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Qixit
Privacy Policy
Thank you for visiting the Qixit.com and related websites (hereinafter “the Site”) and for using Qixit™ Services (hereinafter “Service” or “Services”)
and Software (hereinafter “Software”), all of which are owned by Qix Information
Technology, LLC, a
Missouri Limited Liability Company (hereinafter “Qixit” or “Our
Company”) and for reviewing our Privacy Policy.
Please read the following
policy to understand how your personal information will be treated as you make full
use of our Site, Services, and Software.
You can browse the public
areas of our site without identifying yourself or revealing any personal information
about yourself. If you choose to apply for a Qixit™
account or to otherwise use our Services or Software, the information you provide
will be used to screen and evaluate your application, provide you with updates,
finalize the delivery of the software, and offer you exemplary service. We do not
collect any personal data without your consent. Initiating the application process
constitutes consent for us to use the information as described in this policy.
Overview
This Privacy Policy (hereinafter
“Policy”) governs your use of our Site, Services, and Software.
This Policy describes the information we collect from you and what
may happen to that information. For
example, this Policy will let you know what information we collect from you; what
cookies are and how they are used; how your information is used; who is collecting
your information; with whom your information may be shared; what options are available
to you regarding collection, use, and distribution of your information; how you
may use other users’ information; the types of security precautions in place to
protect against loss, misuse, or alteration of your information; and other important
information about your online privacy.
Please note that we review
our privacy practices from time to time, and that our practices are subject to change. We ask that you bookmark and periodically
review this page to ensure continuing familiarity with the most current version of our Privacy Policy. All amended terms shall be automatically effective after they are posted on the Site.
By visiting
the Site or using our Services and Software, you agree to be bound by the terms
and conditions of this Privacy Policy.
If you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, you are not permitted
to use or access the Site or use our Services or Software.
How does Qixit use my information?
Qixit uses “Your Information”
to provide you with income and services, including a secure and cost-effective way
to manage electronic communications and financial transactions, and a customized
browsing experience. We also may use your personal information to process orders
(like submitting your credit card, name, and zip code to the credit card processor
so that your payment goes through properly), resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems,
respond to your inquiries, detect and protect against error, fraud, or other criminal
activity, and enforce our User Agreement.
Information collected from
your user profile, marketing profile, purchase patterns, and other uses of our services
will be combined in central databases and may be used by us to develop and enhance
our services.
What personally identifiable information does Qixit collect?
The primary purpose of collecting
information from you is to provide you with the merger of email, marketing, and
electronic payment tools ensuring a secure and cost-effective method of managing
electronic communications and financial transactions, as well as with a safe, smooth,
effective, and personalized experience.
We will only collect information about you that we consider necessary to achieve
this purpose. This includes collecting
information that will increase the value of your market identity, and thereby the
financial remuneration you will receive from marketers for accepting delivery of
their marketing messages.
Generally, Qixit collects
information in several ways. Some information
is gathered when you register. This
includes your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, and other basic
demographic information. Where possible, we indicate which fields are required and
which fields are optional. We also
collect personal information when you report a problem, either through the Site’s
email address, by direct mail, or via telephone.
We may also ask for personal information at other times, including, but not
limited to, when you make a purchase or payments using Qixit.
If you contact Qixit, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
We also may ask you questions in a survey concerning your user
experience, the answers to which are never associated with any personally identifiable
information but which are viewed for general customer feedback and satisfaction.
Wherever Qixit collects
personal information, we make an effort to include a link to this Privacy Policy
on that page. The Privacy Policy may
also be accessible through the Qixit email client which you may install on your
own personal computer.
How do you increase and monetize the value of my information
while protecting my privacy?
In using our
service, you are authorizing us to collect information about you and your use of
our services and to represent you in the sale of that information to third parties,
under conditions that reasonably protect your privacy while at the same time converting
the value of this information into money which will be deposited into your account.
Specifically, “Your Information”
is collected from your registration, user profile, marketing profiles you may complete,
purchase patterns, click-throughs and other responses to commercial messages delivered
to you, and to any other uses of our services. Your Information will be combined
in central databases with that of other users and may be used by us to develop and
enhance our services.
