document: title: privacy
text: Effective Date: September 5, 2014

This Privacy Policy describes our policies on the collection, use and disclosure of your information in connection with the following Slashdot Media internet properties (individually a “Site” and collectively “Sites”):

  * SlashdotMedia.com
  * SourceForge.net
  * Slashdot.org
  * Freecode.com



Information collected on these Sites may be used in the manner described below by our parent entity, Dice Holdings Inc., subsidiaries and affiliates acting on our behalf (collectively, “Dice”).  When used herein, the terms, “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to Dice.

We at Dice are committed to good privacy practices regarding your personally identifiable information. Your loyalty as a customer or visitor is important, and we hope that our concerns regarding your privacy, as described in this policy (the “Privacy Policy” or “Policy”), demonstrate our commitment to making your experience with Dice an enjoyable and satisfying one.

Dice has been awarded TRUSTe’s Privacy Seal signifying that this privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with TRUSTe’s program requirements including transparency, accountability and choice regarding the collection and use of your personally identifiable information. TRUSTe’s mission, as an independent third party, is to accelerate online trust among consumers and organizations globally through its leading privacy trustmark and innovative trust solutions. If you have questions or complaints regarding our privacy policy or practices, please contact us at privacy@dice.com. If you are not satisfied with our response you can contact TRUSTe here. The TRUSTe program covers information collected through the Dice sites (“Sites”).

Dice complies with the U.S.-E.U. Safe Harbor framework and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal data from European Union member countries and Switzerland. Dice Holdings, Inc. has certified that it adheres to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of notice, choice, onward transfer, security, data integrity, access, and enforcement. To learn more about the Safe Harbor program, and to view Dice Holdings, Inc.’s certification, please visit http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/.

This Privacy Policy governs your interaction with the Sites and your registration for and use of our online services (collectively, the “Services”). Except as set forth within this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use Agreement and other published guidelines, we do not release personally identifiable information about our users and visitors without their permission.

We encourage you to review the entire Privacy Policy. Please click on any of the links below to review that particular section.

  1. The information we gather
  2. How we use the information we gather
  3. How we share information we gather
  4. Tracking Technologies
  5. Security
  6. Survey & Sweepstakes
  7. Social Media Features
  8. Facebook Connect
  9. Correcting personally Identifiable Information
  10. Changes to this Privacy Policy
  11. Questions?



### A. The information we gather

We gather two (2) types of information about users:

  1. Non-personally identifiable information (information that does not identify a specific individual): When visitors use the Services, we collect and aggregate information indicating, among other things, which pages were visited, the order in which they were visited, and which links were “clicked.” Collecting such information involves the collection and logging of IP addresses, operating system, and browser software used by each user of the Services. Although such information is not personally identifiable, we can determine from the IP address a visitor’s Internet Service Provider and the geographic location of his or her point of connectivity. The non-personally identifiable information we collect helps us identify the most popular areas of the Sites and determine the effectiveness of our promotional activities. In addition, we may disclose some of this information to advertisers to inform them of the number of people who have seen and/or clicked through their advertisements. We collect non-personally identifiable information in part through the use of “cookies.” For more information, read our section entitled “Cookies” below.


 
  2. Personally identifiable information: In certain areas of the Services, such as those in which you complete a profile, submit your resume, create a new account, or enter Dice-sponsored contests or promotions, we may request that you provide us with certain personally identifiable information, such as your e-mail address, name, zip code, profession, or work experience. We will, in such situations, seek to identify which informational items are required and which are optional.

Dice Services are not available to children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13 years of age.




### B. How we use the information we gather

Please take some time to familiarize yourself with the different ways we use the information we gather. Keep in mind that, while Dice encourages all third parties involved, including but not limited to its advertisers, to adhere to our policies regarding the privacy of our visitors and users and to otherwise handle personally identifiable information in a responsible manner, we cannot and do not assume any responsibility for any actions or omissions of third parties, including the manner in which they use information received either from Dice or independently. Nevertheless, in the event you encounter any third party associated with, or who claims association with, Dice, who you feel is improperly collecting or using information about you, please contact privacy@dice.com.

  1. How we use non-personally identifiable information: We use non-personally identifiable information in aggregate form to build higher quality, more useful Services by performing statistical analyses of the collective characteristics and behavior of our visitors and users, and by measuring demographics and interests regarding specific areas of the Services. We may provide statistical information based on this data to advertisers, users, and other current and potential business partners. We may also use the aggregate data to inform these third parties as to the number of people who have seen and clicked through links to their sites.

