Just Between Friends | Privacy Pledge

Last Updated August 1, 2010

Privacy Pledge (Plain English Summary) and Privacy Statement (Legal Version)

Our privacy pledge to you:

Aren't you tired of online services that track your movements around the entire Internet, sell your name and require information they don't need to run the service? With Just Between Friends™, we let you decide how much information to enter – based on the level of service you want and the needs of you and the membership groups to which you belong. We are committed to respecting and protecting the personal privacy of our members and others who visit our website.

We won't send unsolicited emails, sell/rent your name or telemarket you.
The information in your account is yours. We use it to deliver the kinds of services you want – in a private, secure manner that gives you control over who gets to share it – such as giving a phone number or email address to one group and a different phone number or email address to another group.
Your group cannot include your personal information in any directories published by the group without your permission, and you get to choose which information is included in either online or print versions. All Just Between Friends™ online directories and rosters are private and secure, requiring passwords to view.
We even hide your email address behind clickable links so it is not available to unscrupulous spammers who search for names on websites.

Do we share your personal information?

If your membership is provided to you as part of a larger group or organization, such as a PTA, church group, school or corporate account, we will share your basic information with the group or organization that included you in their master account – so they can keep their records up-to-date. But you have control over which parts of your personal information that can be shared with other members of the group – and we never share information you enter about other households or people.

If a company or organization pays for your membership (such as a gift), we may share your name, address, and email address with the organization that paid for your membership. It's only fair that they know who they're buying memberships for.

But we won't share it with anybody else not involved in providing the services to you. (Of course, if law enforcement requires it, we will share it; and if we ever sell the company, we'll need to give the new operators your information.)

We'll also use best practices to protect your information from theft including proper security.

Do we share information about your friends and family?

Never. That's your information. Consider Just Between Friends™ to be a storage locker for your important group and social contacts, deadlines, events and occasions. We never send email or phone the people in your optional Friends and Family directory. We do, though, give you the ability to send them messages yourself. If an organization uses Just Between Friends™ as a platform to create its own membership directory, we may also give them the ability to send messages to the people in its own Just Between Friends™ powered directory.

You'll have opportunities in Just Between Friends™ to enter information, such as birthdays, anniversaries, and interests. We'll use the information to provide you with our valuable services and we will protect it from others – so you can feel confident placing it in Just Between Friends™.

That's it in a nutshell. We keep your privacy and protect your data – probably better than you can do on your own system. But our lawyers want us to put all the "wherefores" and "whatnots" in the privacy policy. So if you'd prefer to read the legal version, feel free to do so.

Privacy Policy (Legal Version)

This Privacy Policy was developed to give you ("you" or "User") a full understanding of the privacy practices of Just Between Friends, Inc. ("we", "us" or "JBF") when you visit or use our website, www.justbetweenfriends.com and other related and affiliated sites on the Internet (collectively the "Website"). We are committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information and developing technology that will give you a useful and safe online experience. This document explains in greater detail the kind of information about you that we collect and how we will use it, the conditions under which such information will be made available to third parties, how we protect the privacy of your personal information, and how you can correct or change your personal information.

We reserve the right to modify our Privacy Policy from time to time, in whole or in part, in our sole discretion. In the event there are material changes in the way we treat your personal information, we will display a notice on the Website. Any new or amended terms contained in the Privacy Policy shall become effective immediately. Your continued use of the Website after we post a revised Privacy Policy signifies your acceptance of the revised terms and conditions. It is therefore important for you to review our Privacy Policy on a regular basis and inform yourself of any changes.

The provisions of our Privacy Policy are also incorporated by reference in our Terms of Use. You can review and print a complete copy of our Terms of Use here.

