AK Platform Service Privacy
Aggregate Knowledge sees privacy as an important part of a company offering.
Last updated July 12, 2011
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Can I opt-out of the service and/or the collection of my information?
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Does the Aggregate Knowledge service use standard log files?
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Does the Aggregate Knowledge service provide links to third-party sites?
Aggregate Knowledge has been awarded TRUSTe's Privacy Seal signifying that this privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with the TRUSTed Cloud program requirements including transparency, accountability, and choice regarding the collection and use of personal information. The TRUSTe program does not cover information that may be collected through downloadable software. TRUSTe's mission, as an independent third party, is to accelerate online trust among consumers and organizations globally through its leading privacy trustmark and innovative trust solutions. If you have questions or complaints regarding our privacy policy or practices, please contact us at privacy@aggregateknowledge.com. If you are not satisfied with our response you can contact TRUSTe here.
Do you collect any personally identifiable information?
No personally identifiable information (PII) is collected using our service. PII is information that can be used to contact or identify a natural person. Examples of PII include, but are not limited to: name, email address, postal address, telephone number, social security number, and credit card number.
How do you use this personally identifiable information?
No personally identifiable information is collected using our service.
What types of information do you use to drive your service?
Aggregate Knowledge aggregates and analyzes anonymous site data and log data on large publisher, retailer, and advertiser websites such as IP address, browser type, referring URL, OS, date/time stamp, pages viewed, clicks, conversions, and simple keyword tags to power its personalized platform solutions. In addition, Aggregate Knowledge buys and normalizes third-party demographic, behavioral, and contextual data from trusted sources to improve the targeting accuracy and performance of its display optimization solution. Aggregate Knowledge does not collect personally identifiable information (PII).
How do you use the data?
Aggregate Knowledge aggregates, normalizes, and analyzes click-stream data from publishers, retailers, and advertiser websites to uncover behavioral affinities across users based on pages visited, articles read, products added to cart, and products bought. By analyzing and correlating this data, Aggregate Knowledge is able to uncover content and products, as well as ad selection for individual users. Aggregate Knowledge does not assign individual users to a-priori behavioral segments based on their browsing activity across multiple sites. Aggregate Knowledge also leverages anonymous, non-PII cookie and IP data from trusted third-party data sources to improve the accuracy and performance of its display optimization solution.
How do you gather information for your service?
We work with each of our customers to carefully select the anonymous data points that will allow us to deliver relevant product and content recommendations. We gather this information by using a combination of tags and cookies. Aggregate Knowledge’s customers use our services to gather information in order to improve the content that they serve. Aggregate Knowledge uses the anonymous data that they have collected for the purpose of providing services to our customers.
Do you transfer any data to a third party?
Aggregate Knowledge shares aggregated non-PII with customers and partners, but no user-level data is shared. Aggregate Knowledge may place image pixels from third-party ad networks on advertiser sites for retargeting purpose. No user data is passed to those third-party ad networks. Website activity and advertising campaign data is used for the purpose of reporting campaign/site performance to the site owner or service provider for that website.
Can I opt-out of the service and/or the collection of my information?
If you do not want your anonymous information to be used to provide our platform service, you can block the cookie named api.aggregateknowledge.com in your web browser, or click on http://api.aggregateknowledge.com/optout2. This will automatically place a cookie on your computer to block our platform service. If you delete your cookies, switch Internet browsers, change computers, or upgrade your web browser, you will need to re-opt out.
Alternatively you may also choose to opt out through the Network Advertising Initiative's Consumer Opt-Out Program. Since the NAI Opt-Out Program is cookie-based, you may need to opt out again (and set a new "opt-out" cookie) if you do any of the following: delete your cookies, switch Internet browsers, change computers, or upgrade your web browser.
To opt-in later to provide our platform service with your anonymous information, delete the AK Platform Service cookie in the browser and then return to a website with an AK Platform Service on it. You will automatically be re-assigned a new cookie.
How can I review and delete my personally identifiable information input by client’s into the platform?
While the AK Platform does not collect, process, compile, merge, receive, or handle any personally identifiable information from our clients, we always respond to questions relating to inquiries within 30 business days. Therefore, if a client requests Aggregate Knowledge to remove data, we will respond to their request within 30 business days. The client will then provide access to the individual as determined under the applicable local data protection laws. If your personal information has been provided to one of our clients and you would like to access, correct, amend or delete your information, please direct your query directly to either Aggregate Knowledge or the applicable Aggregate Knowledge client.
How long do you keep user data?
