Updated July 1, 2005
Your Privacy Rights
BET.com supports a general policy of openness about personal data collection and use. We have adopted and implemented this Privacy Policy as part of our commitment to protecting our users’ personally identifiable information from misuse.
The phrase “personally identifiable information" as used in BET.com’s Privacy Policy means information such as a user’s full name, street address, town or city, state, zip code, telephone number, date of birth, e-mail address and any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact a BET.com user.
Your California Privacy Rights.
Users who reside in California can prevent future disclosures of his or her personally identifiable information, at no charge, by exercising his or her “opt out” rights by using the “opt out” procedures described below:
1. You can send email to: californiacontactus@bet.com, or
2. You can send mail to the following postal address:
BET Interactive, LLC
2000 M Street, NW
Suite 602
Washington, DC 20036
Attn: General Counsel
Additionally, upon receipt of any communication from BET.com, to unsubscribe from future communications, you can click on the link that says “If you do not wish to receive these emails in the future, You can click here to unsubscribe.”
Because BET.com provides its California users with the ability to exercise his or her “opt out” rights as described above, pursuant to Section 1798.83 (c)(2) of the California Civil Code, BET.com is in compliance with the California “Shine the Light” law and is not obligated to provide California users with the names and addresses of all the third parties that received personal information from BET.com for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year.
Please be aware that other websites that may be accessed through our site (including stores listed on BET.com) may collect personally indefinable information about you. The information practices of those websites linked to BET.com are governed by the privacy policies of those websites and are not covered by this privacy statement, and BET.com is not responsible for any information that you provide to those websites when you access these.
What information does BET.com collect?
Some functions, as well as some areas of BET.com, require users to register before they can use or access a particular area of the site (which may be necessary for identification, security, or marketing purposes, etc.). BET.com’s registration, online surveys, contest entry forms, and product order forms may call for users to provide personally identifiable information, financial information (like their bank account or credit card numbers), and demographic information (like their zip code, age, or income level). Additionally, BET.com’s registration process requires users to choose a user ID and password. Users may change his or her password, as well as any personally identifiable information provided to us to keep his or her registration information current.
We use the standard “cookie” feature of major browser applications to allow us to store data about your visit (such data is stored in the aggregate form). Cookies help us learn which areas of our site are useful and which areas need improvement. We also may use cookies to track visits to and business at stores on BET.com, to process the items in your shopping basket, and to track your progress and number of entries in some of our promotions, sweepstakes, and contests. Advertising networks that serve ads onto BET.com may also use their own cookies.
BET.com may also gather anonymous information, which may be used by us or shared with third parties. This is information which does not personally identify you, but which may be helpful for marketing purposes or for improving the services we offer. For example, we might tell our advertisers how many users visited a particular advertisement, and how long, so they can measure whether the ad worked. This information is also used to generate advertising rates. Generally this information is collected through “traffic data” and may entail the use of numeric codes used to identify a computer.
What does BET.com do with collected information?
BET.com’s primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide the user, with a customized experience on our site. This includes personalization services, interactive communications, online shopping, and many other types of services, most of which are completely free to our users. In order to provide services free of charge, we display advertisements. By knowing a little about users, BET.com is able to deliver more relevant advertisements and content, and hence better service, to our users.
In our role of delivering targeted advertisements, BET.com plays the middleman. Advertisers give us an advertisement and tell us the type of audience they want to reach (for example, males over 35 years old). BET.com takes the advertisement and displays it to users meeting those criteria. This kind of advertisement targeting is done with banner ads as well as promotional emails.
We use personally identifiable information from our online registration, survey, and contest and order forms for our own internal evaluation and tracking purposes and to send our users information from our company and promotional material from some of our business partners (or from other companies). If you supply such personally identifiable information, it may also be used to contact you about products and services in which you have indicated an interest, and may be shared with our third party advertisers, business partners, or other companies who may want to contact you, if you have provided your consent through an “opt in” ( in which case their use of your personally identifiable information is subject to such third party’s privacy policy). Additionally, you may opt out of receiving future mailings by using the “opt out” procedures described below – see the Choice/Opt-Out section below.
We may use cookies in a number of ways, including keeping track of user return visits to BET.com or our advertisers’ or business partners’ websites; accumulating and reporting aggregate, statistical information in connection with BET.com user visits; and to deliver to our users content specific to their interests; to save users ID, passwords, or other information so users don’t have to re-enter it each time they visit our site.
Advertisements displayed on BET.com, and links to other websites may also contain cookies. We may also use third parties to display or serve advertising on BET.com and to distribute our emails or newsletters. These third party companies may employ cookie and other technologies to measure advertising effectiveness. You should be aware that different rules may apply to the collection, or use of the personally identifiable information you disclosure to these third parties.
Additionally, BET.com uses a third party ad serving company, 24/7 Real Media, Inc. (“24/7 Real Media”) to serve certain advertisements to you when you visit BET.com. 24/7 Real Media may use anonymous information related to your visit to BET.com to better provide advertisements to you about goods and services that may be of interest to you.
