Version 2.1, September 2011
MDBG recognizes and respects your privacy. This Privacy Policy applies to all of the products, services and websites offered by MDBG Inc. or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies. MDBG adheres to the US Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of Notice, Choice, Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity, Access and Enforcement.
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 MDBG Search. 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 a MDBG Account or purchase a MDBG service or promotion that requires registration, we ask you for personal information (such as your name, email address and an account password). For certain services, such as our advertising programs, we also request credit card or other payment account information which we maintain in encrypted form on secure servers. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other MDBG 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 MDBG, we may 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. MDBG also uses cookies in its advertising services to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web. We may set one or more cookies in your browser when you visit a website, including MDBG sites that use our advertising cookies, and view or click on an ad supported by MDBG’s advertising services.
• Log information – When you access MDBG 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 MDBG, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services.
• Affiliated MDBG Services on other sites – We offer some of our services on or through other websites. Personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent to MDBG in order to deliver the service. We process such information under this Privacy Policy. The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.
• Gadgets – MDBG may make available third party applications through its services. The information collected by MDBG 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.
• Links – MDBG may present links in a format that enables us to keep track of whether these links have been followed. We use this information to improve the quality of our search technology, customized content and advertising.
• Other sites – This Privacy Policy applies to MDBG services only. We do not exercise control over the sites displayed as links, including sites that may also include MDBG 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.
MDBG only processes personal information for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. In addition to the above, such purposes include:
• Providing our services, including the display of
customized content 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 MDBG or our users;
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.
MDBG processes personal information on our servers in the United States of America and in other countries. In some cases, we process 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 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 MDBG features and services may not function properly if your cookies are disabled.
You can decline to submit personal information to any of our services, in which case MDBG may not be able to provide those services to you.
Information sharing
MDBG only shares personal information with other
companies or individuals outside of MDBG in the following
limited circumstances:
• We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the
sharing of any sensitive personal information.
• We provide such information to our subsidiaries,
affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons
for the purpose of processing personal information on our
behalf. We require that these parties agree to process such
information based on our instructions and in compliance with
this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate
confidentiality and security measures.
• 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 the rights, property or safety of MDBG, its
users or the public as required or permitted by law.
If MDBG becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will ensure the confidentiality of any personal information involved in such transactions and provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy. We may share with third parties certain pieces of aggregated, non-personal information such as the number of users who translated or looked up a particular term. 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
We take appropriate security measures to protect against
unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration,
disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal
reviews of our data collection, storage and processing
practices and security measures, as well as physical
security measures to guard against unauthorized access to
systems where we store personal data.
We restrict access to personal information to MDBG
employees, contractors and agents who need to know that
information in order to operate, develop or improve our
services. These individuals are bound by confidentiality
obligations and may be subject to discipline, including
termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet
these obligations.
Data integrity
MDBG 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 MDBG services, we make good faith efforts to
provide you with access to your personal information and
either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete
such data at your request 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 perform this service free of
charge, except if doing so 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 FAQs for these services.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Please note that this Privacy Policy may change from time to
time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy
Policy without your explicit consent, and we expect most
such changes will be minor. Regardless, 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, email notification of
Privacy Policy changes). Each version of this Privacy Policy
will be identified at the top of the page by its effective
date.
Questions
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, email us Chinese Reader-info (at) mdbg.net
Your rights and responsibilities for using MDBG Chinese Reader.
Functional warranty for our products.
How we collect and use information.