Privacy Policy
Last Revised August 31, 2009
PhotoWorks, Inc., a subsidiary of AG Interactive (AGI), is firmly committed to maintaining your privacy. This includes the privacy of both your photos and your personal information. By using our service, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. The Policy explains what information we collect from you and how it is used in order to continue providing you with outstanding service.
PhotoWorks is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build users’ trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the site www.PhotoWorks.com. Because we want to demonstrate our commitment to your privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices and have our privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact us at privacy@photoworks.com. If you feel that your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you may also contact TRUSTe. TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison between you and PhotoWorks to resolve your concerns.
PhotoWorks Privacy Policy is Organized as Follows:
Protecting the Information You Explicitly Provide
- Starting Your Account
- Order Forms
- Registration Forms: Email Updates and Promotions
- Ability for Customers to "Opt Out"
- Tell A Friend
- Sharing and Community Features
Providing Services Through Third-Parties
Automatically Collected Information
Policy on Children
Other Important Information Regarding Your Privacy
Contact Information
Protecting the Information You Explicitly Provide
Keeping your personal and financial information secure is vitally important to us. We urge you not to disclose your personal information or password to anyone. The PhotoWorks site has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card number or password) on our registration or order forms, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). Financial information is transferred between client and PhotoWorks' Web server using a public/private key encryption method using a certificate authority (VeriSign). We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. Access to data is limited to authorized PhotoWorks staff members on a need-to-know basis. Web security and security procedures are reviewed and updated to ensure data protection.
Sometimes we use personal or demographic data to tailor your experience at our site, by showing you content and offers that we think you might be interested in based on the information you provided to us, and by displaying content and offers according to your preferences. Although we do not share personally identifiable information with our partners unless you have given us permission to do so, we may make aggregate statistical and demographic information available to carefully selected third-party partners of PhotoWorks. Such statistical and demographic information does not personally identify you.
Wherever PhotoWorks asks you to provide personally identifiable information on the Web site, we make every effort to include a direct link to this Privacy Statement on that page.
PhotoWorks reserves the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site.
Starting Your Account
When you sign up with PhotoWorks, you establish a password-protected personal account for using our services. In order to establish the account, we will need your name and email address. This personal information is used to conduct business with you, to verify your identity as a registered PhotoWorks customer, for access to your customer images and for the delivery of prizes or other materials. The password you create will allow you to access your account and therefore, should be as secure as possible. A good password includes seemingly random letters and numbers. It should not be obvious, such as the name of your child, pet or birthplace. You can update your account information and change your password at any time. You can do this on the ‘My Account’ page from your personal ‘My PhotoWorks’ page. If you have forgotten your password, please request a new password by sending an e-mail message to customercare@photoworks.com. Your PhotoWorks account can be deactivated, but doing so will result in not being able to access any password-protected area of the PhotoWorks site. Please contact customercare@photoworks.com for further instructions about deactivating your PhotoWorks account.
Order Forms
PhotoWorks uses online order forms to allow you to order prints and products from PhotoWorks. When you fill out order forms, you will be asked to provide personal information such as your name, mailing and email addresses and financial information such as a credit card number and expiration date. We use this information to process your order and to notify you of your order status. Your email address and financial information are used by PhotoWorks to conduct business with you and are not rented or sold to any other third party unless you explicitly give us permission to do so. It will be shared with those persons necessary to process your order. For example, your financial information may be shared with the financial institution that issued your credit card. In addition, customers will be notified by email when their order is received and when their photographs are available online.
Registration Forms: Email Updates and Promotions
PhotoWorks uses online registration forms for you to request services such as PhotoWorks email updates, our newsletter, and for you to receive special offers and promotions. Subscription to our email updates is optional and requires your consent. Note to AOL users: By choosing to transfer your photos to PhotoWorks, you have agreed to receive our mailings. You can opt in or opt out of receiving email updates at any time by following the simple procedure below. When you fill out the registration form you will also be asked to provide personal and/or demographic information such as your name, gender, address, and email address so we can administer the program. We may also ask questions about your camera's make and model and your use of digital images. Submitting such personal information is entirely voluntary.
The more information you provide (and the more accurate it is), the better we can serve you. This information is used to maintain your account at PhotoWorks and may be shared with our partners. For example, some customer surveys, special offers, or promotions may be sponsored by one or more of our partners. In those cases, the personal information you submit may be shared with the sponsoring partner. Customers will have the option to "opt out" of this arrangement either at the time the information is collected, at the time the registration is confirmed, or by following the procedures described below.
p>If you are participating in a PhotoWorks promotion and you wish to update your e-mail address on the promotions mailing list or to quit a promotion and cease receiving promotion-related email, please contact privacy@photoworks.com.Ability for Customers to "Opt Out"
Our users are given the opportunity to "opt out" of having their information used for
purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask for the information.
Users who no longer
wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials from our partners may opt out of receiving these
communications by including "no email" in the subject line of their return email or email us
at privacy@photoworks.com. We make every effort to make our
email updates and announcements regarding promotions, special offers, contests, and sweepstakes relevant to our
customers, but customers always have the opportunity to opt out when registering with us.