Your Information is composed
of two parts, personally identifiable information (PII) and non-personally identifiable
information (non-PII). PII includes
your name, your street address, date of birth, phone number, standard email address,
your Qixit address, and any credit card or bank account information you supply when
transmitting funds or making a deposit or withdrawal to Qixit’s pooled accounts. Non-PII includes information you supply
in response to our questionnaires and marketing profiles, information gathered from
your responses to Qixit delivered marketing message for which you were paid (such
as click through, time read, printing of the message), information regarding the
commercial categories of vendors from whom you have purchased goods or services
using your Qixit account, your age, zip code, and similar information that may increase
the value of your market identity.
In collecting
Your Information, our goal is to help you maximize the value of Your Information
in terms of both saving in time money collected for you in the form of payments
into your Qixit account. In general,
these funds are paid to you by marketers in return for accepting marketing messages
from them which are targeted toward a large number of people like yourself who are
most likely to have an interest in their offers.
The targeting of offers is based on non-personal identifying information
(non-PII).
Specifically, commercial
advertisers will be able to indirectly query a data base containing non-PII information
of our user which will produce summary results in aggregate form.
These queries may result in the identification and release of your Qixit
address, but no other PII, which will be included in a mailing list of other persons
who also match the advertiser’s selection criteria. This address will not be released
to the advertisers, however, but will instead be used only by Qixit to deliver the
prepared commercial message to your account along with the delivery charge you have
set for receiving commercial messages in the selected category.
For example, an publisher
may select to send an offer to 5000 recent book buyers, between 18 and 30 years
of age, who are female and live in Colorado and are charging between 10 and 40 cents
for delivery of a book related commercial message.
If Your Information indicates that you match that profile, your Qixit address
might be included in the “select” of addresses which will receive that offer. Even
at this stage, however, neither your Qixit mailing address, name or any other PII,
is given to the marketers. Instead,
the approved marketing message, along with your required delivery fee, is delivered
to your address directly from the Qixit servers, isolating you from the marketer.
If you are not revealing personal identifying information to marketers, how is it
that I may receive offers directed to me by name?
To facilitate “personalization”
of marketing message, advertisers are allowed to include certain wildcard fields,
such as <FirstName>. This will
signal the Qixit software to replace this wildcard field with your own first name. Thus, a sales letter that begins “Dear
Mr. Smith” does not mean the advertiser knows your name is Smith.
Instead it means the advertiser designed the message to be automatically
personalized with information from your personal profile.
Research shows that such personalization is appreciated by both recipients
and advertisers.
What personally identifiable information will be accessible to others through your
user directory?
Unless you
are minor, your account address, name, city and state shall be searchable in our
user directory, so other persons seeking to contact you may identify and use your
account address. This directory is
similar to a telephone book, but your physical mailing address and phone number
will not be listed in this directory.
People finding you in this directory can only communicate with you through your
Qixit account and must pay your required message delivery charge.
Minors (persons under the
age of 18) will not be listed in our searchable directory.
Will personally identifiable information be shared with merchants when I make a
purchase or otherwise respond to their offers?
When making a purchase using
Qixit, if you have preauthorized us to do so, your name and physical address may
be automatically delivered to the seller along with your payment.
If you choose to withhold this information and provide an alternative delivery
address, the seller may be notified that the delivery address is not the same as
the account address on file.
Alternatively, if you respond
to a commercial message by clicking a link or printing the message (a coupon, for
example), your Qixit address may be revealed to the sender of that message. However, the sender’s use of your address
would still be restricted by (1) the delivery charges you have set and which they
must pay if they wish to communicate with you through your Qixit address, and (2)
other restrictions and privacy terms related to our user agreements with advertisers.
If you respond to an offer
(by making a purchase, for example) an advertiser may be able to link your response
to the offer made and other information they have collected in relation to your
response. For example, when processing
your order the advertiser may be able to deduce that you must fit within the range
of parameters originally selected when
they sent out their offer through Qixit (in the above example: female, 18-30 years
old, resident of Colorado, recent book buyer).
But neither at the time that the offer is sent, nor after you made the purchase,
would we provide the advertiser with your exact age, exact information about your
prior book purchases, or any other exact details.
If you access
our Services through the referral of a third party who is entitled to receive referral
credits or other remuneration, we may share contact information such as your name
and Qixit address with that business partner.
What are “cookies” and how does Qixit,com use them?
