Date of Last Revision: August 29, 2024


off---line Principles

We built off---line to make it easy to share information with your friends and people around you. We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on off---line; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your networks and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about.


off---line follows two core principles:


1. You should have control over your personal information.
off---line helps you share information with your friends and people around you. You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups you join. And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings.

2. You should have access to the information others want to share.
There is an increasing amount of information available out there, and you may want to know what relates to you, your friends, and people around you. We want to help you easily get that information.

Sharing information should be easy. And we want to provide you with the privacy tools necessary to control how and with whom you share that information. If you have questions or ideas, please send them to hi@off---line.com.


off---line's Privacy Policy

off---line's Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we collect and use the personal information you decide to share, and help you make informed decisions when using off---line, located at off---line.com and its directly associated domains (collectively, "off---line" or "Website").


By using or accessing off---line, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy.


The Information We Collect

When you visit off---line you provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected by us and Website use information collected by us as you interact with our Website.


When you register with off---line, you provide us with certain personal information, such as your name, your email address, your telephone number, your address, your gender, schools attended and any other personal or preference information that you provide to us.


When you enter off---line, we collect your browser type and IP address. This information is gathered for all off---line visitors. In addition, we store certain information from your browser using "cookies." A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. We use session ID cookies to confirm that users are logged in. These cookies terminate once the user closes the browser. By default, we use a persistent cookie that stores your login ID (but not your password) to make it easier for you to login when you come back to off---line. You can remove or block this cookie using the settings in your browser if you want to disable this convenience feature.


When you use off---line, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features. In most cases, we retain it so that, for instance, you can return to view prior messages you have sent or easily see your friend list. When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.


You post User Content (as defined in the off---line Terms of Use) on the Site at your own risk. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other Users with whom you may choose to share your pages and information. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content.


Any improper collection or misuse of information provided on off---line is a violation of the off---line Terms of Service and should be reported to hi@off---line.com.


If you choose to use our invitation service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for information needed to send the invitation, such as your friend's email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email or instant message inviting him or her to visit the site. off---line stores this information to send this one-time invitation, to register a friend connection if your invitation is accepted, and to track the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us at hi@off---line.com to request that we remove this information from our database.


off---line may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the off---line service through the operation of the service in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.


By using off---line, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United Kingdom.


Children Under Age 13

off---line does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for Offline or send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 may provide any personal information to or on off---line. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at hi@off---line.com.


Children Between the Ages of 13 and 18

We recommend that minors over the age of 13 ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet.


Use of Information Obtained by off---line

When you register with off---line, you create your own profile and privacy settings. Your profile information, as well as your name, email and photo, are displayed to people in the networks specified in your privacy settings to enable you to connect with people on off---line. We may occasionally use your name and email address to send you notifications regarding new services offered by off---line that we think you may find valuable.


Profile information is used by off---line primarily to be presented back to and edited by you when you access the service and to be presented to others permitted to view that information by your privacy settings. In some cases where your privacy settings permit it, other off---line users may be able to supplement your profile.


Profile information you submit to off---line will be available to users of off---line who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, network names, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the off---line network and those limited pieces of information may be made available to third party search engines. This is primarily so your friends can find you and send a friend request. People who see your name in searches, however, will not be able to access your profile information unless they have a relationship to you (friend, friend of friend, member of your networks, etc.) that allows such access based on your privacy settings.


off---line may send you service-related announcements from time to time through the general operation of the service. For instance, if a friend sends you a new message or poke, or someone posts on your wall, you may receive an email alerting you to that fact.


Generally, you may opt out of such emails from the My Account page, though off---line reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications.


off---line may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like a band or movie and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you off---line. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they're more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don't tell the movie company who you are.


We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of off---line, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile.


