1AutoTrader.net, respects the privacy of visitors
to our website. Please read this Privacy Statement carefully so that
you understand what information we collect through our website and what
we do with that information. This Privacy Statement applies only to
information collected online through the 1AutoTrader.net website and
does not describe the ways in which we may collect or use information
obtained offline or through any means other than our website. If you
have any questions about this Privacy Statement, please contact Customer
Service.
PROTECTING THE PRIVACY OF CHILDREN
Children should always get permission from their parents before sending
any information about themselves (such as their names, email addresses,
and phone numbers) over the Internet, to us or to anyone else. Our website
is not directed at children under 13 and we won't knowingly allow
anyone under 13 to provide us any personally identifying information;
if you're under 13, please don't provide any information about
yourself on this website.
THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT
The information we gather falls into two categories: (1) information
supplied by visitors to the site when they list a car for sale, perform
a search, enter a sweepstakes or other promotional contest, or inquire
about a vehicle listed for sale or about another product or service
offered through our website; and (2) tracking information gathered as
visitors navigate through our website and review our email newsletters
and other email messages. Third-party providers featured on or linked
to by our website, such as vendors of products and services offered
through our site, may be gathering information, as well, through processes
we don't control.
Searches and Listings To make use of certain features
on our site, visitors need to provide limited information about themselves
and their interests so that we can tailor the information we provide
to their needs. For example, to help you find the car you want close
to home, we need to know what kind of car you're looking for and
your zip code. We ask you to provide this information when you perform
a search. We use this information to help you find the car you're
looking for. If you find a listing that interests you and elect to send
the seller an email through our website, we'll share with the seller
the contact information you supply through our online "Email this
Seller" form. Some dealerships that list vehicles for sale on our
site use third-party service providers to manage their "leads"
(that is, the inquiries they receive from consumers who are interested
in the vehicles they've listed for sale). If a dealership has designated
a provider of lead management services, we may also share with that
provider any information you elect to send to the dealership through
our "Email this Seller" form. Vehicle manufacturers like to
monitor how responsive their franchised dealers are to consumer inquiries.
To help them monitor and improve dealer performance, we may also provide
vehicle manufacturers with the information you send their franchised
dealers using our "Email this Seller" tool. If you find a
listing for a certified pre-owned vehicle that interests you and elect
to send the seller an email through our website, we'll also share
the information you supply through our "Email this Seller"
form with the manufacturer of the vehicle you're inquiring about
(which administers the certified pre-owned program) to use for quality
assurance, internal business analysis, process management, and other
similar purposes. If you do not wish to share your email address or
other contact information with sellers who advertise on our website,
lead management service providers, and vehicle manufacturers, you should
not use our "Email Seller" contact form. Many of the dealership
listings that appear on our website include toll-free telephone numbers
that can be used to contact the dealership that is selling the advertised
vehicle. If you call a dealership using one of these toll-free numbers,
we may provide the dealership with the date, time, and duration of your
call, as well as the number from which your call originated. If you
wish to contact a dealership that advertises on our website without
disclosing this information, please contact the dealership by email
or by dialing its local telephone number. When you list a car for sale,
we ask for information on the car and on how you can be contacted by
potential buyers. We also ask for your credit card number and the expiration
date on your card. We use this information to create your ad and to
process your payment.
Sweepstakes and Other Promotions From time to time,
we may offer sweepstakes or other promotions on our website. If you
enter a sweepstakes or promotional contest, we'll ask you to provide
information about yourself (such as your name, address, and email address).
Among other things, we'll need this information to contact you if
you win, and we may also use this information for marketing purposes.
We may share this information with any co-sponsor of the contest or
sweepstakes; we'll identify the co-sponsor in the contest rules.
We may also share this information with shipping or fulfillment companies
or other third-party service providers that help administer our promotions,
such as by conducting drawings, and/or delivering prizes to winners.
If you don't want us to collect the information requested in the
contest or sweepstakes registration form or to provide it to co-sponsors,
please do not enter the contest or sweepstakes.
Online Surveys From time to time, we survey our users
to measure their satisfaction with our site and other sites and to help
us learn more about our audience and how they interact with our site.
Third-party research firms often conduct these surveys on our behalf.
We use the survey results to help us improve the services we offer to
you. Except in the circumstances described below in the "Other
Disclosures" section of this policy, we will not share, without
your consent, any personally-identifying information you submit in response
to an 1AutoTrader.net survey with any company other than the research
firm conducting the survey. We will, however, take the information you
provide and aggregate it on an anonymous basis with data collected from
other survey participants. We may use and disclose that pool of anonymous
information as we see fit, without identifying you personally.
You may also find on our site invitations to participate
surveys conducted by our advertisers, whose privacy practices we don't
control. These invitations will usually link to an online survey form
that is hosted either by the advertiser conducting the survey or by
a third-party research firm working on the advertiser's behalf.
