Privacy Policy
We want you to feel as comfortable as possible using our services. So, gaining your trust and maintaining your privacy is a cornerstone of Kiobo's customer relationships and operations. This privacy policy covers Kiobo's treatment of personally identifiable information you supply us through this website and is effective for all of the products and services Kiobo has developed (toolbar, plug-ins, website, widgets, etc)
Kiobo's privacy policy is deigned to help you understand how we collect information and what we do with the data and information we collect through this website and relates to your accessing and use of the website (www.kiobo.com) and all related pages and describes. By accessing this website and any of its pages you indicate your acknowledgement of and are deemed to have read, understood, and agree to this privacy policy and all other terms and conditions contained herein and consent to our use of the data we collect in the manner set forth below.
Information Collection
We collect the following information from our users through our toolbar, website, and widgets. The ultimate purpose of collecting all of this info is to provide the community with variety and meaningful content while maintaining individual privacy as requested.
- Personally identifiable information provided by you: When you sign up to become part of the Kiobo community, we ask you to voluntarily disclose some personal information such as email address, password, Kiobo username, age group, location. If you choose to decline any of these fields, Kiobo might not be able to deliver the full suite of services to you.
- Cookies - When you access our website, we may assign your computer cookies to facilitate access to our website, personalize your online experience and to record information about your visits to our website. Cookies are tiny files that are sent to your computer when you log on to our website. These files are used to identify your browser and, in turn this helps us store your preferences. Most browsers are set up by default to accept cookies so you don't really have to worry about allowing our cookies into your browser. You can program your browser to reject cookies, however, please note, if you do the functionality of Kiobo might be hindered and you may not be able to use some of the features offered on our website.
- Non-Personally identifiable information collected automatically - We automatically collect information from your browser when you visit our website. This information includes your IP address, your browser type and language, access times, the content of any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us and the referring website address. In this respect we aren't doing anything more special then say your standard blog or any other web site on the internet.
- Emails to Kiobo - In case you email/contact us with specific requests or suggestions, we may keep a copy of these communications directed to Kiobo or its employees agents or contractors.
- Kiobo Chat - We may retain transcripts from some of your live chat sessions for both technical and security purposes, but we do not read or disclose your discussions with third parties except when we have to disclose them by law, to protect our rights and property or in an emergency. Remember, the live chat area is public forum which you voluntarily use.
- Clickstream - The series of websites that you visit during your normal browsing is what we refer to as clickstream. When you download our toolbar and/or our widget, Kiobo will be recording the links of the websites you visit - in other words the clickstream. This information will be stored and aggregated in our servers and then displayed (along with everybody else's info) in the Kiobo website through a visual interface. By displaying this "community clickstream" our users will be able to share what they see and discover new sites. Who gets to see what sites you visit - if anyone at all - is under your control. See the section on "You are in control" for more details.
You are in Control
You are the owner of your information: We only have the information you have chosen to share with us and the rest of the community.
You control how much information you share.
Kiobo is a tool designed to harness the collective wisdom of the crowd. However, when it comes to privacy we want individuals (not the collective crowd) to be in control. We provide a series of ways to control how much information you want to share:
- Toolbar - Our toolbar works as a privacy mode selector: It allows you to modify your current privacy settings without having to go to Kiobo.com. Whenever your browser is active, you may switch from one privacy mode to another by simply clicking on the toolbar (the green Kiobo logo on your browser) and selecting the privacy setting that best suits your needs.
- Share / My clickstream - We give our users the capability to view and share their clckstream.We also give you the capability of modifying how much and to whom you want to share it with. You can share it with world (which will be the Kiobo user community) or keep it as private as you want. We have designed a user interface that allows you to take all or part of your clickstream and modify itps to control with whom you share it.
- Settings - If you are logged in, you may go to the settings section and modify your privacy settings.
- If you would like us to anonymize (disassociate you from your browsing history) the information you have shared with the Kiobo community, you may request us to do so at any time. Simply go to our " Settings" page and click on "Delete my visit history" and we will immediately disassicoate your clickstream information from you. You can also disassociate yourself from your clickstream through the toolbar installed in your browser. If you wish, you may also delete your account altogether by going to the same "Settings" page and clicking on "Delete my account".
What We Do and Don't Track
Once you download the toolbar on to your browser, Kiobo's servers will be tracking and recording the sites you visit. You may modify this by changing your privacy settings (see above).