Tell a Friend
If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about our site, we ask them for the friend's name and email address. PhotoWorks will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to visit the site. PhotoWorks stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email. The friend may contact PhotoWorks at privacy@photoworks.com to request the removal of this information from our database.
Sharing and Community Features
By emailing an invitation (email link) to share your photos or posting your photos to a community viewing page on PhotoWorks, you give users the opportunity to view as well as buy prints from images you explicitly designate for sharing. Be aware that those who have received your invitation can then forward links to your images to others for viewing and purchasing.
If you post a comment on any PhotoWorks site, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of the website, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in your comments. In addition, we reserve the right to terminate the accounts of members if they use our services in a manner inconsistent with these terms and conditions.
Providing Services Through a Third Party
PhotoWorks uses third-party vendors to fulfill orders for certain products and services sold on the PhotoWorks Web site. In the event the product or service you purchase is fulfilled by a third party, personal information such as your name, mailing and email addresses and financial information such as a credit card number and expiration date will be shared with is third-party provider to process your order and to notify you of your order status. The third-party provider is not permitted to use this information for any purpose other than to process your order. It will not be used for additional sales or solicitation by the third party, nor rented or sold to any other third party unless you explicitly give us permission to do so, or unless required to do so to satisfy any law, regulation, governmental request, or judicial order.
Supplementation of Information
In order for PhotoWorks to enhance its ability to tailor the site to an individual's preferences, we combine information about the purchasing habits of users with similar information from our partners or other companies to create a personalized user profile. When a user makes purchases from these partners or other companies, the partners or other companies may collect and share that purchase information with us so we can tailor the site to our users' preferences.
Affiliate ID
If you entered our site by clicking a link or banner ad on one of our affiliate Web sites, we will store the ID of the affiliate site in our database along with your PhotoWorks User ID. We do this to ensure that the affiliate receives proper credit for any subsequent order you might place. Your personally identifiable information will not be shared with any affiliate without your express consent.
External Links
This site contains links to other sites that may include partners or affiliates of PhotoWorks. PhotoWorks is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such other web sites.
The TRUSTe program covers only information that is collected through this web site, and does not cover information that may be collected through software downloaded from this site.
PhotoWorks is currently contracted with a third party that tracks and analyzes non-personally identifiable usage and volume statistical information from our visitors and customers to administer our web site in order to constantly improve the web site quality. All data collected by the third party on behalf of PhotoWorks is owned and used by PhotoWorks. PhotoWorks reserves the right to publish non-personally identifiable, summary information regarding its web site visitors for promotional purposes and as a representative audience for advertisers. Please note that this is not personal information, only general summaries of the activities of our visitors and customers.
Automatically Collected Information
Cookies & User ID
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer, which may contain information that the user has consented to provide. We use cookies to manage your PhotoWorks session. If a user rejects the cookie, they may still use our site although some functionality may be limited. Some of our business partners also use cookies on our site. These cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information and are used to analyze general usage and volume statistical information about our visitors and customers.
Cookies help track visitor behavior and are set on behalf of PhotoWorks. However, PhotoWorks does not have access to or control over these cookies. This Privacy Statement covers the use of cookies by PhotoWorks only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
Clear GIFS
Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users. The main difference between the two is that clear gifs are invisible on the page and are much smaller, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Clear gifs are not tied to users' personally identifiable information. To help us improve visitor experience and manage site content, we utilize clear gifs (a.k.a web beacons) to track visitor behavior.
Internet Protocol Address
We analyze Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in the aggregate for system administration purposes and to gather broad demographic information. We do not link IP addresses to your PhotoWorks User ID, with the following exception: when you place an order using our online checkout process we may record your computer's IP address along with your order to help us identify fraudulent credit card use. We may share this information with the financial institution that issued the credit card used to place an order, or with law enforcement authorities if we determine, or are notified, that the use of the credit card was fraudulent.
Policy on Children
Children under the age of 13 are not eligible to use our services and we ask that they do not submit any personal information to us. If you are under the age of 13, you can use this service only in conjunction with your parents or guardians. Although access to photographs is password-protected, children who obtain access to a personal password may have the ability to post or distribute personally identifiable scanned or uploaded photos, or may provide others with the ability to view or purchase such photographs by sending an email invitation as described above.
Other Important Information Regarding Your Privacy
Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online - for example,
on message boards, through email, or in chat areas - that information may be collected and used by others.
If you post personal information online in a place that is accessible to the public, you may receive
unsolicited messages from other parties. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or any
wireless network can guarantee to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal
information, PhotoWorks cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and
you do so at your own risk. However, once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure
its security on our systems.
Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of
your passwords and/or any financial information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you send
information online.
Contact Information
If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this web site, you can send e-mail to privacy@photoworks.com. We can also be reached at:
PhotoWorks reserves the right to modify this Privacy Statement at any time so please visit this page often. If there are any material changes to our Privacy Policy, the revised policy will be posted on this site and we will change the ‘updated’ date at the top of the page to reflect the date of the modification.