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Your privacy is very important to CarpoolCleveland. (“CarpoolCleveland,” “we,” “us” or hereafter simply referred to as the “Website”). CarpoolCleveland has established this Privacy Policy to explain to you how your information is collected, protected, used and disclosed at our Website. The privacy practices of this statement apply to our services available under the domain and subdomains of www.CarpoolCleveland.com and apply generally to our affiliates, subsidiaries and joint ventures. By using the Website, you consent to the privacy practices described in this policy, as modified from time to time by us. Please carefully review this policy so you understand our data privacy practices. We may use personal information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in this Privacy Policy at any time. However should our privacy practices change, we will post the policy changes to our Website and indicate the date the Privacy Policy was last updated. We encourage you to check back at our Website periodically if you are concerned about how your information is used.

Please read this Privacy Policy to learn more about the ways in which we use and protect your personal information.

If you have additional questions, you may send an email to us by clicking on the link entitled “Contact”.

By visiting this Website you agree to be bound by the terms and provisions of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree please do not use or access our Website.

This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect from you as part of the normal operation and what may happen to that information. This policy is detailed because we believe you should know as much as possible about CarpoolCleveland’s practices so that you can make informed decisions. All of our affiliates, subsidiaries, and joint ventures operate under similar Privacy practices as described in this Privacy Policy and, subject to the requirements of applicable law. It is our goal to provide a consistent set of privacy practices throughout our websites.

When you accept this Privacy Policy and our Terms & Conditions (User Agreement) on this Website, you consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to the terms of CarpoolCleveland’s User Agreement. This Privacy Policy is effective upon acceptance in registration for new registering Users, and is otherwise effective on November 12, 2008 for all Users. If we decide to update our Privacy Policy, we will post the updates to this Website. You agree to be bound to the updated terms if you use the Website after the updated terms have been placed upon it. If any part of this Website links you to other websites, those websites do not operate under this Privacy Policy. We recommend you examine the privacy statements posted on those other websites to understand their procedures for collecting, using and disclosing personal information. If you reach this web site via a link from another web site, this web site operates under these privacy policies and not the privacy policies of the web site from where you obtained the link. Thus, your need to understand that the privacy policies of sites linked to this site are not this site's privacy policies.

Children or minors (persons under the age of 18) are not permitted to use this Website. Criminals, sex offenders, and others seeking to do harm are not permitted to use this Website. You must have a valid driver’s license and proper insurance if you are offering a ride. You must provide this information to the rider at their request. We make no effort and cannot verify or validate any claim by any person using the site thus personal caution and due diligence are the burden of Users of the site and are risks assumed by Users of the site.

Once you register on the Website, you are not anonymous to us. For various services on the Website, we may require you to provide appropriate information as indicated on the forms throughout the Website. Where possible, we indicate which fields are required and which fields are optional. You always have the option to not provide information that is optional. We may receive and store any information you enter on our Website or give us in any other way, including information which you may consider personal, such as first and last name, telephone number, postal and e-mail address and, in some cases, billing or credit card information.

For all of our services that require payment from you, in order to most efficiently serve you, credit card transactions and order fulfillment are typically handled by established third party banking and processing agents. They receive the information needed to verify, authorize and charge your credit card or other payment modes. At present, we do not typically store payment information such as billing address, credit card number, credit card expiration date. We do collect information required by these third parties in order to help ensure validity of transactions and it passes through our site to their processing sites and servers. Although information is sent and transmitted in the regular way according to the requirements of the processors, there is always a risk of interception by sophisticated hackers and others not well intentioned.

When you visit our Website, some information may be automatically collected, such as your computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address, your computer's operating system, the browser type, the address of a referring web site, and the time and date of your visit. We may use this information to protect, enhance or update our Website.

