Dilbert.com and United Media are committed to protecting consumer privacy online. We believe that greater protection of personal privacy on the web will not only protect consumers, but also increase consumer confidence and ultimately their participation in online activities. At Dilbert.com, we intend to give you as much control as possible over your personal information (individually identifiable information about an individual collected online) and strive to help you protect your privacy while using our services.
The purpose of our policy is to inform you about the types of information we gather about you when you visit our site, how we may use that information, whether we disclose it to anyone, and the choices you have regarding our use of, and your ability to correct the information. Please read this notice. By using this site, you signify your assent to our privacy policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our site.
I. Information Which We Collect and the What We Do With the Collected Information
We have two areas on our web site, a general audience area (where the Dilbert comic and related features appear) and The Dilbert Store, in which users can purchase products related to the general web site. Each area has different privacy practices.
a. General Web Site
While visiting Dilbert.com, you can be assured that no personal information is collected, retained or used by Dilbert.com, unless you voluntarily supply it or are visiting The Dilbert Store and choose to purchase product. (See below for more details regarding information collected at The Dilbert Store). If you choose to engage in certain interactive activities on the Dilbert.com site (including, but not limited to, sending e-mails, sending e-cards, answering surveys, entering contests, obtaining daily comic strips via e-mail, subscribing to newsletters or subscribing to free or premium services from Comics.com), personal information may be requested from you. The personal information requested may include your e-mail address, postal address, name, and if you are purchasing product from The Dilbert Store, your home or work telephone number and credit card number. You may be asked voluntarily to provide your income, job function, industry or other demographic information; however, this information is not required to participate in online activities or to receive information from us. You may also be asked whether you would like to be contacted by United Media's advertisers or other third parties. You will not be contacted unless you have given your express permission by clicking a checkbox. It is entirely your choice to determine whether or not you wish to submit any personal information. Dilbert.com, with the exception of The Dilbert Store, does not use "cookies" or tracking software that can identify you personally while you are visiting the site.
All submissions to the Dilbert.com site become the property of United Media and Scott Adams, and they will have the right to use them free of charge, and in any manner and in any medium, forever and throughout the world. This means that your submissions might appear in publications including, but not limited to, a book, newsletter or on a United Media web site. If you do not want your submissions to become the property of United Media and Scott Adams, please do not submit to our sites.
We use the personal information collected on our site for purposes such as correspondence, contacting winners of contests or providing you with a newsletter or comic strip. There may be instances in which you will have the opportunity to subscribe to an e-mail list that will send information about the site or our advertisers to your e-mail address, but this will be done only with your permission and consent. Additionally, in each newsletter or e-mail containing a comic strip, you will be provided the opportunity to opt-out of receiving future correspondence. To subscribe or unsubscribe to The Dilbert Newsletter please follow the instructions at https://members.comics.com/members/registration/showDilbertLogin.do?aid=1. You can only subscribe the address you send your request from; you can't add other people's addresses to the mailing list. To unsubscribe from the Daily Dilbert e-mail, please follow the instructions at https://members.comics.com/members/registration/showDilbertLogin.do?aid=1.
United Media and its advertising partner(s) (see section II.) may perform statistical analyses of aggregate user behavior, but they are not based on personal information. These analyses allow United Media to measure relative consumer interest in the various areas of our web sites for product development purposes. Any non-personally identifiable information collected is used for our own internal purposes to improve the content of the web sites, to enhance user's experiences when visiting our site, to customize the content and/or layout of our pages and to provide the services required by an individual user. Again, any statistical analyses of user behavior will not be based on personal information, but solely on aggregate information. United Media may share this aggregate non-personally identifiable information with advertisers or potential advertisers.
Our site features several activities which are co-sponsored by other web sites and Third Parties, including but not limited to web search-engines. We have no control over the privacy practices or the content of any of our co-sponsors or any of the web sites available through our Third Party sponsored web search-engine. We strongly recommend that you check the privacy policies of the websites you link to via Dilbert.com, as they will not be the same as this Privacy Policy. United Media does not own, control, have access to, or maintain any information collected by our co-sponsors or Third Party partners.
We also have a feature on our web site in which you can change your cursor. This feature is operated by Comet Systems, Inc. through a direct link from our site. While you access the ability to change your cursor through the Dilbert.com web site, we have no control over the privacy practices or the content of Comet Systems, Inc. Please consult Comet System's privacy policy for more information on its privacy practices. To uninstall the Comet Cursor from your machine, follow the instructions at Comet's uninstaller page.
Additionally, our site contains links to other web sites, including those of advertisers. We have no control over the privacy practices or the content of advertisers or other sites to which we provide links from our site. For example, if you click on a banner advertisement, the click takes you off the Dilbert.com site. These other sites (including co-sponsors and advertisers) may use cookies, collect data or solicit personal information. We have no control over these practices and strongly recommend that you check the applicable privacy policy of the site to which you are linking. United Media does not own, control, have access to, or maintain any information collected by these other web sites.
