Software Advice Privacy Policy

Updated and New Effective Date: March 23th, 2007

The Software Advice website ("Website") is owned and operated by RiverGuide, Inc. ("RiverGuide"). RiverGuide has implemented this privacy policy to explain to you how we use and protect personal information we may gather from you by means of this Website ("Privacy Policy"). Any information that you voluntarily furnish to RiverGuide on this Website will be treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

SO THAT WE MAY ASSIST YOU WITH YOUR SOFTWARE LICENSING/PURCHASE INQUIRY, PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT RiverGuide WILL FURNISH THE INFORMATION YOU SUBMIT ON THIS Website TO OUR PARTICIPATING SOFTWARE VENDORS SO THAT THEY MAY CONTACT YOU ABOUT THEIR PRODUCTS, SERVICES, OFFERS, AND PROMOTIONS.

RiverGuide may gather information about you from this Website and from other sources, such as information you provide to our affiliated companies, including parent and subsidiary companies, affiliated Websites or any entity directly or indirectly controlling, controlled by or under common control with said entity ("Affiliates").

As a general rule, you will not be required to provide personally identifiable information as a condition of browsing this Website. When such information is gathered, we will gather the necessary information from you necessary to facilitate transactions requested by you, to improve this Website and your experience with this Website, and to make future visits to this Website easier and more personalized for you.


WHAT INFORMATION IS COLLECTED AND HOW COLLECTED INFORMATION IS USED
Users of this Website may browse without being obligated to submit any personal information; however, we may collect certain personally identifiable information from you in certain areas of our Website for certain purposes. These purposes include:

Information we collect:

Failing to provide information that is required to complete certain transactions will not inhibit your ability to browse the Website, but it may prevent you from being able to complete certain transactions and/or prevent us from putting you in contact with the appropriate software vendor(s).

The general categories of information we gather include:

Personal User Information
We may require that you obtain a user name and password to log on to certain portions of our Website. We may also require that you supply your name, physical address, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card information (when applicable) or other personally identifiable information in order to facilitate certain transactions. We may also require additional personal information to provide specific services to you.

Anonymous User Information
Certain non-personal, anonymous information may be automatically provided to our Web servers by your computer. Additionally, certain other information (such as cookies, described below) may be transmitted by our Web server to your computer. That information does not contain any personally identifiable information. Specific types of anonymous information are described below:

IP Addresses
For each visitor to our Website, whenever possible, our Web server automatically recognizes the visitor's domain name or IP address. An IP address is a number assigned to your computer when you connect to the Internet. As part of the protocol of the Internet, Web servers can identify your computer by its IP address. In addition, Web servers may be able to identify the type of browser you are using or even the type of computer.

We collect IP addresses and related information for the purposes of system administration, to assess the traffic to our Website and to maintain and improve our Website. Although it is not our practice to link IP addresses to your personally identifiable information, we reserve the right to use IP addresses to identify a user when we feel it is necessary to protect the compelling interest of our Website, users of our Website or others or to comply with laws, court orders, or law enforcement requests.

Use of Cookies
Cookies are short strings of text sent from a Web server to a Web browser when the browser accesses a Website. In simplest terms, when the browser requests a page from the Web server that originally sent it the cookie, the browser sends a copy of the cookie back to that Web server. A cookie typically contains, among other things, the name of the cookie, a unique identification number, and an expiration date and domain name information. Cookies are used for personalization, tracking and other purposes. Cookies may be "session-only" or "persistent." Persistent cookies last for more than one visit and are typically used to allow a visitor to our Website to personalize their experience.

We may use cookies to analyze the traffic on our Website (such as total visitors and pages viewed), to personalize features or save you the trouble of retyping your name or other information, and to make improvements to the Website based on the data we collect. We do not save passwords or other sensitive information in cookies. The use of cookies has become a standard in the Internet industry, especially at websites that provide any kind of personalized service.

Cookies may also be placed by third parties prior to or during your visit to the Website. Our Affiliates and business partners may use these cookies in connection with pixel tracking (discussed below) or otherwise. We do not control these cookies. The use of cookies by content providers and advertisers has become standard practice in the Internet industry.

