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About Our Ads Summary and Privacy Policy

Updated March 12, 2012

The Britannica websites are general audience sites, intended for Users (visitors and subscribers) of all ages. Our free website is supported by advertising. Our subscription websites are paid for by subscription fees. If you would like to avoid ads, sign up for a subscription.

About Our Ads Summary

We Use Common Tracking Tools

We or vendors we have hired use several common tracking technologies. These may include browser and flash cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies.

Our Tracking May Be Used to Serve Ads

We use common tracking tools to decide which ads to insert into the pages you visit. As part of this customization, we (or companies we work with) observe your behavior on this website to provide you with ads that are related to the searches you run on our website. We may also get information about your browsing history on other websites from our trusted business partners. We use this information to provide you with ads on our website related to your browsing history outside of our website. Additionally, trusted business partners may use your behavior on this website to decide which ads to show you on other websites.

You Can Control Cookies

You can control cookies. How you do so depends on the type of cookie. To reject browser cookies, you must set your browser to reject browser cookies. To control flash cookies, click here. Why? Because flash cookies do not reside in your browser, and therefore your browser settings will not affect them. If you configure your computer to block cookies, you may not be able to access certain functionality on our sites.

You Can Control Tracking-Based Ads

Many of the ad networks we work with participate in the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. This program allows consumers to opt-out of having their online behavior tracked for advertising purposes. If you want to opt out, click here.

We Also Use Common Tracking Tools for Non-Advertising Purposes

To understand our subscribers and website visitors so that we may improve our sites To track new visitors to our websites. To recognize past subscribers. To store your password if you are registered on our website

Privacy Policy

Our Users are able to visit many of our website pages without telling us who they are or revealing any information about themselves. We may track IP addresses from which Users visit us and analyze this data in the aggregate to determine usage for trends and statistics. Users remain anonymous unless they voluntarily tell us who they are.

Personal Information (PII) We Collect and How We Use It.

We ask Users to provide certain PII about themselves when they sign up for subscriptions, make purchases in our store, or contribute content to a Britannica site. PII means your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, and/or credit or charge card information. It is up to you whether you provide any PII; however, you must provide some PII to purchase a subscription or submit content or make a store purchase. When you provide your PII with your content submissions, realize we have no control over how other Users will use that information. Britannica uses PII for: allowing Users to obtain an account and to receive communications; verifying the identities of contributors of content; making ongoing enhancements to the sites; marketing and promotional purposes; and evaluating site usage by analyzing PII and related data in

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the aggregate. In addition, with respect to Britannica site Users located outside North America, we may share pertinent PII with our local subsidiaries. We may share PII with: Authorized service providers. We may share PII with service providers that perform certain services on our behalf, such as processing credit card payments, performing business and sales analysis, and supporting our Web site functionality. Business partners. When you make purchases or engage in our promotions, we may share PII with the businesses with which we partner to offer you those products, services, promotions, contests and/or sweepstakes. When you elect to engage in a particular merchant's offer or program, you authorize us to provide your email address and other information to that merchant. Direct mail partners. From time to time we may share our postal mailing list with selected providers of goods and services that may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive mailings from these providers, you can notify us at any time by following the instructions set forth below in "How to Opt Out, Correct, Update, or Remove Personal Information." Law enforcement. We also may disclose your information:In response to a subpoena or as otherwise required by law. When we believe disclosure is appropriate in connection with efforts to investigate, prevent, or take other action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud or other wrongdoing; to protect and defend the rights, property or safety of Britannica, our Users, our employees, or others; to comply with applicable law or cooperate with law enforcement; or to enforce our Web site terms and conditions or other agreements or policies. Purchasers of our business. In connection with a substantial corporate transaction, such as the sale of our business, a divestiture, merger, consolidation or asset sale. Our privacy policy would continue to cover your PII.

Prospect and Referral Information

If a User visits a Britannica site and submits an e-mail address to Britannica but fails to complete the registration or purchase process, we may use such "prospect" information to contact the prospective User from time to time with Britannica offers and information about new features, new services, and special discounts we think the User may see as valuable. Similarly, if a User forwards a Britannica e-mail to a friend, we may use the "referral" information provided to contact the friend from time to time with Britannica offers and information about new features, new services, and special discounts we think the friend may see as valuable. We do not sell or rent any contact information for such "prospects" or "referrals."

