Bitly Privacy Policy

DATED 2011-06-14 · VERSION 20110706_rev01 · COMPARED WITH 20110512_rev01 · ARCHIVE SNAPSHOT

Full text changes — 20110512_rev01 to 20110706_rev01

COLOUR MARKS THE SEVERITY OF A FLAGGED CLAUSE · + AND − MARK ADDED AND REMOVED

+### Privacy Policy
+### Bitly Privacy Policy
+Bitly, Inc. ("**bitlyTM**") takes the private nature of your personal information very seriously. This Privacy Policy (which we adapted from a policy originally provided by Automattic (WordPress.com)) describes how we treat the information we collect when you visit and use any website available from **Bitly, Inc.** and is made available under the Creative Commons Sharealike license. Please read this notice very carefully. It is **Bitly, Inc.**' policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.
+This Privacy Policy describes the policies and procedures of Bitly, Inc. ("Bitly", "we" or "us") on the collection, use and disclosure of your information on [http://bitly.com](http://bitly.com/) (the "Site") and the services, features, content or applications offered by Bitly (collectively with the Site, the "Services"). Bitly receives information about you from various sources, including: (i) if you register for the Site and the Services, through your user account with Bitly (your "Account"); (ii) your use of the Services generally; and (iii) from third party websites and services. When you use the Services, you are consenting to the collection, transfer, manipulation, storage, disclosure and other uses of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.
+### Website Visitors
+### What Does This Privacy Policy Cover?
+Like most website operators, **Bitly, Inc.** collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. **Bitly, Inc.**' purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how **Bitly, Inc.** visitors use its website. From time to time, **Bitly, Inc.** may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.
+This Privacy Policy covers the treatment of personally identifiable information ("Personal Information") gathered by Bitly when you are using or accessing the Services. This Privacy Policy also covers Bitly's treatment of any Personal Information that Bitly's business partners share with Bitly or that Bitly shares with its business partners.
+**Bitly, Inc.** also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. **Bitly, Inc.** does not use such information to identify its visitors, however, and does not disclose such information, other than under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information, as described below. Please be aware that **Bitly, Inc.** cannot be responsible for the privacy practices of other sites, including those to which we link or whose products or services we reference. We encourage you to read the terms of use and privacy statements of each Web site you visit.
+This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of third parties that Bitly does not own or control, including but not limited to any third party websites, services and applications ("Third Party Services") that you elect to access through the Service, such as Facebook or Twitter, or to individuals that Bitly does not manage or employ. While we attempt to facilitate access only to those Third Party Services that share our respect for your privacy, we cannot take responsibility for the content or privacy policies of those Third Party Services. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policies of any Third Party Services you access.
+### Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information
+### What Information Does Bitly Collect?
+Certain visitors to **Bitly, Inc.** websites choose to interact with **Bitly, Inc.** in ways that require **Bitly, Inc.** to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that **Bitly, Inc.** gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for an account at Bitly, Inc. to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with **Bitly, Inc.** are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, **Bitly, Inc.** collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor's interaction with **Bitly, Inc.**. **Bitly, Inc.** does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.
+The information we gather enables us to personalize, improve and continue to operate the Services. In connection with certain aspects of the Services, we may request, collect and/or display some of your Personal Information. We collect the following types of information from our users.
+### Aggregated Statistics
+#### Sign-In Information:
+**Bitly, Inc.** may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, **Bitly, Inc.** may monitor the most popular links on the site. **Bitly, Inc.** may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, **Bitly, Inc.** does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.
+When you create an Account, you will provide information that could be Personal Information, such as your username, password and email address. You acknowledge that this information may be personal to you, and by creating an account on Bitly and providing Personal Information to us, you allow others, including Bitly, to identify you and therefore may not be anonymous. We may use your contact information to send you information about our Services, but only rarely when we feel such information is important. You may unsubscribe from these messages through your Account settings, although Bitly regardless reserves the right to contact you when we believe it is necessary, such as for account recovery purposes.
+### Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information
+#### URL Information:
+**Bitly, Inc.** discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on **Bitly, Inc.**' behalf or to provide services available at **Bitly, Inc.** websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using **Bitly, Inc.** websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. **Bitly, Inc.** will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, **Bitly, Inc.** discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only when required to do so by law, or when **Bitly, Inc.** believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of **Bitly, Inc.**, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of a **Bitly, Inc.** website and have supplied your email address, **Bitly, Inc.** may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what's going on with **Bitly, Inc.** and our products. We primarily use our various product blogs to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. **Bitly, Inc.** takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information. However, if **Bitly, Inc.** or any of its products is sold to a new owner, whether by merger, stock sale, asset sale or other means, we retain the right to transfer your profile, Site Data and all other content, data and information to this new owner, provided the owner agrees to respect the Privacy Policy in effect with respect to this personal data.
+One feature of the Services is the ability to create shortened uniform resource locators ("URLs"). Bitly collects and stores both the original URL and the shortened URL and, if you have an Account and are logged in, associates that information with your Account. Bitly also collects and stores (i) the time and date on which you shortened the original URL and (ii) if you chose to share the URL, information on the channels through which the URL was shared.
+### Cookies
+#### Metrics and Analytics:
+A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor's computer, and that the visitor's browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. **Bitly, Inc.** uses cookies to help **Bitly, Inc.** identify and track visitors, their usage of **Bitly, Inc.** websites, and their website access preferences. **Bitly, Inc.** visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using **Bitly, Inc.**' websites, with the drawback that certain features of **Bitly, Inc.** websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
+Bitly collects information about accesses (such as clicks) of every shortened URL created through the Services. This information includes, but is not limited to: (i) the IP address and physical location of the devices accessing the shortened URL; (ii) the referring websites or services; (iii) the time and date of each access; and (iv) information about sharing of the shortened URL on Third Party Services such as Twitter and Facebook. These metrics and analytics are used by Bitly and its partners to improve their websites and services by, for example, providing value-added features.
+### Privacy Policy Changes
+#### User Content:
+Although most changes are likely to be minor, **Bitly, Inc.** may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in **Bitly, Inc.**' sole discretion. **Bitly, Inc.** encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.
+Some features of the Services allow you to provide content to the Services, such as written descriptions of URLs, comments, images and video. For example, using the Bundles feature, Bitly users can curate and "bundle together" a set of links, and can add content to those Bundles, such as comments and videos. All content submitted by you to the Services may be retained by Bitly indefinitely, even after you terminate your account. We may continue to disclose such content to third parties in a manner that does not reveal Personal Information, as described in this Privacy Policy.
+#### Information Collected From Third Party Services:
+Some features of the Services allow you to share your Bitly information through your accounts with Third Party Services such as Facebook and Twitter. If you choose to connect Bitly to such Third Party Services, we may collect information related to your use of those Third Party Services, such as authentication tokens that allow us to connect to your Third Party Service accounts. We may otherwise collect information about how you are using the Services to interact with those connected Third Party Services. Note that Third Party Services may have the ability to restrict the information that is provided to us.
+#### IP Address Information and Other Information Collected Automatically:
+- Bitly automatically receives and records information from your web browser when you interact with the Services, including your IP address and cookie information. This information may be used for to help us understand how users transit a website, to fight spam/malware, to facilitate collection of data concerning your interaction with the Services (e.g., what Bitly links you have clicked on) and for other similar purposes.
+- Generally, the Services automatically collect usage information, such as the number and frequency of visitors to the Site. Bitly may use this data in aggregate form, that is, as a statistical measure, but not in a manner that would identify you personally. This type of aggregate data enables us and third parties authorized by us to figure out how often individuals use parts of the Services so that we can analyze and improve them.
+#### Email Communications:
+We may receive a confirmation when you open an email from us. We use this confirmation to improve our customer service.
+#### Information Collected Using Cookies:
+- Cookies are pieces of text that may be provided to your computer through your web browser when you access a website. Your browser stores cookies in a manner associated with each website you visit. We use cookies to enable our servers to recognize your web browser and tell us how and when you visit our Site and use the Services through the web.
