document: title: privacy
text: At MouthShut.com, we are extremely proud of our commitment to protect your privacy. We value your trust in us and assure you that we would use the information we collect only to provide a more personalized experience. We will work hard to earn your confidence so that you can enthusiastically use our services and recommend us to friends and family. Please read the following policy to understand how your personal information will be treated as you make full use of our many offerings. This document provides a thorough description of tools that MouthShut.com provides to help you interact with other users and MouthShut.com's practices to help you understand MouthShut.com's approaches to privacy. You should carefully read this Privacy Statement (the "Statement"). If you have any questions about this Statement, email privacy@MouthShut.com.

This Statement supplements the MouthShut.com User Agreement (the "Agreement"). Thus, this Statement is incorporated into and governed by all of the terms of the Agreement. In the event of any conflict between the terms of the Agreement and this Statement, the terms of this Statement shall control.

This Statement applies only to information collected on the MouthShut.com web site. It does not speak about MouthShut.com's practices for information collected elsewhere or the practices of any third parties, including those who may operate sites on MouthShut.com's behalf and that display MouthShut.com branding. 

* #### Unregistered Guests:

The MouthShut.com site is optimized for registered users. By registering, you can obtain benefits such as the opportunity to write Opinions, accrue MS-Points credits and personalize your experience using our proprietary tools such as SORT™ and Trusted Circle™. If you choose not to register, you can still use some portions of the site. In that case, MouthShut.com may obtain your IP addresses and by analyzing what URLs you came from and go to.
* #### Registered Users:

If you register, MouthShut.com stores your preferences and passwords for your convenience, to provide you with a more personalized experience. At present MouthShut.com does not use cookies to store your login sessions.
* #### Your Registration Information:

When you register, MouthShut.com asks you for a number of pieces of information. If you register through a co-branded site, the co-brand partner may be transferring to MouthShut.com some or all of the required registration information or possibly other information about you.  
MouthShut.com uses registration information internally for a number of purposes, including:

\- email distribution as described in the Agreement, as you request on the site (such as promotional opportunities or newsletters if you check the applicable boxes on the registration page, and as described below in Section 9), and for administrative purposes (such as to notify you about changes to the Agreement or this Statement or to contact you regarding redemptions of MS-Points credits or other problems with your account). In accordance with instructions on the site, you may opt not to receive certain emails in the future, and MouthShut.com will use reasonable efforts to honor your request.

\- possible special opportunities, such as to become a featured reviewer, get extra exposure on the site or accrue more MS-Points credits.

\- display banner (and similar) advertising to you in connection with the site that is more targeted to you specifically. In doing this type of targeting, MouthShut.com or its ad server, and not the advertiser, connect you with the targeting criteria.

Through your account page, you have some choices about whether or not to display your registration information publicly on the site.

If you register through a co-branded site, MouthShut.com may be required to give the co-brand partner some or all of your registration information to them. While MouthShut.com will use such information in accordance with this Statement, it does not always control how the co-brand partners use or disclose such information. However, the co-brand partner is governed by their privacy policies. If you have any concerns about such privacy policies, you should contact the co-brand partner.

You may request to cancel your registration to the site or request the removal of your registration information from member records by emailing support@MouthShut.com which permission may or may not be granted. However, MouthShut.com will send you an email to confirm your request. After you respond, MouthShut.com will in most cases, remove your information from its "live" database, but residual information may remain in archives and records. MouthShut.com may not be able to propagate changes to your registration information to its co-brand partners who have received such information. In addition, if your account is being terminated for violations of the Agreement, MouthShut.com may keep some of your registration information active to prevent re-registration. 

* #### Your Opinions:

All information you submit as part of an Opinion is automatically displayed on the site (so long as it passes the software filters). MouthShut.com may use such information in accordance with the license granted in the Agreement. This includes the right to use the Opinion or teaser portions (including your identity and photo) throughout the site, on other sites on the web, and offline. If you have registered through a co-branded site, please be aware that MouthShut.com may be required to transfer your Opinions to the co-brand partner for their use and display. Subject to the limitations discussed in the Agreement, you can change an Opinion at any time using the tools available to you on each Opinion page. If you wish to delete an Opinion, you may request support@MouthShut.com on a case-by-case basis. Your request may or may not be granted, depending on the reason of your request. In all cases, MouthShut.com will protect your privacy, as laid down in this policy. However, if the Opinion has been transferred to other sites or parties, your changes may not propagate to these other places.
* #### Comments on Opinions:

Posting comments to other people's Opinions automatically displays your identity. This is true even if you have rated the Opinion anonymously. MouthShut.com may choose to transfer your comments to third parties if MouthShut.com transfers the associated Opinion.
* #### Your Personal Profile Pages:

MouthShut.com allows you to display a large variety of personal information about yourself through the tools that edit your personal profile page. As you can see when you edit your preferences on this page, you have choices about whether to display or hide this information, and you can change this information at any time (although, as discussed elsewhere, it may not be possible to propagate all of these changes instantly or ever). Please note that whatever URL you choose to link to your photo will cause that photo to be displayed in many places throughout the site (not just on the personal profile page).