How we use personally identifiable information: We may use the personally identifiable information a user submits for any purposes related to Dice business, including, but not limited:

    1. To understand a user’s needs and create content that is relevant to the user;

    2. To generate statistical studies;

    3. To conduct market research and planning by sending user surveys;

    4. To notify user referrals of Dice services, information, or products when a user requests that Dice send such information to referrals;

    5. To improve services, information, and products;

    6. To help a user complete a transaction, or provide services or customer support to users and to recipients of Dice products;

    7. To communicate with the user and with recipients of Dice products and services;

    8. To email users about services, information, products and offers from our business partners (and as set forth in the Section How we share information we gather);

    9. To personalize a Site for the user;

    10. To notify the user of any changes with a Site which may affect the user;

    11. To enforce terms of use on a Site; and

    12. To allow the user to purchase products, access services, or otherwise engage in activities the user selects.

    13. To allow us to contact you by phone and/or email.




User names, identifications (“IDs”), and email addresses (as well as any additional information that a user may choose to post) may be publicly available on a Site when a user voluntarily and publicly discloses personally identifiable information, such as when a user posts personally identifiable information in conjunction with content subject to an open source license, uses features to send a message to another user, or as part of a message posted to a public forum or a publicly-released software application. Users may not be able to change or remove public postings once posted. Such personally identifiable information may be used by visitors of these pages to send unsolicited messages. Dice is not responsible for any consequences which may occur from the use of personally identifiable information that a user chooses to submit to public pages.

With respect to surveys, in the event that responses are publicly disclosed, users will be notified at the time they take the survey. Dice will disclose only aggregate information regarding its users, i.e., anonymous information that does not identify any specific individual. Circumstances under which Dice would publicly disclose such aggregate information include, but are not limited to, sharing survey results with the site population, providing data to Dice advertisers on user preferences and/or demographics, and publicizing overall usage data in press communications. Where surveys allow users to submit written comments, and where Dice advises users of the possibility of such disclosure at the time they take the survey, Dice reserves the right to disclose any information provided by users, provided that no personally identifiable information identifying a specific user is disclosed. Participation in surveys is at a user’s option.  Dice does not conduct mandatory surveys.

### C. How we share information we gather

Subject to the foregoing, Dice uses your personally identifiable information in several ways. Dice may share your personal information with service providers to help us with our business activities such as processing credit cards, email marketing, offering customer service, or operating a community forum.  These companies are authorized to use your personally identifiable information only as necessary to provide these services to us. Dice requires that these third parties establish safeguards to protect the confidentiality of the information that we provide them. We take steps to ensure they subscribe to Safe Harbor, are subject to EU Directive or another adequacy finding, or we enter into a written agreement requiring that they provide at least the same level of protection as required by relevant Safe Harbor principles.

In addition, Dice reserves the right to share aggregate information collected from users of the Sites, without prior notice, with entities that are part of the Dice corporate family and unrelated third parties. Aggregate information is used in a collective manner and no single person can be identified by such compiled information.

Dice may share certain data from SourceForge.net, Freecode.com, and Slashdot.org with researchers and research organizations for the purpose of supporting academic and scholarly research on free and/or open source software.  Dice may further choose to establish agreements for these parties to act in a clearinghouse capacity and authorize them to share this data with other researchers studying free and/or open source software.  When data from these websites is transmitted to researchers, Dice makes commercially reasonable efforts to remove personally identifiable information from data fields designed to capture personally identifiable information (other than user names and information that users have made publicly available through one of the sites).  Dice, however, does not guarantee the complete removal of information that may identify a user, particularly in cases where the user has provided that information in comment fields or other fields not specifically designed for the collection of identifiers.

In order to effectively tailor our services, these Sites may sell your personal information third party consultants and business partners, including, but not limited to other lead generation companies (collectively “Third Party Contractors”) to collect, compile, organize, and market to you related services.

When you submit any personal identifiable information on this Site, we will obtain your consent authorizing the Sites to sell to Third Party Contractors, any and all personally identifiable information that is necessary to enable additional service offerings.

