PCWorld.com Privacy Policy

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 PC World.com 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 Website has agreed to answer the following questions:

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

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, please 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, postal address, and e-mail address when you enter a contest or a sweepstakes, fill out a survey, and/or complete subscription registration for sites or services requiring such information.

PCWorld.com will occasionally use some of the information we collect in the aggregate for marketing and promotional purposes. PCWorld.com will occasionally 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 will occasionally 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 will occasionally 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 also has a third party partnership with WebSite Story, which sets cookies that track Web usage of visitors. WebSite Story does not use the information for any other purpose than statistical information shared solely with PCWorld.com.

Visitors to PCWorld.com may disable their cookies and retain full functionality of the PC World Website, with the exception of being unable to subscribe to or make changes to subscriptions to PC World magazine through PCWorld.com.

Our Web pages contain electronic images (called "Clear GIF", "Single-Pixel Gif", or "Web Beacon") that allow us to count page views or to access cookies. In general, any electronic image viewed as part of a Web page, including an ad banner, can act as a Clear GIF. Typically, though, Clear GIFs are very small (1-by-1 pixel size) files. They are often invisible on the Web page, but their presence can be easily detected within Internet Explorer by clicking on "View" and then on "Source." Clear GIFs are so small in order not to use valuable space on the computer screen that is better used to display helpful content. We also include Clear GIFs in HTML-formatted newsletters in order to count how many newsletters have been read. In addition, some advertising networks that serve ads on our Web sites will occasionally use Clear GIFs within banner advertisements. Our Clear GIFs do not collect, gather, monitor or share any personal information about our Web site visitors; they are simply the technique we use to compile our anonymous, aggregated statistics about Web site usage.

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.

The pages that a user calls up on PCWorld.com and that 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.

PC World will occasionally share some of the non-identifying visitor information it collects on the site in the aggregate with third parties for marketing and promotional purposes. However, PCWorld.com never shares personal identifying information with any third party, except in these cases:

• 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.

• with third-party intermediaries--solely for the purposes of distribution--who will not store, retain, or use the information supplied to them. These intermediaries include subscription service bureaus, credit card companies, sweepstakes services 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.

• with third party billing services for magazine subscriptions. Shared information includes credit card number and expiration date from subscribers who wish to pay for PC World print magazine subscriptions.

PCWorld.com and its parent company IDG and sister IDG companies occasionally inform registered users and newsletter subscribers via e-mail of special deals, new products, and other third-party product and service offers that we believe they will find interesting. All such offers are carefully screened. PCWorld.com registered users and newsletter subscribers are given the option to choose whether they would like to receive such mailings upon registration and can change their choice at any time (see below). All mailings are sent by PC World and IDG, through their contracted e-mail delivery service. Under no circumstances is your e-mail address or other personally identifying information shared with the vendor of the third party products or services offered in the mailing. Furthermore, under no circumstances will PCWorld.com or its parent company mail information from known spammers, get-rich-quick sites, or pornographic sites.

Subscribers to newsletter services can change or delete their personal identifying information by visiting the "Subscription Changes" pages on PCWorld.com and clicking the appropriate Unsubscribe or Change Subscription buttons.

We allow users to "opt out" of receiving mailings from PC World or its parent company IDG regarding special offers and deals from third parties. Users can opt out at the time their e-mail information is requested, or by sending e-mail to webmaster@pcworld.com. 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 co-branded services. Even though these partner services may have the look and feel of PCWorld.com, they are hosted by the partners and thus are 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 co-branded partner services pages. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of our partners. Current PCWorld.com partner sites are:

In some cases, users will be referred to third-party sites from PCWorld.com. User information collected on these third-party sites or co-branded partner sites will occasionally 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 18 years of age or under should not submit any information to PCWorld.com without a parent or guardian's consent. PCWorld.com does not market its newsletters or special offers to children under 18 years of age.

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 TRUSTe, PCWorld.com will also post a notice on the site to obtain user consent.

Subscribers to PC World magazine are asked to provide postal addresses and e-mail addresses (e-mail is optional). Postal addresses, which are necessary to send each monthly issue, will be used to promote PC World and IDG products and services, and will occasionally be rented to selected outside firms for promotional purposes. Offers for which the names are rented are screened, and renters are required to target their offers carefully.

E-Mail addresses of PC World print subscribers will occasionally be used for PC World renewal promotions and for customer service purposes. These e-mail addresses can also be used to collect feedback for members of our editorial and research staffs to promote and develop PC World and IDG products and services. We allow users to opt-out of receiving e-mail from PC World Communications, Inc. when e-mail information is collected and with each e-mail use of the user's address. All mailings are sent by PC World and/or its contracted e-mail delivery services.

PC World print subscribers who do not want their names used in any of the above ways may write and ask to be removed from the promotion list. Requests should be sent to:

PC World
Attn: Subscriber Services
P.O. Box 37571
Boone, IA 50037-0571
Or e-mail us at: customer_service@pcworld.com

Further notification of how to be removed from the mailing list can be found in each issue of PC World magazine and in subscription order confirmations.