Non-Personally identifiable Information (Non-PII) We Collect and How We Use It

Like other commercial websites, we collect information about consumer activities and behaviors to improve our websites, provide standard advertising controls, to determine user response to advertisements and promotions, to deliver targeted advertisements that we or our partners believe will be of most interest to you, and to prepare aggregate reports. Non-PII collected includes the following: IP address, domain, browser type and language, referring website addresses, date/time of visits, page view data, and search keywords. Non-PII is collected using the following standard web technologies: Cookies are data files, which often include an anonymous unique identifier, sent to your browser from a website. Cookies can only be read by the party placing the cookie, they cannot erase or alter any of your data and when used in the context of collecting non-PII, they do not include personal data. For more information about cookies visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org. Log files track actions occurring on sites and collect data including your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, click data and types of advertisements viewed. Web beacons are electronic files used to track your navigation of a website or collection of sites, and browsing behavior. Collectively these technologies enable us to better understand our Users. Cookies do not allow us to gather any PII. Demographic Information. At times we ask subscribers to provide us with demographic or profile information regarding their preferences and interests. This demographic information is not required. We use aggregated demographic information to draw conclusions about Users' wishes and preferences. We also provide demographic User information in the aggregate to third parties in connection with advertising campaigns. You may withdraw your consent at any time by following the instructions provided under the heading "How to Opt Out, Correct, Update, or Remove Personal Information" below. Cookies and Beacons Use by Britannica. To help you personalize your online experience, Britannica uses "Cookies." "Cookies" are small files that Britannica transfers to Users browers or, in the case of mobile sites, to Users devices, for record-keeping purposes. One of the primary purposes of Cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. For example, Cookies allow us to recognize you when you re-enter a Britannica site so that you will not have to log in each time you visit. Cookies also allow us to collect anonymous traffic data, such as the number of unique and return visitors who use the Britannica sites. In addition, Britannica places Cookies with Users visiting from advertising banners and hyperlinks on other sites to track the success of a particular advertising campaign or marketing program. Most browsers are initially set up to accept Cookies. If you prefer, you can reset your browser to notify you when you've received a Cookie or, alternatively, to refuse to accept Cookies. It is important to note that you may not be able to use certain features on a Britannica site if you choose not to accept Cookies. The use

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of Cookies is an industry standard and occurs at most major websites. To manage browser cookies, please see your browser's privacy settings. To manage Flash cookies, please use the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager. We use web beacons to monitor the traffic patterns of users from one Britannica page to another and to improve site performance. Cookies and Beacons Use by Third Parties. Advertisers and advertising networks use cookies and beacons to target ads served to Britannica.com. What does it mean to "serve ads"? When you visit a website, your Internet browser transmits a "request" to the computer that hosts the website (the "host server") requesting that server to send you (or "serve") the web page that you are seeking. Most web pages contain components that are pulled from different sources, for example, a web page at a news site may get its weather section from one provider, its sports results from a different source, and advertisements from other servers. Our web pages contain coding that directs your browser to fill the ad spaces on the web pages with content served by advertisers and networks of advertisers to whom we have sold the ad spaces. The advertisers and networks use cookies and beacons to help manage ad delivery and frequency, and to identify audience segment for customized advertising ("targeting"). These cookies are used to identify your IP address, so that when you visit another website using the same advertising network, the network will recognize the cookie as one of its own, read the information on the cookie (the record of which sites in the network you have visited) and serve you an ad that you might be interested in, based on your past visits to other sites in the network. Advertising targeted based on past web surfing is known as "behavioral advertising." Britannica does not permit any advertisers or networks to collect PII about visitors to Britannica.com using cookies or beacons. Our Privacy Policy does not cover the use of information that they may have collected from you on other sites. If you would like to learn more about behavioral advertising or to opt out of having this information used by companies that are part of the Network Advertising Initiative to deliver targeted ads, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org. Many of the same companies are members of the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. You can learn more and opt out of receiving targeted ads from them at http://www.aboutads.info/choices. Some advertising networks require that we specifically list their opt-out links below. When you opt-out of a network, you may receive an "opt-out" cookie so that the network will know not to assign you new cookies in the future. You will continue to receive ads from that network, but not behaviorally targeted ads. If you erase your browser's cookies, you may need to perform this process again. 24/7 Real Media: http://www.247realmedia.com/privacy.html Adconion: http://www.adconion.com/us/privacy-policy/the-adconion-cookie.html Collective Media: http://www.networkadvertising.org DoubleClick: http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/faq.aspx Google: http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html SpotXChange: http://www.spotxchange.com/spx_privacypolicy.html. When you select this option, SpotXchange sets a persistent "opt-out cookie" to prevent information from being uniquely associated with your browser. ValueClick: http://www.valueclickmedia.com/member_privacy.shtml. We have contracted with ValueClick to monitor certain pages of our site for the purpose of reporting traffic, statistics, advertisement 'click-throughs', and/or other activities on our site. Where authorized by us, ValueClick and its business partners may use cookies, web beacons, and/or other monitoring technologies to compile anonymous statistics about our visitors. No personally identifiable information is collected by or transferred to any party other than the advertiser. For more information about how the information is collected and used by ValueClick, please see ValueClick's privacy policy at http://www.valueclickmedia.com/member_privacy.shtml. Yahoo: http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/opt_out/targeting/details.html Our ad server, AdTech, uses cookies to prevent you from seeing the same ad too many times. You can opt out of Ad Tech cookies by following this link: (http://www.adtechus.com/privacy/) To manage or delete browser cookies, please see your browser's privacy settings. To manage or delete Flash cookies, please use the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager here: (http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html)