Please note that Dice reserves the right to disclose information submitted by or concerning any visitor or user as we reasonably feel is necessary to protect our systems or business. We may also disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law, such as to comply with a subpoena or other legal process, when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request. We cooperate with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who may be using our servers or Services for illegal activities. We also reserve the right to report any suspected illegal activity to law enforcement for investigation or prosecution, or to suspend or terminate your use of the Sites in connection with any suspected illegal or infringing activity or if you are in violation of our Terms of Use Agreement or other published guidelines.

If Dice is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on the Site of any change in ownership or uses of your personally identifiable information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personally identifiable information. Dice reserves the right to assign, sell, license, or otherwise transfer to a third party your personally identifiable information in connection with an assignment, sale, joint venture, or other transfer or disposition of any portion or all of Dice’s or its affiliated entities’ assets or stock.

### D. Tracking Technologies

Pixels

We use pixels, or transparent GIF files, to help manage online advertising. These pixels are provided by our ad management partner, DoubleClick. These files enable our ad management partner to recognize a unique cookie on your Web browser, which in turn enables us to learn which advertisements bring users to our website. The information that we collect and share is anonymous and not personally identifiable. It does not contain your name, address, telephone number, or email address. For more information about DoubleClick, including information about how to opt out of these technologies, go to http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/ or you may also opt out by clicking Here.

Framing

The Sites may utilize framing and masking techniques to make it appear that the user is still on the Site when the user is actually on a third party website. We also have co-branding relationships with certain partners. In these relationships, you will notice our service platform on our partner’s page. In this situation, both parties are collecting your data and both privacy policies govern the data collected. We will not share your data with third parties without your consent in these and other relationships. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our Sites and to read the privacy policies of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information.

Web beacons

We use web beacons from time to time. A web beacon is a string of code that provides a method for delivering a graphic image on a web page or in an email message for the purpose of transferring data, or determining how many times a specific web page has been viewed. Web beacons enable Dice to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits a Site, and to learn which banner ads bring users to each Site. For example, when a user visits a web page, the code for the page may include instructions to go to another server to gather a single pixel graphic image. Web beacons are not placed on a user’s computer. Such web beacons may be provided by Dice’s third party advertising companies to help manage and optimize any online advertising.

To opt out of targeted advertising delivered by Network Advertising Initiative members, click here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/consumer/opt_out.asp

Cookies

We use cookies on the Sites. A “browser” or “HTTP” cookie is a unique text file that may be used for data analysis, and enables a web site to tailor information presented to a user based on a user’s browsing program. Dice may use browser cookies to personalize a user’s pages at a Site or Sites, to remember a user when the user registers for products or services, for fraud prevention, or to track visits to a Site or across our Sites. If a user does not want Dice or its partners to deploy browser cookies in the user’s browser when the user visits the Sites, the user may set the browser to reject cookies or to notify the user when a web site tries to place cookies in the browser program. Rejecting cookies may affect a user’s ability to use some of the products, features, functions, or services on our Sites.

We also may use local shared objects, also known as “Flash cookies” to store your preferences or display content based upon what you view on our website to personalize your visit. Flash cookies are different from “browser” cookies because of the amount of, type of, and how data is stored. Cookie management tools provided by your browser will not remove Flash cookies. To learn how to manage privacy and storage settings for Flash cookies, including how to delete Flash cookies, click here for additional information: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html#117118.

The ads appearing on the Sites may be delivered to visitors by third parties, such as Google. The third party advertising technology that Dice uses on the Sites uses information derived from a user’s visits to the Sites to target advertising within the Sites. In addition, Dice’s advertisers may use other third party advertising technology to target advertising on the Sites. In the course of serving advertisements to the Sites, our partners may place or recognize a unique cookie on a user’s browser. Information about users’ visits to the Sites, such as the number of times users have viewed an ad (but not users’ names, addresses, or other personally identifiable information), are used to serve ads to visitors. The use of cookies enables our partners to serve ads to users based on such user’s visit to Dice’s sites and other sites on the Internet. As with other cookies, and consistent with Dice’s policy on cookies stated above, the user may block or delete such cookies from the user’s drive or memory. For more information about Google, Google’s use of cookies, and how to “opt out” of Google’s email/information lists, please click here: http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html. As noted in the Web Beacon discussion above, users also can opt-out of receiving these types of targeted network advertisements from many advertising networks by clicking Here. Please note this does not opt you out of being served advertising. You will continue to receive generic ads.

Log files

Dice web servers may automatically log aggregate information, such as a user’s IP address, domain name, browser type, date and time of access, and other log file data. This information may be used to analyze trends or administer the Sites.

