FreeAdvice.com’s Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Last modified: March 21, 2009 – To view the previous privacy policy, please click here.

At Advice Company (“AdviceCo”) we understand that privacy is important. We have been protecting our user’s privacy since we deployed our very first consumer-oriented website in 1995.

Our Privacy Policy applies to all of the websites operated by AdviceCo, including AttorneyPages.com, ExpertPages.com, FreeAdvice.com and InsurancePages.com, and to all the other products and services we offer. In addition, where more detailed information is needed to explain our privacy practices, we post supplementary privacy instructions or notices that describe how we handle personal information related to such services.

AdviceCo adheres to the US Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of Notice, Choice, Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity, Access and Enforcement. We are also registering with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Safe Harbor Program.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us https://law.freeadvice.com/resources/contact_us.htm or write to us at:

Privacy Matters
Advice Company
2330 Marinship Way, Suite 120 Sausalito, California, 94965
USA

Information we collect and how we use it

We offer a number of services that do not require you to register for an account or provide any personal information to us, such as viewing most of our websites. In order to provide our full range of services, we may collect the following types of information:

Information you provide – When you sign up for an AdviceCo account, service or promotion that requires registration, such as to participate on the FreeAdvice Forum, or FreeAdvice Answers we ask you for personal information (such as your name, email address and an account password). When you use our website to Post a Case or Ask a Lawyer or seek similar assistance we also require personal and other information so that we or a third party can provide an answer or address your question, and we suggest that you not disclose information that you regard as confidential. For certain services, such as to create a professional listing on our websites, or advertise with us, we require far more extensive information and also request credit card or other payment account information which we maintain in encrypted form on secure servers and/or in paper form in a secure location. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other AdviceCo services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information.
Cookies – When you visit AdviceCo, we often send one or more cookies – a small file containing a string of characters – to your computer or other device that uniquely identifies your browser. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service, including for storing user preferences, improving search results and ad selection, and tracking user trends, such as how people search. Firms that market or syndicate advertising or advertise on AdviceCo sites also may use cookies in their advertising services to help them and their customers serve and manage ads across the web. We may set one or more cookies in your browser when you visit a website, including AdviceCo sites that use our advertising cookies, and view or click on an ad supported by AdviceCo’s advertising services.
Log information – When you access AdviceCo services, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.
User communications – When you send email or other communications to AdviceCo, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services. When you use our services to forward requests to third parties we also may receive and maintain a copy of that communication.
Affiliated AdviceCo Services on other sites – We offer some of our services on or through other web sites, and various third parties also advertise on our website, such as for legal forms, and/or to fulfill orders for us. Personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent by or to AdviceCo in order to deliver the service or products. We process such information under this Privacy Policy. The affiliated sites through which our services are offered or provide their own services and products may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.
Gadgets – AdviceCo may make available third party applications through its services. The information collected by AdviceCo when you enable a gadget or other application is processed under this Privacy Policy. Information collected by the application or gadget provider is governed by their privacy policies.
Location data – AdviceCo does business with firms that offer location-enabled services. If you use those services, AdviceCo may directly or indirectly receive information about your actual location (such as GPS signals sent by a mobile device) or information that can be used to approximate a location (such as a cell ID).
Links – AdviceCo may present links in a format that enables us to keep track of whether these links have been followed. We use this information to monitor site performance, we, our suppliers, advertisers and/or customers may also use it to track effectiveness of AdviceCo sites or for other purposes, such as to display customized content and advertising.
Other sites – This Privacy Policy applies to AdviceCo services only. We do not exercise control over our advertisers’ sites, any sites displayed as search results, sites that include AdviceCo applications, products or services, or links from within our various services. These other sites may place their own cookies or other files on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information from you.

AdviceCo only processes personal information for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy and/or the supplementary privacy notices for specific services. In addition to the above, such purposes include:

Providing our services, including the display of customized content, responses and advertising;
Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;
Ensuring the technical functioning of our network;
Protecting the rights or property of AdviceCo and its affiliates, their personnel, users and contributors; and
Developing new services.

You can find more information about how we process personal information by referring to the supplementary privacy notices for particular services.

AdviceCo processes personal information on our servers in the United States of America and in other countries. In some cases, we process or store personal information on a server outside your own country. We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as our advertising partners.

Choices for personal information

When you sign up for a particular service that requires registration, we ask you to provide personal information. If we use this information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected, then we will ask for your consent prior to such use.

