Your privacy is important to 2degrees, and we are committed to protecting the personal information you share with us. This policy covers how 2degrees collects and uses your personal information to provide services that you request and how 2degrees treats personal information that you choose to provide us with.

2degrees adheres to the following principles in order to protect your privacy:

• We will never rent or sell your personal information to 3rd parties
• You alone decide which personal information you have made available to 2degrees is shared with other members of 2degrees.
• You should have access to the information that others wish to share about themselves
• Any personal information that you provide will be secured to the best of our ability

Collection and retention of personal information

Personal information means any information that may be used to identify an individual, including, but not limited to, a first and last name, email address, a postal address, other contact information, title, organization, occupation, industry, personal interests.

When you browse 2degreesnetwork.com, you do so anonymously, unless you have previously registered with us. We have no ability to automatically collect personal information. We do log your IP address (the Internet address of your computer) in order to understand what parts of our website you visit and how long you spend there. But we do not link your IP address to any personal information unless you have registered with us.

Registration (mandatory information):

In order for the 2degrees services to function, 2degrees needs to collect personal information in the course of the registration process. This information is as follows: first name, surname, business name, position (title), business email account , business telephone number, business post code & country.

The following personal information from these mandatory fields is accessible to other 2degrees members without any restrictions: first name, surname, company name, position (title).

With respect to the following Personal Data, you may choose in each individual case whether the data shall be displayed to a specific 2degrees member or not: business email account, business telephone number, business post code & country.

Your Profile information

If you wish, you may provide additional information about yourself on a voluntary basis ("Profile information"), in order to allow other 2degrees members to get to know you better and potentially encourage them to choose you as an appropriate business contact. Providing additional information beyond what is required at registration is optional, but enables you to network more effectively and build relationships using the 2degrees service.

Currently, you are able to enter many types of profile information; for example: your business interests, other companies that you work for, what you have to offer to other 2degrees members, what you are looking for from other 2degrees members, etc. You may also upload a photograph of yourself, if you wish.

You may also provide additional contact information, such as your business address, and your mobile telephone number.

Treatment of your profile and contact information

By default, all other 2degrees members may access your profile and view all the information displayed within it, including any business address that you have given, but not your phone numbers or email address. Some 2degrees members may be able to access more or less of your profile information in accordance with the privacy settings that you have defined on your privacy settings page

Your name, job title, company name, and profile picture thumbnail are available in search results across the 2degrees network.

If you send 2degrees members a request to become one of your contacts, and these 2degrees members confirm your request for contact, these 2degrees members shall be listed against your profile as your contacts. You will also be listed against their profiles as their contact. Likewise, if other 2degrees members request to be your contact, and you confirm these requests, these members will be listed on your profile as your contacts. You will also be listed against their profiles as their contact.

By default, only your contacts can see your list of contacts. However, you may change this setting at any time so that your list of contacts is not visible by anybody at all, is visible to everybody, or is visible only to certain of your contacts, for example to the direct contacts of your contacts.

Other 2degrees Members may send private messages to you in order to establish contact with you. 2degrees has preset your messaging settings so that by default all 2degrees members may send you private messages. You may restrict the ability of 2degrees Members to send you private messages at any time so that either no 2degrees Members or only selected contacts can send you private messages, for example only your contacts.

Deactivation of your personal data

Membership of 2degrees requires that you provide some personal information along with a username and a password. You can review the personal information you provided us with and make changes to the information, or to the settings for your 2degrees account, at any time by logging in to your account on the 2degrees website. If you wish, you can also cancel your subscription to 2degrees. If you cancel your 2degrees subscription, we will remove your profile information from our web site. We may retain certain content contributed by you such as blog posts and forum posts, and this information will remain associated with your name and picture. We may also retain certain personal information if it may be necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, or for legitimate business purposes. All retained data will continue to be subject to the terms of the 2degrees Privacy Policy that you have previously agreed to. To request that we remove your information from the 2degrees service, please send your request to customer_service@2degreesnetwork.com. Please send your request using an email account that you have registered with 2degrees under your name. You will receive a response to requests sent to customer_service@2degreesnetwork.com within five business days of our receiving it.