When you access an advertiser's survey through our website, use
and disclosure of any information you submit will be governed by the
advertiser's privacy policy (or by the privacy policy of the advertiser's
research firm), which may differ from ours. If you can't find the
applicable privacy policy via a link either from the advertiser's
survey invitation or from the online survey form, you should contact
the advertiser directly for more information.
Email Addresses If you provide us your email address,
we may email you about our website or our services, or to inquire about
your experience using our website or sites operated by others. From
time to time, we'll also send you emails that may include automotive
information, special promotions and other commercial offers that we
think may be of interest to you. Though we hope you'll find these
communications informative and useful, if you don't, you can always
unsubscribe by following the simple instructions included in each email.
And you can opt-out of receiving these types of commercial offers at
all by indicating, when you list a car for sale or inquire about a car
listed on our website, that you'd prefer not to receive these communications.
Cookies To help us tailor our website to the needs
and interests of our visitors, we keep track of the pages visited by
our users by placing a cookie, a small entry in text file, on your hard
drive. The cookie contains an ID number that allows us to track the
pages you've visited. We aggregate this data with data on the pages
visited by other users to track overall visitor traffic patterns. We
use this information to improve our site by making it more responsive
to the needs of our users. We also use cookies to make sure you don't
see the same ad repeatedly during a single visit to our site. Cookies
don't reveal personally identifying information; the only personal
information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself.
Cookies can't read unrelated data off your hard drive. Our advertisers
and third parties that provide products and/or services through our
site may also assign their own cookies, a process we don't control.
The help function on most web browsers contains information on how to
set your browser to notify you before accepting a cookie or to disable
cookies entirely. However, if you don't accept cookies, you won't
be able to take advantage of various features on our site that are available
to other visitors. Our "Find Your Car" feature, for example,
won't work properly if you configure your browser not to accept
cookies.
Web Beacons To help us (and in some cases our advertisers)
keep track of how many users are accessing particular pages and listings
within our website, and to track how users respond to ads we place on
third-party websites, we may place a small file, called a web beacon,
on some of our pages and on some of the listings we distribute. In combination
with cookies, these web beacons allow us (or our advertisers) to track
the number of users who view particular pages and listings to fine tune
the advertising messages delivered to users of this and other websites,
including sites in the 1AutoTrader.net Access advertising network (www.autotraderaccess.com).
We may use "clickstream" data collected using web beacons
and cookies to help us tailor the content of promotional messages, including
email messages, to the perceived interests of our users. Advertising
networks with which we are affiliated and third-party advertising services
that we use may also use web beacons on our site to gather similar anonymous
"clickstream" information, which is used to fine tune advertising
messages delivered to our visitors and visitors to other websites. (See
"Data Collected in Connection with Ad Serving and Targeting,"
below, for more information.).
Browser Level Information Our web server automatically
collects limited information about your computer configuration when
you visit our site, including the type of browser software you use,
the operating system you're running, the resolution of your computer
monitor, the website that referred you, and your IP address. (Your IP
address is a numerical address that is used by computers connected to
the Internet to identify your computer so that data (such as the web
pages you want to view) can be transmitted to you. We also use IP address
information for systems administration and trouble shooting purposes.
Your IP address does not tell us who you are.) We use this information
to make our site as useful as we can for as many users as possible.
Data Collected in Connection with Ad Serving and Targeting
1AutoTrader.net works with leading third-party advertising companies,
including DoubleClick, Advertising.com and Tacoda. Their services include
targeting and serving some of the advertisements, promotions, or other
marketing messages you see on the pages of our site and other websites.
1AutoTrader.net also operates an advertising network of automotive specialty
sites known as the 1AutoTrader.net Access network (www.autotraderaccess.com).
Anonymous tracking information called "clickstream" data is
collected from our website and other websites so that DoubleClick, Advertising.com,
Tacoda, 1AutoTrader.net, and others can use such information, sometimes
in conjunction with similar anonymous information gathered through other
websites, to deliver advertisements tailored to match the perceived
interests of consumers. Clickstream information collected from users
of 1AutoTrader.net is used to serve targeted advertsements on this site
and other websites, including sites in the 1AutoTrader.net Access advertising
network. This clickstream data does not identify you personally and
does not include your name, address, email address or telephone number,
but it may include the IP address of your computer. We also use DoubleClick
software to serve our own ads and collect similar information in the
process. DoubleClick, Advertising.com and Tacoda may also use cookies
and/or web beacons to collect anonymous information directly from our
users. If you would like to know more about DoubleClick's information
gathering practices and opt-out procedures, please see the privacy statement
on the DoubleClick website. To opt out of DoubleClick's ad targeting
program, please click here. If you would like to learn more about Advertising.com's
information collection practices and opt-out procedures, please see
the privacy statement on the Advertising.com website. For more information
on Tacoda's information collection practices and opt-out procedures,
please read the privacy policy posted on the Tacoda website.
