Privacy and Security Policy

PineMark is committed to keeping your information safe. We will never sell or give your personal information to third parties without your consent.

Last modified: August 14, 2009

PineMark, Inc. recognizes that privacy is very important. This Privacy Policy applies to all of the products, services, and websites offered by PineMark, Inc. or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies; collectively, PineMark's "services."

INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT

In order to provide our full range of services, we may collect the following types of information:

  • Information you provide— When you sign up for a PineMark Account, it requires registration. We ask you for personal information (such as your name, email address and an account password). For certain services, such as obtaining a certification, we also request credit card or other payment account information which we maintain in encrypted form on secure servers.
  • Cookies— When you visit PineMark, we send one or more cookies— a small file containing a string of characters— to your computer or other device that uniquely identifies your browser. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service, including for storing user preferences and your input.
  • Log information— When you access PineMark services, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.
  • User communications— When you send email or other communications to PineMark, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services.
  • Other sites— This Privacy Policy applies to PineMark services only. We do not exercise control over the sites displayed as our partners. These other sites may place their own cookies or other files on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information from you.

PineMark only processes personal information for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. In addition to the above, such purposes include:

  • Providing our services;
  • Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;
  • Ensuring the technical functioning of our network;
  • Protecting the rights or property of PineMark or our users; and
  • Developing new services.

CHOICES FOR PERSONAL INFORMATION

When you sign up for a particular service that requires registration, we ask you to provide personal information. If we use this information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected, then we will ask for your consent prior to such use. If we propose to use personal information for any purposes other than those described in this Privacy Policy and/or in the specific service privacy notices, we will offer you an effective way to opt out of the use of personal information for those other purposes. We will not collect or use sensitive information for purposes other than those described in this Privacy Policy and/or in the supplementary service privacy notices, unless we have obtained your prior consent. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some PineMark features and services may not function properly if your cookies are disabled. You can decline to submit personal information to any of our services, in which case PineMark may not be able to provide those services to you.

INFORMATION SHARING

PineMark only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of PineMark in the following limited circumstances:

  • We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
  • We provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf. We require that these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
  • We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of PineMark, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

If PineMark becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will ensure the confidentiality of any personal information involved in such transactions and provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

We may share with third parties certain pieces of aggregated, non-personal information. Such information does not identify you individually.

Please contact us at the address below for any additional questions about the management or use of personal data.

INFORMATION SECURITY

We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where we store personal data. We restrict access to personal information to PineMark employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve our services. These individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.

DATA INTEGRITY

PineMark processes personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected and in accordance with this Privacy Policy or any applicable service-specific privacy notice. We review our data collection, storage and processing practices to ensure that we only collect, store and process the personal information needed to provide or improve our services or as otherwise permitted under this Policy. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we process is accurate, complete, and current, but we depend on our users to update or correct their personal information whenever necessary.

ACCESSING AND UPDATING PERSONAL INFORMATION

When you use PineMark services, we make an effort to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete such data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. We ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes), or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case where we provide information access and correction, we perform this service free of charge, except if doing so would require a disproportionate effort. Some of our services have different procedures to access, correct or delete users' personal information. We provide the details for these procedures in the specific privacy notices or FAQs for these services.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

Please note that this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent, and we expect most such changes will be minor. Regardless, we will post any Privacy Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of Privacy Policy changes). Each version of this Privacy Policy will be identified at the top of the page by its effective date, and we will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review. If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us any time through this web site or at

Privacy & Security
c/o PineMark, Inc.
P.O. Box 927637
San Diego, CA 92192