We have implemented a strict data policy and process around data retention. We systematically flush out anonymous click-stream data after 30 days from our optimization engine. More aggregated user data such as impressions, clicks, and conversions remain in the Aggregate Knowledge system for up to 18 months for reporting purpose only.
Does the Aggregate Knowledge service use cookies?
In connection with the platform service, Aggregate Knowledge may use its own cookie or use our customers’ cookies. We use cookies for statistical purposes and to understand the browsing patterns and history of these visitors. Through the use of cookies, we can determine whether or not a visitor has been to one of our customers’ websites before (e.g., a first-time or returning visitor), as well as total request counts of how many requests the user has made to the AK Platform Service. We also store view history information in an internal history cookie that is used only as an optimized history lookup mechanism. This historical information duplicates information held inside the AK Platform Service, and is used for internal purchase and recent view information optimization results.
We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. A session ID cookie is used to determine the length of a visitor session. This cookie expires when a visitor closes their browser. A persistent cookie lets us know if a user has ever been to one of our customers’ websites. A persistent cookie remains on a visitor’s hard drive for a predetermined period of time. Most browsers offer robust options in relation to managing cookies. The default settings in all major browsers accept cookies. However, by altering browser settings, users can automatically block cookies from specific websites, from all websites, from websites without a privacy policy, or from all third parties. We advise users to consult the help information for their browser for detailed information on managing and disabling cookies.
If a user chooses to disable cookies, they may still be able to use our customers’ sites, but some areas of our customers’ sites may be limited. For example, we might not be able to deliver relevant content and product recommendations on our customers’ site to a specific visitor that has disabled cookies on their browser. In addition, the web page may not display as the way our customers intend.
Does the Aggregate Knowledge service use standard log files?
As is common with most websites, we automatically gather certain information and store it in log files. However, none of this information identifies individual users using personally identifiable information (PII). Information in our log files includes Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, referring URL, operating system, date/time stamp, and bytes transferred. We use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends and to track and understand how people use our customers’ sites.
Does the Aggregate Knowledge service use web beacons?
To deploy our AK Platform service, we use a software technology called JavaScript tags (a.k.a., web beacons). No personally identifiable information about you is gathered by JavaScript tags. Information recorded through these JavaScript tags is used to report anonymous individual and/or aggregate usage information to our customers. Aggregate Knowledge uses JavaScript tags in the following ways: to count users who have visited a particular page; to capture metadata about the content of a particular page; and to access tracking cookies as described above.
Does the AK Platform service provide links to third-party sites?
Aggregate Knowledge may provide links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by Aggregate Knowledge. Please be aware that Aggregate Knowledge is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects information.
Group aggregate data
Aggregate Knowledge reserves the right to provide aggregate or group data about end users that have used the Aggregate Knowledge service for lawful purposes. Aggregate or group data is data that describes the demographics, usage, or characteristics of end users as a group, without disclosing personally identifiable information.
How are changes made to the privacy policy?
Aggregate Knowledge reserves the right to change this privacy policy at any time. We encourage you to review our privacy policy whenever you use this website to make sure you understand how your information will be used. Upon any change in our privacy policy, Aggregate Knowledge will post those changes to this privacy statement and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here.
If changes are made to this policy in regard to personally identifiable information (PII) and merger with non-PII, prior notice will be posted in this section of the website. In the case of such a change, visitors will be prompted to opt in. Any such material change in this privacy policy will apply only to information collected following the change in policy. Information collected prior to the material change in policy will continue to be governed by this policy in effect at the time the information was collected, unless you opt in to allow collected information to be governed by the new policy.
Security
Aggregate Knowledge adheres to industry-standard measures to protect information collected and received. A combination of network and host security services are used to protect data related to the AK Platform service.
Although the AK Platform service does not gather personally identifiable data, our datacenters are protected by active and passive security measures. A combination of firewalls, iptables, and real-time tracking measures are used to detect unauthorized access.
The security of our clients’ information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as login credentials), we encrypt the transmission of that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).
We follow generally accepted standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can contact privacy@aggregateknowledge.com.
Complaints and outside resources
Please email questions or requests for more information about Aggregate Knowledge's privacy policies to privacy@aggregateknowledge.com. In addition, we can be contacted at:
Aggregate Knowledge
Attn: Privacy
1820 Gateway Drive
Suite 300
San Mateo, CA 94404
650 293-2920
privacy@aggregateknowledge.com
In This Section
Find our about AK privacy in general, our advertiser registry, website privacy, and AK Platform privacy
Aggregate Knowledge is committed to protecting privacy. Aggregate Knowledge adheres to the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) and TRUSTe self-regulatory principles that are designed to inform consumers about data collection and advertising practices across multiple websites, and provide the ability to opt out.