selecting "My Profile" or you may contact us directly.
Children's Privacy
The Weather Channel is committed to protecting the safety and privacy of young people using the Internet. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13 and believe that children should get their parents' or guardians' consent before giving out any personally identifiable information.
Our Web site may contain links to third party Web sites geared to children. The linked sites are not under the control of The Weather Channel. We are not responsible for the contents of any linked site or any link contained in a linked site, nor are we responsible for the privacy practices of the operators of those sites with respect to children. We strongly encourage parents and guardians to review the Privacy Policies of all linked sites.
Our Commitment to Security
Keeping the information you provide to The Weather Channel secure is important to us. We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic and managerial procedures designed to protect and safeguard your data. Of course, although The Weather Channel uses standard industry practices to protect your personally identifiable information, we cannot guarantee that your communications with our site will never be unlawfully intercepted, or that your personally identifiable information will never be unlawfully accessed by third parties.
Changes to the Privacy Policy
The Weather Channel reserves the right to alter our Privacy Policy as business needs require. If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes here so that you will always know what information we gather, how we might use that information and whether we will disclose it to anyone. All changes to this policy will be posted on our Web site prior to the time they take effect. In the event that we make material changes to the way we use personally identifiable information, affected consumers who have provided us with an e-mail address will be notified via e-mail and will be given the opportunity to opt-out.
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