Atlas, a Microsoft Corporation Subsidiary, Website
Last updated July 15, 2008
www.AtlasSolutions.com
What is housed on the Atlas website?
Atlas's website provides users with information about the company, products, services, client reports, and the ability to contact Atlas with questions relating to any of those topics.
What personally-identifying information is collected by Atlas website?
If they choose, visitors to Atlas's website can voluntarily fill out various forms to request more information. The forms for potential Atlas clients and investors can be used to collect personally-identifying information such as: names, addresses, e-mail addresses and telephone and fax numbers. All personally-identifying information is provided on an opt-in basis.
How does Atlas use this personally-identifying information collected on Atlas's website?
Atlas uses the personally-identifying information collected on its site solely to respond to the individual's request for information. We will include individuals on the respective distribution lists to send them the information they requested. Atlas uses a third party to send the requested information via e-mail. We may contact individuals via telephone using the provided telephone information. With the exception of information provided securely to Atlas's third party e-mail service provider (for the sole purpose of sending user requested information) Atlas does not, and will not, disclose, transfer, release, sell, rent, lease, license or give away any of the personally-identifying information provided to us by, or collected on our website. Atlas will also disclose this information in response to subpoenas, court orders or legal process.
How is this personally-identifying information secured?
To ensure complete confidentiality, collected data is stored in a secure database environment with appropriate system and procedural controls. Atlas also employs appropriate backup and contingency plans to prevent data loss. Finally, an independent accounting firm conducts bi-annual audits on issues of privacy, confidentiality, and security.
What are my choices? How do I opt-out of the website-specific mailing lists and services?
After opting-in you may choose to opt-out from any mailing lists that you have subscribed to at any time. You may also choose to delete your personally-identifying information at any time as well. For lists and services that relate specific to the Atlas website, please send your opt-out request to privacyinfo@atlassolutions.com.
Can I review and delete my personally-identifying information collected by the Atlas website?
You can e-mail privacyinfo@atlassolutions.com if you wish to access your personally-identifying information. Atlas will provide you with access to review and request the deletion of your personally-identifying information, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. In most cases, you can expect a response to your request within 14 business days.
Does this site use cookies?
The AtlasSolution.com web site may use persistent cookies and action tags (aka: Web beacons or pixel gifs) at this site to understand web site usage and to resolve any problems, for example, in navigation, thus enhancing your experience at this site. Usage of cookies and/or action tags is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information while on our site.
Does this site use standard log files?
Like most standard Web site servers, we use log files. This includes Internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, and track user's movement in the aggregate.
How is notice of change given?
Atlas reserves the right to change this privacy policy at any time. Our web site will state the date it was last updated. We encourage you to review our privacy policy whenever you use this web site to make sure you understand how your information will be used. If we materially change how we use your personal information, we will notify via a prominent notice prior to implementing the change.
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Controlling the Use Of Cookies
If you would like to opt-out of the Atlas cookie, click here .
If you would like to learn more about why anti-spyware software is warning you about Atlas cookies, click here.
Cookies
Atlas uses anonymous cookies to track effectiveness of ads, and make ads more relevant. Cookies are tiny packets of information, usually less than one kilobyte, stored in the temp files on your hard drive, and are used by web sites to recognize a computer they have encountered before. Our cookie does not include your name, or anything personal to you. It simply tells us that we have encountered your computer at some point (e.g., when you viewed one of our clients’ ads). Most of the web sites you visit use some form of cookie to keep track of business on the Internet.
While we believe that cookies enhance the web experience for the user by limiting the repetitiveness of advertising and increasing the level of relevant content on the Web, they are not essential to our delivering the Internet's most effective advertising. We respect the fact that users may not want anonymous data to be collected using cookies on their computers. For this reason, we have created a method by which users can opt out of our use of data associated with cookies. More information about opting out can also be found at the Network Advertising Initiative web site at www.networkadvertising.org.
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Blocking Cookies
Many web sites store information in a small text file on your computer, called a cookie. There are several types of cookies, and you can choose whether to allow some, none, or all of them to be saved on your computer.
