Wishing Link Online Privacy and Security
Last Updated: May 28, 2009

Wishing Link takes your privacy very seriously. This policy covers how we treat the information that we collect and receive. By using this site, you agree to the Wishing Link Privacy Policy. We will update this Privacy Policy periodically as our services change and expand. We will notify you of such changes by posting them on our site. If you wish to communicate with us about this policy or changes to your personal information please contact us at info@wishinglink.com.

Key Points

Personal Information You Share

• The Event Organizer determines the amount of information shared with other participants of your event.
• You generally control how much personal information you choose to share with other participants, through photo and blog postings.
• Individuals who wish to change their participation status in a Wishing Link event must contact their event organizer through the event page.

Children On Wishing Link

• Children under 13 are not allowed to create events on Wishing Link.
• Children 13-18 are encouraged to get parental permission before creating events on the Wishing Link Site.

What Wishing Link Does With Your Information

• The information you provide is for sharing with other event participants privately.
  
• Third party advertisers have no access to your personal profile information or User Content stored on the Wishing Link Site unless it is in an aggregated format and/or non-personally identifiable.
• There may be opportunities on the site for you to opt-in and share personal information, but it's your choice.
• Wishing Link does not share any personally identifiable information outside your event without your permission except in extremely limited circumstances described below.

Security

• Wishing Link treats data as an asset that must be protected and uses many tools and techniques to protect your personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure.
• Please bear in mind that, as you probably know, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, and others may abuse or misuse your personal information that they collect from the Wishing Link Site.

This Privacy Policy addresses only the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. It does not cover the use of cookies or other tracking technologies by any third party. If you disclose your information, including personal profile information and User Content, to others, whether they are Event Organizers, Participants, third party advertisers or others, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Wishing Link does not control the privacy policies of third parties, and you are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties where applicable. If you leave our site through a link, we encourage you to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information.

 

Full Privacy Policy

Personal Information Collected

Wishing Link collects personal information when you register with us and when you use Wishing Link to create group events. Personal information is information about you that is personally identifiable like your email address, or phone number, and that may not otherwise be publicly available. When you create an account we ask for information such as your name and email address. Once you register with Wishing Link and sign in to use our services, you are not anonymous to us. Information is also collected as you interact with your event site through photo and blog postings.

Event Organizer requirements: When you create an event using Wishing Link, you become the "Organizer". As an event organizer, you provide us with certain event information, such as event name, length of event, number of participants, and certain personal information, such as your name, your email address, and possibly your telephone number. In addition, as an event organizer, you decide what personal information will be collected from the participants of your event, including the event recipient; email, phone number and address. You will also determine what type of information in a recipient's personal profile will be shared with other participants. An event organizer can also be a participant.

 

Event Participant requirements: When you access Wishing Link as a participant, you provide us with certain personal information. Wishing Link only requires that you provide us your email address in order to participate in an event. Your event organizer may also require that a recipient's additional personal information be included, such as name, address, phone number, interests and affiliations, or other information pertinent to the event. In some cases, the event organizer may enter or modify your personal profile information as needed by your event (in most cases this would be the Recipient's information). Wishing Link does not control or limit the type of personal information that your Event Organizer may require in order for you to be a Recipient.

 

Information you choose to provide: When you use the Wishing Link Site, you may choose to upload, publish or display (collectively, "post"), or transmit to or share with other users, photos, personal profiles, blog entries, messages, notes, text, information, recommendations, opinions, documents, files, listings, and other content on or through the Wishing Link Site (collectively the "User Content"). We collect this information so that we can provide you and your event the service and offer personalized features. In most cases, we retain it so that, for instance, you or other Participants can return to view prior messages you have sent. When you update your personal profile information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time.

You post User Content on the Wishing Link Site at your own risk. Although the User Content is intended to be accessed only by other event participants, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable and we cannot control the actions of other event participants. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Wishing Link Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Wishing Link Site. You understand and acknowledge that copies of User Content remain viewable in cached and archived pages or other event participants and may have copied or stored your User Content.

 

Children's Information

Wishing Link does not target its web site to children, and we will not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children without obtaining prior verifiable parental consent. If we become aware that a subscriber is under the age of 13 and has registered without prior verifiable parental consent, we will remove their personally identifiable information from our files 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@wishinglink.com.

 

Use of Information

We use personal information shared for the following general purposes: to connect a community of people around a unique event, target products and services to your event, improve our services, to customize the advertising and content you see, and to contact you.

Personal information: All Participants are permitted to view your User Content (such as event information, blog entries or any photos you may upload to your event page). In all cases, your Event Organizer will be able to preview and modify your User Content. For example, if your User Content is not appropriate for your event, the Event Organizer may delete it. Further, your Event Organizer will decide to approve all or some User Content before it is posted for view by other Participants. Wishing Link may send you emails containing information from your event, such as User Content or announcements posted by you and other Participants. Wishing Link reserves the right to send you notices about your account or the Wishing Link services.

