Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy Last Updated: November 11, 2010

Outbrain is a collaborative intelligence platform. As such, it is predicated on the idea of sharing the intelligence of voting patterns among the Outbrain community for the benefit of all Outbrain users. We collect the following data through your use of our service:

• Any information you submitted while signing up for the service (including name, email, etc).
• Your submitted ratings and the documents with which they were associated.
• Your clicks on recommendations and sponsored recommendations and the documents with which they were associated
• IP address and an associated estimate of your geographic location, referring URL's, browser and OS and other information normally passed in HTTP requests.
• Information about your engagement with web pages you've read where Outbrain is installed, including time spent on the page, how you reached the page, and the type of content of the page

As part of the Outbrain service, your ratings on documents may be shared publicly and associated to the username you chose when signing up for the service. In addition, if you register on the site, your ratings and web page browsing history will be associated with the registration and personal data you provide and we will use that information to provide you with more targeted recommendations, and that information may be transferred within and to the United States and other countries and territories. However, any personally identifiable data you provide or that we collect about you will not be shared with 3rd parties (other than our service providers), unless required by law.

We use small text files stored on your web browser (otherwise known as cookies) for the purpose of better tailoring recommendations and sponsored recommendations to your preferences over time. We also use them in order to keep you logged in to the Outbrain service if you register with us. These cookies may include a unique anonymous identifier along with information about the particular type of content in which you have shown interest. We may use your rating and web browsing information to try to show you specific recommendations and sponsored recommendations that we think will be of particular interest to you. We may combine information about your web browsing or rating patterns with those of other people who see Outbrain services in order to share trend information-always in aggregate and anonymously-- with 3rd parties. For instance, we may use it as part of an aggregated number to tell a prospective sponsor how many people in the Outbrain network visit Sports web sites each month.

If you click on an Outbrain sponsored recommendation, the advertiser sponsoring the recommendation may cookie your web browser as well, in which case you will be subject to their privacy policy. Please note that you are subject to the privacy policies of each site you visit - if Outbrain is installed on that site, you are subject both to our privacy policy and the policy of the web site owner. If you click on an Outbrain link to visit a site where Outbrain is not installed, you are subject only to that site's privacy policy while visiting that site, and not to ours.

Other semi-interesting (OK... boring) factoids about our policy:

• We may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time and you should check back here periodically to see if has been updated. We will always show the latest modification date of the policy at the top of the page so you can tell when it has last been altered
• We maintain tight controls over all the data we collect, retaining it in firewalled and secured databases with strictly limited & controlled access rights, to ensure it is secure
• Our Privacy Policy only applies to online data collection since we only operate online
• Outbrain does not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from people under 13 years old and we ask people in our Terms of Use not to register with us and not to submit personal information if they are under 18. If you're a kid, please, go play in the yard - don't register for Outbrain.

If the privacy of your ratings on documents, clicks on recommendations, or the pages you visit is a concern for you, we urge you to do the following:

• Choose a username that's not easily associated with you.
• Do NOT rate ANY item you wish not to be associated with.
• Do NOT click any recommendation or sponsored recommendation you do not want to be associated with.
• Opt out of Outbrain's personalization tracking.

Opt out of Outbrain personalization tracking
When you opt out of Outbrain's personalization tracking, we will no longer use information about the pages you visit to tailor our recommendations and sponsored recommendations to your interests. We will still use information about documents you have rated or clicked on to provide you better recommendations and sponsored recommendations - if you do not want us to use rating data or click data, please do not rate or click on documents from our network. Also, please note:

Opting out of Outbrain personalization tracking does not mean you will no longer receive recommendations or sponsored recommendations from Outbrain. It does mean that the recommendations and sponsored recommendations we serve you will not be personalized based on pages you read in the Outbrain network. You will likely receive less benefit from the Outbrain system since our recommendations will not be as well tailored to your interests.

We cookie you in order to prevent personalization tracking. When you opt out of Outbrain personalization tracking, we will cookie your computer with a special Outbrain cookie that informs our servers not to record information about the pages you're visiting. If you browse the web from several computers, you will need to opt out from each computer to ensure that we prevent personalization tracking on all of them. For the same reason, if you buy a new computer, change web browsers or delete this cookie, you will need to perform this opt-out task again.