Unless you request deactivation of your personal information as specified above, your personal information may be retained by 2degrees.

Information about people you wish to invite to join 2degrees:

In order to invite others to join the 2degrees network, you will need to enter their names and email addresses. This information will be used by 2degrees to send your invitation including a message that you write. The names and email addresses of people that you invite will be used only to send your invitations and reminders. All information that you enter in order to invite your contacts to 2degrees will also be covered by this privacy policy.

Sharing of personal information

2degrees will not transfer your personal information to third parties without your consent, except under the limited conditions described under the discussion entitled "Information Sharing and Disclosure" below.

In some cases we will provide you with the opportunity to "opt in" prior to receiving direct marketing or market research information. This means we will require your affirmative action to indicate your consent before we use your information for purposes other than the purpose for which it was submitted. At a minimum, we will always give you the opportunity to "opt out" of receiving such materials. This means we assume you have given us your consent to collect and use your information in accordance with this Privacy Statement unless you take affirmative action to indicate that you do not consent, for instance by asking for your information to be removed from the 2degrees service.

Cookies and other tracking technologies

A cookie is a small data file that certain websites write to your computer’s hard drive when you visit them. A cookie file can contain information such as a user ID that the site uses to track the pages you have visited, but the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. The 2degrees website uses cookies to maintain information about your session whilst you are browsing our website. Unfortunately, the 2degrees website is not usable without accepting the cookies that it sends to your browser.

For additional information about cookies and other tracking technologies, including instructions for blocking their use, see http://privacy.getnetwise.org/browsing/tools/.

How 2degrees uses information collected

2degrees uses information for several general purposes: to fulfill your requests for 2degrees services, to personalize your experience on our website, to keep you up to date on the latest information we think you would like to hear about either from us or from our business partners, and to better understand your needs and provide you with better services. We may also use your information to send you direct marketing information or contact you for market research.

Information sharing and disclosure

Because 2degrees is a global service, your personal information may be shared with other 2degrees offices or subsidiaries around the world. All such entities are governed by this Privacy Policy or are bound by appropriate confidentiality and data transfer agreements.

Your personal information is never shared outside 2degrees without your permission, except under conditions explained below. Inside 2degrees, data is stored in controlled servers with limited access. Your information may be stored and processed in the UK or any other country where 2degrees, its subsidiaries, affiliates or agents are located.

2degrees may send your personal information to other companies or people under any of the following circumstances:

• when we have your consent to share the information;
• if sharing your information is necessary to provide a product or service you have requested (If your information is shared with third parties we will only provide the information they need to deliver the service. Also, such companies are prohibited from using your information for any other purpose);

We will also disclose your personal information if required to do so by law, to enforce our Terms of Use, or in urgent circumstances, to protect personal safety, the public or our websites.

Data security

Your 2degrees account is password-protected for your privacy and security. In certain areas of our websites, 2degrees uses industry-standard SSL-encryption to enhance the security of sensitive data transmissions. While we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure the security of the information you transmit to us, and so we urge you to take every precaution to protect your personal data when you are on the Internet. Change your passwords often and use a combination of letters and numbers.

You post User Content (as defined in the 2degrees Terms of Use) on the 2degrees website at your own risk. Although we have put in place security measures that limit access to information that you contribute, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other 2degrees members or non-members. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the 2degrees website will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the 2degrees website. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content.

Children and privacy

Our websites do not target and are not intended to attract children under the age of 13. 2degrees does not knowingly solicit personal information from children under the age of 13 or send them requests for personal information.

Third party sites

The 2degrees website contains links to other sites. 2degrees does not share your personal information with those websites and is not responsible for their privacy practices. We encourage you to learn about the privacy policies of these third party sites.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

Notice of all changes that substantially affect the ways in which your personal information can be used or shared will be posted in updates to our Privacy Policy. If you continue to use the 2degrees service after notice of changes has been published on our site, you thereby provide your consent to the change in practices.

Questions or suggestions

If you have questions or concerns about our collection, use, or disclosure of your personal information, please email us at info@2degreesnetwork.com

This document was last updated March 16th 2008