MouthShut.com does not transfer your personal profile in total to third parties, but may transfer pieces of your personal profile page in accordance with your instructions, in situations similar to those described under the Registration Information heading above, or as described elsewhere in this Statement.

* #### Your Rating of Others and the Trusted Circle:

One of the most powerful aspects of the site is that it personalizes your experience based on your personal interests using the Trusted Circle™. The system assesses your prior experiences on the site (as evidenced by how you've rated other Opinions or trusted/distrusted other members), and then uses these experiences to dynamically sort the database of Opinions for you based on those that are more likely to interest you. To do this, MouthShut.com captures information about your interactions with other users and then processes this information each time you look for Opinions. The more you interact with others, the more personalized your subsequent uses of the site will be.

In rating and commenting on others' Opinions, your MS-ID is displayed. This causes the Opinion author and all other readers of the Opinion to see your rating. You can choose to hide your identity when rating on an Opinion-by-Opinion basis by making a special request to support@mouthshut.com.

You can also hide or reveal your identity in trusting and distrusting others across all people you trust. You can change your mind and hide/reveal your identity in trusting and distrusting others by following the instructions on the site. However, you cannot prevent from your MS-ID being displayed if another member trusts or distrusts you. Similarly, even if you choose to hide your Trusted and Distrusted Member list, the members who you trust and distrust will know that you trust or distrust them.

Except as otherwise contemplated in this Statement, MouthShut.com does not transfer the complete database of rating and transactional information to others. However, the database is used throughout all of the sites MouthShut.com operates or may operate in future, whether branded solely by MouthShut.com, co-branded with others, or operated for others on a private-label basis.

* #### MS-Points Credit Redemption:

MouthShut.com may ask you for additional information to process a request for MS-Points credit redemption. MouthShut.com may choose to add such information to our database record about you, which will be treated the same as other business records. Without limiting the foregoing, MouthShut.com uses your mailing address information to send you redeemed MS-Points credits and, in limited circumstances, other communications. Also, MouthShut.com may choose to feature your Member ID in promotional materials (both online and offline) to highlight your earnings successes.
* #### Email Notifications:

In a number of places, MouthShut.com provides the option to receive an email when an activity occurs. For example, you can choose to be emailed if a specific other member writes an Opinion or a comment, or if a new Opinion is written on a certain product. If you choose to be notified when another member writes an Opinion or comment, that other member will be able to see that you've done so.
* #### Scratch-Pad Feature:

The Scratch-Pad feature allows you to store links and notes in a centralized place in your account. Except as may otherwise be specified in the notebook feature, the information you store in your notebook is not displayed on your profile page or otherwise in the public areas of the MouthShut.com site.
* #### Integrated Services:

Although MouthShut.com doesn't currently offer any integrated services operated by third parties as part of your registration, MouthShut.com expects to do so in the future. These could include functionality like a MouthShut.com email account. In these circumstances, MouthShut.com may transfer some or all of your registration information and other information to the third party to operate the integrated service if you choose to use these services.
* #### Internal Analyses and Reports:

MouthShut.com uses all of the information in its databases, including personal information you've submitted, and other server and usage logs, to analyze the site and user behavior, troubleshoot technical problems, resolve disputes and address complaints, and prepare aggregated reports that are shared with others, including the management of MouthShut.com.
* #### Other Information:

Specific uses of personal information that vary from this Privacy Statement (if any) may be found throughout the site. To the extent that, during your submission of information on the site, you are notified of privacy practices that are different from those described in this Privacy Statement, those alternative disclosures will govern that submission.

There may be situations where MouthShut.com collects data through a survey or similar process when the page does not link to this Statement. In those cases, unless you are informed otherwise, you should assume that MouthShut.com treats all information from such pages as it treats its other valuable business records.

Of course, there are many other ways in which MouthShut.com could get information from or about you that are not described elsewhere in this Statement. For example, you might send email through a customer service email address, or MouthShut.com may get a complaint about you from a third party. MouthShut.com's practices with respect to such information are pretty much as you'd expect-MouthShut.com uses and discloses this information in a commercially reasonable business manner.