By default, there are certain website categories that we simply do not track, record and/or display. We do this to ensure that users are comfortable sharing clickstreams. These are:
- Adult websites - We want to keep it PG. If you happen to browse into an adult site, don't worry. We know better than broadcasting it to the rest of the world. We go to great lengths to make sure we block all known adult sites from being displayed in the Kiobo tools or to be linked to our users' clickstream.
- Secure sites - We don't track any secure sites (sites using https). Many sites have set security measures to avoid other users from accessing personal information. They usually require their members to "log-in". Some examples of these are web based email providers, banks, social networks Kiobo will not track personal content within these secured sites; in fact it is unable to do so. For example if John Doe is checking his email on "Gmail", other users will be able to see that John is viewing gmail.com but unable to see his emails or anything that happened after John "logged-in" to email account.
What Do We Do With the Information We Collect?
We process the information in order to display content relevant to the community. Furthermore, we process information to create content that is relevant to you. This content can come in the form of personalized recommendations and/or tailored advertisement.Kiobo may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties.
We also aggregate the information we collect to create analytics tools. The results of these analytics (not the personal information of our users) may be shared with third parties to enhance the services we provide to our users and/or for commercial purposes.
There might be some extraordinary situations when we might have to use your personal information without your prior consent. This might happen if we believe (in good faith) that access, use, storage, or disclosure of such information is necessary for one of the following reasons
- Comply with applicable laws, legal processes, regulations and governmental requests; but only after we are satisfied that such requests by law enforcement or private litigants meet all applicable legal requirements.
- Enforce applicable Terms of Service and investigate potential violation of these terms
- Address security, technical or fraud issues
- Protect our users, company, and public in general from threats to their property, safety, and/or rights.
- On occasion we might enhance personal information with information collected from third parties.
If we intend to use your information for a purpose other that the mentioned in this policy, we will inform you and allow you to opt-out from that specific initiative.
California has passed legislation requiring certain specific disclosures be made available to California residents who use the Internet and provide information that may be used for marketing purposes. That legislation requires any business that discloses a customer's personal information to any third party for direct marketing purposes to provide the customer a method for obtaining the names, addresses and certain other specified details of anyone who might have received that personal information. If you are a California resident you may request this information from Kiobo by sending us an email at support@kiobo.com . Kiobo is not obligated to respond to more than one such request from you per calendar year.
If you visit Kiobo from outside the United States, please be aware that the data is stored and processed in the US and that data protection laws of your country may be different from that of the US where our operation is currently headquartered.
Children's Privacy
Our websites are general audience sites, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. You must be 13 years and older to register to use the Kiobo website. As a result, Kiobo does not specifically collect information about children. If we learn that Kiobo has collected information from a child under the age of 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. We recommend that minors between the ages of 13 and 18 ask and receive their parents' permission before using Kiobo or sending information about themselves or anyone else over the Internet.
Modifications to the Privacy Policy
There might be a situation in which this privacy policy could change. We don't anticipate any major changes but if a modification occurs and your privacy rights are altered we will require your explicit consent. We will post changes of this policy, a full history of these changes and the effective date of each policy change in the Kiobo.com site. If Kiobo is acquired, merges or sells part or all of our assets and become subject to a different privacy policy we will provide notice to our users before transferring any personal information.
Keeping Your Data Safe
Security: We take appropriate security measures (including physical, electronic and procedural measures) to help safeguard your personal information from unauthorized access and disclosure. For example, only authorized employees and authorized third-party service providers are permitted to access personal information, and they may do so only for permitted business functions. In addition, we use encryption in the transmission of your sensitive personal information between your system and ours, and we use firewalls to help prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to your personal information.
We want you to feel confident using our websites to transact business. However, no system can be completely secure. Therefore, although we take steps to secure your information, we cannot guarantee this (just as any other site can't) Users should also take care of how they handle and disclose their personal information. Please refer to the Federal Trade Commission's website at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/data.shtm for information about how to protect yourself against identity theft.
Links and Third Party Advertising
Our website may provide links to resources and other websites that we believe may be useful to you. These links will lead you to websites operated by third parties that operate under different privacy policies. We encourage you to review those privacy policies, as we have no control over information you may submit to those third parties.
Our website may use third parties, such as ad server companies, to present or serve advertisements that you may see on our website. Our website may also include advertisements placed by third parties. These third party advertisers may also download cookies to your computer, or use other technologies that track the effectiveness of their advetising. Our privacy policy does not cover any information collected by those third parties nor does it cover how they may use such information.