Privacy Policy

Placely is an online service providing travelers the ability to stay better connected with people while traveling (the "Placely Service"). This Privacy Policy describes when and how we collect information, what we collect, and how we store, use and protect it. The Privacy Policy covers only information connected with use of the Placely Service and does not apply to any information collected or used by our linked or partner sites. This Privacy Policy is not the only document that governs your use of the Placely Service. Your agreement with Placely is governed also by the Terms of Service which you must accept during the sign-up process before you can use our Service.

Information Collection

  • Placely will record the information you give us when you register, and retain it until you ask to close your account.
  • When you close your account, we will remove your subscription information from our records. However, records of meetings arranged between you and other Placely users and any of your personal information that related to those meetings may remain in the Placely service if those other users maintain an open Placely account.
  • When you register with Placely, we may ask you for certain information that we use to customize advertising provided to you through the Placely Service.
What we collect:
  • In order to become a Placely user, you must first create an account on this web site. To create an account you are required to provide the following contact information: name, email address, country, ZIP/postal code, a brief summary of your professional background (current occupation & networking objectives), and choose a password.
  • Once a user, you may provide additional information in the Profile section describing your interests, professional experiences and education. Providing additional information beyond what is required at registration is entirely optional, but enables you to better identify yourself and allows other members to better find you in the Placely system.
  • In order to invite others to connect with you directly in Placely, you will enter their names and email addresses. This information will be used by Placely to send your invitation including a message that you write. The names and email addresses of people that you invite will be used only to send your invitation and reminders. You may also choose to manually enter or upload data about your contacts into the private "My Network" section of our website. All information entered there will only be viewable by you and will not be searchable by others in the Placely network without your permission.
  • Our servers automatically recognize Users' domain names, types of computers and web browsers accessing our website, and IP addresses (the number assigned to computers on the Internet). No personal information about you is revealed in this process. The Service may also gather anonymous traffic data that does not personally identify you, but that may be helpful for marketing purposes or for improving the Placely Service.
How we use it:
  • The personally identifiable information you choose to provide on this site is used to help you describe yourself to other users. Other information, that does not personally identify you as an individual, is collected by Placely Inc. from the site (such as, by way of example, patterns of utilization) and is exclusively owned by Placely. This information can be utilized by Placely in such manner as Placely, in its sole discretion, deems appropriate.
  • Placely may use non-identifying information to tailor the Placely Service to you, for example by delivering only advertisements relevant to your postal code or travel itinerary. We will aggregate and report this information to our content partners, for example to help them measure audience size and composition and/or click-throughs on advertising.
  • Placely will communicate with you through email and notices posted on this website. These include welcome emails which help inform new users about various features of the service. Please be aware that you will always receive certain emails from Placely related to the proper functioning of your account, such as email notices when another user in your network sends you an opportunity. Placely may send you promotional information unless you have opted out of receiving such information.
  • Information you provide at registration or in your Profile section is also used to customize your experience on the web site. For example, when you login to your account we will display the screen names of new users who have recently joined your network.
Use of cookies and log files:
  • Like most web sites, Placely uses cookies and web log files to track site usage. A cookie is a tiny data file which resides on your computer which allows Placely to recognize you as a user when you return to our site using the same computer and web browser. Unfortunately, if your browser settings do not allow cookies, you will not be able to use our website. Like the information you enter at registration or in your Profile, cookie and log file data is used to customize your experience on the web site.
  • One type of cookie, known as a "persistent" cookie, is set once you've logged in to your Placely account. The next time you visit the Placely web site, the persistent cookie will allow us to recognize you as an existing user so you will not need to log in before using the service. In order to access or change any of your private information (like a credit card number), however, you must log in securely again with your password even if your computer contains your persistent cookie. Additionally, if you log out of the Placely site you will need to re-enter your password the next time you visit in order to log in to your account. Another type of cookie, called a "session" cookie, is used to identify a particular visit to the Placely site. Session cookies expire after a short time or when you close your web browser.
  • If you reject cookies, you may still be able to use our site, but your ability to use some areas of our site may be limited.
Use of web beacons:
  • We may allow other companies, called ad networks, to serve advertisements to Placely users. Ad networks include third party ad servers, ad agencies, ad technology vendors and research firms. Placely may "target" some ads to users that fit a certain general profile. Placely does NOT use personally identifiable information to target ads.
  • To deliver these ads properly, Placely may include a file, called a web beacon, from these ad networks within pages served by Placely so the networks may provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for advertisers as well as to target ads to you while you visit other websites.
  • Because your web browser must request these advertisements and web beacons from the ad network's servers, these companies can view, edit or set their own cookies, just as if you had requested a web page from their site.
  • These general targets may also be used by ad networks to display targeted ads on other websites as a substitute for random, irrelevant ads. You will never see additional ads as a result of being a Placely user and Placely never provides personally identifiable information to any advertiser or any third party.

