Legal Information
 TERMS OF USE
COPYRIGHT
 PRIVACY
Policy
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POLICY
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| Privacy Policy |
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As an Internet pioneer, AltaVista understands the power that the Internet holds for changing people's lives, expanding their horizons and enhancing the ease with which they perform their jobs. All these benefits are at risk if people are concerned about their personal privacy. AltaVista is committed to providing its users with an Internet experience that respects their personal privacy concerns.
Our privacy policy and practices are detailed below and we ask you to read them fully. The policy is derived from three pledges that we make to you, our customers:
- We pledge that AltaVista will not use information about you without your permission.
- We pledge that AltaVista will provide the means for you to manage and control the information that you have provided to us.
- We pledge that we will provide mechanisms for you to communicate your privacy concerns to us and that we will respond to them thoroughly and thoughtfully.
We are currently designing technical mechanisms that we feel will greatly enhance your control over the data that you provide to us. Check back to this page from time to time to see these new features.
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| Coverage |
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This policy applies to sites whose URL terminates in either av.com or altavista.com. AltaVista affiliates own sites operating at shopping.com and zip2.com . These sites have similar privacy policies that can be viewed by visiting those sites.
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| Registration |
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You can visit altavista.com or av.com and use many of the services without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. The majority of our services do not require any form of customer registration.
However, we do require registration for use of certain services, e.g., portfolios within AltaVista Finance. During the registration process we require you to complete certain fields, request that you complete other fields and ask you to select a username and password.
With your permission we may share the information that you provide to us with selected third parties, primarily our advertisers and sponsors. You may opt-out of such sharing of information at the time of registration. If you opt to receive email communications from us, we may also send you news about AltaVista and our services, as well as relevant offers made by our advertisers and sponsors. You will only receive those communications if you opt-in at the time of registration.
During your use of our site and our services, we may collect additional demographic and profile data. We use this data to personalize your experience at our site, showing you content that we think you will be interested in, and displaying the content according to your preferences. We may share this information with selected advertisers and sponsors. If you do not wish demographic or profile information to be shared, then you may opt-out at the time of registration.
From time to time we may run contests on our site in which we ask participants for contact information, e.g., their email addresses. If you participate in contests, your contact information will be used primarily to reach you in connection with the contests. We may also use the collected contact information to send you information about AltaVista, our services and selected sponsors. You may opt-out of receiving such mailings at the time of registration for the contest.
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| Cookies and How Altavista Uses Them |
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A cookie is a small piece of data that is sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer's hard drive. We use cookies to help us provide customizable services and to allow you to sign-in to our site. For example, we can store your zip code in a cookie and this enables us to show you your local weather each time you visit our site.
You can choose whether to accept the cookies that we send to you by changing the settings of your browser. If you choose not to accept these cookies, your experience at our site may be inferior and some features will not work as intended.
AltaVista uses an outside company to serve advertising on our site. The outside advertising company uses cookies to ensure that you do not see the same advertisements too often. Cookies that are received with advertisements are read and placed by our advertising company and AltaVista does not have access to them.
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| Third-Party Relationship |
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In order to provide you with news and features that match your local interests, AltaVista has relationships with many of the best media companies throughout the world. You can recognize these sites by the joint branding of AltaVista and a media company. Whenever you provide registration information on co-branded sites, that data may be shared with our media partner.
In addition to finding co-branded sites, you will find direct links on our site to sites offered by third parties. Some of these sites are authorized to use the AltaVista brand and/or logo. AltaVista carefully evaluates all parties that are authorized to use its brand and logo and believes that all such sites have adopted acceptable privacy policies. However, no third-party sites are covered by this Privacy Policy. If you feel that a site using the AltaVista brand and/or logo does not follow an acceptable privacy policy, please send us an email at search-support@altavista.com. We will forward complaints to the appropriate third parties and may, in particular circumstances, decide to advocate on your behalf to attempt to cause the third parties to change their privacy policies.
AltaVista provides certain user information to third parties in aggregate form in order to facilitate the sale of advertising and the sponsorship of services on the AltaVista site.
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| Security |
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AltaVista has security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of customer data under our control. For example, we impose strict rules on AltaVista employees who have access either to the databases that store user information or to the servers that host our services. While we cannot guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration to data will not occur, we make efforts to prevent such unfortunate occurrences.
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| Contacting Us |
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If you have questions about this privacy policy or the practices of this site, please contact:
General Counsel
AltaVista Company
529 Bryant Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
You can send email to search-support@altavista.com. Please place the words "Privacy Policy" in the Subject line of your email.
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