The Information We Collect
- Registration: When you register with The Fool, we ask for your name, email address and postal code. We usually also capture your IP address at the time you register.
- Emailing an Article or Message Board Post: If you use our recommendation service to email an article or post to a friend, you will need to provide us with your friend's email address. The Motley Fool will automatically send this person a one-time email, attaching the recommended article as well as inviting them to visit and register with our site. We will not use these email addresses for any other purpose.
- Making a purchase: Orders placed with us for goods and services from areas like the Fool Shop are fulfilled in a variety of different ways. Some products are handled entirely by the Motley Fool Limited and some, such as books, are handled entirely by third parties. If you order a product or service of ours via a third party, for example Global-Investor, Quicken or BT click&buy, please be aware that these sites have their own privacy and data collection practices. The Motley Fool does not collect, see or have access to any personal information you may provide to such third parties.
- Optional Services: We may also ask for additional information when providing special, personalised services. If you don't want to give us the information requested, you certainly don't have to, but you will not be able to take advantage of such offerings. For example, we can't track your personal stock portfolio unless you input the stocks you own or fulfill a product order unless you provide us with your mailing address. On occasion, we may also ask you for other personal information in connection with surveys, sweepstakes or other promotional offers running on our site but again, your participation in these features are purely voluntary.
- Information We Automatically Track: While on our site, we automatically log certain information about how you're using our site. This information may include the URL that you just came from, your IP address and the pages you visit while on our site.
If your browser is set up to accept them, we also use a feature known as a "cookie." Cookies contain bits of information that Web sites transfer to your computer's hard drive for record keeping purposes. Cookies can make the Web more useful by storing information about your preferences on a particular site such as ours.The Motley Fool may place a pixel on pages on our site, or those of our advertisers and partners. This enables us to record in our server logs that a specific user id has visited a particular page. This data allows us to analyse and determine our audience's behavioural characteristics, which helps us to optimise our site, advertisement placement, and marketing focus. Only anonymous, non-Personally Identifiable Information is collected, and it cannot, by itself or in combination, be tracked to a specific individual.
At The Motley Fool, cookies are used the following ways:
- To automatically access your previously stored account information and deliver more personalised services such as the My Fool feature.
- To estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
- Advertising networks that serve ads onto our site may also use cookies but please note that we neither control nor have access to those cookies. These advertisers' uses of cookies are subject to their own privacy policies and not that of the Motley Fool's.
Most browsers are set up to accept cookies, but you can configure your browser to refuse cookies or to notify you when you've received one. If you reject cookies, though, you will not be able to use certain features of our sites such as creating and customizing your portfolio or viewing or posting on our discussion boards. For more on managing cookies, we encourage you to read the Interactive Advertising Bureau UK's discussion on what you can do.
Where Your Information is Stored
The information outlined above is processed and stored in the United States of America. By using our site, you consent to this transfer. The Motley Fool takes steps to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Our Use of This Information
- More Customised Service: The Motley Fool collects personal information to provide you, the user, with the best and most personalised Web experience possible and to provide our advertisers with an efficient means to reach the right audience. In short, by knowing a little about you, The Motley Fool can deliver more relevant content and advertisements to you while at our Web site and thus, provide you with a more efficient, customise and seamless experience when using our service.
- Internal Research: Cookies and the other information we automatically track are used to help us better understand how our audience uses our site as well as for internal research on users' demographics and interests. Each browser accessing The Motley Fool is given a unique cookie which is then used to determine usage patterns, and to help in targeting content and ads based on user interests.
- To Confirm Your Registration and Contact You: Once you've registered, we will send you a confirmation email acknowledging your new account to the address that you supplied us. We may subsequently email you about our various products and services, or other products and services we feel may interest you. If you'd rather not receive these subsequent communications, let us know on our never mail page.
Information Sharing and Disclosure
The Motley Fool oes not give, rent, lend or sell individual information to any third party. Furthermore, we will not disclose any information about individual users, except as described below.
