Privacy

Visible Path Privacy Policy

Last revised: 12/10/08

 

 

We believe that your relationships are capital and need to be protected to remain strong. Visible Path applies unique social network algorithms that automatically rate relationship strength and path strength to help drive to new levels of success, efficiency and trust in your social network. We believe there are a set of six core principles that must be applied to protect the privacy of your relationships:

• You own your relationships
• You control if, when and how you share your relationships
• You decide whether you are visible or invisible to contacts and colleagues seeking introductions
• You, and only you, can view the strength of your relationships
• You control the minimum relationship and path strength required to access your relationships
• You can unsubscribe and delete your relationships at any time

Subscribers

This privacy statement discloses the information practices for subscribers to our free and paid services available at http://www.hooversconnect.com and subscribers to partner-branded versions of our free and paid services.

Collecting and using information

Similar information is collected from both our free and paid services:

• Search index information Visible Path builds a search index that lists each person that you know – name, title, company, and tenure – so that other subscribers in your trusted network can find paths to these people. This information does not include the relationship that you maintain with the person or the contact information you have for the person (see below for relationship information). By building this search index, a person in your network will be able to identify that they have a path to ‘John Smith’, without knowing that you have a relationship with John or seeing any contact information for John. Not all individuals who appear in the search index are subscribers; those who prefer to have their names removed may do so by sending an email to privacy@hooversconnect.com. We do not use this information for marketing or sales and do not provide access to search index information to any partners or any other third parties.
• Profile information.Your profile contains the information that you provide to describe yourself – your biography, work history, academic history and other attributes. You control the content of your profile and how your profile is shared. We do not use this information for marketing or sales and do not provide access to profile information to any partners or any other third parties.
• Relationship information. Your relationship information is the information that you contribute on your contacts or your relationships. This information belongs exclusively to you and you control if, when and how your relationship information is shared.  We do not use this information for marketing or sales and do not provide access to relationship information to any partners or any other third parties.
• Account and activity information.Your account information is the information that you enter to set up your account – your name, title, company, business phone number, email address, etc. Your activity informationincludes summary information that describes how actively you use the service. We use this information to market and sell our services to you and your company unless you have opted out of receiving such information. If you are using a version of our service that is offered by one of our partners, we may provide this information to that partner so that they can market and sell relevant services to you and your company unless you have opted out of receiving such information.

Editing or removing personal information

You can edit or remove personal information from the Visible Path service at any time, including profile information and account information. You can hide relationship information at any time by signing into your account. You can unsubscribe to remove relationships information completely (see below for information on unsubscribing).

Discovering relationships

Visible Path offers optional plug-ins for different applications and messaging systems (e.g., an Outlook plug-in) that help you automatically discover relationships and automatically keep your network up-to-date. You control what folders and data are scanned and when they are scanned. No messaging content is ever scanned. We do not use this information for marketing or sales and do not provide access to relationship information to any partners or any other third parties.

Corporate networks

If your company elects to set up a corporate network, the company administrator may see that you use Visible Path in order to invite you to connect to the company network. If you connect to the company network, the company administrator will be able to view your account and activity information but not your relationship information. You control your connection to the company network and may disconnect at any time. Visible Path may also present an analysis of the corporate network to the company. If produced, the report will present data at a level of aggregation and abstraction such that no relationship information can be directly associated with any individual subscriber.

Technical support

If you ask for technical support to solve a technical problem, we will review the data required to address your problem. Any information reviewed during technical support will be deleted at your request or upon the resolution of the issue.

Unsubscribing

You can unsubscribe at any time.  If you decide to unsubscribe, your profile information, your relationship information, your account information and your activity information are deleted. The search index information may not be deleted, since multiple subscribers may know the people that you know, although the existence and the strength of your relationship with the people are deleted. Information that you have shared with other subscribers in the context of an introduction, such as a contact card or vCard, will remain in the system. To unsubscribe, please sign in to www.hooversconnect.com and select settings.

Security

In order to secure your personal information, we use secure socket layer (SSL) encryption to protect all data. The security practices followed by Visible Path are available at http://info.hooversconnect.com/security.html.

 

Visitors

This section of our privacy policy discloses the information practices for visitors to the Visible Path web site at http://www.hooversconnect.com and http://info.hooversconnect.com.

Collecting and using information

If you are inquiring about our products and services, we ask you to provide contact information such as name, company, title, phone number, email address and other general information to help us direct and respond to your request. If you are applying for a job, we ask you to provide contact information, current employment information, a personal statement and a resume.  We use the information you provide to respond to your request by either email or phone. We also use this information for marketing and service notification correspondence unless you request the information provided be used only to answer a specific request.

Sharing information

We will not sell, rent or otherwise provide information gathered on the web site to any third parties.

Removing personal information

You can ask us to remove all personal information provided to the web site by sending an email to privacy@hooversconnect.com. Within thirty days, we will remove your personally identifiable information from our database.

Choice/Opt-out

We provide you the opportunity to 'opt-out' of having your personally identifiable information used for certain purposes. For example, if you request a "demo" you can indicate your preference on the online form. If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by emailing us at privacy@hooversconnect.com. 

EU Safe Harbor

We abide by the EU Safe Harbor framework as set forth by the United States Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use and retention of information collected from the European Union.

 

General

This section of our privacy policy discloses the information practices that are consistent for both visitors to the Visible Path web site at http://www.hooversconnect.com and http://info.hooversconnect.com, subscribers to our free and paid services available at http://www.hooversconnect.com, and subscribers to partner-branded versions of our free and paid services.

Cookies and Log Files

Cookies are used during subscriber registration, for session control and for collecting general statistics on visitor and subscribers usage.  The general usage statistics are aggregated and not used to identify individual usage.  We also use web log files to track site usage and standard internet technologies to track the address of the site you came from and you go to when you leave http://www.hooversconnect.com, the Internet protocol (IP) address of your computer (or the proxy server you use to access the World Wide Web), your computer operating system and type of web browser you are using, as well as the name of your ISP. We use this information to analyze trends to improve service, but do not link it to personally identifiable information in any way.

Third party sites

The http://www.hooversconnect.com web site and our free and paid services may contain links to third party web sites not associated with Visible Path. Visible Path is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of such sites. You will need to review the policy statements of these sites to understand their privacy policies.

Changing this privacy policy

Visible Path may update this privacy policy. In the event there are significant changes in the way we treat your personally identifiable information, we will display a notice on this site. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.

Legal Disclaimer

It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information when required by law. We will disclose such information wherein we have a good-faith belief that it is necessary to comply with a court order, ongoing judicial proceeding, governmental investigation, or to exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims. We may transfer personal information to an entity that acquires Visible Path or substantially all of Visible Path’s assets, and such entity shall be required to assume our obligations under this privacy policy.

 

Questions or comments?

Please email us at privacy@hooversconnect.com or contact us at:

Visible Path Corporation
650 Townsend St, Suite 675

San Francisco, CA 94103

Attn: Privacy