eChemistry.com Privacy Policy

Websites are required by law to have a detailed, legally-worded privacy statement, and ours is below. Since privacy statements are necessarily lengthy, time consuming to read, and full of incomprehensible legal terminology, we've created this brief summary.

The most important thing for you to know is that we're real people. We are in the business of love, we want to help people find love, and we make privacy decisions based on what will best support an increase in love in the world. We have no interest in selling or otherwise using your personal information for any purpose other than those relating directly to this website and welcome your advice on what we can do to further assure you of our honest intentions.

We do not sell, lend, rent or otherwise transfer your personal information to any other business or vendor. We ensure that our computers and servers are stored securely, and we use encryption to protect your privacy. By signing up on this site you are agreeing to receive emails from us related to our matchmaking services. We only want to contact people who want our help in finding love, so if you wish to opt out of these notifications please go to "email preferences" and adjust your email preferences accordingly.

eChemistry does not use any irritating methods of member recruitment such as spam email messages, pop-up ads, or any other intrusive advertising. We believe that an honest company can advertise ethically and still be successful. We also listen to your comments, so if you can think of anything further we can do to operate honorably and earn your trust, please email us at: love@eChemistry.com.

Now, for the much longer, much more detailed legal version:

eChemistry.com Privacy Policy

• We at eChemistry.com, ("we" or "eChemistry.com" or "eChemistry") have created this privacy policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to protecting your personal information and informing you about how we handle it. This privacy policy only applies to transactions and activities in which you engage, and data gathered, on the eChemistry.com Website, eChemistry.com Messenger and email communications between eChemistry.com members (collectively, the "Site") but does not apply to any other Website or offline point of contact between eChemistry.com, or any other company, and consumers. Please review this privacy policy periodically as we may modify it from time to time. This privacy policy was last revised on May 17, 2004. Each time you visit the Site or provide us with information, by doing so you are accepting the practices described in this privacy policy at that time.

Personality Questionnaire

• In order to become a member of eChemistry.com you are required to answer a Personality Questionnaire ("Personality Questionnaire", "Questionnaire", "Personality Test", "Test"). This Questionnaire includes a large number of "Personality Questions" such as "Are you an Introvert or Extrovert" as well as "Profile Creation Questions," such as "Describe yourself and who you're looking for in a match." eChemistry collects a wide variety of information which is used to find matches which offer the highest possible chance of a successful long-term relationship or marriage.

Personality Questions

• Your answers to individual Personality Questions (such as "Are you an Introvert or Extrovert") are not made accessible to the public, other users of the site or anyone not employed by eChemistry directly except when expressly indicated. This information is held in a strictly confidential manner. Information collected during the questionnaire which may be shared with other users of eChemistry will be displayed in a strictly anonymous manner with no personally identifying details (details which would allow someone to identify you individually such as email, address, phone number), and will only be shown to potential match candidates. Any question which is not determining your personality (including "Demographic Information" such as your age, gender, etcetera as well as essay questions such as "Describe yourself and who you are looking for in a match") is considered a "Member Profile Question" as described below.

Member Profile

• In addition to the personality components of the questionnaire, you will also be required to answer Demographic Information Questions (age, gender, etcetera) included in Member Profile Questions ("Member Profile Questions", "Profile Creation Questions") to create a Matching Profile which will be visible to select other users who match you according to eChemistry's proprietary matching algorithms ("Member Profile", "Matching Profile", "Profile"). Your Matching Profile will include your essay answers to such questions as: "Describe yourself and who you are looking for in a match." Your Profile is what is shown to other matches and generally includes your picture and some information that you entered, but does not include your individual responses to Personality Questions mentioned above except in a broad, cumulative way to give people a general idea of what personality they can expect (for example, we don't tell them exactly how you answered the "Are you an Introvert or Extrovert" question, but if your cumulative answers to the test tell us that you're probably talkative then we may say something like "This user is verbally expressive and easy to talk to"). We ask that you do not enter personal information or financial information into your Profile (for example, don't use your address or password as your username, or include your name or address in your written essay responses), because if you do then it may be posted publicly on the Site, and the information will then be treated as "demographic information" that is "public information." Initially your first Profile is created from Profile Creation Questions mixed in with Personality Questions in the personality test (so we ask "Describe yourself and who you are looking for in a match" during the personality test to give you a break from Personality Questions and to help you create your first profile by the time you're done answering the Personality Questions). In the same way as other popular Internet introduction sites, we use your first name to identify you to other users in your public profile because this adds a human element to each match (referring to people as numbers, like "User# 1,053,893" or usernames, such as "qtpI73" is less conducive to starting a real relationship).

