eCompliments Privacy Policy

Keeping your personal information private is important to us. This privacy policy describes how we collect and use the personal information you provide on our Web site: www.ecompliments.com. It also describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information and the steps you can take to access this information and to request that we correct or delete it. If you have questions about this privacy statement, please send them to us by email to privacy@ecompliments.com. Unless defined herein, Capitalized Terms shall have the same meanings as defined in the Site Use Agreement, which can be found here.

BY USING THE SITE, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE TERMS, PLEASE DO NOT USE THE SITE.

1. Types of Information

Registration Information:  Information entered during the User registration process, has four distinct characteristics and classifications: 

(i) Open Information – the items that you choose to be displayed on your public profile (this may include, but not be limited to, your name, address, telephone number, website, blog, and Additional Registration Information);

(ii) Additional Registration Information - any information you choose to add to the More Information portion of your Complimentee profile (this may include, but not limited to pictures, promotions, specials, and discounts); and

(iii) Private Information - any confidential information you disclose to eCompliments during the registration process and any information you select to not be made public on your profile (this absolutely includes passwords, credit card information and may include any other information you specifically designate to be private by your privacy settings); and

(iv) Professional Listings - pursuant to our Site Use Agreement, any available information about businesses, organizations, entities or other public figures, similar to that of a telephone book or other online directory listing, that is either public or has been complied by a third party service.  Said Professional Listings may be purchased by eCompliments and Posted on our Site.

“OPT IN” Information:  any email address associated with an account in which the User actively chooses during the registration process to receive any of the following Opt-In items:  (i) special discount and promotional emails from eCompliments or its Professional Account holders, (ii) the eCompliments Newsletter, and / or (iii) other email notices from eCompliments. 

Passively Collected Information:  certain information collected from your activity on our Site.  This information includes:  (i) “Cookies” – are small text files that a Web site can place on your computer's hard drive in order, for example, to collect information about your activities on the site or to make it easier to use certain site functions. The cookie transmits this information back to the Web site's computer. Many users do not know that "cookies" are being placed on their computers when they visit Web sites. If you want to know when this happens, or prevent it from happening, you can set your browser to warn you when a Web site attempts to place a "cookie" on your computer; and (ii) “Site Activity Information” – information recorded about your use of the Site, including pages you view, searches you perform, your browser type, IP address, requested URL, referring URL, and timestamp information.

User Generated Data:  Any User Content, Additional Profile Information, or any other information actively entered into the Site by the User, which the User intends to be published or should reasonably expect to be published. 

2. Uses of Information

Published on Site: Any information that is defined as (i) Registration Information that is not Private Information (as defined above) or (ii) User Generated Data, shall be made available or published to the Site for public view. We store and display to the public the User Generated Data in order to provide the services that we offer. When User Content is displayed, it is accompanied with your User Name. Please do not include information you wish to keep private in the information that will be made available through the Site. To the extent you include personally identifiable information in the User Content you Post to the Site, please understand that third parties may be able to identify you, your User Name and contact you, whether you want them to or not. We are not liable for interaction resulting from this practice.

Internal Use: In order to have our Site work at is optimal level and to allow us to provide you with great customer service, we may use Registration Information, User Generated Data, Passively Collected Information and Opt-In Information within eCompliments to perform the services outlined in the Site Use Agreement. This use may include providing certain information to outside third parties who perform services for eCompliments that are reasonably necessary for the operation of our business. These services may include but not be limited to providing technical support and customer service, credit card processing, conduct quality assurance testing, facilitating creation of accounts, providing accounting or legal services or any other services that are reasonably necessary to allow eCompliments to operate its business. Said third parties are required to use your information only for the services requested. 

Aggregated Use: Any Registration Information (not including Private Information), User Generated Data, and Passively Collected Information may be used in its aggregated form to, inter alia, perform statistical analysis of the use of the site, measure User interest in Site elements and study the demographics of the Users of the Site. This aggregated information may be provided by eCompliments in their ordinary course of business (a) to Professional Account holders as a part of the Consumer Solutions Analytics, (b) to third party service providers who provide Web Site Analytics services, and (c) for promotional, advertising or other press related uses by eCompliments in order to promote the success of the Site. You cannot be identified from this aggregate information. The term “Web Site Analytics” refers to a process that uses cookies and other tools to help us analyze how Users use the Site and the effectiveness of the Site features. The information generated by the cookie about your Use of the Site (including, without limitation, your IP address, browser type, and activity on the Site) will be transmitted to and stored by this service provider. They will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the Site and compiling aggregated reports for us. The information collected by our service provider and provided to us is not personally identifiable.