Collection And Use Of Personal Information. We collect certain basic information about you during the process of registration. We may obtain this information from two sources. The group or organization to which you belong, such as a PTA, church group, school or corporation, may input some of the registration information that they have received from you. We will then use that information to contact you and invite you to participate in our on-line community. Otherwise, we will ask you to provide us with the information that we require when you register to join JBF, and we will verify your information with a designated official within your group or organization. The information that you and your group provide to us during the initial registration process includes your name, date of birth, gender, mailing address, telephone contact information and email address, the affiliations that you have within the group or organization, a user-chosen password, and similar identifying information that may not be publicly available.
When your group or organization provides us with personal information about you or your family, we require them to certify that they obtained such information from you or with your consent, and that they have obtained your permission to post your information to our Website. We do not make any distinction between information that we obtain from you, or from your group. We consider all such information to be personal to the individual user, and therefore, protected under the terms of our Privacy Policy.

You will also have the opportunity, either during registration or at any later time, to create a more extensive user profile containing additional elements and information about you and your family, your group and its members, and your friends. Entering this additional information will enable you to take greater advantage of the services that we provide through the Website, and assist us in understanding the demographics and consumer behavior of our users. Providing additional information beyond what is required at registration is entirely optional, and can be altered or removed by you at any time. You always have the right to decide how much personal information you wish to enter, based on the level of service you want, and to determine the amount of personal information about you or your family that you wish to make available to others in your group or organization.

We collect certain information from your computer and web browser whenever you access a page on the Website, including your Internet Protocol ("IP") address, hardware and software attributes, and your Internet Service Provider. We may also use other programs and technologies from time-to-time to collect, retrieve and store additional information about your use of the Website and about your transactions with us and some of our business partners, including the web pages that you have visited, the features and services that you have used, and other standard logging information. We use this information to analyze site navigation and usage patterns in order to improve the services that we provide and, in aggregate, to guide our internal marketing efforts. We may also use this information to deliver customized content and advertising to the groups and individuals that use our services. These programs and technologies collect only limited information, and they cannot be used to run programs on your computer or deliver viruses. We do not share the link between your computer's IP address and your personally identifiable information with any third party, except with your consent or as required by law.

From time-to-time we may offer programs in which we will collect additional information from you. For example, if you elect to use our referral service to inform a friend about our Website, we will ask you for your friend's name and email address, in order to send an invitation to visit the Website. We will store this information for the sole purpose of sending this communication and tracking the success of our referral program. If the referral includes a special incentive or bonus for the person who initiated the referral, we will store the personally identifiable information of that person in order to allow us to properly award the incentive or bonus.

We may also request that you provide information to us in other situations. For example, if you submit a customer service request to us, we may require some personally identifiable information from you to in order to identify your account, verify that you are an authorized user, and process your inquiry.

All information that you provide to us, whether at the time of registration, when you update your profile or when you use our services, will be retained in our database on secure servers. We will use this information primarily to create an account for you and customize your experience on our Website, provide you with important notices and information about your group or organization, deliver the services that you have requested, and improve our customer service. We may use information about you to inform you of the products and services that we provide, or that may be available from our partners and affiliates. We may also contact you via surveys to conduct research regarding your opinion of current or potential new features or services that may be offered.
Disclosure To Third Parties. We do not rent, sell, disclose or share your personal information with other people or nonaffiliated companies. We will share your information with third parties solely to carry out your specific instructions, to provide you with the products, services or information that you have requested, and to comply with applicable law.
If you belong to a group or organization such as PTA, or a school, religious, sports, recreational, corporate, civic or similar association, we will periodically provide them with updated information. Specifically, the Administrator of your group, who may be an officer or other person selected by your group, will have access to some or all of the information that we collect from or about you, your family, and the other members of your group. This information is frequently used by the group to populate a membership directory, roster or activity schedule. We provide updated information and reports to your group's Administrator so that you will continue to receive important notices, and to enable you to maintain communications with the other members. You should contact your group or organization to obtain more information regarding the person(s) who have been selected to serve as its Administrator(s), and to determine the type of information they have the authority to view and receive.

You always have control over which portions of your personal information may be viewed by other members of your group, and you may change your preferences at any time. We will not share your personal information with any members of your group, other than your group's Administrator(s), unless you specifically authorize or request us to do so. For example, any personal information, documents or other materials that you choose to publish, upload, display, transmit or share with others (Apost@) on a public area of the Website will be viewable by all other group members. And any personal information that you include in a communication that you initiate through JBF, such as an email to another member, will be viewable by the intended recipient.