+- Bitly cookies also allow Bitly to track when you have clicked on a Bitly shortened URL. Each click of a shortened URL is tracked using a unique identifier assigned to you in one or more cookies stored by your web browser and associated with Bitly.
+- Bitly cookies do not, by themselves, contain Personal Information, and we do not combine the general information collected through cookies with other Personal Information to tell us who you are. As noted, however, we do use cookies to identify that your web browser has accessed a Bitly URL and may associate that information with your Account if you have one.
+- Most browsers have an option for turning off the cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your browser software) allowing you to decide on acceptance of each new cookie in a variety of ways. We strongly recommend that you leave cookies active, because they enable you to take advantage the most attractive features of the Services.
+- This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Bitly only and does not cover the use of cookies by third parties. Bitly does not control when or how third parties place cookies on your computer. For example, third party websites to which a URL points may set cookies on your computer.
+#### Aggregate Information:
+We collect statistical information about how both unregistered and registered users, collectively, use the Services ("Aggregate Information"). Some of this information is derived from Personal Information, such as your location (which, in turn, is derived from your IP address). This statistical information is not Personal Information and cannot be tied back to you, your Account or your web browser.
+### How and To Whom Is My Information Shared
+The Services are designed to help you share information with others. As a result, much of the information generated through the Services is shared publicly or with third parties.
+#### Public Bitly Activity Information:
+Much of your activity on and through the Services is public by default. This includes, but is not limited to:
+- Unshortened URLs you have shortened, their corresponding shortened URLs, the time and date those URLs were shortened, and metrics and analytics information for your shortened URLs, as described above;
+- Aggregate non-personal information about what Bitly links you have clicked on and associated metrics and analytics information, as described above; and
+- Any Bundles you have created, along with content added to those Bundles, if you have elected to make those Bundles public.
+Registered users may have some of this information associated with their Accounts. Unregistered users will not have this association, but information concerning their use of the Services (such as what Bitly links they click on, when they clicked, from where they clicked, etc.) is tracked anonymously through the use of cookies and stored by Bitly.
+For registered users, some of this information is publicly accessible through a unique URL, which that user can make non-public through his/her Account settings when he or she is logged in. Removing access to the unique URL does not, however, make this information non-public, and it may still be accessible through other means, such as Bitly's API services.
+Please also remember that if you choose to provide Personal Information using certain features of the Service, then that information is governed by the privacy settings of those particular features and may be publicly available. Individuals reading this information may use or disclose it to other individuals or entities without our control and without your knowledge. Therefore, we urge you to think carefully about including any specific information you may deem private in content that you create or submit through the Service.
+#### IP Address Information:
+While we collect and store IP address information, that information is not made public. We do at times, however, share this information with our partners, service providers and other persons with whom we conduct business. We may share hashes of your IP address with other third parties, but these hashes cannot feasibly be reversed into the IP addresses themselves or linked to you individually.
+#### Information You Elect to Share:
+When creating a shortened URL, you can elect to share that URL through Third Party Services. Any information that you elect to distribute through Third Party Services is instantly provided to them and may then become accessible to users of those services. Therefore, in addition to reviewing this Privacy Policy, you should also review the terms of services and privacy policies of such Third Party Services that you access through the Services.
+You may otherwise access other Third Party Services through the Services, for example by clicking on links in the Statistics page for a Bitly shortened URL. Bitly is not responsible for the privacy policies and/or practices of these Third Party Services, and you are responsible for reading and understanding those Third Party Services' privacy policies. This Privacy Policy only governs information collected on the Services.
+#### Aggregate Information:
+We share Aggregate Information with our partners, service providers and other persons with whom we conduct business. We share this type of statistical data so that our partners can understand how and how often people use our Services and their services or websites, which facilitates improving both their services and how Bitly interfaces with them. In addition, these third parties may share with us non-private, aggregated or otherwise non Personal Information about you that they have independently developed or acquired.
