Scope

This Privacy Policy describes how we handle your personal information for our services on the bidTropolis website. It applies generally to the bidTropolis.com website where this policy appears in the footer of the page (“the Site”). The policy that applies on any of our domains or subdomains is always the policy that appears in the footer of each website.

Our subsidiaries’ and joint ventures’ privacy practices are similar to those described in this Privacy Policy. Subject to the requirements of applicable law, we strive to provide a consistent set of privacy practices throughout the global bidTropolis trading community. By accepting the Privacy Policy and the User Agreement in registration, you expressly consent to our collection, storage, use and disclosure of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance for new users and is otherwise effective on February 1st, 2005.

Collection

You can browse the Sites without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. Once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous to us. If you choose to provide us with personal information, you consent to the transfer and storage of that information to our servers located in the United States.

We may collect and store the following personal information:

• email address, physical contact information, and (depending on the service used) sometimes financial information, such as credit card or bank account numbers;
• transactional information based on your activities on the Sites (such as bidding, buying, selling, item and content you generate or that relates to your account);
• shipping, billing and other information you provide to purchase or ship an item;
• community discussions, chats, dispute resolution, correspondence through the Site, and correspondence sent to us;
• computer sign-on data, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the Site, and ad data;
• other information, including IP address and standard web log information, and

supplemental information from third parties. (For example, if you incur a debt to bidTropolis, we will generally conduct a credit check by obtaining additional information about you from a credit bureau, as permitted by law. As another example, if the information you provide cannot be verified, we may ask you to send us additional information (such as your driver license, credit card statement, and/or a recent utility bill or other information confirming your address), or to answer additional questions online to help verify your information.)

Marketing

We don't sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We may combine your information with information we collect from other companies (such as demographic data) to improve and personalize our services. If you don't wish to receive marketing communications from us, simply indicate your preference once you sign-in on in My bidTropolis, similar account status page, or by following the directions within the email.

Use

Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. You agree that we may use your personal information to:

• provide the services and customer support you request;
• resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems;
• prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and enforce our User Agreement;
• customize, measure, and improve our services and the Sites' content and layout;

tell you about targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences; and compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third parties.

Our Disclosure of Your Information

We may disclose personal information to respond to legal requirements, enforce our policies, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property, or safety.

We may also share your personal information with:

members of our corporate family to help detect and prevent potentially illegal acts and provide joint services; (Our corporate affiliates will market only to users who request these services.)

service providers under contract who help with our business operations; (such as fraud investigations, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs and co-branded credit cards)

other third parties to whom you explicitly ask us to send your information; (or about whom you are otherwise explicitly notified and consent to when using a specific service)

law enforcement or other governmental officials, in response to a verified request relating to a criminal investigation or alleged illegal activity; (In such events we will disclose name, city, state, telephone number, email address, User ID history, fraud complaints, and bidding and listing history.)

other business entities, should we plan to merge with or be acquired by that business entity. (Should such a combination occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this privacy policy with respect to your personal information. If your personal information will be used contrary to this policy, you will receive prior notice.)

Without limiting the above, in an effort to respect your privacy and our ability to keep the community free from bad actors, we will not otherwise disclose your personal information to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties without a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal procedure, except when we believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected illegal activity.

Activity Associated with User IDs

Your User ID is displayed throughout bidTropolis and is therefore available to the public. All of your activities on the Site will be traceable to your User ID. Other people can see your bids, items that you have purchased in the past, items for sale, storefronts, feedback, ratings and associated comments, and so on. Notices are sent to other community members regarding suspicious activity and policy violations on the Site and refer to User IDs and specific items. Therefore, if you associate your name with your User ID, the people to whom you have revealed your name to will be able to personally identify your bidTropolis activities.

Using Information from bidTropolis

Our Sites enable you to share personal and financial information in order to complete transactions. We encourage you to disclose your privacy practices and respect the privacy of other users. We cannot guarantee the privacy or security of your information and therefore we encourage you to evaluate the privacy and security policies of your trading partner before entering into a transaction and choosing to share your information. To help protect your privacy, we allow only limited access to other users' contact, shipping and financial information in order to facilitate your transactions. When users are involved in a transaction, they may have access to each other's name, User ID, email address, and other contact and shipping information. In all cases, you must give other users a chance to remove themselves from your database and a chance to review what information you have collected about them.

You agree to use user information only for:

bidTropolis transaction-related purposes that are not unsolicited commercial messages;

using services offered through bidTropolis (e.g. escrow, insurance, shipping and fraud complaints), or

other purposes that a user expressly chooses.

Cookies

We use "cookies" (small files placed on your hard drive) on certain pages of the Site to help analyze our web page flow, customize our services, measure promotional effectiveness, and promote trust and safety.

A few important things you should know about cookies are that:

We offer certain features that are only available through the use of cookies.

We use cookies to help identify you and maintain your signed-in status.

Most cookies are "session cookies," meaning that they are automatically deleted from your hard drive at the end of a session.

You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although doing so may interfere with your use of the Sites.

You may encounter cookies from third parties on certain pages of the Sites that we do not control. (For example, if you view a web page created by another user, there may be a "cookie" placed by that web page.)

No spam, spyware or spoofing

We and our users do not tolerate spam. Make sure to set your bidTropolis notification preferences so we communicate to you as you prefer. You are not licensed to add other bidTropolis users, even a user who has purchased an item from you, to your mail list (email or physical mail) without their express consent. You may not use our communication tools to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate our User Agreement. We do filter and automatically scan messages before they are sent for viruses and other illegal or prohibited content but do not permanently store email messages sent through these tools. If you send an email to an email address that is not registered in our community (via Refer a Friend or other tool), we do not permanently store that email or use that email address for any marketing purpose. We do not rent or sell these email addresses.

Account Protection

Your password is the key to your account. Use unique numbers, letters, and special characters and do not disclose your bidTropolis password to anyone. If you do share your password or your personal information with others, remember that you are responsible for all actions taken in the name of your account. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personal information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately notify bidTropolis and change your password.

Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personal Information

You can see, review and change most of your personal information by logging into the Site. Generally, we will not manually modify your personal information because it is very difficult to verify your identity remotely. You must promptly update your personal information if it changes or is inaccurate. Once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it. Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable law. We do retain personal information from closed accounts in order to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our bidTropolis User Agreement, and take other actions otherwise permitted by law.

Security

Your information is stored on our servers located in the United States. We treat data as an asset that must be protected and use lots of tools (encryption, passwords, physical security, etc.) to protect your personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure. However, as you probably know, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, and other users may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the Site. Therefore, although we work very hard to protect your privacy, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private.

Third Parties

Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. If you disclose your information to others, whether they are bidders, buyers, or sellers on our Site or other sites throughout the Internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Since bidTropolis does not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

General

We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on the Site. All amended terms automatically take effect 30 days after they are initially posted on the Site. In addition, we will notify you in accordance with your Notification Preferences.