Data collection devices,
such as “cookies,” are sometimes used to store, and sometimes track, information
about you. Generally, these cookies
help provide personalized services and promote trust and safety.
A cookie is a small file containing a small amount of data that is sent to
your browser from a web server and placed on your computer’s hard drive to assist
us in providing our services. All pages
on the Site where you are prompted to login or that are customizable may require
that you accept cookies. Cookies are
only read by the server that placed them and are unable to execute any code or virus. Most cookies are “session cookies” and
are automatically deleted from your hard drive at the end of a session.
More specifically, we may use cookies to:
(1)
Remind us of who you are when you login and
to access your account information in order to deliver to you a more personalized
service;
(2)
Measure your visiting patterns in the aggregate. Aggregate data (data gathered across
all user accounts) may be gathered in a non-personally identifiable form to build
higher quality, more useful online services by performing statistical analyses of
the collective characteristics and behavior of our visitors, such as how long and
how often users view certain pages;
(3)
Determine your clickstream to our Site;
(4)
Better personalize the content that you and other
users will see on our Site; and
(5)
Collect IP addresses for system administration.
With whom does Qixit share my information?
Your information will not
be made available to third parties except (1) with your permission, (2) under the
terms described above which shall provide financial remuneration to you under the
terms you set in your Qixit account profile, or (3) under court order.
Specifically, as described
above, your information will be included in our marketing databases which are made
available on a restricted basis, which does not allow identification or delivery
of specific information regarding individual persons, to third parties who wish
to send funds or delivery fees to you in conjunction with commercial offers. The
targeting of offers is based on non-personal identifying information.
We may also disclose account
information where we have reason to believe that disclosing the information is necessary
to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be violating
Qixit’s policies as specified in the Privacy Policy or User Agreement, violating
state or federal law, or may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally
or unintentionally) Qixit’s rights or property, other Site users, or anyone else
that could be harmed by such activities.
Qixit may disclose or access account information when we believe in good faith that
the law requires it and for administrative and other purposes that we deem necessary
to maintain and improve our services.
We cannot ensure that all
of your private communications and other personal information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Policy.
For example, we may be forced to disclose information to the government or
third parties under certain circumstances.
What are my choices regarding collection, use, and distribution of my information?
Qixit will
contact you if you request we contact you, if you create a Qixit account, or if
you contact us directly by phone or email.
We may also send you email and Qixit messages delivered through our Services and
Software, at no charge, regarding related and unrelated products and services. Qixit may communicate with you via telephone,
email, or direct mail.
How may I use information from other parties which I may collect through your Services?
Recognizing the global nature
of the Internet, you agree to comply with all applicable local laws and rules regarding
online conduct and privacy, as well as content.
Specifically, but not as a limitation, you agree to comply with all applicable
laws regarding transmission of technical and personal data exported from the United
States or the country in which you reside.
You also agree
to use any user information provided to you through the Qixit service solely for
the purpose for which it was provided to you; and in full compliance with the terms
set in that registered user’s Qixit account profile.
What security precautions are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration
of my information?
Whenever Qixit handles your
personal information, we take steps to ensure that your information is treated securely
and
in accordance with the relevant User Agreement and this Policy. Your information
is stored on our servers located in the
United States
. We use procedural and mechanical
safeguards to protect your personal information against loss, theft, and unauthorized
access and disclosure to protect your privacy, including encryption.
Unfortunately, however, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed
to be 100% secure. We cannot, therefore,
warrant or ensure the security of any information you transmit to us or from our
online products or services, and you do so at your own risk.
Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its
security on our systems.
Additional Information
Any questions
regarding this statement should be directed to Privacy Officer, Qix Information Technology LLC,
116 N Main Street, St. Charles, MO 63301
This Policy is the sole
authorized statement of Qixit’s practices with respect to
the online collection
of personally identifiable information and the usage of such information.
Any summaries of this Policy generated by third party software or otherwise
shall have no legal effect, are in no way binding upon Qixit, shall not be relied
upon in substitution of this Policy, and do not supersede or modify this Policy.
In the event of any sale
or transfer of assets or our business to a third party, we reserve the right to
transfer any and all information that we collect in connection with use of our services
and web site to that third party, provided however, that the third party shall be
bound by the same or stricter provisions provided in our User Agreement and Privacy
Policy.
Your Information will not
be made available to third parties except under the conditions described above,
or under court order.
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