As always, we only authorize our third party ad serving companies to employ anonymous cookies for ad delivery and anonymous targeting. Additionally, we do not give our third party ad serving companies any personally identifying information about you.
If you would like more information about your ability to opt-out of the use of cookies, or to prevent 24/7 Real Media from setting and/or reading cookies on your computer, or to know more about the information gathering practices and procedures of 24/7 Real Media, please click here: www.247realmedia.com/privacy.html.
BET.com’s privacy policy covers the use of cookies by BET.com only and does not cover the use of cookies by our third party ad serving companies, such as 24/7 Real Media.
BET.com may use users IP address (the number assigned to your computer while it is on the Internet) for our internal purposes to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our site. If users shop on BET.com, their IP address is used to help identify their computer and their online “shopping cart” (if any) and to gather broad demographic information. In addition, your IP address is transmitted with each message sent from your account.
Demographic and profile data from online forms or cookies may be used to tailor your experience at our site, showing you content that we think you might be interested in, and displaying the content according to your preferences. This information may be shared with our third party advertisers, business partners, or other companies only on an aggregate basis, unless you expressly agree through an opt-in that personally identifiable information about you may be disclosed.
If you submit financial information it may be used to check your qualifications and to bill you for products and services. You may choose to submit unique identifiers (such as social security numbers) in order to allow us to verify your identity and for use as account numbers in our record system.
Disclosure to Third Parties.
BET.com may disclose user’s personally identifiable information to third parties (i) when we have his or her consent (through an "opt in"), in which case their use of a user’s information is subject to such third party’s own privacy policy; (ii) when users use co-branded services on BET.com and provide any personally identifiable information to any of our third party co-branded business partners (where users are consenting to provide this information to such co-branding partner). Additionally, such third party’s use of a user’s information is subject to such third party’s own privacy policy; (iii) when we have retained companies to work with or on behalf of BET.com to provide products, goods or services that users have requested; (iv) if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a legal process served on BET.com or its parent company, subsidiaries or affiliate by a governmental agency, court or other entity (e.g., to respond to subpoenas, court orders or other legal process); (v) if we believe a user’s actions violate any law, regulation, our “Terms of Service” or any of our guidelines for promotions, product offerings or any other features of BET.com, or if a user threatens the rights, property or safety of BET.com, its advertisers, other users, or any other party; (vi) as and when we, in our sole discretion, and in the good-faith belief believe that such disclosure is necessary or appropriate to investigate or resolve possible problems or inquiries, to protect our business and assets, to defend our interests, rights or property of BET.com, and/or to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations; or (vii) in the event of a bankruptcy, or a merger, acquisition, joint venture or other business combination involving BET.com. Also, personally identifiable information you provide to BET.com may be stored outside of the country in which you reside.
Public Forums.
BET.com makes chat rooms, forums, message boards, personal web pages and/or news groups available to its users. Please remember that any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information.
Security.
BET.com has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Any time we ask for a credit card number we transmit that credit card number in an encrypted format. We use industry-standard, SSL (secure socket layer) encryption. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, BET.com cannot ensure or warrant 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.
Children.
BET.com is a general audience site. We do not direct any of our content specifically at children under thirteen (13) years of age, and we do not collect any personally identifiable information from anyone under 13 years of age.
Choice/Opt-Out.
BET.com gives you (or your parent(s) if you are under 18 years of age) the following options for removing your personal information from our database in order to stop receiving future communications from BET.com.
1. You can send email to: contactus@bet.com.
2. You can send mail to the following postal address:
BET Interactive, LLC
2000 M Street, NW
Suite 602
Washington, DC 20036
3. Upon receipt of any communication from BET.com, to unsubscribe from future communications, you can click on the link that says “If you do not wish to receive these emails in the future, You can click here to unsubscribe.”
Please note: BET.com is not responsible for removing information from third-party lists or entities with which you have previously authorized us to share your information.)
Additionally, you may opt-out of sharing your information with third-party lists or entities by either clearing the appropriate checkboxes at the point of initial collection or by following the procedures of third-party lists or entities.
Correct/Update.
BET.com gives you the following options for informing us of changes to information you have previously provided:
1. Email contactus@bet.com.
2. Send mail to the following postal address:
BET Interactive, LLC
2000 M Street, NW
Suite 602
Washington, DC 20036
Contacting BET.com.
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with BET.com, please feel free to contact”
BET Interactive, LLC
2000 M Street, NW
Suite 602
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 533-1990
BET.com reserves the right to revise this Privacy Policy at any time and for any reason and reserves the right to make changes at any time to any of the information contained in this Privacy Policy. By entering and using the services provided by BET.com, you acknowledge and agree that you shall be bound by this Privacy Policy and any such revisions. We suggest users periodically review this Privacy Policy to be aware of any modifications to these terms and conditions.