We collect non-personal identification information through the use of, without limitation, the following types of methodology:
Cookie technology: A "cookie" is an element of data that a website can send to your browser, which may then store it on your system.
IP address tracking: An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer when you are on the Internet. When you request pages from our Sites, our servers log your IP address.
Web beacons: A Web beacon, or "clear gif," is a small graphic image on a webpage or Web-based document that a website can use to determine information about a user.
Non-personal identification information might include the browser you use, the type of computer you use and technical information about your means of connection to our Sites—such as the operating systems and the Internet service providers utilized and other similar information. Our systems may also automatically gather information about the areas you visit and search terms you use on our Sites and about the links you may select from within our Sites to other areas of the Web or elsewhere online.
We use such information for our business purposes and, in particular, primarily to administer the Sites, better manage advertising on the Sites and, in the aggregate, to understand how our users as a group use the services and resources provided on our Sites. This way, we know which areas of our Sites are the favorites of our users, which areas need improvement and what technologies are being used so that we may continually improve our Sites.
We may share this aggregate statistical information with our partners, suppliers and other third parties, but we will not share any individual names, personal navigational or other personal information. For example, we may use a third-party advertising company to serve ads when you visit our Sites. We may share demographic and preference information with this company to allow them to display appropriate advertisements for you.
We use a proprietary advertising server to display ads on our Sites. In addition, advertisers may elect to use third-party advertising companies to serve ads onto our Sites. Some of our advertisers may display ads on our Sites that may use cookie technology or Web beacons to (i) identify nonpersonal information about our users (such as connection speed, browser and country of origin) and (ii) track user behavior within our Sites. Advertisers generally use such information to customize the display of ads within our Sites. We will not permit such advertisers to collect any personal information from our users within our Sites, however, you may choose to voluntarily provide the advertisers with your personal information. We do not have access to these cookies or any information that they may contain.
Further, we currently contract with a third-party Web analytics provider to help manage and optimize our Sites. We use this service to help us measure the effectiveness of our advertising and how visitors use our Sites. To do this, we use Web beacons and cookie technology on the Sites. The type of information we collect includes the number of hits a webpage receives, the type of browser used and the number of times a visitor makes a purchase from a particular promotion. By supplementing our records, this information helps us learn things like what pages are most attractive to our visitors, which of our products and services most interest our users, and what kinds of offers our users like to see. Although this third-party provider logs the information coming from our Sites on our behalf, we control how that data may and may not be used.