Privacy Policy
Last Updated September 12, 2007
Engage does not send spam or sell email addresses.
Engage is committed to honoring the privacy of its members and visitors. This Privacy Policy, part of Engage's overall Terms of Use, describes how Engage uses your personally identifiable information (such as name, address, email addresses, and double blind email communications between Engage members) and other information, collected through the Engage web site www.engage.com (the "Site") as part of the registration process or otherwise in connection with your use of the various services (the "Service") offered by Engage through the Site.
Engage has earned the Habeas Web Seal. Habeas is an industry leading reputation services provider that conducts thorough best practices assessments, whitelisting, and monitoring programs for senders of legitimate email. Engage proudly meets Habeas Safelist Requirements by demonstrating trustworthy email practices.
This Privacy Policy does not apply to any other web site, nor to any offline contact or communications, including offline contact between you and Engage or any other user of the Service.
About Engage
The Service provided by Engage is an online dating and matchmaking service. In order for you to participate in the Service, you must provide information about yourself.
Information Gathered/Tracked by Engage
Profile Information Submitted to Engage
In order to register as a member of the Service, you must provide Engage with certain account information about yourself, such as your name, email address, gender, and location.
In addition, Engage also asks Members to provide more complete profile information such as age, occupation, photos, interests, etc., by answering a questionnaire. Answering these additional questions is entirely voluntary. However, since answering the questionnaire facilitates finding matches that offer the highest possible chance of a successful, long-term relationship or marriage, the more questions you answer, the better your chances.
Information Automatically Collected by Engage
Engage automatically collects from you (and any other visitor to the Site, whether or not a Member), non-personally identifiable information, such as server and browser type, and information that in some cases could be personally identifiable, such as IP address.
Information About Your Contacts
If you choose to invite your friends to join your Engage community, refer friends to Engage, or share Engage profiles with your friends, you can manually enter their email addresses or upload all your contacts at once. Your contacts will be saved for your future use as a service to you, to help you communicate with your friends and suggest matches through Engage. Friends you invite to Engage will receive your personal invitation, including a personal message that you write. They may also receive reminder emails regarding this invitation. Engage will never automatically invite your contacts or send them any other email without your permission, and we will not sell these email addresses.
The email address information you securely upload will be for your private use on Engage and will only be viewable by you and will not be searchable by others on Engage. Engage will not store your username and password for your email account. Engage will only save email addresses and names of the contacts uploaded by you. Your friend may contact Engage to request the removal of this information from Engage's database by sending an email to support@engage.com.
Primary Uses of Information Obtained by Engage
Information Members Submit to Engage
Your profile information and photos are publicly displayed to support the function of the Site as a dating site where Members and other visitors to the Site can meet and introduce others, including reviewing information posted by and about Members. The information and photos may be displayed on the Site or in emails relating to the Site's function as a dating and matchmaking Service. For these purposes, your profile information includes your username, first name, location and gender, along with other information you provided to Engage. In addition, if you participate in various optional services, such as community ratings, matchmaking voting, etc., the results of that information will be publicly displayed.
Your email address and full name are disclosed if you communicate within your online community or invite others to join your community. For example, this information is disclosed when you invite your friends to join Engage, when you email your friends through Engage, when you ask a friend for a reference or to become a matchmaker for you, or when you use the "See who is already on" or "Give away six months FREE" features. Other than as described in this privacy policy, your full name and email address are not shared or displayed to others when communicating with other members through the Service.
Other members may search for your profile on the Service using information you have provided to us about yourself. These searches may be based on your profile information, for example your location and gender, your username, your email address, and/or your full name. Engage uses your email address and your other personal information to help us efficiently operate our web site, to contact you in connection with your use of the Service, transactions and other activities on the web site (including, but not limited to, registration and other confirmation emails, updates on the web site or important news that may affect your relationship with Engage), responses to Customer Service inquiries, lists of potential matches, introductions, and to forward messages to you from other Engage users and matchmakers. These types of communications, are known as "Service Communications." In some cases, Service Communications may also contain commercial messages, such as banner ads and special offers. In order to ensure that you receive messages from the Engage, we may resend emails to you with the information discussed above.
In addition to Service Communications, your email address provided by you at registration, or as updated, may be used by Engage and its affiliated entities, to contact you for any reason, including: (1) your account status (including an email confirmation of registration), (2) changes to the web site, the Terms of Use, and Privacy Policy, (3) participation in user surveys, asking for feedback on the web site, and (4) notifying you of existing or prospective products and services offered by us or our advertisers and partners. This information helps us to improve our web site. The information provided by you at registration may be used by Engage and its affiliated entities to contact you with special offers and promotions.
Engage may aggregate your information and use it in connection with the management of the Site and Service, including for maintenance, marketing, advertising, analysis, assessment, and development. However, for reporting purposes, such information will be consolidated in a strictly anonymous manner with no personally identifying details.
Information Automatically Collected by Engage
Engage uses your server, IP address, browser-type and other similar information in the general administration and management of the Site and Service. If Engage associates this information with your personally identifiable information, then it is treated the same as your other personally identifiable information.