Subscriber Communications.
As a benefit of membership, Britannica site subscribers may receive the following communications from us: Communications related to subscription maintenance activities. These communications may include, without limitation, notices regarding material changes to Britannica site policies, service updates, service enhancements, and account management procedures. Since these

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communications are necessary to ensure Britannica provides its subscribers with the highest quality of services, our subscribers are not permitted to opt out from receipt of these communications. Newsletter Communications. As a benefit of a Britannica subscription, we may send Britannica subscribers our exclusive Britannica newsletters. To unsubscribe to a newsletter, a User can either (i) follow the instructions at the bottom of any newsletter or (ii) follow the instructions set forth below in "How to Opt Out, Correct, Update, or Remove Personal Information." Communications containing information about Britannica products and services. We may send promotional e-mails and other outbound communications to Britannica site subscribers regarding products and services from Britannica. Any Britannica site subscriber that does not wish to receive such product and service communications can choose to remove his or her contact information from our contact list at any time by (i) following the instructions at the bottom of any promotional e-mail or (ii) following the instructions set forth below in "How to Opt Out, Correct, Update, or Remove Personal Information."

Protection for Children.

Children should always ask parents for permission before providing any Personal Information to Britannica or purchasing any products or services from Britannica. Britannica does not knowingly collect or solicit Personal Information from or about children under 16, except as permitted by law. If we discover we have received any Personal Information from a child under 16 in violation of this policy, we will delete that information immediately. If you believe Britannica has any Personal Information from or about anyone under 16, please contact us at privacy@eb.com.

Security.
We use appropriate measures to ensure the security of all information you provide to us, including the use of passwords, firewalls, and encryption. No transmission of information is guaranteed to be completely secure. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise data security.

How to Opt Out, Correct, Update, or Remove Personal Information.

Users may opt out of certain services or correct, update, or remove Personal Information that Britannica has collected about them through any of the means listed below. Please be sure to include the following information in your correspondence: Your e-mail address Your first and last name Your mailing address (street, city, state, zip code, and country) The name of the Britannica site to which the request applies

Call us at: (within the United States), or (outside the United States) Monday - Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (U.S. Central Time). Send a fax to: (312) 294-2104 Write us at: Britannica Customer Service, Attn: Removal from Mailing List 331 North LaSalle Street Chicago, IL 60654-2682 Please allow up to six (6) weeks for mailed-in or faxed opt-out requests to be processed. Links to Other Websites. The Britannica sites each contain links to other websites. Britannica is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these third-party websites. We urge all Britannica site Users to follow safe Internet practices: Do not supply Personal Information to these sites unless you have verified their security and privacy policies. Data Retention. We retain your information for as long as necessary to permit us to use it for the purposes that we have communicated to you and comply with applicable law or regulations. Your Consent and Changes to Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy was last updated on March 12, 2012. By using any one of the Britannica sites, you consent to the collection and use of your information by Britannica in the manner specified in this Privacy Policy. We reserve the right

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to change this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here or on with a notice on our home page. Your California Privacy Rights. If you are a California resident, you are entitled to prevent sharing of your personal information with third parties for their own marketing purposes through a cost-free means. If you send a request to the address above, Britannica will provide you with a California Customer Choice Notice that you may use to opt-out of such information sharing. To receive this notice, submit a written request to the address above under the "How to Opt Out" section, specifying that you seek your "California Customer Choice Notice." Please allow at least thirty (30) days for a response. Contact Us. For more information, please contact us at: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Attn: Legal - Privacy Practices, 331 North LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60654, or privacy@eb.com. UK Privacy Policy Australian Privacy Policy

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