Other Uses: Other uses of site information may include:

Contact Us:  If you submit personal information, such as your email address, to us by following the “Contact Us” link located throughout the Site, we will use that information to respond to your question or request for information. We will not share your information with third parties without your explicit permission. You can also contact us by email at privacy@ecompliments.com.

Email Invitation Program:  In order to allow you to encourage others to share the good about your User Account, you may choose to provide us with another person's e-mail address so that person may be invited to Post content on the Site. We use this information to contact and, if necessary, remind that person about the invitation. By providing us with another person's e-mail address, you represent to us that you have obtained the consent of the person concerned as regards such disclosure to us of their personal information. All addresses receiving an invite are provided with the option not to receive further invitations. We may disclose such information if required to do so in order to comply with legal process, as described above

Inbox Services: In order to allow you to send and receive direct communications to other Registered Users of the Site, we record the messages that you send and receive. Please also note that the personal messages you send or receive using the Inbox Services feature are only private to the extent that you and the sender/recipient keep them private. We cannot be responsible for what the other party does with the Content of such a message.

Press Room:  If you sign up for eCompliments Press Releases on our “Press Room”, we will collect your email address to fulfill your request. We will not share your email address with third parties other than a service provider that mails the Press Releases for us. To unsubscribe, login to your profile, click the "edit profile" link and on the "sign up" tab deselect the options you want to "unsubscribe." If you wish to change your email address for purposes of receiving the Press Releases, you may unsubscribe and then re-subscribe with a new email address.

Third Party Use: Our Site Use Agreement contemplates the distribution of User Generated Data to third parties. The third parties are encouraged to publicly display or publish your User Generated Data in connection with their own websites and media platforms. When we distribute your User Generated Data to third parties, we typically include only your User Name and User Content.

3. Preferences

By creating a User Account, you can change some of your Registration and Open Information and your Inbox Service settings by accessing the “Profile Preferences” link on the User Profile Page of the Site. Upon your request, we will use commercially reasonable efforts to suspend the paid-for services of your Account and will revert back to a Basic / eComplimentary profile.  Your User Content will continue to be displayed on the Site; nevertheless, we may still retain your personal information in our systems.  Using the Inbox Services is purely optional.  By accessing the Inbox Services settings, you may elect to stop receiving messages from other Registered Users or from us.  Your Inbox Service settings will not prevent us from sending you notice of any updates to our Site Use Agreement or Privacy Policy.

4. Information Sharing

We may share your Registration Information with third parties in the ways that are described in this Privacy Policy. We will also share your personal information if we are required to do so by law, or if we believe that doing so is necessary in order to conform to the law, cooperate with law enforcement agencies, comply with legal process served on us, or otherwise protect our legal rights or reputation (which we may, in our discretion, contest the validity of any request). From time to time we employ service providers to perform various functions involving Registration Information on our behalf. These service providers are prohibited from using this personal information for any other purpose.  We may also disclose information in the aggregate to third parties relating to user behavior in connection with actual or prospective business relationship or acquisition.  If another company acquires our company or our assets, that company will possess your Registration Information, and will assume the rights and obligations with respect to that information as described in this Privacy Policy.

5. Access to your Personal Information

Upon written request to our privacy department and reasonable confirmation of the validity of the request and/or the requestor, we will provide you reasonable access to your personally identifiable information, within 30 days of your access request. If we cannot provide access within the 30-day period, we will tell you when we will provide access. In the unlikely event that we cannot provide you access to this information, we will explain why we cannot do so. To request access to your personally identifying information; contact us by email at privacy@ecompliments.com.

6. Security

Providing security for the information you submit to our Site is a top priority for us. Your account is password protected. We use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption for Private Information you provide during the Registration Process.  We apply generally accepted, industry standard measures to protect the Private Information stored in our database. We limit access to your Private Information to those employees and contractors who need access to perform their job function, such as our customer solutions representatives. If you have any questions about the security on the Site, please contact us. Please be aware, however, that no transmission of information via the Internet can be entirely secure. You should, therefore, always use caution when submitting personal information online. We are not responsible for any intercepted information sent via the internet, and you hereby release us from any and all claims arising out of or related to the use of intercepted information in any unauthorized manner.

7. Links to Other Web Sites

Our Sites include links to other Web sites whose privacy practices may differ from ours. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is subject to their privacy policies. Our privacy policy does not apply to information you may submit to those sites. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policy of any Web site you visit.

8. Changes in this Privacy Policy

If we change this privacy policy in ways that affect the personally identifying information we have collected through our Sites, we will post those changes in this space and advise you of choices you may have as a result of those changes. We will also post a notice on our home page that this privacy statement has changed.  Your continued Use of the Site will be your express acceptance of these new terms.