We may use encryption where appropriate to safeguard your data. We may use procedural and technical safeguards to protect your personal information against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access and disclosure to protect your privacy, including encryption, firewalls and secure socket layers, consistent with a website of our size. The degree and extensiveness of the use of these tools and softwares will vary from time to time and may not be present at all times. We treat data as an asset that must be protected against loss and we make reasonable business efforts consistent with our business judgment to protect this information from unauthorized access. There is no guaranty or promise we will be successful in that regard. We may employ certain security techniques to protect such data from unauthorized access by Users inside and outside the company. However, please note that 100% security is not a realistic guarantee any website or service exposed to the internet can provide today and neither can we.

A "cookie" is a small text file placed on your computer's hard drive by a web server which is acknowledged by your web browser. We use cookies for a variety of purposes, including, but not limited to the following: (a) To assist us in providing our services to you; (b) To allow you to change pages during your visit to our Website without repeatedly having to re-enter your password; (c) To track activity on our Website; (d) To introduce services to you on this and other websites. You can usually set parameters on your computer that allow you to elect to accept cookies or to have your browser notify you each time a cookie is offered. You can also usually delete cookies from your hard drive. You can find instructions on how to accept cookies, on how to be notified that a cookie is being offered, and on how to delete cookies through your Internet Browser. If your browser does not accept cookies from our website, some features we provide may not function properly. If your browser does not accept cookies from our website, some features others provide may not function properly. Third-party advertisers, such as those we use to serve ads on our behalf across the Internet, may use cookies and other technologies for several purposes. We do not have access to or control over cookies or other features they may use, and the information practices of these advertisers are not covered by the Privacy Policy.

If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails or letters, or if other Users or third parties send us correspondence about your activities or postings on the Website, we may collect such information into a file specific to you.

When you register on our Website, we describe or make available our policies on how your information is used. If you do not agree to our usage of your information, do not use our Website.

Your username is public and it identifies you to other members in the system. Your age is private and is never shared.

Your contact information such as name, email address, phone number, mobile phone number and SMS address is private, unless you elect otherwise or access a Website function that states it makes it available to others and under what circumstances. When a member finds your trip itinerary as a carpool match, the member will see your username, trip information, and feedback, however your detailed contact information is not visible. The textual address you enter when registering is private and is not shared.

When posting a carpool, only zip codes are used and provide a general route, which can not be tracked to your specific address. Once you find a carpool match, it is your decision where, when and how to meet. We do not monitor or control these meetings, nor do we attempt to. We offer suggestions for safe carpooling practices only.

Your trip information such as your start location, end location, date and time of the journey is public, but only zip codes are used to provide a general route.

Your preference information such as if you smoke in the car, and your type of vehicle is public.

Vehicle information such as year of vehicle, make and model is public.

Please note, in all the cases above, there may be additional optional or required information fields as defined by the various forms on the Website.

In order to begin using our services, we validate your email address by sending a confirmation email to that address. There are many websites today which offer free or paid email accounts which you can subscribe to should you require an email address.

We may use any information you provide to facilitate the services you request, troubleshoot problems, identify abuse of our services, identify violation of our terms of use, help promote safe carpooling, measure consumer interest in our services and products and enhance our Website. We may compare and review your personal information for errors, omissions and for accuracy.

You agree that we may use personal information about you to improve our content and services. You agree that we may use your personal information to contact you and deliver notifications to you, including, but not limited to, (i) notifications regarding your use of the Website, including any notification concerning violations of use, (ii) updates, and (iii) promotional information and materials regarding CarpoolCleveland’s products and services. We also reserve the right to send notifications of any changes or new features of our Website. By accepting the User Agreement and Privacy Policy, you agree to receive these notifications.

We may share much of our data, including personal information about you, with our affiliates, subsidiaries, and joint ventures that are committed to serving your online carpool needs and related services and products, throughout the world. To the extent that these entities have access to your information, they will treat it at least as protectively as they treat information they obtain from their other users. Our affiliates, subsidiaries, and joint ventures follow privacy practices no less protective of users than our practices described in this document.

We share information with companies that help us process the transactions you request and protect our customers' transactions from fraud, such as sharing your credit card number with a service that screens for lost and stolen card numbers.

