Alexa Internet Privacy Policy

Updated 17 March 2003
Alexa is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy, which is a binding part of Alexa's Website Terms of Use and End User License Agreement ("Agreement"), explains the type of information Alexa collects through its website and theAlexa browser companion software ("Toolbar Service") and what Alexa does with it.

ALEXA'S TOOLBAR SERVICE COLLECTS AND STORES INFORMATION ABOUT THE WEB PAGES YOU VIEW, THE DATA YOU ENTER IN ONLINE FORMS AND SEARCH FIELDS, AND, WITH VERSIONS 5.0 AND HIGHER, THE PRODUCTS YOU PURCHASE ONLINE WHILE USING THE TOOLBAR SERVICE. ALTHOUGH ALEXA DOES NOT ATTEMPT TO ANALYZE WEB USAGE DATA TO DETERMINE THE IDENTITY OF ANY ALEXA USER, SOME INFORMATION COLLECTED BY THE TOOLBAR SERVICE IS PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE. ALEXA AGGREGATES AND ANALYZES THE INFORMATION IT COLLECTS TO IMPROVE ITS SERVICE AND TO PREPARE REPORTS ABOUT AGGREGATE WEB USAGE AND SHOPPING HABITS.

IN ADDITION, WHEN YOU PERFORM SEARCHES USING THE SEARCH FUNCTION AVAILABLE ON ALEXA'S TOOLBAR SERVICE SOFTWARE VERSION 6.5 AND HIGHER OR ON THE ALEXA WEBSITE, YOU OFTEN WILL BE TAKEN TO A WEBSITE DETAIL PAGE AT AMAZON.COM. IF YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNT ON AMAZON.COM AND AN AMAZON.COM COOKIE ENABLED, YOUR SEARCH RESULTS WILL BE TRANSMITTED TO AND LOGGED BY AMAZON.COM AND MAY BE CORRELATED BY AMAZON.COM WITH ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION YOU MAY HAVE PREVIOUSLY PROVIDED TO AMAZON.COM.

Please read the following privacy policy carefully before downloading and using Alexa's Toolbar Service software or using the Alexa website. If you download and use Alexa's Toolbar Service software or use the Alexa website, you will be bound by the terms of the Agreement, including this Privacy Policy.  This policy may change from time to time so you should check it frequently.

Alexa's Toolbar Service improves your ability to use the Web. One of its most important features is Related Links, which tells you about websites that are "related" to the ones you are viewing while surfing the Web and which you may find interesting. It does this, in part, by logging and analyzing the Web surfing patterns of Alexa users, which we call usage paths. These usage paths are also used to create research and commercial reports that analyze aggregate Web usage patterns.

Alexa does not attempt to determine the identity of any Alexa user by analyzing Web usage paths.

What types of information does Alexa collect?
If you are visiting the Alexa website (alexa.com), we collect the following information: the full Uniform Resource Locator("URL") of the Web page from which you came to alexa.com; your Internet Protocol ("IP") address, which may include a domain name; the date and time for each page you view; the name of and information about any advertisement that brought you to the Alexa website; searches you perform, links you click on; and computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform. We also transmit cookies to your computer so we can track the pages of our website that you view and the order in which you view them.

If you use the E-mail This Site feature, we collect your message, the recipient e-mail address(es), and your e-mail address for the purpose of sending the e-mail. We do not send other e-mail to these address(es).  If you choose, we can save your e-mail address in a cookie on your computer to make this feature easier to use.

If you download and install the Toolbar Service software, which provides the Alexa toolbar, we collect any information voluntarily provided by you during the installation and registration process, which can include your e-mail address as well as demographic information such as gender, age, occupation, household income, zip code and country. We also collect the name of and information about any advertisement that brought you to the Alexa download. Any e-mail address that you give us during the installation process is kept separate from information collected during your use of the Toolbar Service and is not used to correlate your identity to Web usage path or shopping information. Demographic information is correlated to Web usage and shopping information collected during your use of the Toolbar Service, but we do not attempt to determine your identity by analyzing this information.

When you download the software, and at times during your use of the Alexa website and Toolbar Service, we transmit Alexa cookies to the hard drive of your computer. These cookies assign your Web browser a unique series of numbers, letters, or characters that enable Alexa's servers to recognize and identify your Web browser when you are using the Toolbar Service. They also enable Alexa to track and store information about your Web usage path and online shopping while using the Toolbar Service. See below for more information about how Alexa uses this data.

