Last Updated: December 2007
Local.com Corporation ("Local.com," "we," "us" or "our") understands the importance of maintaining your privacy, and we therefore strive to provide our services with your protection in mind. This Privacy Policy applies to your use of Local.com's service (the "Service") that provides users, who submit search queries in a Local.com or third-party branded search box on a Web page (a "Search Page"), with Internet navigation assistance web pages containing relevant local search results and other content ("Results Pages;" and, together with any Search Pages, the "Local.com Web Pages"). This Privacy Policy describes our practices regarding the collection, maintenance, use and sharing of information from the Service. This Privacy Policy is maintained in conformity with any and all applicable privacy-related laws and regulations.
Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time, and those changes will be available for your review on most Local.com Web Pages that you view and on our web page located at www.local.com/privacy.aspx. Your continued use of our Service after any such changes have been made will signify your assent to the changed Privacy Policy. Accordingly, we ask that you bookmark and periodically review this Privacy Policy to ensure continuing familiarity with the most current version.
We do not collect any personally identifiable information about you (such as your name, physical address, email address, or telephone number) when you use our Service. If you wish to submit an online request for information about partnering with Local.com or any other information about our Service or our company, you will be asked to provide certain personally identifiable information, including your name, company, e-mail address, and telephone number. We will always let you know whether such information is required or optional. Local.com Web Pages will transmit limited non-personally identifiable information that your browser makes available whenever you visit a web site. This log information includes your Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, operating system, the domain name of the web site from which you linked to our Service, search queries entered by you on our Service, and the date and time of your queries. Please note that any search query information collected by us is maintained by Local.com on an aggregated basis (i.e., together with the queries of all of our end-users) for the purposes of generating statistics regarding the use of our Service (such as the number of queries performed by the average end-user per month, a list of the most popular query terms, etc.), and is never used in a manner that matches specific search query information with the identity of any particular end-user.
In order to take advantage of certain features on the Service (including the posting of reviews of businesses and the receipt of newsletters and special offers from Local.com), you may be required to create an online account with Local.com. During the account creation process, you will be required to provide certain personal information such as your e-mail address. We may also request other information such as your zip code, age range, gender, and whether you want to receive promotional information from Local.com. We will store all of this information. If you have an online account with us, you have the ability to review and update your personal information online by clicking on a “My Account” link (or similar link) on the Service and logging into your account. You can also review and update your personal information by contacting us.
When you visit a Local.com Search Page, a cookie that uniquely identifies your browser may be sent to your computer. A "cookie" is a small file containing your preferences that is sent to your browser and sent back by your browser each time your browser accesses our servers. Cookies that we may use may only be read by the server that placed them there. We use cookies to improve the quality of our Service (for example, by fulfilling your language, filtering, and other preferences) and to better understand how people interact with our Service (for example, by tracking user trends and patterns of how people search). Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. If you wish to control how and whether cookies will be accepted by your browser, you should refer to the documentation accompanying your browser. However, some aspects of the Local.com Service may not function properly without cookies.
We currently use the services of a web analytics company to help us measure the effectiveness of our Service, including the advertising on the Service. To do this, we allow the web analytics company to include Web beacons and cookies on the Local.com Web Pages. The type of information collected via such Web beacons and cookies includes search terms, search parameters, click-throughs by users, and other similar information. By supplementing our records, this information helps us learn things like user preferences, popular search categories, click-through rates, how to improve our Service, and what kinds of offers our users like to see. Although our web analytics company logs this information on our behalf, we control how that data may be used.
Most, if not all, of the advertisements appearing on the Service are delivered to you by one of our Web advertising partners (“Ad Serving Partners”). In the course of delivering such advertisements, our Ad Serving Partners may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. Thereafter, information about your visits to the Service, such as your search terms or phrases or the number of times you have viewed an advertisement (but not your name, address, or other personal information), is used to deliver advertisements to you. The information collected by our Ad Serving Partners through cookies is anonymous, and our Ad Serving Partners are not authorized to collect any personally identifiable information about you. For more information about cookies, and how to “opt-out” of cookies from certain Ad Serving Partners, please click here.