A first-party cookie is used by the web site you are currently viewing. These cookies are commonly used to store information, such as your preferences when visiting that site. If you do not allow first party cookies, you may not be able to view some web sites or take advantage of customized features (such as local news and weather, or stock quotes).
A third-party cookie is used by a web site different from the one you are currently viewing. Third-party web sites usually provide some content on the web site you are viewing. Many sites use advertising from third-party web sites and those third-party web sites may use cookies. A common use for this type of cookie is to track your web page use for advertising or other marketing purposes. Third-party ad servers, such as Atlas, serve ads on behalf of our advertising clients. We use our anonymous third party cookies to track the effectiveness of the ads.
Most browsers offer robust options in relation to cookies. The default settings in all major browsers accept cookies. However, by altering your browser settings, you can choose to automatically block cookies from specific web sites, from all web sites, from web sites without a privacy policy, or from all third parties. Consult the help manual for your browser for detailed information.
Blocking Third Party Cookies (including the Atlas cookie)
Included below are instructions for blocking third party cookies in some of the most common browsers. If your browser or version is not listed here, or you wish to treat cookies in some other way, please refer to your browser's help menu or printed manual for instructions.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x
- Menu: Tools-Internet Options
- Select Tab: Privacy
- Click Button: Advanced (just below center of the page)
- Check Box: “Override Automatic Cookie Handling”
- Click Radio Button corresponding to “Block” Third party cookies
Firefox (by Mozilla)
- Menu: Tools > Options
- Click the Privacy panel and then click on the Cookies label.
- Check Box: “for the originating Web site only”
Netscape Navigator 4.x and above
- Menu: Edit > Preferences
- Select Category: Advanced
- Find section: Cookies
- Select “Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server.”
If you have a specific question or would like more information, please e-mail privacyinfo@atlassolutions.com.
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Opting Out of Cookies
If you would like to opt-out, please opt-out at this
site
Use of Web Beacon
Atlas Web pages may contain electronic images known as Web beacons - sometimes called single-pixel gifs - that may be used to assist in delivering cookies on our sites and allow us to count users who have visited those pages and to deliver co-branded services. We may include Web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or our newsletters in order to determine whether messages have been opened and acted upon. Atlas may also employ Web beacons from third parties in order to help us compile aggregated statistics regarding the effectiveness of our site or other operations of our sites. We prohibit Web beacons on our sites from being used by third parties to collect or access your personal information. Atlas uses Yahoo! to provide their Web analytics. The analytics data is used to improve your web experience. To learn more or opt-out of Yahoo! analytics tool please click here: (https://ondemand.indextools.com/optout,OptOut.vm?domain=stats.indextools.com).
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Complaints & Outside Resources
Please e-mail questions or requests for more information about Atlas's privacy policies to privacyinfo@atlassolutions.com. If you need to contact us regarding an email abuse issue, please contact Atlas at postmaster@atlassolutions.com. If Atlas has not responded to your inquiry within a reasonable amount of time or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, please contact the Network Advertising Initiative at www.networkadvertising.org. If you have concerns about personal information collected by this website, you can contact TRUSTe.
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General Information About Ad-Serving
If you are interested in learning more about our business of serving advertisements, please read further. If you wish to block or opt-out of Atlas's anonymous cookie, please click here for further instructions.
Our Use of Cookies
To improve the success of marketing campaigns, Atlas uses a common Internet technology called "cookies." Cookies are small text files that we generate and store on people's computers when the computer browser views one of our client's advertisements. Cookies are associated with a specific computer and a specific Internet browser program (i.e., Internet Explorer or Firefox). You can think of a cookie as a sign that says, "This computer browser was here". It tells us the computer's browser has at some point viewed one of our client's advertisements. The cookie does not include your name, address, phone number, email address, or anything that identifies you. It's an anonymous number that we assign to that Internet browser and computer just to tell us we've seen this browser at a site where one of our clients advertises. We assign a cookie to every user who visits a web site where an Atlas banner is displayed and where our web beacons (see discussion below) are placed. Atlas uses cookies to track advertising effectiveness and to select the best ads to serve. One example of this is measuring how often an anonymous user sees an ad; among other things, this helps us ensure that the user is not shown the same ad over and over again.
