Ask, Answer and Win at Winzy.com

Last updated: March 6, 2007

Winzy takes your privacy seriously. Please read the following to learn more about our privacy policy.

What This Privacy Policy Covers

This policy covers how Winzy treats personal information that Winzy collects and receives, including information related to your past use of Winzy products and services. Personal information is information about you that is personally identifiable like your name, address, email address, or phone number, and that is not otherwise publicly available.
This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that Winzy does not own or control, or to people that Winzy does not employ or manage.

What personally identifiable information does Winzy collect?

Registration Data

You do not have to register or provide any personal information to use the Winzy service. However, if you choose to withhold registration information, you will not be able to redeem prizes, invite friends, or earn Winzy points.
During registration, Winzy collects your email address so you can login to the service. After providing Winzy with this information, you are no longer anonymous.
In addition, you may enter your shipping address and phone number so we know where to send your prizes and how to contact you.

Other data collected

From time to time, Winzy may collect additional personal and non-personal information about you, for example, in these instances:
- when you redeem a prize you have won through Winzy;
- when you update your shipping and contact information;
- when you register to receive goods or services from one or more of our partners;
- when you enter into a contest, sweepstakes or promotion sponsored by Winzy and/or one of our partners;
- when you fill out a user survey;
- when you subscribe to one of our newsletters;
- when you contact our customer service center.
Winzy automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Winzy cookie information, and the page you request.
Winzy may combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from business partners or other companies.

Refer-a-Friend feature

If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will automatically send your friend an email inviting him or her to visit the site. Winzy.com will store this information for the sole purpose of sending referral emails and tracking the success of our referral program.
Your friend can opt out of receiving referral emails at any time. Each referral email will include a link to opt-out. In addiiton, your friend may contact us using this feedback form to request that Winzy stop sending referral emails.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

If you win a prize from Winzy, we may post your Winzy ID, first name, first initial of your last name, city and state of residence on our website, along with the prize you won.
Winzy uses information for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, personalize your Winzy experience, fulfill your requests for products and services, fulfill prizes you have redeemed through Winzy, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients.
Winzy does not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties for marketing purposes without providing you with a choice to opt-out from such disclosure, which you can exercise at the My Account page.
In addition, Winzy may share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies under the following circumstances:
- We provide the information to trusted partners who work on behalf of or with Winzy under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help Winzy communicate with you about offers, or they may use your information to help us administer sweepstakes, contests and promotions and fulfill prizes.
- We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims;
- We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Winzy’s terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
- We transfer information about you if Winzy is acquired by or merged with another company. In this event, Winzy will notify you before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
Winzy displays targeted advertisements based on personal information. Advertisers (including ad serving companies) may assume that people who interact with, view, or click on targeted ads meet the targeting criteria - for example, women ages 18-24 from a particular geographic area.
- Winzy does not provide any personal information to the advertiser when you interact with or view a targeted ad. However, by interacting with or viewing an ad you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will make the assumption that you meet the targeting criteria used to display the ad.
- Winzy advertisers may include financial service providers (such as banks, insurance agents, stock brokers and mortgage lenders) and non-financial companies (such as stores, airlines, and software companies).
We may share with third parties certain pieces of aggregated, non-personal information, such as the number of users who searched for a particular term, for example, or how many users clicked on a particular advertisement. Such information does not identify you individually.

Cookies

A cookie is a small amount of data, which is sent to your browser from a web site’s computers and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Winzy uses its own cookies for a number of purposes, including to:

Track entries in Winzy sweepstakes, contests and promotions.
Access your information when you "sign in."
Display relevant advertising banners based on your interests and activity on Winzy.
Estimate and report our total audience size and traffic.
Conduct research to improve Winzy’s content and services.
Require you to re-enter your Winzy password after a certain period of time has elapsed to protect you against others accidentally accessing your account contents.

Winzy lets other companies that show advertisements on some of our pages set and access their cookies on your computer. Like Winzy, some of these companies may use their cookies to keep track of the web searches you make while visiting this website. They may also keep track of your web surfing behavior on this website and other websites you may visit. That information may be used to customize ads to you on this and other websites, and/or to keep track of your response to the ads they deliver. If you would like more information about some of these practices or to learn your choices about not having information used by these companies to target ads to you, please click here. Other companies’ use of their cookies is subject to their own privacy policies, not this one. Advertisers or other companies do not have access to Winzy’s cookies.

Winzy does not require users to accept cookies in order to enter or view the site. However, if you reject cookies, you will not be able to register for a Winzy account, invite friends to use Winzy, earn Winzy points, or redeem Winzy prizes. Please note that some areas or features of Winzy will be significantly slower, or may not function at all, if cookies are disabled.

Tracking Pixels

Third party advertisers may also use tracking pixels that count new registrations on Winzy. This allows the third party advertising companies to know how many new users have registered with Winzy as a result of their advertising for Winzy, or to track how many users have viewed a particular advertising offer displayed on Winzy. The information collected by such tracking pixels are used in aggregate only for reporting purposes and is not used in connection with your personally identifiable information.

Your Ability to Edit Your Account Information and Preferences

You can edit your Winzy Account Information, including your marketing preferences, at any time.
We allow users to access their profiles and change information, communication and sharing preferences as they deem necessary, by accessing the My Account page.
New categories of marketing communications may be added from time to time. Users who visit My Account can opt out of receiving future marketing communications from these new categories.
We reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to the Winzy service, such as service announcements, administrative messages and newsletters, that are considered part of your Winzy account, without offering you the opportunity to opt-out of receiving them.

Confidentiality and Security

Your registration data is password-protected so that only you and Winzy have access to this personal information. You may edit your registration data by using your password.
We limit access to personal information about you to employees who we believe reasonably need to come into contact with that information to provide products or services to you or in order to do their jobs.
Winzy takes steps to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with our Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you use these services at your own risk.

Policies regarding Children’s Privacy

Winzy is committed to the safety of our children. Children under 13 may not register with Winzy. Winzy does not knowingly collect any personal information from such children at this site. If Winzy obtains actual knowledge that it has collected personal information about a child under the age of 13, that information will be immediately deleted from its database. This policy complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”).

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Since this policy may change over time as we modify or expand our service, we suggest that you check back from time to time in order to understand how we treat your information. Your use of Winzy constitutes your agreement to the terms of Winzy’s privacy policy.
If we decide to materially change our privacy policy, we will prominently post those changes on this page 30 days prior to the change, or send you an email informing you of the change fourteen (14) days in advance. Your continued use of Winzy constitutes your agreement to any such changes.

Questions and Suggestions

If you have questions about this policy, please contact us using this feedback form or you can write to:

Winzy, LLC
Customer Care - Privacy Policy Issues
2513 East Charleston Rd, Suite #101
Mountain View, CA 94043