Privacy Policy

Welcome to the privacy policy ("Privacy Policy") for Autoquake.com. Your privacy is very important to us. Please read this Privacy Policy to learn about the ways in which we use and protect your personal information. This Privacy Policy applies to the www.autoquake.com website (the "Site").

This policy covers how Autoquake.com treats personal information that Autoquake.com collects and receives, including information related to your past use of Autoquake.com's products and services. By accepting this Privacy Policy and the Visitors Agreement, you expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information in the manner prescribed in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to all these terms and conditions, please do not provide us with any information and do not use Autoquake.com.

Effective Date: August 31, 2006.

1. Information We Collect

Our primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide you with a safe, efficient, and personalized experience. We only collect personal information about you that we consider necessary for this purpose.

In general, you can browse the Site without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself. Once you give us your personal information, you are not anonymous to us. If you choose to use our services, we may require you to provide contact and identity information, financial information and other personal information as indicated by the Site. Where possible, we indicate which fields are required and which fields are optional. You always have the option not to provide information by choosing not to use a particular service or feature.

Under some circumstances we may require some additional financial information, such as, but not limited to, credit card details if you are registering to sell on the Site or to registering to use our financial services. We use this financial information to help verify your name, address, and other information. We may also use this information to charge you for your use of our services.

We automatically collect and process certain information based upon your use of the Site. We use this information to conduct internal research on our users' demographics, interests, and behaviour to better understand and serve you and our community. This information may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on the Site or not), which links on our site you follow, browser information, and your IP address.

We use data collection devices such as "cookies" on certain pages of the Site. "Cookies" are pieces of information, small files placed on your hard drive by your web browser between visits of our site that assist us in providing customised services and to help promote safer trading. We also offer certain features that are only available through the use of a cookie. We also use cookies to allow you to enter your password less frequently while you are using the Site. Cookies can also help us provide information which we tailor to your interests. Most cookies are "session cookies", meaning that they are automatically deleted from your hard drive at the end of a session using the Site. You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although in that case you may not be able to use certain features on the Site and you may be required to re-enter your password more frequently while you are using the Site. Cookies don't reveal personal information; the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. Cookies can't read unrelated data off your hard drive.

To help us keep track of how many users are visiting particular pages within our website, and how many users are accessing particular listings that we distribute, we may place a small file, called a web beacon, on some of our pages and on some of the listings we distribute. These web beacons allow us to track the number of users that view our pages and our listings, but they don't reveal any personally identifying information about individual users.

Additionally, you may encounter "cookies" or other similar devices on certain pages of the Site that are placed by third parties. For example, if you view a web page or an ad created by a user or partner, there may be a "cookie" placed within that web page. We do not control the use of cookies by third parties.

If you establish a credit account with us to pay the fees we charge, we collect some additional information, including but not limited to a billing address, a credit card number and a credit card expiration date. We do not store credit card information except, for reference purposes only; we may store the last 4 digits of credit card numbers.

If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails or letters, or if other users or third parties send us correspondence about your activities or postings on the Site, we may collect such information into a file specific to you.

If you register for Autoquake.com (a) on another web site, or (b) use a web site providing a service for Autoquake.com, or (c) a web site that helps facilitate your activity on Autoquake.com, that web site may provide personal information about you and your transactions back to Autoquake.com.

2. Our Use of Your Information

We use information in the files we maintain about you, and other information we obtain from your current and past activities on the Site, to resolve disputes, provide customer support, troubleshoot problems and enforce our Visitors Agreement and policies. At times, we may look across multiple users to identify problems or resolve disputes, and in particular we may examine your information to identify users using multiple User IDs or aliases.

To make use of certain features on our site, visitors need to provide limited information about themselves and their interests so that we can tailor the information we provide to their needs. For example, to help you find the car you want close to home, we need to know what kind of car you're looking for and your postal code. We ask you to provide this information when you perform a search. We use this information to help you find the car you're looking for. If you find a listing that interests you and elect to send the seller an email through our website, we'll share with the seller the contact information you supply through our online "Email Seller" form.

You agree that we may use personally identifiable information about you to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to analyze site usage, improve our content and product offerings, and customise the Site's content, layout, and services. These uses improve the Site and better tailor it to meet your needs.

You agree that we may use your information to contact you and deliver information to you that, in some cases, are targeted to your interests, such as targeted banner advertisements, administrative notices, product offerings, and communications relevant to your use of the Site. By accepting the Visitors Agreement and reading this Privacy Policy, you expressly agree to receive this information.

3. An Important Note About Children

Our services are not available to children and we ask that persons under the age of 18 do not submit any personal information to us. If you are under 18 years old, you can use this service only in conjunction with and under the supervision of a parent or guardian.

4. Our Disclosure of Your Information

As a matter of policy, Autoquake.com will never sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. However, the following describes some of the ways that we may disclose your personally identifiable information:

(1) We aggregate (gather up data across all user accounts) personally identifiable information and disclose such information in a non-personally identifiable manner to advertisers and other third parties for marketing and promotional purposes. However, in these situations, we do not disclose to these entities any information that could be used to identify you personally. Certain information, such as your name, email address, password, credit card number, and bank account number are never disclosed to third party advertisers.