Other Personal Information

• We use your email address and your other personal information to help us efficiently operate the Site, to contact you in connection with your transactions and other activities on the Site (including, but not limited to, confirmation emails or important news that could affect your relationship with eChemistry.com), and to forward messages to you from other eChemistry.com users. These types of communications, are known as "Operational Communications." We may use demographic information to tailor the Site and communications to your interests. We also use personal information to send you newsletters, information, offers and other promotional materials for eChemistry.com's goods or services. We attempt to send you offers that are of value to you, such as discounts, exclusive offers or special event information. The Site provides you with options to decline to receive communications from eChemistry.com. Some of these options may only be for a certain category of communications; others may be more general. By posting a profile on the Site, you are opting in to receive eChemistry.com messages. If you wish to modify your contact settings (which emails you will receive and which you won't) you can modify your preferences at any time by logging in and choosing "email preferences" from the main menu.
  In order to operate the Site and to provide you with information about products or services that may be of interest to you, we may collect "personal information" (i.e. information that could be used to contact you directly (without using the Site) such as full name, postal address, phone number or email address), "financial information" (i.e. credit card numbers or passwords) or "demographic information" (i.e. information that you submit, or that we collect, that is neither personal information nor financial information; this may include, but is not limited to, zip code, postal code, hometown, gender, username, age/birth date, purchase history information, browsing history information, searching history information, registration history information, and the content of communications between you and other members over the Site), subject to the rest of this paragraph. Demographic information is divided into two categories: 1) "non-public information", which consists of purchase history information and one-on-one communications between you and other users of the Site; and 2) "public information", which consists of all other demographic information. We ask that you do not enter personal information or financial information into your "Profile" (for example, don't use your address or password as your username, or include your name or address in your written responses), because if you do then it may be posted publicly on the Site, and the information will then be treated as "demographic information" that is "public information."

Information Supplied by You at Registration or Purchase

• eChemistry offers a subscriber-based service to users seeking romantic relationships. To process subscriptions and/or product purchases, we may require your name, billing address, phone number, email address, shipping address and credit card information or banking information (depending on whether you pay by credit card or direct bank transfer). Information gathered during product purchases is used primarily for authorization of credit card transactions, to contact you in case of problems with processing your order, customer relationship management services, order fulfillment and sweepstakes and promotional fulfillment. In general, you will receive one email notification that you have placed an order, and another email notification that your order has been filled. You will be similarly notified of subscription renewal transactions when they occur.
  Your personal contact information will not be lent or sold to any other business or vendor.

Your IP Address

• Like most e-commerce Websites, each time you visit the Site, we automatically collect your IP address and the web page from which you came. In order to administer and optimize the Site for you and to diagnose problems with our Site, we use your IP address to help identify you and to gather broad demographic information about you (for example, your IP address often indicates which country you are logging in from, so we could someday customize our site to provide different web pages to people from, say, the United States, from those from, say, China or Germany). . IP addresses are logged to track a user's session. This gives eChemistry an idea of which parts of our site users are visiting. IP addresses are also recorded to track unusual or suspicious activity. This provides further protection to all eChemistry users since troublesome users may be tracked and blocked from the site

Cookies

• Our site uses cookies to keep track of some types of information while you are visiting or using eChemistry. Cookies are very small files placed on your computer, so that eChemistry can identify you. We use encrypted connections with you as often as we can (whenever the address bar says https:\\ instead of http:\\ it means that the connection is encrypted), and to do that we have to save the encryption/decryption password with some additional information on your computer in that "cookie" file. Cookies are needed for the eChemistry site to operate properly. If your browser is set to reject all cookies, the site will not function properly because it is configured to refuse to send information to you without that verification of who you are. Like most Websites, the Site uses cookies to keep track of your purchases and other activity on the Site and enhance your experience on the Site