United Media reserves the right to email any free or premium subscribers information regarding important issues and/or changes related to their accounts.
b. The Dilbert Store
When you purchase product from The Dilbert Store, we will request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information, including your name, postal address, daytime and evening telephone number, credit card number and e-mail address. Dilbert.com may supply this information to third parties, such as fulfillment houses, for the sole purpose of fulfilling your order. Individuals who do not have a Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express credit card are not permitted to purchase product online. For information on the privacy policy of Café Press, which sells Dilbert clothing, please go to http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/privacy.aspx. For information on the privacy policy of Amazon.com, which sells Dilbert books and toys, please go to http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/468496/104-5084494-9297533.
When you purchase product from The Dilbert Store, you are given the choice to opt-out of receiving future e-mail solicitations from United Media about promotions and sales items that may be of interest to you. If you do not opt-out, United Media will use this information only to send you e-mails regarding future promotions. Your personal information is not shared with third parties. All future e-mail solicitations will contain instructions about how to opt-out of receiving additional e-mails. Participation in these solicitations is entirely your choice.
II. Use of Cookies
What are cookies? Like many other commercial sites, our site may utilize a standard technology called a "cookie" to collect information about how our site is used. Cookies are information files that your web browser places on the hard drive of your computer when you visit a website. Cookies were designed to help a web site recognize a user's browser as a previous visitor and thus save and remember any preferences that may have been set while the user was browsing the site. A cookie cannot retrieve any other data from your hard drive, damage user files, pass on a computer virus or capture your e-mail address.
United Media and its' advertising partner(s)' cookies help us see which areas are popular and which are not. Many improvements and updates to our website are based on the data collected through the cookies such as total number of visitors and pages viewed. Cookies on our site may collect your domain name and track your selections through our web pages. We only use "cookies" to gather the information indicated in this policy and do not use cookies to gather personal information about you without your consent, nor do we link or combine information collected through cookies to any personal information that is submitted online when participating in our activities. We may disclose the non-personally identifiable information collected, in aggregate form only, to third parties including advertisers or potential advertisers.
III. Disclosure to Third Parties
The personal information you choose to provide to us through submissions that will be posted to our site, such as when you submit an entry to the List of the Day, Lazy Entrepreneur, any of the Financial Pages, or features of the DNRC, including cubicle art, will be disclosed to visitors to the Dilbert.com site. THEREFORE, IF YOU DO NOT WANT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO BE KNOWN BY OTHERS, DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THESE TYPES OF ACTIVITIES.
We may disclose to our Administering Agencies personal information you voluntarily provide to us in order to participate in contests. These Administering Agencies use the information only for conducting the contest and retain the information only as long as is required by law and then they destroy the information.
We may also disclose personally identifiable information to third parties when required by law or in the event such information is relevant to judicial or government investigations or proceedings, or otherwise necessary to protect our website or the safety of its users.
Personal information you submit when you choose to purchase product from The Dilbert Store (as described in Section I.b.) will be disclosed only to the fulfillment houses who use the information solely for processing your order. We disclose only in aggregate form our statistical analyses or demographics of users to third parties, such as advertisers or potential advertisers.
United Media does not retain personal information in tracking profiles.
IV. Third Party Advertising
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here:
In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertiser may place or recognize a unique “cookie” on your browser.
VI. Security of Information
We use our best efforts to ensure the security of personal information submitted by users. We exercise great care in providing secure transmission of information from your PC to our computers. Unfortunately, no electronic communication over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. While we strive to take great care to protect your personal information, Dilbert.com and United Media cannot warrant the security of any information that you submit to us, and you do so at your own risk. We do offer secured-server transactions that encrypt your information in transit to thwart someone from intercepting it and misusing it when collecting credit card information for online purchases. We also store any personal information, including credit card numbers, in an area to which the general public does not have access to it.
Remember to sign off the Dilbert.com site and close your browser window when you are finished. This is to ensure that others cannot pose as you online. This is especially important if you are at a terminal that is accessible to others, such as the library, at school, at the workplace or at an Internet café.
Subscribers to the Daily Dilbert and/or Comics by E-mail service should also be aware that the service is not password protected and therefore a user who has your e-mail address may be able to view to which services you subscribe.
VII. Use of Materials
The right to download and store or output the materials in our site is granted for the user's personal use only, and materials may not be reproduced in any edited form. Any other reproduction, transmission, performance, display or editing of these materials by any means mechanical or electronic without the express written permission of us is strictly prohibited. Users wishing to obtain permission to reprint or reproduce any materials appearing on these sites may contact us at reprints@unitedmedia.com.
VIII. Questions and How Users Can Correct Information.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding Dilbert.com's or Comics.com's privacy policy and/or practices, or you need to correct personal information, please write to us at:
United Media
Attn: Web Privacy Policy
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
This policy is effective as of February 5, 2002. Any change will be posted at the earliest possible time and shall apply to all personal information submitted after the effective date of such change.
To link to the full Terms of Use Agreement pertaining to our site, please click here.
The Dilbert.com and Comics.com websites are intended for domestic viewers and are consequently directed towards residents of the United States.
Dilbert © 2005, United Feature Syndicate, Inc.