We may disclose information in good faith to appropriate authorities in case of concerns regarding fraudulent transactions, illegal activities or other malpractices. In response to a request by law enforcement, immigration, customs or other government officials relating to a criminal investigation or alleged illegal activity, we can (and you authorize us to) disclose your name, street address, city, state, postal code, country, telephone number(s), email address, financial information, and any additional information we maintain about you, with a subpoena or comparable legal process., or in matters of urgency or where we decide to do so under all the facts and circumstances, with only assurances that the request is from any appropriate authority without any further specific legal process.

We share aggregated statistical data with our business partners or for public relations. For example, we may disclose demographic information of our Users or commutes. However, this aggregated information is not tied to personally identifiable information such as your name, email address or phone number.

As with any other business, it is possible that CarpoolCleveland in the future could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition occurs, the successor company would have access to the information maintained by CarpoolCleveland, including customer account information, but would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless and until it is amended as described above.

If third parties unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications to trace your personal information, or an external user illegally acquires your personal information from the Website, you agree we will not be liable to you or anyone claiming through you or on your behalf for any consequences.

You agree that all personal information of another user you acquire through the Website or through a related communication or transaction of the Website, CarpoolCleveland hereby grants to you a license to use such information only for: (a) CarpoolCleveland related communications that are not unsolicited commercial messages, (b) using services offered through CarpoolCleveland, and (c) any other purpose that the counter-party user expressly agrees to after you adequately disclose of the purpose(s) to the counter-party user. You shall not copy, sell, transfer, distribute, publish or assign your license to our services in any format to any third party.

In most cases, we provide Users with the opportunity to review any information you have collected about them and in most case we will remove you from our database if you notify us in writing to do so. In addition, under no circumstances, except as defined in this Section, can you disclose personally identifiable information about another CarpoolCleveland user to any third party without our consent and the consent of such other user after adequate disclosure. Note that law enforcement personnel are given different rights with respect to information they access.

CarpoolCleveland and our Users do not tolerate spam. Therefore, without limiting the foregoing, you are not licensed to add a CarpoolCleveland user to your list (email, physical mail, telephone, fax, web site or content, or contact list) without their express consent after adequate disclosure.

You may not use the Website to participate in pyramid schemes or chain letters.

You may not use any computer based scripts, robot, spider, scraper or any other automated tools to enter or retrieve any data from our Website. You agree that you will not use any device, software or routine to interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Website. You agree that you will not take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure. You agree that you will not orchestrate or participate in any denial of service type attack. You agree that you will not copy, reproduce, alter, modify, create derivative works, or publicly display any content (except for your own personal, non-commercial use) from our Website without the prior expressed written permission of CarpoolCleveland. We reserve the right to determine abuse of our services and terminate your account without prior notice if we deem necessary.

You are not allowed to use the Website for any purposes other than carpooling services as documented in the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

You can review the personal information you provided us and make desired changes to allowed fields of this information, or to the settings for your account, at any time by logging in to your account on the Website and choosing "My Account" option. You may not be allowed to change the user name you entered at the time of registration. If you terminate your account or delete/change your data or content, the program of the web site will usually update a linked live database immediately. However, some data may update more slowly, and some old data may remain permanently in our archives and records, backups and related data repositories. This is necessary in order to deter fraud, abuse or a breach of our contract, by ensuring that persons who try to commit fraud, abuse or breach of our contract will not be able to avoid detection simply by closing their account and opening a new account. However, if you close your account, your personally identifiable information will not be used by us except as has been described.

You are responsible for all actions taken with your account and password, including fees charged to your account. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you not disclose your CarpoolCleveland password to any third parties. If your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately change your password, through our Website.

CarpoolCleveland cannot and does not ensure your safety. By using this web site you agree and accept that we have no responsibility for your safety or any eventualities resulting due to carpooling or using any services on the Website. We do not control information provided by Users on the Website and they may misrepresent themselves.

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, or your dealings with CarpoolCleveland, you can contact us by sending an email to info@carpoolcleveland.com. You may also write to us at Carpool Cleveland, P.O. Box 336, North Olmsted, OH 44070.

This document was last updated on November 12, 2008.