Third-Party Advertising

• We may use third-party advertising companies to serve ads on our behalf. Your personally identifiable information (information which could be used to contact you or identify you specifically) will never be shared with advertisers. Right now we don't, but in the future we may share demographic information with advertisers on an anonymous and aggregated basis (i.e., without telling the advertisers your identity). One of the reasons we may do this is to increase the likelihood that our advertisers' goods and services will appeal to you, so that we may target specific ads at specific demographic groups. Our sharing of demographic information with advertisers is anonymous (i.e., we do not tell advertisers which particular eChemistry.com users are members of which demographic groups), subject to the rest of this privacy policy. When you respond to an advertisement, however, we ask you to remember that if that ad that is targeted to a demographic group and you decide to give the advertiser your personal information, then the advertiser may be able to identify you as being a member of that demographic group. These companies may employ cookies and action tags (also known as single pixel gifs or web beacons) to measure advertising effectiveness.

Legal Disclaimer

• Your personal information or financial information may be passed on to a third party in the event of a transfer of ownership or assets, or a bankruptcy (if eChemistry merges, acquires or is acquired by another entity). We may also disclose personal information or financial information when we determine that such disclosure is necessary to comply with applicable law, to cooperate with law enforcement or to protect the interests or safety of eChemistry.com or other visitors to the Site. We also may disclose your personal information or financial information to our subsidiary and parent companies and businesses, and other affiliated legal entities and businesses with whom we are under common corporate control. Whenever personal information or financial information is disclosed under this paragraph, we may also disclose your demographic information along with it, on a non-anonymous basis. All of our parent, subsidiary and affiliated legal entities and businesses that receive your personal information, financial information, or non-anonymous demographic information from us will comply with the terms of this privacy policy with respect to their use and disclosure of such information. Information under the heading "Privacy Policy" above takes precedence over the more relaxed summary above it if there is a conflict, although this was designed without any intention of conflicts. If any part of this Policy is legally voided or trumped by local law it does not affect the rest of the Policy.

Age Restrictions

• Please note that nowhere on the Site do we knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 18, as we require that all users represent to us that they are at least 18 years old. All adults are welcome to explore the site, complete the Relationship Questionnaire and obtain a Personality Profile. As per the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, any information input by minors will be purged from our database.

Public Forums

• eChemistry makes message boards available to its users and visitors. Please remember that any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose any personally identifying information.

Refer A Friend

• eChemistry encourages you to refer a friend to our service. In this section you are able to send us a friend's name and email address. We will keep this information in our database, and send that person an email containing your name and inviting them to visit our site. This email will also include a quick and easy way for them to remove their information from our database, if they desire. We ask that you do not abuse this feature by entering names and addresses of those who would not be interested in eChemistry.

Security

• The Site has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Our secure server software (SSL) is the industry standard and among the best software available today for secure commerce transactions. We encrypt all of your financial information as it travels over the Internet. We don't let anyone on our computers who might want to take your information, and our servers are kept in a secure building. Your information may be transferred to and maintained on computer networks which may be located outside of the state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction in which you reside, and the country or jurisdiction in which these computer networks are located may not have privacy laws as protective as the laws in your country or jurisdiction.

Changing our Privacy Policy for Previously Gathered Information

• If at any point we decide to use particular personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by way of an email or by providing 30 days notice on the Site. Please note that we will continue to have the right to change our privacy policy and practices, and how we use your personally identifiable information, without notice, provided that such changes shall only apply to information gathered on or after the date of the change.

How You Can Access and Update Your Email Preferences, Personal Information and Public Information

• We give you the opportunity to opt-out of certain communications and modify some personal information or demographic information you have provided to us, and to hide some demographic information from, or make some demographic information visible to, the public users of the Site, at anytime by going to the "Email Settings" or "My Profile" sections of the Site. Please be aware that it may take several hours for the changes you make to take effect on the public areas of the Site. We thank you for your patience. Please note that changing or deleting your information through the "Account Settings" or "My Profile" section of the Site, or otherwise opting-out of receipt of email communications from eChemistry.com, will only change the data in our database for purposes of future activities on the Site and for managing future communications from eChemistry.com. Changes or deletions will not change or delete emails or information that we may have already forwarded to other users or credit card companies or any other third parties, all as provided above in this privacy policy

Links to Other Sites

• eChemistry is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of other websites that may be linked to this site or which we may link to.