If we propose to use personal information for any purposes other than those described in this Privacy Policy and/or in the specific service privacy notices, we will offer you an effective way to opt out of the use of personal information for those other purposes. We will not collect or use sensitive personal information for purposes other than those described in this Privacy Policy and/or in the supplementary service privacy notices, unless we have obtained your prior consent.

Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some AdviceCo features and services may not function properly if your cookies are disabled.

AdviceCo sites display cookies of various advertisers, such as Google® and cookies are also used for on AdviceCo sites to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web. Your ability to view, edit, and manage your ads preferences associated with any cookie is dependent on the firm placing the cookie, and its willingness to let you modify or opt out of cookies.

You also can decline to submit personal information to any of our services, in which case AdviceCo may not be able or willing to provide those services to you.

Information sharing

AdviceCo only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of AdviceCo in the following limited circumstances:

We require your explicit or implicit consent, or opt-in consent, for the sharing of sensitive personal information. For example the FreeAdvice Answers feature, the FreeAdvice Forums, and the AttorneyPages’ Post Your Case features require you to identify yourself and provide personal information to benefit from those services. As is discussed on the instructions for such services, some or all of the information you provide is shared through those services with third parties or the public to enable you to receive the services you requested.
We provide certain information to our affiliated companies and to other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf. We normally require that these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and may impose any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
When you contact a professional through our site we transmit your request to the professional, including any personal or sensitive information contained therein. We maintain a record of the transmittal, which we treat in confidence. Many of the party(ies) to whom the material is transmitted are professionals who are accustomed to treating communications received on a confidential and/or privileged basis, although we have no effective control over how such parties handle the information. If we learn that the parties are abusing the personal information transmitted through us, we would stop sharing new information with them.
We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to any rights, property or safety of AdviceCo, its officers, directors, employees or shareholders, its users, contributors or the public as required or permitted by law.

If AdviceCo becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale or license of some or all of its assets, we will endeavor to require the other parties involved in such transactions to similarly protect the confidentiality of personal information.

We may share with third parties certain items of aggregated non-personal information, such as information that is recorded about users and collected into groups so that it no longer reflects or references an individually identifiable users, such as the number of users who searched for a particular term, for example, or how many users clicked on a particular advertisement. Such information does not identify you individually.

Please contact us at the address below for any additional questions about the management or use of personal data.

Information security

Although no Internet business can assure anything close to total security, we try to take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These steps include physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where we store personal data (including alarm systems and passwords), and internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices.

We endeavor to restrict access to personal information to AdviceCo employees, contractors and agents who have a need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve our services. These individuals and firms are usually bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination, and/or face criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations and/or violate applicable laws.

When, at your request we send your personal information on to third parties, such as other customers or lawyers or experts, or otherwise publish that information, we lose all control over what they do with such personal information. We generally have no knowledge as to whether or not their security policies and procedures are adequate or effective. While we would normally stop dealing with a third party where we have actual knowledge that it is abusing its access to personal information supplied through any of our websites, we may have no effective remedy and make no commitment to undertake legal action or to reports back to any person who has provided information to us.

Data integrity

AdviceCo processes personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected and in accordance with this Privacy Policy or any applicable service-specific privacy notice. We review our data collection, storage and processing practices to ensure that we only collect, store and process the personal information needed to provide or improve our services or as otherwise permitted under this Policy. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we process is accurate, complete, and current, but we depend on our users to update or correct their personal information whenever necessary.

Accessing and updating personal information

When you use AdviceCo services, we make good faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and generally either to correct inaccurate data or to delete inaccurate data if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. We ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes), or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case where we provide information access and correction, we may require you to pre-pay the costs we estimate will be involved. We will not do so if it would require a disproportionate effort. Some of our services have different procedures to access, correct or delete users’ personal information. We provide the details for these procedures in the specific privacy notices or FAQ for these services.

Enforcement

AdviceCo regularly reviews its compliance with this Privacy Policy. Please feel free to direct any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or AdviceCo’s treatment of personal information by contacting us through this web site or by writing to us at

Privacy Matters
c/o Advice Company
2330 Marinship Way, Suite 120
Sausalito, California, 94965
USA

When we receive formal written complaints at this address, it is AdviceCo’s policy to contact the complaining user regarding his or her concerns. We will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including police and other law enforcement authorities, were appropriate.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Please note that this Privacy Policy may change from time to time and we anticipate that most such changes will be minor. We will post any Privacy Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, explicit notification of a new Privacy Policy). If you have any additional questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us any time through this web site or at