Hitwise Privacy Policy

Customer Privacy Policy

Hitwise is strongly committed to protecting and respecting your privacy rights in accordance with the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance. This Customer Privacy Policy sets out the basis on which Hitwise collects and uses personal data from you and should assist you in understanding our data security and privacy practices regarding collecting personal data from customers of Hitwise services. Please note that the practices outlined in this Customer Privacy Policy apply to Hitwise's collection and use of Hitwise customer personal data only, i.e. data obtained from subscribers and clients of Hitwise services. It does not relate to data collected from Hitwise's data partners such as ISPs. A separate privacy policy relates to the collection of data from ISPs (see the Partner Privacy Policy below).

The Customer Privacy Policy is broken down into several key areas for your benefit:

Obligation to provide
What personally identifiable information is collected?
Are Cookies and Log files used?
Where we store your personal data
Uses made of the information
Does Hitwise disclose information to Third Parties?
Links to Third Party Sites
Can I change or delete information secured?
Children's Online Privacy Protection
Legal nature of this Privacy Statement
Changes
Contact our Privacy Office

Obligation to provide
Customers and potential customers are not obliged to provide any personal data to Hitwise. However, if any person declines to provide personal data that Hitwise seeks, Hitwise may be unable to provide the services, goods or information that person seeks.

What personally identifiable information is collected?
Hitwise collects information from its customers in a fair and lawful manner for the purposes of customer identification, providing services and billing and related administration. Hitwise collects customer data from newsletter subscribers and customers at the time of registration or subscription to the Hitwise service, such as name, address, e-mail address, fax and telephone numbers. Hitwise may collect other information about the newsletter subscriber's and customer's use of the website and their business or the company for whom they work, for the purpose of direct marketing campaigns, as permitted by law. Customers are not obliged to provide such information and newsletter subscribers and customers may choose to opt out of such direct marketing campaigns through contacting the Privacy Manager. Hitwise will give you the option to opt out of each campaign in any related correspondence that we may send to you.

Hitwise may keep a record of any correspondence with customers and newsletter subscribers.

Hitwise may also ask you to complete surveys for research purposes and may keep a copy of your responses. Please note that you are not obliged to respond to such surveys.

Are Cookies and Log files used?
Hitwise may collect information about your computer and browsing preferences, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration purposes. This is statistical data about Hitwise's users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

In some circumstances, Hitwise uses cookies to enhance the functionality of the service we offer our customers. A cookie is a small data file on the hard drive of your computer. Hitwise uses cookies to identify a customer and to store registration details so that the customer is no longer required to re-enter these details on subsequent visits. In addition, Hitwise uses cookies to indicate the number of computers used by each customer to log-in to the Hitwise service, to prevent abuse of the system and logins (See Conditions of Use). Hitwise also collects information on IP addresses and web browsers used by customers when they access the service for the same reasons mentioned above.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts or functionality of the Hitwise website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to the Hitwise website.

Where we store your personal data
Transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although Hitwise will endeavour to protect your personal data, Hitwise cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to the Hitwise website. Transmission is at your own risk. Once Hitwise has received your information, Hitwise will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside of Hong Kong. By submitting your personal data to Hitwise, you consent to the transfer and storage of personal data outside of Hong Kong. Hitwise will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely outside Hong Kong and in accordance with this Customer Privacy Policy.

All information you provide to Hitwise is stored on Hitwise's secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted. Where Hitwise has given you a password which enables you to access certain parts of the Hitwise website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential.

Uses made of the information
Hitwise uses information held about you in the following ways:

To provide you with information and services that you request from Hitwise or which Hitwise feels may interest you, where you have consented for such purposes;

To carry out its obligations in any contracts with you;
To allow you to participate in interactive features of the Hitwise service, when you choose to do so; and
To notify you about the changes to the Hitwise service.
To conduct internal administration of Hitwise's business.

Does Hitwise disclose information to Third Parties?
Hitwise uses third party tools such as online CRM software and email communication systems to store customer personal data on third party ASP servers. Hitwise does not permit third party ASPs to use customer personal data. Hitwise does not share or disclose this information with or to any other third parties. Hitwise and the third parties we contract with take every care to ensure the security of customer personal data.

Hitwise does not collect or compile personally identifiable information for the dissemination or sale to outside parties for consumer marketing purposes.