Information Sharing

Placely takes the privacy of our users very seriously. We will never sell, rent, or otherwise provide your personally identifiable information to any third parties for marketing purposes. We will only share your personally identifiable with third parties to carry out your instructions and to provide specific services. These third parties do not retain, share, or store any personally identifiable information except to provide these services and are bound by strict confidentiality agreements which limit their use of such information.
  • Placely offers a "public profile" feature which allows users to publish portions of their Placely profile, including your "name", but not your "email address" to the public Internet. Users may opt-out of this feature, however Placely does not warrant how third-party search engines will update their cache.
  • Placely may provide aggregated data about the usage of our services to third-parties for such purposes as we deem, in our sole discretion, to be appropriate. We may segment our users by geographic location, industry, etc. If you would like to be excluded from the aggregated research or products based upon aggregated data about our users' activities on the site, please email customer service.
  • Placely partners with other online services to give you the combined results of both services. Whenever we offer such combined services it will be your choice to make use of the combined services or not. In these cases, your personally identifiable information will only be passed from Placely to the partner if you choose to use the combined service.
  • Many emails you initiate through Placely, an invitation sent to a non-user for instance, will list your email address and name in the header of the message. Emails you initiate may also provide aggregate information about your network (for instance how many people are in your network), but will never list the people to whom you're directly connected. Other communications that you initiate through the Placely website, like a request for contact, will list your name as the initiator but will not include your personal contact information. Your contact information will only be shared with another user if both of you have indicated that you would like to establish contact with each other.
  • It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information when required by law. We will disclose such information wherein we have a good-faith belief that it is necessary to comply with a court order, ongoing judicial proceeding, or other legal process served on our company or to exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.

Accessing and Changing Your Account Information

You can review the personal information you provided us and make any desired changes to the information, or to the settings for your Placely account, at any time by logging in to your account on the Placely website and editing the information on your Profile page. You can also close your account through the Placely website. If you close your Placely account, we will remove your name and other personally identifiable information from our publicly viewable data. We may retain certain data contributed by you if it may be necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, or for legitimate business purposes, such as analysis of aggregated, non-personally-identifiable data, account recovery, or if required by law. All retained data will continue to be subject to the terms of the Placely Privacy Policy that you have previously agreed to.

Security

In order to secure your personal information, access to your data on Placely is password-protected, and sensitive data (such as credit card information) is protected by SSL encryption when it is exchanged between your web browser and our web site. To protect any data you store on our servers we also regularly audit our system for possible vulnerabilities and attacks and we use a tier-one secured-access data center. Placely will attempt to notify you in writing by email, if we are in possession of your email address, or by any other contact information you give us, of any security breach that requires your attention.

Changes to Privacy Policy

Placely may update the Privacy Policy at any time. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.

Questions or Comments

Please contact us using the Contact Us page or send postal mail to 426 33rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Effective Date

This Agreement is effective beginning on July 1, 2007.