Third party web site links & subdomains

Links to third party web sites or widgets to enable sharing of information through social networks on the Sites are provided solely as a convenience to the user. When a user uses these links, the user leaves the Sites. Dice has not reviewed all of these third party sites, does not control, and is not responsible for, any of the third party sites, their content or privacy practices. Dice does not endorse or make any representations about the third party sites, or any information, services, or products found on the sites. If a user decides to access any of the linked sites, Dice encourages the user to read their privacy statements. The user accesses such sites at user’s own risk.

With respect to SourceForge.net, Dice to delivers the following services via subdomains:

  * Integrated communications,

  * Internet access,

  * Information sharing between developers and end users, and

  * Downloads through third-party mirror providers




Any personally identifiable information you provide using any third party content, software, services, and other products is subject to that third party’s policies governing privacy and security.

### E. Security

The security of your personally identifiable information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number) on our order forms, we encrypt the transmission of that information.

We follow generally accepted standards to protect the personally identifiable information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. It is your responsibility to protect the security of your login information. Please help keep your account safe by using a strong password. We advise that you do not communicate any confidential information through our services.

If you have any questions about security on our Sites, you can contact us at security@dice.com.

### F. Surveys and Sweepstakes

Occasionally, Dice may conduct surveys in order to better deliver advertisements and content and to better understand your needs relating to the Services. We will not share your survey information with any third party, except in aggregate form.

From time to time we may provide you the opportunity to participate in contests or surveys on our site. If you participate, we will request certain personally identifiable information from you. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code). That information, to the extent it conflicts with this policy, will govern that particular promotion or sweepstakes – please remember to read it carefully. We may use this information to notify contest winners and award prizes, to monitor Site use, to personalize the site, to send participants an email, and to measure participants’ demographics, interests and opinions. We may use a third party service provider to conduct these surveys or contests; that company will be prohibited from using our users’ personally identifiable information for any other purpose. We will not share the personally identifiable information you provide through a contest or survey with other third parties unless we give you prior notice and choice.

If you choose to use our referral service to tell another person about a job, we will ask you for that person’s email address. We will automatically send that person a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. We use this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email, and do not store these email addresses.

### G. Social Media Features

The Sites include social media features, such as the Facebook Like button and widgets, that run on our Sites. These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Sites. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

### H. Facebook Connect

You may  be able to log in to our Sites using sign-in services such as Facebook Connect. These services will authenticate your identity and provide you the option to share certain personally identifiable information with us such as your name and email address to pre-populate our sign up form. Services like Facebook Connect give you the option to post information about your activities on the Sites to your profile page to share with others within your network.

### I. Correcting personally identifiable information

If you would like to have your personally identifiable information removed from Dice’s database, or would like to correct an error in such information, please contact us at privacy@dice.com, and we will use reasonable efforts to comply with your request. Keep in mind, however, that there will be residual information that will remain within Dice databases, access logs, and other records, which may or may not contain such personally identifiable information. The residual information will not be used for commercial purposes.  If you have provided more than one email address to our service, you may continue to be contacted, unless you request to unsubscribe each email address you have provided.

  1. Access: If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may correct, update, amend, delete/remove or deactivate it by making the change on our member information page or by emailing our Customer Support at support@dice.com or by contacting us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed below.

  2. Data Retention: We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you Services. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information to provide you Services, contact us at support@dice.com. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

  3. Blogs: The Sites may offer publicly accessible blogs or community forums. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your personally identifiable information from our blog or community forum, contact us at support@dice.com. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personally identifiable information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.

  4. Testimonials: We post customer testimonials on the Sites which may contain personally identifiable information. We do obtain the customer’s consent via email prior to posting the testimonial to post their name along with their testimonial.




### J. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this privacy policy to reflect changes to our information practices. If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the e-mail address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on the Site prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.

Note that, by using the Services, you signify your agreement to this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Policy, please do not use the Services. Your continued use of the Services subsequent to changes to this Policy will mean that you accept the changes; therefore, please bookmark this page and review it periodically. If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, or any other privacy issues in connection with the Services, please e-mail us at privacy@dice.com.

### K. Questions?

Questions regarding this Privacy Policy should be directed to privacy@dice.com. You may also contact us at Dice Holdings, Inc., 12150 Meredith Drive, Urbandale, IA 50323, or 888-321-3423.