Important Note - Your group or organization may have its own privacy policy which may contain provisions that are materially different from the terms of our Privacy Policy. By sharing your personally identifiable information with your group or organization, you acknowledge that the group's privacy policy will determine the manner in which that information may be used and disclosed to other members and third parties. Please contact your group or organization directly to obtain more information about their current privacy policy and practices.

Certain employees of our company will have access to personal information collected from groups and individual users. However, only those employees who need the information to perform a specific job or function, such as a customer service representative, will have access to such information.

We may occasionally retain other companies to provide services in connection with the operation of our Website, such as the delivery of mailings, processing transactions, or performing statistical analyses. We will only provide such companies with the personal information they need to deliver the requested services. They do not retain, share or store any personally identifiable user information, except to provide these services, and they are bound by confidentiality agreements which limit the permissible use of such information.

We will not share personally identifiable information with third parties, such as advertisers and marketers. We may provide aggregated data about the usage of our services to certain third-parties for such marketing and other business purposes as we deem, in our sole discretion, to be appropriate. For example, we may report to partners and sponsors the number of users who "clicked" on an ad, or the number of users who visited certain web pages on the Website. Aggregated data is typically retained and used in a statistical format and is not traceable to any individual or IP address. It does not contain any personally identifiable information about any users, or regarding any specific user's online usage patterns.

Although we make every effort to preserve your privacy, we will disclose personally identifiable information about you if we are required to do so by law, or in the good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to respond to a subpoena, court order, or other legal process. We may also disclose such information to law enforcement agencies, or otherwise, in the good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to detect, prevent or address suspected illegal or fraudulent activity, to enforce our Terms of Use, to respond to claims of infringement of intellectual property rights of third parties, and/or to protect the rights, property or safety of you, us, or any other person or entity.

We also reserve the right to transfer all of our user information, including your personally identifiable information, to a third party purchaser in the event of a change in ownership of our company, or in the event of a direct merger with or acquisition of assets by another entity. All registered JBF users will be notified of any change in ownership, or of the merger or acquisition, and may choose to modify or remove any of their personal information at that time.

Personal information that we collect on the Website may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which we, or our affiliates, subsidiaries or agents maintain facilities, and by using the Website you consent to any such transfer of information outside of your home country.
How We Protect Your Information. We use industry standard security measures to prevent the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. For example, we utilize encrypted user names and passwords, and if we request that you enter sensitive information, that information will be encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software or other security protocol, which encrypts the information that you input. We use data protection techniques to guard against break-ins, and our servers are placed in secure, locked environments that are not available to the public in order to protect the integrity and security of our network and systems. We cannot guarantee, however, that our security measures will prevent third-parties from circumventing our security technology and software and illegally obtaining this information.

Correcting Your Information. At any time, you can review your account and make any desired changes to the information that you provide to us, or to the settings on your account (including your email and contact preferences), by logging into your account on the Website. If you no longer desire to use the Website or the services that we provide, you can remove your personal information from your account on the Website and notify us of your decision to terminate by using this web link, or you may notify us by mail at the address shown below. We will make all reasonable efforts to correct, update or remove your personal information.
We reserve the right to retain information that we obtain from you for a reasonable period of time if we believe in good faith that retention is necessary (i) to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or government request; (ii) to enforce our Terms of Use, including the investigation of potential violations; (iii) to detect, prevent or otherwise address security, fraud or technical issues; (iv) for legitimate business purposes, such as analysis of aggregated, non-personally-identifiable data, or to enable account recovery in the event of a system failure; and/or (v) to protect the rights, property or safety of JBF, its users, partners, or the public. All retained information will continue to be subject to the terms of the Privacy Statement in effect at the time of your request.

You may also contact us electronically if you have any questions or comments about our Privacy Policy by using this web link, or you may contact us by mail at the following address:

Privacy Policy Agent
Just Between Friends, Inc.
1910 Cochran Road, Suite 600
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15220