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Corporate Information |
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[ In a world of risk, know who to trust ] |
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thawte, Inc.
Version 2.4
Effective Date: August, 2005
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| thawte is committed to providing you with excellent service for all of our products and services and because we respect your right to privacy, we have developed this Privacy Statement to inform you about our privacy practices for the entire thawte.com site and all its entities (which covers thawte.com and t-refer.com). thawte services may be hosted on partner sites on behalf of thawte, and if this thawte Privacy Statement is listed on that site, then it will also apply. |
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| thawte is a wholly owned subsidiary of VeriSign, Inc.
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thawte is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program and is authorized to use the TRUSTe trustmark. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build users' trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the principles of disclosure and informed consent. thawte has agreed to disclose its privacy practices and have them reviewed and audited for compliance by TRUSTe. Members of the TRUSTe Privacy Program agree to adhere to TRUSTe's established privacy principles of disclosure, choice, access, and security. Members of the TRUSTe Privacy Program also agree to comply with ongoing TRUSTe oversight and its alternative dispute resolution process. In keeping with TRUSTe's Privacy Program, this Privacy Statement will inform you of:
- What personal information our site gathers about you
- How we use and with whom we share the personal information we gather
- Your ability to opt-out of future communications
- What security procedures we have in place to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, or alteration
- How you can correct or update your personal information
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| Questions regarding this Privacy Statement should be directed to marketing@thawte.com. Please specify "Privacy Statement" in the subject line of your e-mail. If you do not receive a reply from us or if you believe that your inquiry has not been satisfactorily resolved, please contact TRUSTe. The TRUSTe program covers only information that is collected through this Website, and does not cover information that may be collected through software downloaded from this Website. |
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Overview
Privacy is of great concern to most users of the Internet, and is a critical part of an enjoyable and satisfactory user experience. We at thawte are acutely aware of and sensitive to the privacy concerns of our subscribers and other visitors to our Website. Whether you are a customer of our various products and services or a visitor to our site, we assure you that we do not collect personal information from you unless you provide it to us. If you are enrolling for a thawte digital certificate, you may be asked to provide certain personal information. Please note, however, that we are asking for this information for the limited purposes of creating your Digital certificate, providing the services that may be part of your Digital certificate, and authenticating your identity in order to issue you a Digital certificate. You should be assured that we do not provide or sell personal information about our customers or site visitors to vendors that are not involved in the provision of thawte's public certification and other services. If you would like to read more about the practices related to the issuance of digital certificates, you can view the documentation at, /repository/index.html. This Privacy Statement applies to thawte's Website and all its entities (which covers thawte.com and t-refer.com).
This Privacy Statement applies to the thawte.com site. Many of our subsidiaries maintain their own privacy policies that may be viewed on their Websites. We strive to provide our visitors and subscribers with the highest level of privacy possible, and therefore require that our Reseller/Referrers offer no less protection than that offered in this Privacy Statement. In addition, each of our Reseller/Referrers must meet the data protection requirements of their relevant national laws. thawte’s parent company, VeriSign, Inc., has its own privacy policy that may be viewed on its Website.
Please note that our site contains links to other sites. thawte is not responsible for the privacy practices, privacy statements, or content regarding these other sites.
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Privacy Policy Enforcement
thawte supports TRUSTe's comprehensive assurance process. In order to ensure compliance with its Privacy Program, TRUSTe monitors our site by conducting initial and periodic reviews and "seeding" (tracking unique identifiers in our site's database). TRUSTe also relies on online users to report violations of posted privacy statements or specific privacy concerns. If a TRUSTe participant is suspected of not conforming to the TRUSTe principles, TRUSTe will investigate the issue, which could result in penalties, additional audits, or revocation of the participant's right to use the TRUSTe trustmark. Extreme violations may even be escalated to the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC"). These enforcement measures are intended to provide some assurances that you can rely on our representations in this Privacy Statement. For more information on the TRUSTe assurance process, see http://www.truste.org/consumers/compliance.php.
If you feel that we are violating this Privacy Statement, please contact us at marketing@thawte.com. Please specify "Privacy Statement" in the subject line of your e-mail. If you feel that we do not provide you with an appropriate response, you may file a report with TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php.
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Information We Gather from You
Personal Information
thawte does not collect any personal information from a visitor to our site unless that visitor explicitly and intentionally provides it. Under no circumstances do we collect any personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, health, or sex life. If you are simply browsing our site, we do not gather any personal information about you.
There are three ways in which you may explicitly and intentionally provide us with and consent to our collection of certain personal information:
1. E-mail Request for Information or Registrations for Guides or Seminars - We use links throughout our site to provide you with the opportunity to contact us via e-mail to ask questions, request information and materials, register or sign up for guides or seminars, or provide comments and suggestions. You may also be offered the opportunity to have one of our representatives contact you personally to provide additional information about our products or services. To do so, we may request additional personal information from you, such as your name and telephone number, to help us satisfy your request.