When you use the Toolbar Service, we collect information about the websites you visit, the searches you perform when you use the "search" function, and the pages you view. This information allows us to provide you with information about the Web page you are viewing (Alexa's Site Info) and to build our database of information about related Web pages (Alexa's Related Links). Thus, for every Web page you view while using the Toolbar Service, the Alexa software transmits and stores the following information from your computer to Alexa:

• Your IP address, which may include a domain name.
• The full URL of the Web page you are visiting.
• General information about your browser.
• General information about your computer's operating system.
• Your Alexa cookie number.
• The date and time the above information is logged.
  

All of the above information is logged together in a single data string for each Web page you visit. Each string is logged in our database in the chronological order received from our hundreds of thousands of users.

If you use Internet Explorer's Related Links feature, we collect the full URL of the Web page for which you requested the Related Links information; your IP address, which may include a domain name; the date and time of your request; and computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform. This information is stored in the same logs as the usage paths. We do not transmit cookies to your computer when you use this Internet Explorer feature. If you use Netscape's What's Related feature, we receive from Netscape the URL of the Web page for which you requested the related links information with the information that appears after the "?" stripped out; your IP address, which may include a domain name; the date and time of your request; and computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform. We do not transmit cookies to your computer when you use this Netscape feature.

Does Alexa collect personally identifiable information?
The URLs we collect through the Toolbar Service sometimes contain personal information about you. For example, when you enter information on a Web page (e.g., when you complete an online registration form or sign up for a contest), the operator of the website may insert that information into its URLfor that or the next page. This information often appears after a question mark ("?") in the URL, although it can appear in other places. This means that your name, your address, your e-mail address, or similar information you might consider private or personally identifiable which you enter into a Web page sometimes becomes part of a URLthat is then transmitted to Alexa and automatically stored in Alexa's databases. This can also occur with words, topics, products, or phrases you enter into search engines - whether those engines are provided by the Alexa Toolbar Service itself or found elsewhere on the Web - while using the Alexa Toolbar Service. Alexa has no control over what information third party websites put into their URLs or where they put it, but any information in each URL is collected and stored by Alexa when you are using the Toolbar Service.

If you use version 5.0 or higher of the Toolbar Servicesoftware, as part of the shopping feature of the Toolbar Service, we collect information about the products you view or search for on the World Wide Web. This allows us to provide more detailed product and comparative shopping information. The information we collect includes product codes (such as ISBN numbers for books), product names, and other identifiers that appear in both the text and the URLs of Web pages that you view. The product information that Alexa gathers is logged together with your IP address, Alexa cookie number, the names of Alexa's business partners that might have additional information about the particular product, and the date and time, in a single data string for each Web page you visit. These strings, which we call "shopping paths," may also contain personally identifiable information. Alexa transmits the product descriptions (without your Alexa cookie number or IP address) to its business partners, who return relevant product information and/or comparison shopping information to the Toolbar Service for your use.

Also for users of version 5 of the Toolbar Service, the shopping feature of the Alexa Toolbar Servicesoftware provides comparative shopping information from Amazon.com and enables you to purchase items with Amazon.com's 1-Click feature or place items in your Amazon.com shopping cart. To do this, Alexa reads any Amazon.com cookies stored on your Web browser and transmits them to Amazon.com (but not to any other party) along with the product information described above. If you are not an Amazon.com customer already, Alexa will transmit new Amazon.com cookies to enable the Amazon.com shopping features of the Toolbar Service. When you make a purchase or place items in your Amazon.com shopping cart using the buttons provided by the Alexa Toolbar Service, Alexa logs the fact that you selected the button and the product for which you selected it. Alexa does not receive any information from Amazon.com about your existing Amazon.com account or other Amazon.com purchases that you make when not using the Alexa Toolbar Service.

Alexa analyzes its logs of usage path, shopping path, and purchase information collected from users to determine Web usage and shopping patterns of users in the aggregate. Further, by storing this information with users' Alexa cookie numbers, Alexa correlates each user's usage path information, shopping path information, Amazon.com purchase information, and demographic information to each other.

If you e-mail Alexa, we may store copies of such e-mail or similar communications between you and Alexa. This can result in the collection of your e-mail address or other personally identifiable information you may have in your e-mail text, addresses, or other fields, as well as the collection of the your IP address, the Internet or other routing of your communication, and the date and time of your communication. We do not attempt to correlate this information to your Alexa cookie number or your usage and shopping paths unless responding to your inquiry requires us to do so.