Atlas also collects anonymous information using cookies and web beacons to determine where a user clicks on a web page, their scrolling behavior, how they navigate through a site, and their computer screen size used to view a site. We analyze the data to derive key findings so that we can make usability recommendations to our clients. We help clients better communicate with their customers and web site users, which improves acquisitions and decreases costs of maintaining the site.
Our Use of Web Beacons
In addition to our use of cookies, Atlas also utilizes a common Internet technology called a "web beacon." This technology is also referred to as "action tags" or "clear gifs" in the industry. If the advertiser chooses to use web beacon technology, the advertiser’s web page will contain a clear gif, which would not be visible to the user. Advertisers program the web beacon via Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to collect certain information about your visit to their web site. This information does not contain any personally identifiable information about you. This anonymous information is returned to Atlas for processing. Our web beacons are usually placed on our clients' websites, and occasionally, we place our web beacons on our clients' partners' websites. We also place them in HTML-based e-mails. Wherever our web beacons are placed, we take efforts to have these web sites disclose the presence of our web beacons.
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Anonymous Ad-Serving Process
Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P)
Atlas is in compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) P3P specifications for cookies used in serving advertisements on behalf of our clients. You can view the P3P specifications at www.w3.org/p3p. Due to the P3P specifications as well as the way our active and opt-out cookies are named, we have one P3P compact policy for both types of persistent cookies. Please read more about this in our opting-out section. You can view our full ad serving P3P policy by clicking here.
What information is collected by the advertisement serving process?
When an Internet user visits a web site where one of our clients' advertisements or web beacons are placed, we may collect and store information about the visit--including the user's anonymous cookie ID, the specific ad posted on the site, and the time and place of delivery. If the user clicked on the ad, we collect and store that action. We do not know the name, phone number, address, email address, or any personally identifying information about the user. The identities of all users who see an ad from an Atlas server remain completely anonymous to us. We do collect information about how many times users view and click on our clients' advertisements and whether or not a user visits specific pages of an advertiser's web site (e.g. a registration or checkout page). We may collect the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from users when we serve advertisements or web beacons on a web site. We also collect anonymous demographic information and anonymous online survey answers or demographics from other vendors and we may receive anonymous information collected through another Microsoft service.
Sometimes clients will send us anonymous information they collected online during transactions, so we can provide targeted advertisements and analyze if our advertising has resulted in sales. In this process, the information that we receive is completely anonymous to Atlas. This information relates to online transactions, including, but not limited to, the client-assigned user's ID, transaction sales total, product ID, and other demographic data. Atlas will also collect data on events that occur on a client's web site, such as when the user has applied for a loan. In these instances, Atlas does not know the content of such a transaction, merely that the event, a loan application, occurred. Atlas does not receive any information from our clients in this process that would allow us to identify any individual.
How is this anonymous information used?
The anonymous information that we collect is used only by the specific advertisers who hire us to deliver ads, and only in the context of our selection of ad-content and our reporting of ad-effectiveness to our client. In order to assess an advertising campaign's effectiveness, both web and email based, we will report to our client our analysis of the anonymous data in a summarized format. On occasion, our clients ask us to send them, or their agents, our anonymous data that is collected on their specific web site. In these situations, we send our anonymous data. We recommend that you visit our clients' web sites to review their privacy policies and contact them directly if you have questions about their information practices.
Some of Atlas's clients, or their agents, might receive anonymous web traffic behavior from us. Each client has warranted that the information it receives shall be used in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and if information is linked to personally-identifying information, it shall be linked in a manner that is in compliance with the Self Regulatory Principles Governing Online Preference Marketing promulgated by the NAI. We recommend that you visit our clients' web sites to review their privacy policies and contact them directly if you have questions about their information practices.
Atlas will also disclose this information in response to subpoenas, court orders or legal process.
How is this anonymous information secured?