2. Enrollment - If you choose to enroll for one of our products or services, we will request certain information from you. Depending on the type of product or service that you request, you may be asked to provide different personal information. For certain products and services, we may require your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card number, bank account information, IP address, and/or identity number. Other products and services may require different or supplemental information from you in order to apply. For a detailed listing of the type of personal information requested for our various products, please refer to the enrollment page for the particular product or service.
3. Refer-A-Friend - If you choose to use our referral services (t-refer.com) or crypto challenge promotions to tell others about our site, we will ask you for your friend’s contact details. thawte stores this information for the sole purpose of tracking the success of our referral programs. Your friend may contact us at http://www.thawte.com/ucgi/gothawte.cgi?a=w179750802002000 to request that we remove this information from our database.
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Statistical Information about Your Visit
When you visit our site, our computers may automatically collect statistics about your visit. This information does not identify you personally, but rather identifies information about a visit to our site. We may monitor statistics such as how many people visit our site, the user's IP address, which pages people visit, from which domains our visitors come and which browsers people use. We use these statistics about your visit for aggregation purposes only. These statistics are used to help us improve the performance of our Website. |
Use of Cookies
thawte only uses "cookies" as described in this Section. A "cookie" is a piece of information that our Website sends to your browser, which then stores this information on your system. If a cookie is used, our Website will be able to "remember" information about you and your preferences either until you exit your current browser window (if the cookie is temporary) or until you disable or delete the cookie. Many users prefer to use cookies in order to help them navigate a Website as seamlessly as possible. You should be aware that cookies contain no more information than you volunteer, and they are not able to "invade" your hard drive and return to the sender personal or other information from your computer.
Our uses of "cookies" are limited to the following specific situations. The first situation is with respect to temporary cookies. There are two instances in which we use temporary cookies. First, if you are accessing our services through one of our online applications, our Web server may automatically send your browser a temporary cookie, which is used to help your browser navigate our site. The only information contained in these temporary cookies is a direction value that lets our software determine which page to show when you hit the back button in your browser. This bit of information is erased when you close your current browser window. If you come to our site from one of our business partners, our Web server may also send your browser a temporary cookie that reflects an "origination code" for that business partner. We use this information for statistical and marketing purposes.
The second situation in which we may use cookies is when you visit our Website and request documentation or a response from us. When you are filling out a form you may be given the option of having our Website deliver a cookie to your local hard drive. This type of cookie is not temporary, although you can always delete or disable it through your browser preferences. If you choose not to accept a this type of cookie, you will still be able to use our Website. You might choose to receive this type of cookie in order to save time in filling out forms and/or revisiting our Website. We only send this type of cookie to your browser when you have clicked on the box labeled "Please remember my profile information" when submitting information or communicating with us. Even if you choose to receive this type of cookie, you can always set your browser to notify you when you receive any cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it in each situation in which one is sent. To find more information about cookies, if you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer® as your browser, go to the Microsoft Website at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cookies.htm?RLD=291 or if you are using Netscape Navigator® as your browser, go to the Netscape Website at http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/sec_privacy.jsp.
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Bulletin Boards, Chat Rooms and Forums
If you use a forum, bulletin board, chat room or other chat tool on this Website, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. thawte is not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums. You are also responsible for using these forums in a manner consistent with the Rules of Engagement or other terms and conditions set forth on the relevant forum site. |
How We Use and With Whom We Share the Information We Gather
thawte assures you that the personal information we gather from you is used by us only as explained below. |
Sending you responses and updates
thawte generally responds to any e-mail questions, requests for product or service information, and other inquiries that we receive. We may also retain this correspondence to improve our products, services, and Website, and for other disclosed purposes. Frequently we retain contact information so that we can send individuals updates or other important information about our services and products. Occasionally these updates or other important information may be sent out by third parties on our behalf. Please be assured that any third party who contacts you in this capacity has executed a confidentiality agreement with us that contains a provision ensuring the privacy and security of any transferred information and limits the third party's use of the shared information to sending updates or providing services on our behalf. In situations where you have supplied your information in connection with a question or request for information about a product or service offered by a thawte business partner, we may also send the information you have supplied to the thawte business partners that offer such products or services. Please be assured that these thawte business partners have agreed to ensure the privacy and security of any transferred information and may only use the shared information to send you information about the products or services about which you asked. |
Facilitating the support, renewal and purchase of our products and services
We may use the information you submit to contact you to discuss the support, renewal, and purchase of our products and services. We may also provide the information you have submitted to us to a thawte business partner, representative or affiliated company (either within or outside South Africa and/or the United States) so that the business partner, representative or affiliated company can contact you and facilitate the support, renewal, and purchase of thawte products and services. Our affiliated companies help us provide foreign-based (and certain domestic) customers with support, assistance, and the provision of our products and services in their local markets. You may receive a communication directly from one of our business partners, representatives or affiliated companies. Please be assured that any business partner, representative or affiliated company who contacts you for one of these purposes has agreed to use the information we supply only in accordance with a confidentiality agreement. To find out the names and locations of the business partners, representatives and/or affiliated companies to whom we have provided your information, please contact us at the address given at the end of this Privacy Statement. |
Facilitating the provision of certain included products and services (if you are applying for certain types of Digital certificates)
From time-to-time we may request information from customers via surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use of and satisfaction with this Website, and improving our customer service and product offerings. |
Validating your identity (if you are applying for certain types of Digital certificates)
Certain types of Digital certificates require that we compare some of the information in your application to information contained in a third-party database or with some other third party source. We do this in order to authenticate your identity and other attributes, and also to prevent identity theft. We have confidentiality agreements in place with these third-party databases restricting the disclosure of your information. In certain limited situations, we have contracts in place permitting the third-party database to disclose the information to its subcontractors or affiliates, but only for authenticating your identity and only in accordance with confidentiality agreements. |
Forming the contents of a Digital certificate
The exact information that appears in our different types of Digital certificates is set forth in the relevant enrollment page and this Privacy Statement. Generally this information is limited to e-mail address and name, but certain classes of Digital certificates contain additional information. For example, Server IDs may contain the organization's Dun and Bradstreet number.Please note that all information that you provide us that forms the content of a Digital certificate will be "published." Publication of Digital certificates in an accessible location (a repository) is an integral part of enabling the widespread use of Digital certificates. Your Digital certificate will be published in our repository so that a third party may access, review, and rely upon your Digital certificate. You should have no expectation of privacy regarding the content of your Digital certificate.