Other Disclosure/Use of the Information Gathered/Tracked on the Site
Aside from the situations otherwise described in this Privacy Policy or where you are expressly informed otherwise, as a matter of policy Engage does not sell, rent, share, trade or give away any of your personal information. However, the following describes some of the ways that your personal information may be disclosed and used:
Other Users
The Service enables users to interact with other users including, but not limited to, sending and receiving electronic mail, participating in discussion groups, etc. via the Internet. The electronic mail service provided through the Service is double blind and so does not disclose your actual email address to the other party. Of course, if you elect to exchange messages and share your information with others through the Service, Engage has no control over what those third parties do with your information. For this reason, Engage strongly recommends that you use care when disclosing personally identifiable information to others.
External Service Providers
You may separately agree to provide information about yourself to other companies who provide services on the Site, in order to use their services, order their products, or receive offers from them. If you agree to provide information to these companies, that information will be subject to their privacy policies. Engage has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. You should, therefore, review their privacy policies carefully if you have concerns about what information is collected and how it may be used.
Internal Service Providers
Engage may use internal service providers to facilitate and evaluate the Service. This may require disclosure of some of your personal information to these service providers. In some instances, an internal service provider may collect information directly from you. In all cases, these internal service providers are obligated to conform to the terms of this Privacy Policy in connection with their use of your personal information.
Other Related Entities
From time to time Engage may provide information about you to its subsidiaries and other related entities in order to provide you the Service. Each of these entities will comply with the policies described in this Privacy Policy.
Search Engines and Other Web Applications
Online search engines and other third-party web applications gather and often cache data from Web sites such as Engage's. Engage does not ordinarily restrict search engines and other web applications from such activities, as they often provide useful services for the company and its members. Indeed, Engage may organize the information which is otherwise available on the Site in a manner which is convenient for such search engines or other applications. Engage may also use the information available on the Site for "widgets," "mashups," "Web services," "Web feeds," or other facilities which enable other online sites to incorporate functionality and data originating from Engage on their own sites.
Acquisition
If the stock or assets of Engage, its subsidiaries, its joint ventures, or any combination of such, are acquired by another entity or if Engage merges with another entity, then some or all of your personal information may be provided to such successor entity in connection with that transaction.
Legal Requests
Engage may disclose your personal information to law enforcement and such other government officials as Engage, in its sole discretion, believes necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation or prosecution of alleged illegal activity. Engage also may disclose information about you pursuant to a court order in a civil action or other lawsuit.
Optional Services
If you elect to participate in optional services available through the Service, such as Cast Your Vote™, then you understand that additional information about you with respect to that optional service will be available to others. If you no longer wish for such information to be shared or displayed, then you need to cease participation in that portion of the Service.
Links
The Site may contain links to other web sites. Please be aware that Engage is not responsible for the privacy practices of other web sites. Engage encourages its users to be aware when they leave the Site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by the Site.
Use of Cookies and Web Beacons
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. Engage uses both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. For the session ID cookie, once users close the browser, the cookie simply terminates.
Cookies are used to manage sessions on the Site. Also, you may use a cookie to remember your password in order to automatically log in to the Site.
A "persistent" cookie is a text file stored on your (the user's) hard drive for an extended period of time. This file can be removed by you at any time by following the directions in your Internet browser's help file. A persistent cookie is set once you've logged into your Engage account. The next time you visit the Engage web site, the persistent cookie will allow us to recognize you as an existing user, so you will not need to sign in before using the service. In order to access or change any of your private information, however, you must sign in securely again with your password, even if your computer contains your persistent cookie. Additionally, if you log out of the Engage site you will need to re-enter your password the next time you visit in order to sign in to your account.
If you use a public computer, such as at a café or library, or do not wish to be automatically signed in, you should sign out of the Engage service and make sure you click the "Sign Out Completely" link.
The Site pages also may contain an electronic file called a web beacon. Web beacons allow Engage to count users who have visited a particular page or to access certain cookies.
Security
Engage uses industry standard measures to protect your information that is stored within its database as well as communications between users through the Service. Engage limits access to your information to those employees and consultants who need access to perform their job function such as Engage customer service personnel. However, due to technical limitations, Engage is unable to guarantee that your personal information and private communications will never be disclosed in ways not described in this Privacy Policy. Therefore, Engage does not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information or private communications will always remain private.
Correcting /Updating or Removing Information
You may modify or remove any of your personal information at any time by logging in to your account. If you remove information which is the minimal information required to be a Member, then your membership in the Service will terminate.
Canceling Your Membership
If your membership with Engage is terminated for any reason, your personal information may continue to be maintained until you either remove it or Engage elects to remove that information. In addition, your information may be retained in Engage's archives for the Site, created as part of its normal back-up and archive operations.
Changes in this Privacy Policy
If Engage changes its Privacy Policy, it will post those changes on the Site. If Engage intends to use your personally identifiable information in a manner materially different from that stated at the time of collection, Engage will notify you via email or by placing a prominent notice on the Site.
Contacting Engage
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, Engage's privacy practices, or your dealings with the Site, please contact us.
Recent Updates
September 12, 2007 The "Information Members Submit to Engage" and "Primary Uses of Information Obtained by Engage" sections were updated along with miscellaneous other changes.
February 9, 2007 The "Information Gathered/Tracked by Engage," "Use of Cookies and Web Beacons," and "Primary Uses of Information Obtained by Engage" sections were updated.
April 16, 2006 The "Primary Uses of Information Obtained by Engage" section was updated.