 

Site use: Similar to other web services, when you use the Wishing Link site, Wishing Link collects non-personally identifiable information that helps us improve our service and customize content and advertising. Wishing Link uses the data for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients.

There are three types of non-personally identifiable information we collect.

"Cookies" are text files we may place on your computer to understand user traffic patterns, technology used, usage data and aggregate demographics. Like many websites, Wishing Link uses cookies to collect anonymous visitor information. Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser. Cookies make the use of a website easier by saving passwords and preferences while a user is at the site. By doing this, we can personalize your return visits and save you time during the creation of a new event. In order to enjoy the benefits of being a registered user, your browser must be set to accept cookies. It is possible that some parts of the website will not function properly if you reject Cookies.

 

Server Logs collect non-personal information such as your Internet Protocol address, browser type and activity on the Wishing Link Site. This is used for product development and testing, and backup/recovery purposes.

Information Sharing
From time to time we share the personal information we collect with trusted companies who work with or on behalf of Wishing Link. We may also combine personal information with publicly available information and information we receive from or cross-reference with our partners. These companies may use your personal information to enhance and personalize your experience with us, to communicate with you about products and events that may be of interest to you, and for other promotional purposes. Information sharing allows us to introduce new resources based on your interests and needs. With that end in mind, when you purchase an item, your customer information is shared with other select companies whose products and services you may find useful.

Information Sharing Is Your Choice
It's your information and it's your choice. We understand and respect that not all customers may wish to allow us to share information with other select companies. If you do not want Wishing Link to share your customer information, please immediately email us at info@wishinglink.com and we will remove your name from lists we share with other companies. After the six to eight week time period it takes to process your request, your information will no longer be shared. When contacting us, please clearly state your request, including your name, mailing address, email address, and phone number.

We use anonymous information, such as that pertaining to web pages viewed, to analyze trends, track user's movements, provide a better website experience and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. We do not use this data in a manner that would identify you personally.


Under the following circumstances, we may still be required to share your personal information:

• We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims;
• We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of the Wishing Link Terms of Use, or as otherwise required by law.
• We transfer information about you if Wishing Link is acquired by, reorganized or merged with another company. In such an event, you will have the opportunity to ask not to receive promotional information following any such change of control.
• Legal requirements: Wishing Link 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 use and share personal profile, User Content, or other information when we believe it is necessary to protect our interests or property, to prevent potential fraud or other illegal or prohibited activity, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.

Access to Your Account Information and Preferences
You have the right and ability to modify your personal profile information at any time by logging into your account page. Information will be updated immediately. You can opt in or out of receiving future communications, or you can unsubscribe by following instructions contained in the messages you receive. We do reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to the Wishing Link service, such as service announcements and administrative messages, that are considered part of your Wishing Link account membership, and we do not offer you the opportunity to opt-out of receiving those messages.

 

Individuals who wish to deactivate their Wishing Link account can request it by sending an email to info@wishinglink.com. Deactivated accounts and their associated personal profiles will persist indefinitely in the Wishing Link database and Administrators may see it in membership reports but it will not be generally available to members through the Wishing Link site.

Where you make use of the communication features of the service to share information with other Participants, however, (e.g., posting User Content) you generally cannot remove such communications.

Security

Your information is stored and processed on our servers located in the United States. We treat data as an asset that must be protected and use many tools (encryption, passwords, physical security, etc.) to protect your personal information against unauthorized access and disclosure. For instance, your personal profile information is located on a secured server.

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 Party Sites
Our Websites may contain links to other websites for news and other information. Our Privacy Policy only applies to the Wishing Link website and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of other websites. You should check the privacy policies of those sites before providing your personal information to them.

Third party advertisers: Third party advertisers have no access to your personal profile information or User Content stored on the Wishing Link Site unless you choose to share it with them. They may have access to anonymous User Content in order to target contextually relevant advertisements. Advertisements that appear on Wishing Link are sometimes delivered (or "served") directly to users by third party advertisers. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. These third party advertisers 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. Wishing Link does not have access to or control of the cookies that may be placed by the third party advertisers.

We also work with a third party to monitor certain pages of our website for the purpose of reporting website traffic and other advertising statistics. Where authorized by us, this third party may use cookies and/or other monitoring technologies to compile anonymous statistics about our website visitors. No personally identifiable information is transferred to this third party.

Sharing with other third parties: The Wishing Link Site is intended to allow you to share information with other people in your event. We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We may share your data with trusted third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is reasonably necessary to offer the service, or data is in aggregated form, or content is anonymous, or sharing is expressly permitted by you. For example: We may offer certain programs and promotions on the Wishing Link Site or through your event page which your Event Organizer has/have decided to pass on to you, and you may choose to opt in. We may provide anonymous content to partners to allow us or them to target contextually relevant advertisements that may be posted alongside content. If the ownership of all or substantially all of the Wishing Link Site business, or individual business units owned by Wishing Link Inc, were to change, your user information may be transferred to the new owner so the service can continue operations. In any such transfer of information, your user information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy.