Privacy Regulations

Submitted by veniceconnected on Sat, 31/01/2009 - 14:22

Our privacy regulations contain information on how we use and protect personally identifiable information
 

Table of contents

 

Purposes

These privacy regulations describe the procedures for handling personally identifiable information for our services on the venice>connected websites. In general, these rules apply to the site www.veniceconnected.com,  its associated contents and other correlated sites in which these rules appear at the foot of the page. Some venice>connected  websites or other websites managed by us may be subject to other privacy regulations published therein. The rules applicable to the various sites will always be those that appear at the foot of the page of the associated website.
 
The procedures regarding privacy adopted by our associate companies, affiliates and joint ventures are similar to those described in these privacy regulations. Without prejudice to the law in force, we undertake to provide a series of standards valid for the entire community of venice>connected service users. By accepting the privacy regulations and the Agreement with users, whenever a user registers with the site, he or she expressly gives his or her consent to the use, storage and divulgation of his/her personally identifiable information. These privacy regulations shall remain valid after their acceptance and shall enter into force on 1 February 2009.

Data controller

By making use of venice>connected  services you also agree to the following terms and conditions:
Venis S.p.A. (with registered office in Venice, Palazzo Gradenigo - Castello 2838 - Italy) hereinafter referred to in this document as "venice>connected", is the data controller of personally identifiable information and, furthermore, may transfer such data to the Municipality of Venice (with registered office in Venice Italy, Ca'Farsetti - S.Marco 4136 - Italia) and to COSES (with registered offices in Venice, San Polo 1296 - Italy) for statistical processing, while the other companies that belong to the project will only receive data on users’ names and surnames.
Venis S.p.A.  handles the personally identifiable information of users for the purpose of performing venice>connected  services, pursuant to the Agreement with users, pursuant to these privacy regulations and in compliance with the principles set out therein.

Collection

It is possible to navigate our sites without revealing your identity or other personal particulars. However, after providing personally identifiable information, the user is no longer anonymous for us. If he or she chooses to provide personally identifiable information, he or she agrees to the collection and use of such information as described in these privacy regulations .
 
venice>connected may collect and store the following personally identifiable information:
  • Name, surname, address, telephone number, e-mail address, date of birth and occasionally financial information such as, for example, the user’s credit card number;
  • Information on transactions based upon activities carried out by users on the websites (such as, for example, purchases and contents correlated to the account);
  • Information acquired from interactions with our websites, services and contents, including information on computers and connections, statistics on the number of contacts, traffic from and towards websites, IP address and standard information on Internet access;
  • Additional information that we may request in order to verify the authenticity of a user's identity, or if we believe the user is infringing the rules of the website; alternatively venice>connected   may have recourse to other lawful procedures for the collection of information for the purpose of verifying a user's identity;
  • Information acquired by other companies, such as, for example, demographic and navigation dates;
  • Additional information provided by the user.

Marketing

venice>connected  does not sell personally identifiable information or transfer it against payment to third parties for marketing purposes without the user’s explicit consent. We can associate his or her data to information that we collect from other companies and use that data to improve and personalise our services and content.

Utilisation

venice>connected  makes provision to collect personally identifiable information in the first place for the purpose of offering you a secure, easy-to-use, efficient and personalised service. The user may authorise venice>connected  to make use of his or her personally identifiable information for the following purposes:
  • providing services and assistance to customers at his/her request;
  • settling disputes, collecting tariffs and defining problems;
  • preventing potentially illicit or prohibited activities and enforcing our Agreement with users;
  • personalising, analyzing and improving our services and contents;
  • providing information to our service users and those of other companies, sending them communications on service updates and promotional offers;
  • Comparing the exactness of the data and verifying them with third parties.

Area subject to the communication of personally identifiable information

venice>connected  has the right to divulge personally identifiable information in order to comply with legal requests, enforce our rules, answer claims alleging that third-party rights have been infringed or to safeguard the rights, property or security of all parties.
 
venice>connected  may share the user's personally identifiable information with
  • Service providers with whom we have a contractual relationship and who cooperate in our business activities (as, for example, investigating frauds, collecting invoice payments, affiliation and incentive programmes and co-branded credit cards);
  • Other third parties towards whom the user has expressly requested that venice>connected  forward his or her personally identifiable information (or about whom he or she has otherwise received express communication and to whom he or she agrees when using a specific service);
  • The police or other officers of a public authority, in order to meet requests concerning penal investigations or presumed unlawful activities. In these cases venice>connected  will divulge the information and data necessary to facilitate the investigation, such as, for example, name, city, postal code, telephone number, e-mail address, user’s username chronology, IP address;
  • Other companies, in the event of a merger or an acquisition between venice>connected  and the company in question (in this case, venice>connected   will require that the new company handle the user’s personally identifiable information in compliance with these privacy regulations . In case the user's personally identifiable information could not be handled in a manner compatible with these rules, he or she would receive prior notice to this effect).
Without prejudice to the foregoing, in order to respect the user's privacy and maintain our capacity to prevent access to his or her personally identifiable information by ill intentioned persons, we shall not divulge his/her personally identifiable information to the police, officers of public authorities or other third parties without first ascertaining the existence of a summons or an order issued by a court or substantially similar legal procedures, except for those cases in which we, in good faith, consider that the divulgation of the information is necessary to prevent imminent physical violence or financial loss or notify suspected illicit activities.