Although these information logs may contain personally identifiable information, Alexa does not attempt to correlate cookie numbers, usage paths, shopping paths, Amazon.com purchases, or demographic information to your e-mail address and does not attempt to determine the identity of any Alexa user by analyzing this information, except as required by subpoenas, court orders or legal requirements.

If you write a Review on the Alexa website, the content you submit on the Review form, the URL that you reviewed, your chosen public nickname, the date of the Review, your Alexa cookie number, and a record locator number may be logged together by Alexa. If you choose to rate a website or recommend the addition of a website as a Related Link, your e-mail addresses and recommendation and rating are logged together by Alexa.

All transmissions between you and Alexa, including e-mails, URLs, cookie identification numbers, usage paths, shopping path information, Amazon.com purchase information, and any personally identifiable information they might contain, pass through many third party machines, operating systems, programs, browsers, Web servers, networks, routers, Ethernet switches, ISPs, proxy servers, intranets, the public telephone systems, or other devices, any of which may create activity logs containing such transmissions.

What does Alexa do with the information it collects?
If you gave us your e-mail address when you registered, we use it to send you Alexa newsletters, product updates, service-related information, and other offers and information from Alexa or its business partners. Alexa also may contact you by e-mail to respond to reviews, ratings, and customer service inquiries you submit. We do not disclose your e-mail address to business partners or to anyone other than employees and agents working for or on behalf of Alexa, except as required by subpoenas, court orders, or legal requirements. We do not use your e-mail address to correlate your identity to your Web usage paths, shopping path information, or Amazon.com purchase information. If you have given us your e-mail address but wish to unsubscribe at any time, please see our section regarding changing your information for instructions on how to do so.

We use Alexa cookies for such functions as verifying that you are an Alexa user, counting and tracking your Alexa website visits, setting the appearance of the toolbar, helping the toolbar remember which module and tab you were last on and which search feature you used last, remembering the default search engine that you used in our Web search feature, determining the length of time you spent on a Web page, and keeping the nickname you used when you wrote your last Web review. We further use cookies to determine the number of visitors that came to the Alexa website through a particular advertisement. Your Alexa cookie number is also used to create usage and shopping paths and to correlate those with any demographic information you provide, but we do not use your cookies, usage paths, shopping paths, or product purchasing information to attempt to determine your identity. If you have The Web You Made feature turned on, your cookie also contains information about the last several websites that you visited. 

We use IP addresses to diagnose problems with our servers and to administer our website. Your IP address also is used by Alexa to gather broad demographic information, such as your general geographic location and Internet Service Provider. IP addresses are further used to help determine the number of Alexa users. This demographic information may also be used by Alexa to analyze aggregate Web usage behavior.

We use Web usage paths to build the Related Links functionality. We use shopping paths to build the functionality of our product information and comparison shopping features. We use both usage and shopping paths and Amazon.com purchase information for aggregate research and reports described below.

How does Alexa share the information it collects?
User privacy has always been a core value of Alexa. That is why Alexa does not attempt to determine the identity of its users or correlate their e-mail addresses with their Web usage paths or shopping information. Except as described below, Alexa does not intentionally disclose personally identifying information collected from any user to any third party-including Amazon.com-without the user's consent.

We provide "stripped" usage path information, demographic information, and shopping path information to Amazon.com, researchers, and other third parties. They use it to prepare analyses of aggregate Web patterns and trends. Such analyses are used in research and commercial reports. Before providing the usage path information, we "strip" from the URLs a portion of your IP address and the information that appears after the "?," with limited exceptions for certain types of search terms, leading "search engine" websites, and many e-commerce websites. Before providing the shopping path information to any third party, we strip a portion of your IP address from the data string.

Although this process effectively eliminates most, but not all, personally identifiable information collected during use of the Toolbar Service, we require Amazon.com and other third parties to abide by our practice of not attempting to use such information to determine users' identities.

We also provide the stripped usage path information to the nonprofit Internet Archive (www.archive.org), which is building a "library" of the Web.

If you use the search functions provided on either the Alexa website or on versions 6.5 and higher of the Toolbar Service software, we transmit your search term and IP address to the search engine you chose.

