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Privacy Policy

Last updated on September 05, 2007


At www.alfy.com (the "Site") we recognize that respecting the privacy of our users ("you") is as important as the quality of the online experience that we deliver. Our Site complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and related rules (collectively, "COPPA"), which you may read about by clicking here.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully because it describes our information collection practices, the kind of information we gather, and how, why and under what circumstances we may use or disclose your personal information. When we refer to personally identifiable information we mean any combination of your e-mail address, full name, mailing address, telephone number, credit card information, billing address and social security number, or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact you. By visiting and using the Site you are agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy and to comply with the other terms and conditions governing your use of this Site. You should review the Site's other terms and conditions by clicking here.

The Information We Collect

You may access and use most of the content and offerings available on the Site without providing us with any personally identifiable information. We generally do not collect any personally identifiable information from users aged 12 and younger, except that we may collect a valid email address which we use only to send the user one email message in order to activate the user's Alfy account. Once the user's account is activated, we delete the email address from our system. As part of the registration process we may also ask users aged 12 and younger for other non-personally identifiable information, such as first name, birth date, gender, and zip code.

We do require users 13 years of age and older to provide us with certain personally identifiable information, such as first and last name, valid email address, birth date, gender and zip code.

In addition, in order to access certain content or to participate in certain services provided through the Site, all users regardless of age are required to provide certain personally identifiable information, such as name and email address. For example, in order to earn and accumulate points on the Site, to subscribe to an email newsletter that you sign up to receive, to participate in message boards/chat rooms or to enable your participation in a contest, sweepstakes or other promotion that you elect to enter, we collect certain personally identifiable information so that we can provide you with the service you have selected. Participation in any of these activities is voluntary so you can choose whether or not to give us this information. Our information collection, use and disclosure practices with respect to children under the age of 13 are further described below in a section titled Kids, Parents and COPPA or by clicking here.

In general, when we collect any personally identifiable information from you, you will know because you will have to provide that information by filling out a form. A user or parent can access and update the user information previously provided to us, or modify your opt-out choices, by sending us an email identifying the change to be made to info@alfy.com.

Information Gathered Through Technology

In addition to the information that we receive from you directly, we gather date, time, browser type and the IP addresses of all of our users for our internal purposes. We keep this information for system administration, for web server load balancing, to report aggregate information to our advertisers and for our internal security audit log. We do not link IP addresses to any personally identifiable information.

When your web browser accesses the Site, we collect certain information via "cookies." "Cookies" are pieces of information that our Site sends to your computer while you are visiting the Site. Most web sites use "cookies" because "cookies" make the use of the Site more useful for the user. We do not store any personally identifiable information in "cookies." nor do we link or combine information collected through cookies to any personal information that is submitted online by our users on the Site.

We may use third party advertising companies to serve advertisements on our behalf. These companies may employ "cookies" and "action tags" (also known as "single pixel gifs" or "web beacons") to deliver advertisements that are more relevant and more interesting to you, and to measure advertising effectiveness. We do not control the "cookies" and "action tags" that they employ. Any information that these third parties collect via "cookies" and "action tags" is not linked with personally identifiable information that you provide to Alfy. If you would like more information about this practice and your choices, click here.

Most browsers are initially set up to accept "cookies." You can reset your browser to refuse all "cookies" or indicate when a "cookie" is being sent. You may disable the "cookies" if you wish by using utilities provided by companies not associated with our Site. Unfortunately, if you disable cookies on your computer, you will not be able to take advantage of many of the great features and content the Site has to offer.

How We Use Your Personally Identifiable Information

Your privacy is important to us, which is why we do not share your personally identifiable information with third parties except in accordance with this Privacy Policy. We use the personally identifiable information and other information you provide us in order to (a) provide you with the services you have elected to receive, subject to the procedures for parental consent described below, such as entry into contests, sweepstakes or other promotions, email newsletters, and to track the accumulation of points, (b) notify you about new features and services on the Site or other products and services that we think you may find interesting; and (c) for analytical purposes to help us to improve the Site and for our business generally. We sometimes engage third parties to provide you with products or services that you have requested, like a shipping company that delivers a package or a company that helps fulfill prizes for a sweepstakes. We share personally identifiable information with these third parties as necessary for them to provide you what you have requested on our behalf. Unless we tell you differently, these third parties do not have any right to use the personally identifiable information we provide to them beyond what is necessary to assist us. We will disclose your personally identifiable information when required by law, for example, in response to a court order or subpoena. We may also disclose such information in response to a law enforcement agency or other public agency request or if we believe that such disclosure may prevent a crime from being committed. We may disclose your personally identifiable information to enforce our terms and conditions or to protect the rights, property, safety and security of the Site, our users or others. If all or substantially all of the Site are transferred or sold to a third party, personally identifiable information collected by us may be transferred to the acquirer.