USE AND DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION
When we present information to our advertisers-to help them understand
our audience and confirm the value of advertising on our website--it
is usually in the form of aggregated statistics on traffic to various
pages within our site. Any credit card information you may provide to
us is secured during transmission over the Internet using industry--standard
secure socket layer (SSL) encryption and is stored on our secure servers.
(See "Security," below.) We use your credit card information
only to bill you for the products and services you order from us. We
don't share your credit card information with anyone, except as
may be necessary to process your transactions or comply with law. We
may collect, or have a third party collect on our behalf, aggregated
statistical information about how visitors use and navigate around our
site, such as the number of users who visit various pages within the
site, what they click on, whether they scroll up or down on particular
pages, fill out forms, etc. This aggregated information does not identify
you personally. We use this information to improve our site. We may
also disclose this aggregated information to third parties.
LINKS AND FEATURES OFFERED IN CONJUNCTION WITH
OTHER PROVIDERS
To make our website more valuable to our visitors, we feature some products
and services that come from other providers. Our finance, insurance,
warranty, and inspection services, for example, are made available through
cooperative arrangements with companies that specialize in providing
such services. We share with these third parties such information as
is necessary for them to provide the products or services. We have a
strategic marketing relationship with our sister company, Cox Auto Trader,
the publisher of Auto Trader Magazine. When you visit our site to purchase
a combination print ad (in Auto Trader Magazine) and online ad (on 1AutoTrader.net),
you may be redirected to a web page hosted by Cox Auto Trader to complete
your transaction. Any information you submit on forms that appear on
web pages hosted by Cox Auto Trader will be collected and used pursuant
to Cox Auto Trader's privacy policy. (You can tell which site hosts
the page you're viewing by looking at the location bar at the top
of your web browser. If it says "1AutoTrader.net," you're
on a page hosted by 1AutoTrader.net. If it says "traderpub.com,"
you're on a page hosted by Cox Auto Trader.) Of course, our site
includes links to other websites, and provides access to products and
services offered by third parties, whose privacy policies we don't
control. When you access another website or purchase products or services
or conduct other transactions through our website, use of any information
you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the
site you're visiting or the provider of such products or services.
When you provide information in the course of obtaining products or
services through our site, use of any information you provide may be
governed by the privacy policy of the provider of those products or
services. The provider's privacy policy may differ from ours. If
you can't find the privacy policy of any of our provider partners
via a link either from their site's homepage or from the pages on
which the products or services are offered, you should contact the provider
directly for more information.
OTHER DISCLOSURES
We may occasionally release information about our visitors when release
is appropriate to comply with law, to enforce our Visitor Agreement,
or to protect the rights, property or safety of visitors to our site,
our customers, the public or 1AutoTrader.net. As our business grows,
we may buy or sell various assets. In the unlikely event that 1AutoTrader.net,
Inc., one of its business units, or substantially all of its assets
is acquired by another company, information on our visitors would be
among the transferred assets. If you choose to unsubscribe in response
to an email message that we send on behalf of an advertiser, we will
share your email address and opt-out instructions with the advertiser
to ensure that your email privacy preferences are honored. Similarly,
if we ask a third-party company to send its customers email offers on
our behalf, we will share with that company (or its agent) a list of
email addresses collected from website visitors who have opted out of
our email program to ensure that their privacy preferences are honored.We
may allow others to search some of our databases (our listings database,
for example) and to analyze the data they find there or aggregate it
with other data, either for their business purposes, or ours. Though
some of the information in our databases may be personally identifying
(such as the contact information included in a vehicle listing), we'll
only allow searches of the portions of our database that contain information
that is otherwise publicly available on our website. When we use other
companies to help us operate our site or improve the services we offer
to you, we may provide them with information about our visitors that
is necessary for them to perform their services. We require that these
companies commit to use the information only to perform the services
that we request.
SECURITY
Information we gather on our website is stored within 1AutoTrader.net-controlled
databases (or databases hosted on our behalf) on servers maintained
in protected environments. Any credit card information you provide us
is secured for transmission over the Internet using industry-standard
secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption. Click here to learn more about
the SSL protocol on webopedia.com. However, no physical or electronic
security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of
our servers or databases, nor can we guarantee that information you
supply won't be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the
Internet. And, of course, any information you include in a vehicle listing
is available to anyone with Internet access.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT
The web is an evolving medium. If we need to change our privacy policy
at some point in the future, we'll post the changes to this Privacy
Statement on this website and update the reference to the effective
date to reflect the date of the amendment. By visiting 1AutoTrader.net,
you agree that your visit, and any dispute over privacy, is governed
by this Privacy Statement and our Visitor Agreement. |