Sharing Your Information with Third Parties

off---line is about sharing information with others — friends and people in your networks — while providing you with privacy settings that restrict other users from accessing your information. We allow you to choose the information you provide to friends and networks through off---line. Our network architecture and your privacy settings allow you to make informed choices about who has access to your information. We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you. For example:

  • Your News Feed and Mini-Feed may aggregate the information you provide and make it available to your friends and network members according to your privacy settings. You may set your preferences for your News Feed and Mini-Feed on your Profile Edit page.
  • Unlike most sites on the Web, off---line limits access to site information by third party search engine "crawlers" (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN). off---line takes action to block access by these engines to personal information beyond your name, profile picture, and limited aggregated data about your profile.
  • We may provide information to service providers to help us bring you the services we offer. Specifically, we may use third parties to facilitate our business, such as to host the service at a co-location facility for servers, to send out email updates about off---line, to remove repetitive information from our user lists, to process payments for products or services, to offer an online job application process, or to provide search results or links (including sponsored links). In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for use for a limited time in connection with these business activities. Where we utilize third parties for the processing of any personal information, we implement reasonable contractual and technical protections limiting the use of that information to the off---line-specified purposes.
  • Like many other websites that interact with third party sites, we may receive some information even if you are logged out from off---line, or that pertains to non-off---line users, from those sites in conjunction with the technical operation of the system. In cases where off---line receives information on users that are not logged in, or on non-off---line users, we do not attempt to associate it with individual off---line accounts and will discard it.
  • If the ownership of all or substantially all of the off---line business, or individual business units owned by off---line, were to change, your user information may be transferred to the new owner so the service can continue operations. In any such transfer of information, your user information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy.

When you use off---line, certain information you post or share with third parties (e.g., a friend or someone in your network), such as personal information, comments, messages, photos, or other information, may be shared with other users in accordance with the privacy settings you select. All such sharing of information is done at your own risk. Please keep in mind that if you disclose personal information in your profile or when posting comments, messages, photos, or other items, this information may become publicly available.


Links

off---line may contain links to other websites. We are of course not responsible for the privacy practices of other websites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by off---line.


Third Party Advertising

Advertisements that appear on off---line are sometimes delivered (or "served") directly to users by third party advertisers. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. These third party advertisers may also download cookies to your computer, or use other technologies such as JavaScript and "web beacons" (also known as "1x1 gifs") to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. Doing this allows the advertising network to recognize your computer each time they send you an advertisement in order to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. In this way, they may compile information about where individuals using your computer or browser saw their advertisements and determine which advertisements are clicked. off---line does not have access to or control of the cookies that may be placed by the third party advertisers. Third party advertisers have no access to your contact information stored on off---line unless you choose to share it with them.


This privacy policy covers the use of cookies by off---line and does not cover the use of cookies or other tracking technologies by any of its advertisers.


Changing or Removing Information

Access and control over most personal information on off---line is readily available through the profile editing tools. off---line users may modify or delete any of their profile information at any time by logging into their account. Information will be updated immediately. Individuals who wish to deactivate their off---line account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of off---line.


Where you make use of the communication features of the service to share information with other individuals on off---line, however, (e.g., sending a personal message to another off---line user) you generally cannot remove such communications.


Security

off---line takes appropriate precautions to protect our users' information. Your account information is located on a secured server behind a firewall. When you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number or your password), we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). (To learn more about SSL, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Sockets_Layer). If you have any questions about the security of off---line Website, please contact us at hi@off---line.com.


Terms of Use, Notices and Revisions

Your use of off---line, and any disputes arising from it, is subject to this Privacy Policy as well as our Terms of Use and all of its dispute resolution provisions including arbitration, limitation on damages and choice of law. We reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use at any time. Non-material changes and clarifications will take effect immediately, and material changes will take effect within 30 days of their posting on this site. If we make changes, we will post them and will indicate at the top of this page the policy's new effective date. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or through notice on our home page. We encourage you to refer to this policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current privacy policy. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.


Contact Information

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at hi@off---line.com