* #### Children:

MouthShut.com feels strongly about protecting the privacy of children and encourages kids to involve their parents in any interactive activity they participate in online. If you are 12 or younger and we collect your age information through the registration process, you are not eligible to use the site. If you are under 18, MouthShut.com encourages you to use the site with the help of your parents or guardians of legal age, but you are not eligible to participate in the MS-Points program
* #### Contractors and Third Party Service Providers:

MouthShut.com uses contractors to help with its operations. Some or all of these contractors may access the databases of user information. Usually these contractors will enter into an agreement that places restrictive provisions on their use and disclosure of all information they obtain through the relationship.

MouthShut.com may also use third party service providers to help with certain aspects of its operations that may require disclosure of your personal information to them. For example, MouthShut.com may use a third party service provider to mail MS-Points redemption rewards, serve ads, or deliver some or all of the emails sent as part of the site's normal operation. Again, usually MouthShut.com will place extensive restrictions on the ability of these third parties to use and disclose your personal information except as necessary to perform the services they are asked to perform.

* #### The "Corporate Family":

MouthShut.com may share some or all of your information with its subsidiaries or parent company (if any in future), in which case MouthShut.com will ask such entities to honor the promises in this Statement. In addition, as part of a diligence review, MouthShut.com may disclose some or all of your personal information to a potential acquirer or merger partner, although in this case MouthShut.com would try to restrict their use and disclosure of this information.
* #### Government Relations and Lawsuits:

In some cases, the government can compel the disclosure of information about you, and of course MouthShut.com will need to comply. However, irrespective of those situations, MouthShut.com can unilaterally turn over information about you to the government if it believes such disclosure to be appropriate, in which case you authorize it to do so. You also consent to MouthShut.com disclosing information about you to actual or potential parties to a lawsuit that MouthShut.com is or may become involved in (a) if it is required to do so, (b) if it reasonably believes that such disclosures will potentially mitigate its liability, or (c) to enforce its rights.
* #### Collecting Personal Information from the Site:

Many friendships have developed through the site, and MouthShut.com wants the community to be vibrant and engaged. Thus, MouthShut.com is delighted when users begin communicating with each other outside the context of the site. However, not every user wants to engage in these types of dialogue, and MouthShut.com believes each user should have the right to set the boundaries that feel right to them. Thus, you may not collect, use or store any personal information about other users on the site for any purpose whatsoever unless the user invites you to do so. Thus, if a user displays an email address in his or her personal profile, you can assume that the user is willing to receive a single personal email from you that has some relation to the site. However, without that user's permission, you may not contact the user about something that has nothing to do with MouthShut.com, store that user's contact information in a database for further communications, or continue to contact the user if they have requested you not to. In all circumstances, as described in the Agreement, you may not use robots, scripts or other automated procedures to collect any information, including user contact information, from the site. You may also not email users inviting them to join your own review site under any circumstance-doing so is a theft of MouthShut.com's valuable rights and an affront to users. MouthShut.com will protect its users' interests-and its own interests-very vigorously in this regard.
* #### Your Use of Email Tools:

MouthShut.com may provide you with some tools that allow you to send email to your friends. If you use this tool, the email will include your email address, as well as any personal message you choose to include. MouthShut.com does not store, in any easily-retrievable way, the email addresses of the friends you are communicating with. You may not use these tools to send spam or to send content that would violate the Agreement. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not send "Tell a Friend" invitations to anyone who would not welcome the message or post any invitations to any web sites, message boards, mail lists or USENET groups (unless you are the owner of that venue). In any case, you should not assume that emails processed by MouthShut.com are private communications.
* #### Limits on MouthShut.com' Abilities:

A site and service as complicated as MouthShut.com is never perfect, and thus MouthShut.com may inadvertently make uses or disclosures of your information in ways not contemplated by, or in direct contravention of, this Statement. For example, if the software has a temporary glitch, your personal information could be displayed on the site even though you've configured your preferences otherwise. MouthShut.com might also make ad hoc uses of your information in ways it can't contemplate here. MouthShut.com will do its best to work with you if these types of situations arise, but your sole remedy in these cases is to have MouthShut.com try to rectify the problem as soon as it can.

In addition, although highly unlikely, it is possible for Internet transmissions containing your personal information to be intercepted by others. It is impossible for MouthShut.com to ensure the privacy and security of all transmissions made to and from the site while in transit.

Of course, MouthShut.com does not control the privacy practices of its advertisers and other third-party sites that it promotes or links to. If you click through a banner ad or link and submit your information to an advertiser, you will be subject to their privacy policies. Please make sure you understand these policies before submitting your information.

* #### Security Practices:

MouthShut.com uses industry-standard methods of securing its databases of user information, such as, if and where appropriate, firewalls and limits on who can access user information databases. However, please keep in mind that there is no such thing as perfect security on the Internet.