Effective: September 22, 2008
Grockit’s Privacy Policy sets forth what information about you we collect, as well as how that information is used, maintained, and, in some cases, shared. It is designed to help you make informed decisions when using Grockit, located at www.grockit.com and its directly associated domains (collectively, “Grockit” or the “Website”).
By using or accessing Grockit, you accept the practices described in this Privacy Policy.
The Information We Collect
When you visit Grockit you provide us with two types of information: personal information that you knowingly choose to disclose to Grockit and website use information collected by Grockit as you interact with our Website.
When you register with Grockit, you provide us with certain personal information, such as your name, your email address, and any other personal or preference information that you provide to us. You will also be asked to create a password.
Our Website employs browser cookies and other technologies to collect information about users, such as their IP address, the type of browsers used, web pages viewed, and other information. We take measures to ensure that our cookies do not collect personally identifiable or sensitive information. The aggregate information we collect is analyzed and may be combined with similar aggregate information of other visitors to our Website. You may set your browser to reject cookies; however, this may affect some functions of our Website.
When you use Grockit, you may transmit information to Grockit and others about yourself through activities which include: setting up your personal profile, forming groups and relationships with other users, playing multi-player games, sending messages to others, performing searches and queries, and otherwise transmitting information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the Grockit service and offer personalized features. In most cases, we retain this information so that, for instance, you can return to games that you have played or easily access one of your groups on Grockit. When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.
You post User Content (as defined in the Grockit Terms of Use) on the Site at your own risk. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other users with whom you may choose to share your pages and information. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other users have copied or stored your User Content.
Any improper collection or misuse of information provided on Grockit is a violation of the Grockit Terms of Use and should be reported to privacy@grockit.com.
If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our Website, we will ask you for information needed to send an invitation to your friend, such as your friend’s email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email or instant message inviting him or her to visit the Website. Grockit stores this information to send this one-time invitation, to register a friend connection if your invitation is accepted, and to track the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us at info@grockit.com to request that we remove this information from our database.
Grockit may also collect information about you from other sources and other users of the Grockit service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.
If you use Grockit outside of the United States, information that we collect about you will be transferred to servers inside the United States and maintained indefinitely, which may involve the transfer of information out of countries located in the European Economic Area. By allowing Grockit to collect information about you, you consent to such transfer and processing of your data.
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Children Under Age 13
Grockit does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for Grockit or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to Grockit or on the Website. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at info@grockit.com.
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Children Between the Ages of 13 and 18
Grockit recommends that minors over the age of 13 ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet.
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Use of Information Obtained by Grockit
When you register with Grockit, you create your own profile and privacy settings. Your profile information, as well as your name, email and photo, are displayed to people in the groups specified in your privacy settings to enable you to connect with people on Grockit. We may occasionally use your name and email address to send you notifications regarding new services offered by Grockit that we think you may find valuable.
Profile information is used by Grockit primarily to be presented back to and edited by you when you access the Website and to be presented to others permitted to view that information by your privacy settings. In some cases where your privacy settings permit it, other Grockit users may be able to supplement your profile.
Profile information that you submit to Grockit will be available to users of Grockit who belong to at least one of the groups which you allow to access the information through your privacy settings. Your name, group names, and any profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Grockit network and those limited pieces of information may be made available to third-party search engines. This is primarily so other users in your groups can find you. People who see your name in searches, however, will not be able to access your profile information unless they have a relationship to you that allows such access based on your privacy settings.
Grockit may send you service-related announcements from time to time through the general operation of the service.
Grockit may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people are studying for a particular standardized test, and personalizing advertisements and promotions.
We may use information about you that we collect from other sources to supplement your profile.
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Sharing Your Information with Third Parties
Grockit allows you to choose the information that you provide to other users through Grockit. Our network architecture and your privacy settings allow you to make informed choices about who has access to your information. We will not provide your personal information to third-party marketers without your permission.
We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is (1) reasonably necessary to offer the Grockit service, (2) legally required or, (3) permitted by you. For example:
We may provide information to service providers to help us bring you the Grockit service. Specifically, we may use third parties to facilitate our business, such as to host the service at a co-location facility for servers, to send out email updates about Grockit, to remove repetitive information from our user lists, or to provide search results or links (including sponsored links). In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for a limited time in connection with these business activities. Where we utilize third parties for the processing of any personal information, we implement reasonable contractual and technical protections limiting the use of that information to the Grockit-specified purposes.
We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Grockit service or using the Grockit name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.
We may let you choose to share information with marketers or electronic commerce providers through sponsored groups or other on-site offers.
Like many other websites that interact with third-party sites, we may receive some information even if you are logged out from Grockit, or that pertains to non-Grockit users, from those sites in conjunction with the technical operation of the system. In cases where Grockit receives information on users that are not logged in, or on non-Grockit users, we do not attempt to associate it with individual Grockit accounts and will discard it.
If the ownership of all or substantially all of the Grockit business, or individual business units owned by Grockit, Inc., were to change, your user information may be transferred to the new owner. Grockit does not guarantee that any entity receiving such information in connection with one of these transactions will comply with all terms of this policy.
When you use Grockit, certain information you post or share with third parties, such as your personal information or your games or other learning devices, may be shared with other users in accordance with the privacy settings you select. All such sharing of information is done at your own risk. Please keep in mind that if you disclose personal information in your profile or when posting comments, messages, photos, videos, or other items, this information may become publicly available.
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Links
Grockit may contain links to other websites. Grockit is not responsible for the privacy practices of other websites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our Website to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by Grockit.
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Third-Party Advertising
Advertisements that appear on Grockit are sometimes delivered (or “served”) directly to users by third-party advertisers. Such third-party advertisers automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also download cookies to your computer, or use other technologies such as JavaScript and “web beacons” to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. Doing this allows the third-party advertiser to recognize your computer each time they send you an advertisement in order to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. In this way, they may compile information about where individuals using your computer or browser saw their advertisements and determine which advertisements are clicked. Grockit does not have access to or control of the technologies that may be placed by third-party advertisers. Third-party advertisers have no access to your contact information stored on Grockit unless you choose to share it with them.
This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies and similar technologies by Grockit and does not cover the use of cookies or other tracking technologies by any of its third-party advertisers.
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Changing or Removing Information
Access and control over most personal information on Grockit is readily available through the profile editing tools. You may modify or delete any of your profile information at any time by logging into your Grockit account. Modified or deleted information will be updated immediately. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Grockit. To deactivate your account, please contact us at privacy@grockit.com.
When you use any of the communication features on our Website to share information with other Grockit users (e.g., posting a group chat message), you generally cannot remove such communications.
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Security
Grockit takes appropriate precautions to protect our users’ information. Your account information is located on a secured server behind a firewall. Because email and instant messaging are not recognized as secure communications, we request that you not send private information to us by email or instant messaging services. If you have any questions about the security of Grockit website, please contact us at privacy@grockit.com.
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Terms of Use, Notices and Revisions
Your use of Grockit, and any disputes arising from it, is subject to this Privacy Policy as well as our Terms of Use and all of its dispute resolution provisions including arbitration, limitation on damages and choice of law. We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use at any time. If we make changes, we will post them and will indicate at the top of this page the policy’s new effective date. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or through notice on our home page. We encourage you to refer to this policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current privacy policy.
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Contacting the Website
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at privacy@grockit.com. You may also contact us by mail at 777 Florida Street. San Francisco, CA 94110.
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