Kids, Parents and COPPA

We care about the safety and privacy of all children, particularly those under the age of 13. We do not ask children under 13 to disclose more personal information that is necessary for them to participate in a particular activity, and we always seek parental consent in accordance with COPPA.

Generally speaking we do not collect any personally identifiable information for children under 13 without first asking for parental consent. If and when we do ask for consent, we do it only in certain types of circumstances, as permitted by COPPA. For example, we may collect the child's e-mail address before seeking parental consent when a child asks to participate in a contest on a one-time basis only, the first time a child requests that we send him or her our online newsletter (in which case we will communicate with the parent and tell the parent that we are about to engage, at the child's request, in a regular communication with the child, and give the parent the opportunity to stop further communication), when the collection is meant to protect the child's safety during his or her visit to the Site (and in that case we will notify the parent and give him or her the opportunity to prevent further use of the information), and when the collection is done for the purpose of protecting the security of the Site, or to respond to law enforcement, if necessary. The e-mail addresses that may be collected from children under the age of 13 are not used for any other purpose.

Other than as described above, we will ask for verifiable parental consent (in compliance with COPPA), before we collect any personally identifiable information from any child under the age of 13, and before we use or disclose any personally identifiable information that a child under 13 has provided to us.

We may seek your parental consent in several ways: for example, via confirmatory e-mail if we will use the information collected from your child for internal purposes only (such as, for example, communicating updates about the Site's content). Before we disclose the e-mail address of a child under 13 to any third party (or through chat rooms or message boards when the personally identifiable information has not been stripped from postings) we will get a signed consent from a parent via mail or fax, or accept and verify a credit card number in connection with a transaction or subscription, or take a call from a parent through a toll-free telephone number staffed by trained personnel, or ask a parent to send us a confirmatory e-mail accompanied by the parent's digital signature.

We also fully comply with COPPA in connection with other types of information that your child provides us (for example, information collected through "cookies") if these types of information are tied to personally identifiable information.

Links To Other Sites

To enrich the user experience on our Site, we may provide links from the Site to third party web sites. Our Privacy Policy does not apply to any of the third party web sites that we provide links to. The third party web site operators (and not us) are responsible for the information collection, use and disclosure practices of those third party web sites. We advise our users, and their parents in case of our under 13 year old users, to check the privacy policies of each of the third party web sites before using it, to understand how your personal information will be handled on each third party web site.

Additional Policies

Certain features of the Site may be subject to additional terms and conditions and/or privacy policies. In such event, we will give you notice of the additional policies so that you can review them prior to participating in such Site features.

Legal Information

Although the Site follows and complies with COPPA, this does not guarantee safety or that the relevant person is a child or a parent or legal guardian, and the Site does not guarantee the actual identities claimed by its users. Also, we do not guarantee that users who are children will not voluntarily release personal information about themselves or about you or their friends or other acquaintances on our Site or on web sites that they visit or link to from our Site. It is very important that parents understand the features, uses and potential risks of using any website. That's why we advise all users and their parents to practice safe computing and urge parents to advise their children not to give out any personally identifiable information without their consent.

Changes And Updates

We reserve the right to change the information, features, products, policies, promotions, disclosures and disclaimers of this Site at any time, including this Privacy Policy. We will notify users of the Site of any material changes to this Privacy Policy by posting on the Site a revised Privacy Policy, which will indicate the new effective date of such Privacy Policy. BY VISITING THE SITE, YOU ACCEPT THE PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY, UNLESS YOU ARE A CHILD UNDER THE AGE OF 13, IN WHICH CASE, YOUR PARENTS ACCEPT THIS PRIVACY POLICY. Please check this Privacy Policy periodically to determine if any changes were made to it since you last visited us. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes to this Privacy Policy means that you have accepted such changes. In the event there is a material change in the information collection, use or disclosure practices described in this Privacy Policy, we will provide parental notification of the changes and give parent's the opportunity to withdraw consent to the new uses.

If you are a user or a parent and have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us at:

ALFY, Inc.
589 Eighth Avenue, 20th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Telephone: (212) 968-0600
Fax: (212) 629-5790
email: info@ALFY.com

California Privacy Rights

Users of the Site who are residents of California may request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for purposes of their direct marketing. If you want to make this request, you may write to us at the address listed above, to the Attention of California Privacy, or email us at CA_info@alfy.com.