+#### Email Communications with Bitly:
+As part of the Services, you may occasionally receive from Bitly email and other communication relating to your Account. These emails will only be sent for purposes important to the Services, such as password recovery.
+#### User Profile Information:
+User profile information including your username, Twitter account name and Facebook account name (to the extent you have linked your Account with those services), and other information you enter may be displayed to other users to facilitate user interaction within the Services. Users' email addresses will not be directly revealed to other users by Bitly.
+#### Information Shared with Agents of Bitly:
+We employ and contract with people and other entities that perform certain tasks on our behalf and who are under our control (our "Agents"). We may need to share Personal Information with our Agents in order to provide products or services to you. Unless we tell you differently, our Agents do not have any right to use Personal Information or other information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us. You hereby consent to our sharing of Personal Information with our Agents.
+#### Information Disclosed Pursuant to Business Transfers:
+In some cases, we may choose to buy or sell assets. In these types of transactions, user information is typically one of the transferred business assets. Moreover, if Bitly, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that Bitly goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Bitly may continue to use your Personal Information as set forth in this policy.
+#### Information Disclosed for the Protection of Bitly and Others:
+Bitly also reserves the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as it reasonably believes is necessary to (i) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, (ii) enforce these Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations hereof, (iii) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, (iv) respond to user support requests, or (v) protect the rights, property or safety of Bitly, its users and the public. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and spam/malware prevention.
+#### Information We Share With Your Consent:
+Except as set forth above, you will be notified when your Personal Information may be shared with third parties, and will be able to prevent the sharing of this information.
+### Is Information About Me Secure?
+Your Account information is protected by a password for your privacy and security. You need to prevent unauthorized access to your account and Personal Information by selecting and protecting your password appropriately and limiting access to your computer and browser by signing off after you have finished accessing your account.
+Bitly endeavors to protect Account information to ensure that it is kept private; however, Bitly cannot guarantee the security of any Account information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors, may compromise the security of user information at any time.
+Bitly otherwise stores all of its information, including your IP address information, using industry-standard security techniques. Bitly does not guarantee or warrant that such techniques will prevent unauthorized access to information about you stored by Bitly, Personal Information or otherwise.
+### What Information of Mine Can I Access?
+If you are a registered user, you can access information associated with your Account by logging into the Site. This information includes a history of the URLs you have shortened, and access to the metrics pages for those URLs.
+If you are not a registered user, you can access the metrics pages for your shortened URLs by adding the "+" symbol to the end of the URL.
+Registered and unregistered users can access all of the above information.
+### How Can I Delete My Account?
+Should you ever decide to delete your Account, you may do so by emailing [support+sitelink@bitly.com](mailto:support+sitelink@bitly.com) If you terminate your Account, any association between your Account and information stored by Bitly will no longer be accessible through your Account and you will no longer be able to create and share links or Bundles using the Account. However, given the nature of sharing using Bitly, any public activity on your Account prior to deletion will remain stored on Bitly's servers and will remain accessible to the public.
+### What Choices Do I Have Regarding My Information?
+- You can use many of the features of the service without registering, thereby limiting the type of information that we collect.
+- As stated previously, you can always opt not to disclose certain information to Bitly, even though it may be needed to take advantage of some Bitly features.
+- You can delete your Account. Please note that Bitly will need to verify that you have the authority to delete the Account, and activity generated prior to deletion will remain stored by Bitly and may be publicly accessible.
+### What Happens When There Are Changes to this Privacy Policy?
+Bitly may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. Use of information we collect now is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is used. If we make changes in the way we collect or use information, we will notify you by posting an announcement on the Services or sending you an email. A user is bound by any changes to the Privacy Policy when he or she uses the Services after such changes have been first posted.
+### What If I Have Questions or Concerns?
+If you have any questions or concerns regarding privacy using the Services, please send us a detailed message to: [privacy@bitly.com](mailto:privacy@bitly.com). We will make every effort to resolve your concerns.
+Effective Date: June 14, 2011.