Most of the limited, non-personally identifiable information collected is used to operate, develop, and improve our products and services. For example, Local.com may use your IP address to determine which language to use to provide you with Internet search results or to advise you how far a particular vendor is from your location. In addition, information collected from end-users may be used in aggregate form to, among other things, determine the total number of end-users who are using our Service, prepare utilization reports for our partners or affiliates (collectively, “Partners”), diagnose and fix compatibility problems or other problems with our Service, and perform statistical analyses to enable us to build higher quality, more useful online services. The information collected from end-users also allows us to deliver search results pages that are as responsive as possible to an individual end-user’s particular search query (for example, serving results in the end-user’s native language and tailored to the end-user’s country of connectivity). If you submit a request for information about Local.com through our web site, we may use your e-mail address to send you an e-mail that gives you the opportunity to elect to receive periodic e-mail alerts from Local.com regarding developments at the company. In addition, if you elect to receive promotional information from Local.com when you create an online account, we will use the information you provided to Local.com during the account creation process to send you only promotions that will be most relevant to you. We also take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to, or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of, data.
As a general rule, we do not share the information we collect from end-users with third-parties. However, when users submit a search query on our Service, IP addresses and search terms or phrases are transmitted to certain Partners with whom Local.com has subcontracted (such as Looksmart, Miva, AlmondNet, and others) so that those Partners can deliver responsive Internet search results, advertising, or other services and, in some cases, for the internal data reporting purposes of those Partners. In addition, some of the information we collect is provided, in aggregate form only, to our Partners solely for purposes of calculating amounts owed to such Partners or helping such Partners improve their services. Our Partners are obligated by applicable law to protect the privacy of certain types of data; however, we are not responsible for their actions or omissions, including the manner in which they use information that they receive from us. Nevertheless, if you feel that any of our Partners, or any third party who claims association with Local.com, is improperly collecting or using information about you, we urge you to contact them directly and also to inform us by e-mailing us at privacy@local.com. If in the future we sell or transfer assets or portions of our business, or if we experience a change in control, reorganization or liquidation, we may transfer such information to our successor or buyer, subject to this Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to share aggregated information with others. Examples of this include the number of users who searched for "used cars" or how many users clicked on a particular advertisement. Finally, we reserve the right to disclose any information about you if it is required by law, necessary to defend our legal rights, or if we in good faith believe it is appropriate to cooperate in investigations of fraud or other illegal activity in which you may be involved (or are reasonably suspected to be involved), even without a subpoena, warrant or court order.
If you have an account with Local.com, you can post reviews of businesses to the Service, which we then store. Such postings are governed by our [Terms of Service]. The postings may appear on other third-party websites or when searches are executed on the subject of your posting. Also, whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information in a review, that information will be publicly available and can be collected and used by others. For example, if you post your email address in a review, you may receive unsolicited messages. We cannot control who reads your review or what other users may do with the information you voluntarily provide in the review, so we encourage you to exercise discretion and caution with respect to your personal information. We may sell your reviews to third-parties.
Certain of our Partners who provide or enable any functionality on the Service may also collect information from you. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of our Partners. In addition, any web sites that you click to from one of our Results Pages may have been developed by third-parties over which we exercise no control. Such web sites may send their own cookies to end-users, collect data, or solicit personally identifiable information from you. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such web sites, including such web sites’ use of any information collected when our end-users click through to such web sites. Even though such information might not identify you personally, we strongly encourage you to become familiar with the privacy practices of those web sites.
Any advertiser who wishes to place advertising on our Service will be asked to provide certain information such as the advertiser’s business name, phone number, physical address, e-mail address, service area, website URL, description of the advertiser’s business, a contact name, advertising category and/or keyword, and credit card information. Some of this information is personally identifiable. This information will be used by Local.com to create an account for the advertiser, improve the Service, communicate changes to the Service, conduct research, provide anonymous reporting for internal purposes and for reporting to third-parties, and market Local.com products and services to advertisers. Some of the information will also be displayed within the advertiser’s ad copy on the Service. We will not disclose any personally identifiable information to third parties without your prior consent. Advertisers may edit their account information by contacting Local.com’s Client Services Department at clientservices@local.com.
Questions regarding this Privacy Policy should be directed by e-mail to Local.com at privacy@local.com or, by U.S. mail, to One Technology Drive, Building G, Irvine, CA 92618, Attn: Legal Department.