(2) Autoquake.com cooperates with law enforcement inquiries, as well as other third parties, to enforce laws and third party rights, such as intellectual property rights and laws relating to fraud. Therefore, in response to a verified request by law enforcement or other government officials such as a the Data Protection Act 1998 form relating to a criminal investigation or alleged illegal activity, or other activity that may expose us or you to legal liability, we can (and you authorise us to) disclose personal information such as name, address, telephone number, email address, User ID history, and bidding and listing history about you as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate. Further, we can (and you authorise us to) disclose your User ID, name, address, telephone number, email address, and company name to Autoquake.com under a confidentiality agreement as we in our sole discretion believe necessary to share information in order to prevent, investigate, or take action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud, situations involving potential physical threats to any person, violations of our Visitors Agreement, intellectual property infringement or other unlawful activities.

We respond to verified requests (subpoenas, search warrants, court orders, or other legal process) from law enforcement or other government officials relating to a criminal investigation of alleged illegal activity, or to establish or exercise our legal right or defense against legal claims.

(3) At times we may retain third parties to analyze data we collect, including Personal Information, safely to help us improve our products and our Web site . In addition, if you order a product or service from us, we may provide Personal Information to suppliers and other third parties to enable delivery of such product or service. These third parties are not authorized by us to use your Personal Information in any way. To help us do this, we may measure the effectiveness of our web presence by determining what you clicked on to get to our site. To help us do this, we may measure statistics to personalize your Web site experience, as well as to evaluate statistics about usage of the Web site. Information about your computer may also be collected and linked to your Personal Information. This is to ensure that our Web site presents the best web experience for visitors, and that they are effective information resources.

We cannot ensure that all of your communications with Autoquake.com and other personally identifiable information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Privacy Policy. For example, third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, or users may abuse or misuse your information that they collect from the Site. Therefore, although we use industry standard practices to protect your privacy, we cannot guarantee, and you should not expect, that your personally identifiable information or communications with Autoquake.com will always remain private.

We reserve the right to transfer information about you to a successor in interest that acquires the right to such information by acquiring the Service, acquiring Autoquake.com or substantially all of Autoquake.com's assets, or merging with Autoquake.com. In any of these events, Autoquake.com will notify you before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

5. Links

This site contains links to other sites. We will make every effort to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy. We are not responsible for any other Websites, their respective privacy practices, or privacy policies to find out how they treat your personal information. When you visit or access any third-party site, you are subject to that site's privacy policy and terms and conditions.

6. Control of Your Password

You are responsible for all actions taken with your User ID and password, including those actions that result in fees being charged to your account. Therefore we strongly recommend that you do not disclose your Autoquake.com password to any third parties. If you choose to share your User ID and password or your information with third parties when necessary for you to do so for them to provide you with additional services, you are responsible for all actions taken with your User ID and password and therefore you should review that third party's privacy policy. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personally identifiable information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Whenever there is any risk that your password or account has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately change your password as detailed in Section 6 below and check recent activity on your account.

7. Accessing, Reviewing and Changing Your Personally Identifiable Information

We offer you the ability to review and change the information you submit to us by logging into the Site and entering in the new information yourself or by sending us an email to privacy@autoquake.com. Upon your written request, we will deactivate your account, contact information, and financial information from our active databases. To make this request, please contact us at privacy@autoquake.com. Such information will be deactivated as soon as reasonably possible in accordance with our deactivation policy and applicable law. We will retain in our files information you have requested to remove in some circumstances, such as to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems and enforce our Visitor Agreement. Further, such prior information is never completely removed from our databases due to technical and legal constraints, including stored "back up" systems. Therefore, you should not expect that all of your personally identifiable information will be completely removed from our databases in response to your requests. New categories of marketing communications may be added to the Marketing Preferences page from time to time. Users who visit this page can opt out of receiving future marketing communications from these new categories or they can unsubscribe by following instructions contained in the messages they receive.

8. Other Information Collectors

Except as otherwise expressly included in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties, whether they are bidders, buyers or sellers on the Site or other sites throughout the Internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. To the extent that we use third party advertisers, they adhere to their own privacy policies. Since Autoquake.com does not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to the privacy policies of that third party. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

9. Security

Autoquake.com has implemented reasonable security measures in order to protect both personal information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration. We limit access to personal information about you to employees who we believe reasonably need that information to provide products or services to you. Our employees are made aware of and are accountable for compliance with these procedures. All Member accounts are password-protected. We go to great lengths to protect the account information that you have provided us. Access to this information is limited to only the Autoquake.com employees who need it in order to perform their job function, such as customer service representatives. However, please note that we do not guarantee account security. Hardware or software failure and other factors may lead to a security breach. If you have any questions about this, please contact us at privacy@autoquake.com.

10. Changes in our Privacy Policy

As we update and expand our services, this Privacy Policy may change to accurately reflects the regulatory environment and our own data collection and disclosure practices so it is your responsibility to refer back to it periodically.