Sharing data on venice>connected

The user's username is displayed throughout the entire venice>connected  website (and therefore it is available to the public) and it is connected to all your activities on the site. Other persons may see votes cast, the forum postings, the files (images, videos and documents) uploaded onto the site and all associated comments.
 
If a user accesses our sites from a public computer or a computer in an Internet point, some of his or her information may be visible to others who make subsequent use of the computer. After using a public computer we suggest you disconnect from  venice>connected  and eliminate the cookies.

Utilisation of data provided by venice>connected

venice>connected  allows the user to share his/her personally identifiable and financial information, obtained through the websites, for the purpose of completing transactions and obtaining information on services offered by the site. We encourage users to communicate the procedures adopted on questions of privacy and to respect the privacy of other users. venice>connected  is unable to guarantee the privacy or the security of shared data, therefore, we advise you to evaluate the rules on privacy and security before performing these operations and opting to share personal information.

Cookies

venice>connected  uses "cookies" (small files stored on the hard drive) in some web pages in order to analyse access to the web pages, personalise its services and content and guarantee trust and security.
 
Here is some important information on the cookies:
  • venice>connected  offers functions that can only be provided through cookies;
  • the use of cookies enables venice>connected  to identify you and spares you the trouble of having to insert your password in continuation;
  • venice>connected  mainly uses cookies that are automatically cancelled at the conclusion of each session;
  • You are always free to refuse the cookies but in this case you will be prevented from using some venice>connected  services and sites.

Prohibition on spamming, spyware or counterfeit email

venice>connected  and its users do not tolerate spamming, i.e. the undesired and unrequested receipt of commercial and advertising material and information.  The user is not authorised to include the address of a venice>connected  user in address lists (email or postal) without his or her express consent. We invite users to notify venice>connected  of all cases of spamming or counterfeit email by sending an email to the address info@veniceconnected.com. The sending of commercial and/or advertising email is prohibited as also of contents that violate our Agreement with users.  venice>connected  carries out automatic verifications of messages and can use manual filters to verify the presence of spamming, viruses, and attempts to acquire personally identifiable information, carry out illicit activities or transmit illicit or prohibited contents, but it will not store messages sent through such instruments permanently. Emails sent to an address indicated by venice>connected  will not be stored permanently, and the email address will not be used for marketing purposes and nor will it be transferred or sold.

Account protection

The password is the only "key" that will allow the user to access his or her venice>connected  account. We advise you to use long numbers, letters and special characters and never to disclose your password. If the user decides to divulge his/her password or personal information to third parties, he/she will be responsible for all the acts performed through the use of his/her account. If a user loses the control of his/her password, he or she may no longer be able to control the use to which it may be put and become subject to legally binding actions carried out on his/her behalf. Therefore, if for any reason your password is found to be compromised, we advise you to notify a venice>connected  and change it immediately.

Access, control and modification of personally identifiable information

The user can see, check and modify at any time part of the data saved. We advise the user to immediately rectify data in the event of variations or inaccuracies. After transmission, it is impossible to modify or remove published messages. venice>connected  will close an account and eliminate personally identifiable information as soon as reasonably possible upon receipt of a reasoned application made to venice>connected  on the basis of the activities on his/her account and in conformity to the law in force. venice>connected  will retain the personally identifiable information associated with an account closed in order to comply with the law in force, prevent fraud, collect any outstanding fees, settle disputes and problems, offer assistance in the event of any investigations, enforce the Agreement with users of venice>connected   and undertake other actions pursuant to law. The user may address any other requests to customer service.

Security

Your data are stored on our servers in Venice. venice>connected   handles such data as if they were property to be protected and makes use of various tools (cryptography, physical level password protection, etc.) to safeguard your personally identifiable information from unauthorised access and divulgation. However, please be aware that third parties may illegally intercept or access private transmissions or communications between users and may use personally identifiable information gathered from the website in an illegitimate and improper manner. We undertake to make every effort to protect your privacy, but we cannot guarantee that your personally identifiable information or your private communications will always remain confidential.

Third parties

With the exception of some cases expressly indicated in these privacy regulations, this document refers exclusively to the use and divulgation of data provided directly from users. If personally identifiable information is communicated to other websites, the use and the divulgation of such data could be subject to other rules. venice>connected   does not control the privacy regulations of third parties and users are subject to the privacy regulations of such third parties, where applicable. We advise users to acquire appropriate information before divulging personally identifiable information to others.

Various

venice>connected  may modify the content of these privacy regulations at any time by publishing the new version on its website. All the new terms and conditions will come into force after the lapse of 30 (thirty) days from the publication date. If our help pages do not correspond to any questions concerning the privacy regulations , please write to the data controller at the following address:
Venis S.p.A. – venice>connected  Privacy Policy Requests (Questions on Privacy regulations), Palazzo Gradenigo - Castello 2838, 30122 Venice, Italy..