When you click on a search result, you often will be sent to a website detail page at Amazon.com. Alexa transmits your search result, which includes your original search term, the result of the search as displayed on our website, and the URLs of the page found by the search to Amazon.com, who uses that information to personalize that detail page. If you have an account on Amazon.com and you have an Amazon.com cookie enabled, your search result will be logged by Amazon.com's servers and may be correlated by Amazon.com with personally identifiable information that you have provided to Amazon.com. Alexa does not receive any personally identifiable information about you from Amazon.com.

As noted above, with versions 5.0 and higher of the Toolbar Service software, Alexa transmits product descriptions of the products you view while using the Toolbar Service (without your Alexa cookie number or IP address) to its business partners, who return relevant product information and/or comparison shopping information to the Toolbar Service for your use. Further, to enable the Amazon.com 1-Click and shopping cart features to work on the Alexa Toolbar Service, Alexa reads and transmits Amazon.com cookies to and from your computer and Amazon.com. Alexa does not use the Amazon.com cookies to attempt to determine your identity, and Alexa does not receive any other information about your Amazon.com account or any purchases you make while not using the Alexa Toolbar Service.

If you write a Review on the Alexa website, the content you submit on the Review form, the URL that you reviewed, and your chosen public nickname often are transmitted to Amazon.com and logged by Amazon.com. 

We disclose any information we possess in response to subpoenas, court orders, or legal requirements, and such information might be used by the receiving party to determine your identity, your Web usage and online shopping behavior, or other things about you. We generally do not inform users of such requests for information, although we might try to do so in some cases.

We employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf, such as technical support services. To perform those functions, it may be necessary for them to obtain access to Alexa's databases and servers, which may contain personally identifying information about users. They may not use such access or information for any purpose other than that for which they are retained.

In the event that Alexa or substantially all of its assets are sold or acquired, all information collected by Alexa would be transferred to the acquiring party. In any such transfer, however, such information would remain subject to any applicable terms and conditions, including the terms of this Privacy Policy and any amendment thereto.

How is your information protected?
Alexa uses commercially reasonable computer security safeguards to protect its databases and servers against risks of loss, unauthorized access, destruction, misuse, modification, or inadvertent or improper disclosure of data. These risks, however, cannot be completely eliminated and Alexa therefore cannot guarantee complete security.

Alexa also segregates certain personally identifiable information provided by you. Any e-mail address you chose to provide is stored in a database. Your usage paths are stored on a separate database and server that can be accessed only by a limited number of Alexa employees. Shopping paths are stored in a database separate from usage paths, e-mail addresses, and demographic information. Also, any demographic information you chose to provide is stored, along with your Alexa cookie number and the name of any advertisement that brought you to the Alexa download, in a database separate from e-mail addresses, Web usage path information, and shopping path information. Alexa prohibits its employees from using any of this information to determine your identity.

No Confidentiality for Customer Feedback
Feedback and other comments and statements that you chose to submit to Alexa by any means - whether by e-mail to Alexa Customer Service, telephone, letter, or any other means - shall be considered nonconfidential. Alexa is free to use such information on an unrestricted basis.

Data Collection and Use Practices by Other Businesses We Do Not Control
The Toolbar Service and Alexawebsite provide links to various features, services, and Web pages provided solely by our business partners or other organizations, such as Amazon.com, InfoSpace, mySimon, YellowBrix, BBBOnLine, and VeriSign. The links take you to pages provided solely by those entities, although sometimes the pages are co-branded with the Alexa logo. You will be able to tell when another entity is involved with providing features, services, or Web pages, and any information about your interaction with those Web pages, including which pages and advertisements you view and any search terms or other information you enter, will be received by that other business.

When you click on links to other businesses, those businesses may attach a cookie to your hard drive and may collect information about you. Alexa makes no claims or representations about what those businesses do or do not collect about you. Please review any terms of use and privacy policies of those other businesses to learn about their data collection and data use practices.

Further, our business partners may post advertisements on pages co-branded with the Alexa logo. Those advertisements are transmitted to your browser directly by the advertiser or the business partner, not by Alexa, and those advertisers may transmit a cookie to your hard drive and may collect information about you. If an advertiser or its ad server has previously placed a cookie on your machine, it may recognize the cookie and learn you have visited our co-branded Web page or used our Toolbar Service even though you do not click on the advertisement. Alexa makes no claim or representations concerning what such advertisers do or do not collect about you, and refers you to those entities for information about their privacy practices.