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Disclosure by Law and Protection of thawte and Others
If we are required by law to disclose certain information to local, state, federal, national or international government or law enforcement authorities, we will do so (for example, we may disclose the identity of purchasers of certain software products to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Export Administration, as required under the terms of our export licenses). We will also disclose information to third parties as necessary in order to comply with applicable laws and regulations. In addition, thawte may share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities or suspected fraud, or enforce or apply thawte’s agreements. |
Surveys
From time-to-time we may request information from customers via surveys. Participation in these surveys is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use of and satisfaction with this Website, and improving our customer service and product offerings. |
Your Ability to Opt-Out of Further Notifications
From time-to-time, we notify our subscribers of new products, announcements, upgrades and updates. If you would like to opt-out of being notified, please contact us at the address given at the end of this Privacy Statement. If you would like to change your preferences online, please visit http://www.thawte.com/ucgi/gothawte.cgi?a=w179750802002000. Please be aware that you may not opt out of receiving information regarding the security, initial use, expiration, product enhancement or migration of our Digital certificates or other products or services. |
We consider the protection of all personal information we receive from our Website visitors and subscribers as critical to our corporate mission. Please be assured that we have security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of any personal information we receive from you. As with any transmission over the Internet, however, there is always some element of risk involved in sending personal information. In order to try to minimize this risk, we encrypt all information that you submit in ordering one of our products or services using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. Our security procedures are also subject to at least an annual SAS-70 Type II audit by an internationally-recognized accounting firm. |
How You Can Update or Correct Your Personal Information
We cannot update or correct information contained in a digital certificate without destroying the integrity of the Digital certificate because we digitally sign each subscriber's Digital certificate as a part of the Digital certificate issuance process. If we were to subsequently modify or remove any information listed in a Digital certificate, our digital signature would not verify the Digital certificate's new content. Furthermore, if a subscriber (sender) then digitally signed a message with his or her private key, a third party would not be able to properly verify the sender's signature (created using the sender's private key) because the sender's Digital certificate would have been altered after the key pair's creation. For more information and tutorials on digital signatures, Digital certificates, keys, and related subjects, click here http://www.thawte.com
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If you would like to update or correct any information in our records that is not contained in your Digital certificate you may do so by accessing your status page at:
2. Enter the order number and password
3. Click on Representative under thawte Contact Person, this will open an e-mail in which you request the changes to your details.
4. A thawte Certificate Order Processing representative will then send a Change letter to the Authorizing Contact of that Certificate and only once the form is filled out and returned to thawte will the information be updated.
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How You Can Revoke (Deactivate) Your Digital ID
When a third party wants to rely on a digital certificate, it is important for the third party to know its status (for example, whether it is valid, suspended (where available) or revoked). The third party may do this by accessing our Website and querying the status of the digital certificate. We do not generally delete digital certificates (and their content) from our online repository because a third party might not then be able to check its status. You may, however, revoke (deactivate) your digital certificate. A revoked digital certificate will still appear in our repository with an indication that it has been revoked. If you are a digital certificate subscriber and would like to have your digital certificate revoked (deactivated) from our database you may do so by accessing your status page at:
2. Enter the order number and password
3. Click on Representative under thawte Contact Person, this will open an e-mail in which you request to revoke a certificate.
4. A thawte Certificate Order Processing representative will then send a Revocation letter to the Authorizing Contact of that Certificate and only once the form is filled out and returned to thawte will the certificate be revoked.
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Changes to this Privacy Statement
If a material change is made to this Privacy Statement and/or the way we use our customers' personal information then, with the prior written approval from TRUSTe, we will post prominent notice of the nature of such change on the first page of this Privacy Statement and also on our home page. |
Mailing Address
International (non-USA):
thawte Inc.
PO Box 2749 Durbanville, 7551
South Africa
USA :
thawte Inc.
487 East Middlefield Road , Mountain View
California, U.S.A.
94043
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