Privacy Policy

Last modified: May 1, 2013 (view archived versions)

There are many different ways you can use our services – to search for and share information relating to the neighborhood that you reside in, work in or otherwise affiliate with, to communicate with other people or to create new content. When you share information with us, for example by creating a neighborbee account, we can make those services even better – to show you more relevant content, search results and ads, to help you connect with people or to make sharing with others quicker and easier. As you use our services, we want you to be clear how we’re using information and the ways in which you can protect your privacy.

Our Privacy Policy explains:

  • What information we collect and why we collect it.
  • How we use that information.
  • The choices we offer, including how to access and update information.

We’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible, but if you’re not familiar with terms like cookies, IP addresses, pixel tags and browsers, then read about these key terms first. Your privacy matters to neighborbee so please do take the time to get to know our practices – and if you have any questions contact us.

Information We Collect

We collect information to provide better services to all of our users – from figuring out basic information like which language you speak, to more complex items like which ads you’ll find most useful or the people who matter most to you online.

We collect information in two ways:

  • Information you give us. When you sign up for a neighborbee account and use neighborbee, we’ll ask for personal information or otherwise obtain from you all or some of the following: your name, email address, postal address, phone number, mobile phone number, Facebook url, photo and user name, information posted in community discussions and other interactive online features, correspondence you send to us, and search queries conducted on this site.
  • Information we get from your use of our services. We may collect information about the services that you use and how you use them, like when you visit a website that uses our advertising services or you view and interact with our ads and content. This information includes:
    • Device information. 
We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). We may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your neighborbee account.
    • Log information. 
When you use our services or view content provided by neighborbee, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This may include:
      • Details of how you used our service, such as your search queries.
      • Telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls.
      • Internet protocol address.
      • Device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL.
      • Cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your neighborbee account.
    • Location information. 
When you use a location-enabled neighborbee service, we may collect and process information about your actual location, like GPS signals sent by a mobile device, in order to match you with a zip code, building or street address. We may also use various technologies to determine location, such as sensor data from your device that may, for example, provide information on nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers.
    • Unique application numbers. 
Certain services include a unique application number. This number and information about your installation (for example, the operating system type and application version number) may be sent to neighborbee when you install or uninstall that service or when that service periodically contacts our servers, such as for automatic updates.
    • Local storage. 
We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.
    • Cookies and anonymous identifiers. 
We use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit a neighborbee service, and this may include sending one or more cookies or anonymous identifiers to your device. We also use cookies and anonymous identifiers when you interact with services we offer to our partners, such as advertising services or neighborbee features that may appear on other sites.

How We Use Information We Collect

We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect neighborbee and our users. We also use this information to offer you tailored content – like giving you more relevant search results and ads.

We can post information we collect from you publicly (street, zip code and homepage) or privately (within your street address, zip code or hive and building).

We may use the name you provide to neighborbee across all of the services we offer that require a neighborbee account. In addition, we may replace past names associated with your neighborbee account so that you are represented consistently across all our services. If other users already have your email, or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible neighborbee Profile information, such as your name and photo.

When you contact neighborbee, we may keep a record of your communication to help solve any issues you might be facing. We may use your email address to inform you about our services, such as letting you know about upcoming changes or improvements.

We use information collected from third parties, cookies and other technologies, like pixel tags, to improve your user experience and the overall quality of our services. When showing you tailored ads, we will not associate a cookie or anonymous identifier with sensitive categories, such as those based on race, religion, sexual orientation or health.

We use information from third party APIs (Facebook Connect) to identify and register you into the neighborbee service, we cannot store the data per Facebook’s Developer policy (refer to policy) nor do we have access to your Facebook password or the ability to change any Facebook information in your profile. By using the neighborbee service, if you connect with Facebook, you can potentially share information you posted in neighborbee to your Facebook account. It is up to you to use Facebook’s privacy controls to restrict the sharing of content from neighborbee.

We may combine personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other neighborbee services – for example to make it easier to share things with people you know. We will not combine any cookie information with personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent.

We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy.

Neighborbee may process your personal information on a server located outside the country where you live.

Transparency and Choice

People have different privacy concerns. Our goal is to be clear about what information we collect, so that you can make meaningful choices about how it is used. For example, you can:

  • Review and control certain types of information tied to your neighborbee account.
  • You can also opt out of certain neighborbee advertising services here.
  • Use our editor to see and adjust how your neighborbee profile appears to particular individuals.
  • Control who you share information with.
  • Take information out of many of our services.

You may also set your browser to block all cookies, including cookies associated with our services, or to indicate when a cookie is being set by us. However, it’s important to remember that many of our services may not function properly if your cookies are disabled.

Information You Share

Many of our services let you share information with others including, but not limited to third party services and social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. Remember that when you share information publicly, it may be indexable by search engines, including neighborbee. Our services provide you with different options on sharing and removing your content. While you can control information so that only people in your hive may see or access the information, people who receive your information will have the ability to repost the information. See terms and conditions for use.

Accessing and Updating Your Personal Information

Whenever you use our services, we aim to provide you with access to your personal information. If that information is wrong, we strive to give you ways to update it quickly or to delete it – unless we have to keep that information for legitimate business or legal purposes. When updating your personal information, we may ask you to verify your identity before we can act on your request.

We may reject requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require disproportionate technical effort (for example, developing a new system or fundamentally changing an existing practice), risk the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes).

Where we can provide information access and correction, we will do so for free, except where it would require a disproportionate effort. We aim to maintain our services in a manner that protects information from accidental or malicious destruction. Because of this, after you delete information from our services, we may not immediately delete residual copies from our active servers and may not remove information from our backup systems.

Information We Share

We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of neighborbee unless one of the following circumstances apply:

  • With your consent. 
We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of neighborbee when we have your consent to do so. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
  • For external processing. 
We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
  • For legal reasons. 
We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of neighborbee if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:
    • Meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
    • Enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
    • Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
    • Protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of neighborbee, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.

We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services.

If neighborbee is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, we will continue to ensure the confidentiality of any personal information and give affected users notice before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Information Security

We work hard to protect neighborbee and our users from unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of information we hold. In particular:

  • We encrypt many of our services using SSL.
  • We offer you two step verification when you access your neighborbee account.
  • We review our information collection, storage and processing practices, including physical security measures, to guard against unauthorized access to systems.
  • We restrict access to personal information to neighborbee employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to process it for us, and who are subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations and may be disciplined or terminated if they fail to meet these obligations.

Application

Our Privacy Policy applies to all of the services offered by neighborbee LLC and its affiliates, including services offered on other sites (such as our advertising services), but excludes services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy.

Our Privacy Policy does not apply to services offered by other companies or individuals, including products or sites that may be displayed to you in search results, sites that may include neighborbee services, or other sites linked from our services. Our Privacy Policy does not cover the information practices of other companies and organizations who advertise our services, and who may use cookies, pixel tags and other technologies to serve and offer relevant ads.

Enforcement

We regularly review our compliance with our Privacy Policy. We also adhere to several self regulatory frameworks. When we receive formal written complaints, we will contact the person who made the complaint to follow up. We work with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that we cannot resolve with our users directly.

Changes

Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. 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). We will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review.

Specific Product Practices

This Privacy Policy may be supplemented in the future with notices to explain specific privacy practices with respect to certain neighborbee products and services that you may use.