- Fool Community: On our boards (and anywhere else on our site), you are publicly identified by your user or screen name. If you choose your full name as your username, you have voluntarily disclosed that information to The Fool community. Similarly, any information you provide in your public profile is for public consumption. The same is true for any personal identifiable information (such as an email address) you include in any message board posts. Also, if you choose to email one of our articles to someone or email a reply to a message board post (as opposed to posting the reply on the boards), your email address will be revealed to whoever opens and reads the email. Other users may also use this function and email you a response to a message you've posted on our boards. While you will be able to see the sender's email address, the sender will not be able to see yours. However, should you respond to the message, you will have disclosed your email address to the message's recipient(s).
- Current or Prospective Advertisers/Partners: We only provide aggregate, non-identifiable information to our current and prospective advertisers and business partners. For example, we might tell advertisers that there are 120,000 Registered Fools in Metropolis, but we won't tell them that Superman is one of them, and we won't tell them that his email address is ckent@dailyplanet.com.
- Our Parent Company: As previously mentioned, the information we collect from our users is processed and stored by our parent company, The Motley Fool, Inc. in the United States. Also, since our parent handles the distribution of some of our emails for us, we provide our users' email addresses to Fool US for the sole purpose of delivering these publications. Unless you've registered with Fool US or have otherwise provided them with your email address, they will not be contacting you or otherwise using your email address for any Fool US-related purposes.
- Third Party Service Providers: We may employ the services of third party providers to aid us in certain aspects of our operations (such as the distribution of our email products or conducting a survey for us). Depending on the services performed, some of these providers may be provided with user information. These contractors would be subject to confidentiality agreements which limit their use and disclosure of all information they obtain through their relationship with The Fool to Fool-related business only, consistent with this policy.
- Legal Requests: The Motley Fool may disclose your personally identifiable information to protect the rights and property of The Fool as well as to comply with any applicable law or valid legal process. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Requests by Government Agencies. We will disclose any information we have in our possession to law enforcement or government officials in response to any inquiry or investigation or if in our sole discretion, we believe it is necessary or appropriate in connection with any investigation or activity that is or may be illegal or may expose us or you to legal liability.
- Disclosures we are legally required or entitled to make under any enactment, rule of law or by the order of a court.
Security
The Motley Fool is committed to protecting your personal information. All information that you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Access to personalised areas of the site, such as My Fool and My Portfolio is password-protected for your privacy and security. While we do our best to protect your personal information, The Motley Fool cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. What does all this mean? Just as in the investing world, you must protect yourself. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and/or any account information. If you need to change your password, please follow the steps outlined below.
Direct Mailings
If you register with The Motley Fool or sign up for or buy any of our products or services, we will send you information about our various products and services, or other products and services we feel may interest you. Only The Motley Fool will send you these notices. If you do not want to receive such offers and mailings, you can let us know on our Email Unsubscribe page, or via email to UK Privacy or send snail mail to: Privacy at The Motley Fool, 2nd Floor, Golden House, 30 Great Pulteney Street, London W1F 9LT. We'll remove your name from our lists as soon as we can. Another way is to simply to click the unsubscribe link found in our email messages.
Deactivating Your Account or Editing Your Information
You have the ability to edit your information and preferences at any time, including whether you want us to contact you about our various products and services. If you would rather not hear from us, you can let us know on our never mail page. Another way is to simply to click the unsubscribe link, which you will find on our email messages.
If you want to correct or change the information in your Profile, or any other information we have about you, please go to http://boards.fool.co.uk/editsettings.asp. You will either be able to make your changes right there, or we'll give you instructions as to how to do what you want.
If you want to change your email address for delivery of your email subscriptions or unsubscribe, you should go to http://www.fool.co.uk/account/freemailsubscribe.aspx and follow the prompts.
Other Data Processors
Many of our advertisers or partners, such as brokerages and merchants, link from our site to areas on their own sites where they sell their own goods and services. If you follow these links from our site to theirs, you should be aware that these other sites have their own privacy and data processing practices. The Motley Fool has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. For more information regarding a site and its privacy policies, check that site.
Users 16 and under
If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide personal information to The Motley Fool's website. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.
Changes to this Privacy and Cookie Statement
The Fool may amend this Privacy and Cookie Statement from time to time. If we make any substantive changes to this policy, we'll announce it on our site.
No comments:
Post a Comment