Hitwise may disclose the names of users of the Hitwise service to enquiring parties only if the enquiring party is from the same organisation as the Hitwise user.

Hitwise may disclose your personal data to third parties:

in the event that Hitwise sells or buys any business or assets, in which case Hitwise may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets;
if Hitwise or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets;
if Hitwise is under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation;
in order to enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements with you; or
to protect the rights, property or safety of Hitwise or its customers, which includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Links to Third Party Sites
The Hitwise website may from time to time contain links to external websites. Hitwise encourages its customers to review the privacy and security policies of any externally linked websites that may be accessed through the Hitwise website. Hitwise assumes no responsibility or liability for the information, collection and disclosure practices of any sites that a user can access through the Hitwise website. Please check the privacy policies of external websites before you submit any personal data to them.

Can I change or delete information secured?
Hitwise does its utmost to ensure the quality and accuracy of the customer personal data in its possession, and as such invites newsletter subscribers and customers of the service to access or update their details as necessary. Hitwise is committed to providing reasonable and practical access to allow visitors the opportunity to identify and correct any inaccurate details we may hold. This can be done by clicking here or through contacting the Privacy Manager.

Hitwise shall respond to your data access request within 40 days of receiving your request. If Hitwise is unable to respond to your request within such period Hitwise shall notify you of the reason why Hitwise is so unable. Hitwise reserves the right to charge you a reasonable administrative fee for complying with any access request made by you.

All newsletter subscribers and customers have the right to access or update personal data that they have submitted through the Hitwise website by clicking here or by contacting the Privacy Manager. Should subscribers and customers subsequently choose to unsubscribe from mailing lists they can do so by following the instructions on how to unsubscribe provided in all Hitwise communications. On request, Hitwise will delete personally identifiable information that has been submitted from the current database, unless it is required to retain such information by law. As a general principle, Hitwise will retain customer records for 7 years.

Children's Online Privacy Protection
The Hitwise service is directed towards adult business users. Hitwise does not knowingly collect information from children under the age of 13. Children under the age of 13 should not use the Hitwise website or submit information to Hitwise.

Legal nature of this Privacy Statement
Please note that this Privacy Statement is not intended to create a legally binding agreement between Hitwise and customers of the Hitwise services. This statement has been created as a guide to the privacy practices of Hitwise, and is not a contractual document. Hitwise will act to ensure it complies with the privacy principles contained in this Customer Privacy Policy.

Changes
Any changes that Hitwise makes to this Customer Privacy Policy shall be posted on the Hitwise website and where appropriate notified to you by email.

Contact our Privacy Office
If you have any queries about the privacy statement or to report a privacy issue or wish to know more about our Complaint Handling Procedure please contact our Privacy Manager .

Partner Privacy Policy

This privacy policy relates to the data collected by Hitwise from data partners in order to power the range of real-time competitive intelligence tools.

Hitwise takes significant steps to ensure that its privacy practices, and that of its data partners, protect an individual's data privacy rights. The Hitwise products do not require the collection of personally identifiable information about individuals. Hitwise produce products that help clients understand general and aggregate usage of the Internet to assist with their marketing efforts.

This Partner Privacy Policy is broken down into several key areas for your benefit:

Who are Hitwise's data partners?
What information is collected from partners?
Does Hitwise collect any personally identifiable information?
Contact our Privacy Office

Who are Hitwise's data partners?
Hitwise partners with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as well as companies who have established panels of Internet users through a clear and robust opt-in process.

What information is collected from partners?
Hitwise only collects aggregate, non-personally identifiable data from its partners.

This data collected from ISPs includes aggregate usage statistics of websites. Once this data is weighted to be representative of regional usage of the internet Hitwise produce a product that ranks the most popular sites visited in a given market.

Hitwise is also able to collect demographic information about the visitors to a website via our opt-in panel partners. This information does not contain any personally identifiable data about individuals. This data has been provided by the user when they opted-in to join the panel. It may include the age, gender, household income level and regional or state location of the user. Such data is provided to Hitwise on an anonymous basis.

Does Hitwise collect any personally identifiable information?
At no time does Hitwise collect any personally identifiable data from any of its data partners.

Contact our Privacy Office
If you have any queries about the privacy statement or wish to know more about our Complaint Handling Procedure please contact our Privacy Manager .