PCWorld.com Privacy Policy

This confirms that PCWorld.com 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. Because this web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe. By displaying the TRUSTe trustmark, this web site has agreed to notify you of:

1. What information does PCWorld.com collect, and how is it used?
2. What are cookies, and how are they used?
3. What is PCWorld.com's relationship with the DoubleClick advertising network?
4. Does PCWorld.com share the information it collects with others?
5. How can I make changes to my personal information?
6. What else should I know about my privacy and PCWorld.com?
7. What security procedures are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of my information?
8. What about children?
9. How will I be notified of changes to this privacy policy?

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should contact:

Customer Service
PC World.com
501 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
e-mail: webmaster@pcworld.com

If you do not receive acknowledgment of your inquiry, or your questions have not been satisfactorily addressed, you should then contact TRUSTe: http://www.truste.org/users/users_watchdog.html

TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with the Web site to resolve your concerns.

PCWorld.com collects personal identifying information such as your name and e-mail address when you enter a contest or sweepstakes, fill out a survey, and/or complete subscription registration for sites or services requiring such information. PCWorld.com also collects billing information including credit card number and expiration date from visitors who wish to pay for PC World print magazine subscriptions.

PCWorld.com may use the information in the aggregate for marketing and promotional purposes. PCWorld.com never shares such personal identifying information with any third party, except with the individual sponsor of a contest, promotion, or sweepstakes, and only if the participant specifically asks to receive additional information from a specific sponsor and for the purposes of administering the contest and notifying the winners.

PCWorld.com may log visitors' IP addresses for the collection of aggregate information about site visitors and their interests. PCWorld.com does not link these IP addresses to personal identifying information such as a visitor's name and/or e-mail address.

PCWorld.com may place a cookie on the visitor's hard drive in order to facilitate a user-friendly experience. Cookies are small files that contain information a Web site uses for tracking purposes. PCWorld.com uses the cookie information it receives to improve the efficiency of customer service for subscription-based sites, allowing subscribers to easily change addresses and add or cancel subscriptions by automatically verifying subscription status.

PCWorld.com also uses cookies to enhance site content by compiling aggregate information about what specific sections and pages users visit. Advertisers or independent third parties who operate the servers on which the ads reside may also place cookies. Although PCWorld.com encourages third parties to adhere to appropriate privacy standards and policies, PCWorld.com is not responsible for the actions or policies of such parties.

PCWorld.com has contracted with DoubleClick to serve all advertising on www.pcworld.com, both on the Web site itself and through its e-mail newsletters. When DoubleClick is serving ads, it recognizes certain types of non-personally identifiable information, such as a user's IP address, browser version or type, operating system, service provider, and time zone. DoubleClick also uses cookies to note the general content of the sites you visit over time in order to serve ads on this site and other sites. Furthermore, PCWorld.com uses so-called "web beacons" (also referred to as "clear gifs" or "pixel tags") provided by Doubleclick to help manage our on-line advertising. These web beacons allow Doubleclick to recognize a browser's cookie when a browser visits this site. Although DoubleClick does share with PCWorld.com the non-personally identifiable information described above, such information is strictly in the aggregate.

The pages a user calls up on PCWorld.com and are noted by Doubleclick are not connected with personally identifiable information collected either at PCWorld.com or elsewhere. For more details about the non-personally identifiable information DoubleClick collects and the opportunity to opt out of such data collection, please visit http://www.doubleclick.net/naiprivacy.

PCWorld.com occasionally informs registered users and newsletter subscribers of special deals, new products, and other third-party product and service offers that it believes they will find interesting. PCWorld.com registered users and newsletter subscribers are given the option to choose whether they would like to receive such mailings upon registration. At any time you can request that your information not be used for such purposes by sending an e-mail request to PCWorld.com at webmaster@pcworld.com. Under no circumstances are e-mail lists made available to known spammers, get-rich-quick sites, or pornographic sites.

PCWorld.com may also share personal information with third-party intermediaries--solely for the purposes of distribution--who will not store, retain, or use the information supplied to them. These intermediaries may include subscription service bureaus, credit card companies, and banks, or third-party providers of PCWorld.com services that the user selects at our site. Users are given the option to discontinue such services at any time, at which point the user's personal information will be automatically deleted from the service providers' databases.

Subscribers to newsletter services can change or delete their personal identifying information by visiting the sites and clicking the appropriate Unsubscribe or Change Subscription buttons. For all other changes, please contact PCWorld.com at webmaster@pcworld.com.

Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online, regardless of the site--such as a user name or e-mail address in a chat or bulletin board area--you should be aware that the information provided can be collected and used by others.

PCWorld.com sites contain links to other sites not owned or operated by PCWorld.com. PCWorld.com is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these sites.

Also, PCWorld.com has several reputable partners (listed below) that produce cobranded PCWorld.com partner services. Even though these partner services may have the look and feel of PCWorld.com, they are hosted by the partners and thus not part of PCWorld.com. Consequently, please keep in mind that use of any personal information collected as part of the services listed below is governed by the partner's privacy policy, not PCWorld.com's. Please make sure to review our partners' privacy policies: You will find a link to these policies on all of the cobranded partner services pages. Please note that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of our partners. Current PCWorld.com partner sites are:

In some cases, users may be referred to third-party sites from PCWorld.com. User information collected on these third-party sites may be shared with PCWorld.com in aggregate form for internal tracking purposes, but is not linked to any personal information.

Internally, PCWorld.com restricts access to personally identifiable information. Only employees who need the information in order to do their jobs have access to it. These employees are limited in number and are committed to our privacy and security policies. Credit card information is encrypted for security.

Children 16 years of age or under should not submit any information to PCWorld.com without a parent's or guardian's consent. PCWorld.com does not monitor the age of its audience.

If PCWorld.com plans to use information collected from users in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection, it will directly contact users to obtain written or active e-mail consent prior to using their personal information. In some cases and with prior approval from Trust-e, PCWorld.com may also post a notice on the site to obtain user consent.