We store this anonymous information securely at the Atlas data centers. Atlas has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control, including password controls.
What are my choices? How do I opt-out of Atlas's cookie process?
There are two ways you can stop cookies from being stored on your computer and therefore, stop Atlas from storing and using this anonymous information:
- Block cookies by globally or selectively disabling cookie use in the browser configuration; or
- Opting out of the Atlas cookie to prevent data collection using Atlas’s cookies.
Can I correct or update anonymous information about me?
The data that we collect in the advertisement serving and tracking process is completely anonymous to us -- we do not associate it with any identified person. Because we do not know the person associated with our anonymous data, we cannot give anyone access to or the ability to change this anonymous information.
How long is anonymous cookie data retained?
We may retain our anonymous cookie data for up to two years. Aggregate reports generated from this data may be kept longer.
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Anti-Spyware Tools
Atlas supports the efforts of the government and industry to control spyware – malicious programs that damage computers or steal personally identifiable information. Anti-Spyware tools can be helpful in both identifying and removing spyware, and are often available for free, or bundled with other software or hardware.
Unfortunately, some creators of anti-spyware programs have chosen to search for cookies as well as spyware programs, causing confusion about cookies. As discussed elsewhere in this policy, cookies are not software programs - they are simple text files, which are used by companies to recognize a particular browser from one web page to another.
Atlas does not use spyware.
All we do is set anonymous cookies. We do NOT have access to any of your files or personal information. Cookies cannot hijack or redirect your browser, and cannot be used to access stored information on your computer.
Opting Out of cookies may not affect your Anti-Spyware Tool
If you choose to opt-out of our cookies, anti-spyware programs may continue to find our cookie. As explained on our Opting-Out page, this process uses an opt-out cookie, which instructs our server not to collect any data or perform any targeting. Anti-Spyware tools generally do not look at the contents of a cookie, so they do not recognize the difference between the opt-out cookie and the one we use for reporting and personalization.
Warnings from Spybot Search & Destroy ™
Many users of Spybot Search & Destroy (“Spybot”) complain that they repeatedly see pop-up warnings while surfing, which say “Spybot reports you want to download “Avenue A, Inc.” This is a known threat. Do you want to BLOCK this download?” Similar warnings appear regarding other third party ad servers.
To Stop these pop-up warnings:
- Open Spybot – if asked to select mode, pick “advanced”
- Click “Immunize” on the menu running down the left side of the application
- On that screen, scroll down until you see a drop-down menu (the scroll bar is on the lower right corner)
- On the drop down menu, select “Block all bad pages silently”
Spybot will continue to function normally, but will no longer interrupt you with warning messages.
The “download” to which Spybot refers is the placement of our cookie – there is no software or application which is downloaded if you choose not to block. Spybot identifies the cookie served by Atlas, atdmt, as Avenue A, Inc., the former name of our parent company. Blocking or opting outing out of the use of our cookie will not alter Spybot’s performance – it will continue to send warning messages.
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Privacy & Atlas On Demand
Atlas On Demand allows Atlas’s advertising customers to effectively plan, purchase, deliver, measure and optimize On Demand television advertising
What information is received by Atlas On Demand?
We receive anonymous data provided by cable operators. Examples of the types of data that we receive include the names of the programs and ads being viewed, as well as the time of day. At times, we may capture which buttons on the remote control are being used (play, pause, fast forward, etc.) and the viewing direction (forward or reverse). Information such as nine digit zip code which indicates where the viewing occurred may be collected in the future.
How is the anonymous data used?
We use anonymous data to report the aggregated performance of on demand media buys compared to advertisers’ goals and to optimize their creative used in their campaigns.
Can I correct or update anonymous information about me?
The data that we receive is completely anonymous to us -- we do not associate it with any identified person. Because we do not know the person associated with our anonymous data, we cannot give anyone access to or the ability to change this anonymous information.
How is this anonymous information secured?
We store this anonymous information securely at the Atlas data centers. Atlas has security measures in place to help protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control.
How long is this anonymous data retained?
We may retain our anonymous data for up to two years.
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