You acknowledge and agree that Alexa is not responsible for any content, advertising, products, or other materials on the websites (whether co-branded with the Alexa logo or not) of or available from other businesses that we do not control. You further acknowledge that Alexa shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such site or resource.

How to Change Your Information
You can inform us of a change in the e-mail address or demographic information you provide us by contacting us. Alexa does not currently enable users to access, review, or change usage path and shopping path information collected during use of the Toolbar Service. Alexa also does not enable users to delete information, including usage path, shopping, and demographic information.

If you do not want to receive Alexa newsletters, offers, and product and service information, simply contact us and be sure to include the e-mail address where such information is being sent, and state that you no longer want to receive Alexa information and updates.

To submit requests to change or remove website owner contact information, follow the instructions on the following form: Change Contact Information Form, or contact us. Please note that it can take up to 6 weeks for approved requests to be implemented in Alexa's Toolbar Service or website.

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Glossary of Terms

Related Links
Related Links are lists of websites that are related to the website you are viewing. Whenever you visit a Web page, the Alexa Toolbar Service retrieves information from the Alexa servers to suggest other related Web pages that might be of interest to you. Alexa's Related Links enable you to "surf" from one related site to another, discovering interesting and unique sites as you go, without having to return to a search engine.

Usage Paths
A usage path is the trail of requests automatically transmitted to and logged by Alexa as a user surfs the Internet with the Alexa toolbar enabled. Usage paths consist of the following data for each Web page visited by an Alexa user: (a) the IP address assigned to the user; (b) the date and time the Web page is visited by the user; (c) the user's browser type and version; (d) the user's operating system and version; (e) the user's Alexa cookie; and (f) the full URL that the site assigns to the Web page.

Uniform Resource Locator
A URL (or uniform resource locator) is the full Web address of a file or document you view when browsing the Internet. With most browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, the URL of every Web page that you view is displayed in a window near the top of the screen. Typically, a URL consists of four parts: protocol, server (or domain) where the file is located, path, and filename. However, some URLs have no path or filename. An example of a URL is:http://www.alexa.com/company/index.html

http is the protocol
www.alexa.com is the server
company/ is the path
index.html is the filename

Internet Protocol Address
An Internet Protocol ("IP") address is a set of numbers that is automatically assigned to your computer each time you connect to the Internet. When you use your Web browser to request a Web page from another computer on the Internet, your Web browser automatically gives that computer your IP address so that the data you request can be sent to your computer. For many users who access the Internet from a dial-up Internet service provider (ISP), the IP address will be different every time they log on ("dynamic" IP addresses); others may be assigned only one IP address that remains the same from session to session ("static" IP addresses) (more common with broadband ISPs).

Domain Name
A domain name identifies one or more IP addresses. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. For example, in the URL http://www.alexa.com/site/company, the domain name is alexa.com.

Cookies
A cookie is a small data file consisting of numbers, letters, or other characters that the Alexa server sends to your browser and stores on your computer's hard drive when you visit the Alexa website or download the Alexa Toolbar Service software. The Alexa servers can access this cookie when you return to the website or use the Alexa Toolbar Service. The cookie automatically identifies your computer, but not your identity, to our servers while you use the Alexa Toolbar Service or the Alexa website. If you have The Web You Made feature turned on, your cookie also contains information about the last several websites that you visited.

Amazon.com cookies may be present on your hard drive if you are already an Amazon.com customer. If you are not already an Amazon.com customer, Alexa may transmit Amazon.com cookies to your computer to enable you to put products in your Amazon.com shopping cart through the Toolbar Service. These cookies alone do not reveal your identity to Alexa, and Alexa does not use these cookies to try and learn your identity.

You can configure your browser to accept all cookies, reject all cookies, or notify you when a cookie is set. (Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.) However, if a browser is set to reject cookies, it may encounter functionality problems with the Alexa Toolbar Service.

Toolbar
The Alexa toolbar consists of buttons or links on your Web browser and enables you to use the Alexa Toolbar Service. The toolbar provides information for each Web page a user views, including a rating for the level of traffic the page receives, reviews of the page provided by other Alexa users, contact information for the owner of the Web page, site statistics, Related Links, and, in some cases, comparison shopping information.

Browser
A browser, short for Web browser, is a software application used to locate and display Web pages. Two popular browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Detail Page
A detail page is the page, displayed by either Alexa or Amazon.com, that provides details about a website, provides a user the ability to read and write reviews, and provides personalized recommendations for other websites and/or products that the user may be interested in.