FriendFeed Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 26, 2008

FriendFeed takes your privacy seriously. We respect and protect the privacy of our users and take appropriate steps to safeguard your personal information. This privacy policy (the “Policy”) explains the types of personal information that we receive and collect when you use the FriendFeed website ("Site") or the services offered by FriendFeed ("Services").

Because FriendFeed is intended for users to share information, photos, ideas, etc. with their friends, it is important to distinguish between what we will share with third parties, and what users are themselves sharing on the Site. We do not generally restrict what you share with your friends on the Site, and you are solely responsible for the content and privacy of what you share. FriendFeed, however, does not sell personal information to third parties at any time for any reason. The information we collect, as described below, is used solely to facilitate the delivery to you of our Services. Despite our policy against the sale or use of personal information of users other than for the purpose of delivering the Services, users should be aware that what they share on the Site may be discovered by third parties without the involvement of FriendFeed, including, without limitation, search engine crawlers, bots and the like. Users should always take that into consideration whenever they share something, whether on our Site or on other third-party sites.

FriendFeed adheres to the US safe harbor privacy principles of Notice, Choice, Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity, Access and Enforcement, and is registered with the U.S. Department of Commerce's safe harbor program.

If you have any questions about this Policy, please contact us at privacy@friendfeed.com, or write to us at FriendFeed Inc., 313 W. Evelyn Ave., Mountain View, CA 94041.

Information we collect

Information you provide

When you sign up for a FriendFeed account, we ask you for personal information, such as your name, email address, and a nickname. You'll be asked to create a password for your FriendFeed account. You may also provide us with additional email addresses that we will link with your account.
You may create a public profile that includes certain personal information and pictures, which can be accessed and viewed by other FriendFeed users.
If you choose to have FriendFeed aggregate your activity from other websites, you must provide us with your username for each site. You should be aware that for certain sites, this may expose your email credentials. For some sites, we will ask for a password if it is required by that service to display the information on FriendFeed.
When you provide friends' email addresses and the services they use, we store these in order to provide Services to you. We also store your imported contact list if you choose.
When you invite friends to FriendFeed or send messages through FriendFeed, we collect and maintain information associated with those messages, including email addresses and content.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file containing a string of characters. This information is sent to your computer when you use FriendFeed, and it’s stored on your computer so that we can uniquely identify a user’s browser. We use cookies to store user preferences and track user trends. Because FriendFeed is entirely personalized, your browser must accept cookies for us to provide our Services to you.

Contents of entries

The contents of any entry that you post directly to the Site, including any text, images, photos, videos and audio, are stored and maintained on our servers in order to publish these items and provide the Service. Your submitted content will be associated with your account.

User communications

When you send email or other communication to FriendFeed, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services.

Non-personally-identifying information

This is information that is commonly made available by web browsers and servers, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. FriendFeed uses this information to better understand how visitors use our website. From time to time, we may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in FriendFeed usage.

Uses

We maintain and process your personal information in order to provide your FriendFeed account and access. When you send messages or invitations through FriendFeed, your name, email address and personal FriendFeed URL are identified in the message. We also use your name and email address to notify you of FriendFeed updates that you have selected for in “Settings”, as well as other information, such as friend subscription requests.

We store passwords for third-party services if it is required by that service to display the information on FriendFeed. We do this in order to provide Services to you. We do not store passwords for third-party sites when you provide them as part of contact information retrieval, such as contacts import from Gmail.

In addition to the above, FriendFeed may process personal information for such purposes as:

Sending you information related to your FriendFeed account or other FriendFeed services;
Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;
Ensuring the technical functioning of our network; and
Developing new services.

FriendFeed processes personal information on our servers in the United States of America. For users outside the United States, please note that any personally-identifying information you enter into the Site will be transferred out of your country and into the United States. You consent to such transfer through your use of the Site and our Services. You also warrant that you have the right to transfer such information outside your country and into the United States.

Choices for personal information

You may change your FriendFeed account settings in the FriendFeed “Settings” section. You may delete your entries through FriendFeed, and this will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted entries remain in our database to keep them from accidentally reappearing in people's feeds. When an entry is deleted in FriendFeed, it often is not deleted in the third-party site from which that entry came. FriendFeed retains the original entry so that it is not added as a "new" item during a future crawl.

If you wish to terminate your FriendFeed account, you can do so at: http://friendfeed.com/account/delete. You can also write to us at FriendFeed Inc., 313 W. Evelyn Ave., Mountain View, CA 94041. If you terminate your account, your profile and any entries or comments you’ve made will be removed from the site. Your account will be deleted immediately, but it will remain in our backup systems.

You can decline to submit personal information to our Service, in which case FriendFeed may not be able to provide the Service to you.

Information sharing

In addition to the uses noted above, FriendFeed only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of FriendFeed in the following limited circumstances:

We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
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 imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of FriendFeed, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

If FriendFeed becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

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 FriendFeed 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

FriendFeed processes personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected and in accordance with this Policy. 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. 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 FriendFeed, 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.

Links to Third Party Sites

This Policy only applies to the FriendFeed website and services. We do not exercise control over the sites that our service links to. These other sites may place their own cookies or other files on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information from you. We encourage you to read such privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit. It is the sole responsibility of such third parties to adhere to any applicable restrictions on the disclosure of your personally-identifying information, and FriendFeed and its affiliates shall not be liable for wrongful use or disclosure of your personally-identifying information by any third party.

Enforcement

FriendFeed regularly reviews its compliance with this Policy. Please feel free to direct any questions or concerns regarding this Policy or FriendFeed’s treatment of personal information by contacting us at privacy@friendfeed.com or by writing to us at the address below. When we receive formal written complaints at this address, it is FriendFeed's policy to contact the complaining user regarding his or her concerns. We will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that cannot be resolved between FriendFeed and an individual.

Changes to this policy

This Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Policy without your explicit consent, and we expect most such changes will be minor. Regardless, we will post any Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice. Each version of this Policy will be identified at the top of the page by its effective date, and we will also keep prior versions of this Policy in an archive for your review.

If you have any additional questions or concerns about this Policy, please contact us at privacy@friendfeed.com, or write to us at FriendFeed Inc., 313 W. Evelyn Ave., Mountain View, CA 94041.