Pixel Tracking
RiverGuide may employ a common technique usually referred to as "pixel tracking" to measure the effectiveness of marketing and advertisements, as well as compile aggregate usage statistics. Pixel tracking, which may be used in connection with advertisements on other sites, on our Website or in e-mail messages, involves the use of pixel tags (also known as "clear gifs," "Web beacons" or "1-by-1 gifs") that are not visible to the user of the site and consist of a few lines of computer coding. For example, if you visit our Website from an advertisement on another site, the pixel tag will reference the cookie you received when you clicked on the advertisement. The pixel tag also may register this activity with a business partner to allow us to count the number of times or when an advertisement is accessed. This data is collected for use in our marketing and research. Personally identifiable information about you is not collected by pixel tracking, nor is any tracking information generated from the pixel tag allowed to be used for any other purpose other than to report Website activity to us.

Other Information
We may also request other personally identifiable information from you, or you may affirmatively provide us with information. As a general matter, we try to limit the information we gather to the minimum information we need to perform the applicable services and to improve your experience on our Website. If you send an e-mail to our Website or otherwise affirmatively provide us with information beyond what we request, we will treat such information as having your consent to collect, retain and use the information for purposes reasonably associated with the purpose for which you provided the information. For example, we may retain a copy of the e-mail and any personally identifiable information you may have supplied in the e-mail with respect to a user service question to help us evaluate our service, train our employees and provide better service to our users.

We may also gather information about your transactions and, as permitted by applicable law, information we receive from credit reporting bureaus and other third parties, such as credit history. This information may include credit card information.

WHO IS COLLECTING THIS INFORMATION
We collect the user information described above by means of your use of this Website and the features of this Website. For example, information is collected in connection with online transactions, with the registration of users, and with the provision of information and/or services.

Data collected online may also be combined or merged with information you provide to us by means other than this Website as part of the standard business operations of RiverGuide and its Affiliates; provided, however, this Privacy Policy applies only to data collected on-line. If the same information about you is gathered from this Website and also from other sources with different privacy policies, RiverGuide may elect, in its sole discretion, to treat such information in accordance with the privacy policy that least restricts our use and disclosure of such information.

During the time you are using our Website, you may be linked or directed to other third party sites outside our Website that are beyond our control. For example, you might click on a hyperlink that will take you off our Website. Third party Websites may have a privacy policy different from our Privacy Policy. You should review the applicable privacy policies of all other Websites before providing personally identifiable information in connection with such sites. We are not responsible for any actions or privacy policies of such third parties. In addition, third parties who assist us with pixel tracking may collect a limited amount of information to help us measure the effectiveness of ads, usually by placing cookies on your hard drive.

WITH WHOM MAY THE INFORMATION BE SHARED

PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT RiverGuide MAY PROVIDE CERTAIN INFORMATION YOU SUBMIT ON THIS WEBSITE TO THIRD PARTIES, INCLUDING YOUR NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER, EMAIL ADDRESS SO THAT THEY MAY CONTACT YOU ABOUT THEIR OWN OR OTHERS' PRODUCTS, SERVICES, OFFERS AND PROMOTIONS.

Additionally, you may authorize us to share your e-mail address with our Affiliates business partners, and third parties, including vendors whose products are profiled on the Website. If you opt-in and/or receive an e-mail opt-in confirmation, our Affiliates and business partners and third parties may contact you via e-mail, U.S. post, and/or telephone with a variety of special promotions, offers, or other information that may be of interest to you.

RiverGuide may share personally identifiable information with its Affiliates and business partners necessary to complete transactions as part of its standard business operations and to assist us in offering products or services to you.

First, we may disclose user information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property, users of our Website, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities. Second, we may disclose user information when we believe in good faith that such disclosure is required by applicable law.

CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
RiverGuide does not solicit personal information from children. We abide by the United States Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and will not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under age 13. We recommend that parents actively participate in their children's use of the Internet.

CHOICES YOU CAN MAKE ABOUT YOUR INFORMATION
We will give you an opportunity to opt-out of the gathering of your personally identifiable information, specific uses of your personally identifiable information, and any marketing promotions in accordance with the procedures set out in the section below, "Correcting and Changing Your Information." In addition, you may opt-out of receiving any further email from RiverGuide by clicking on the "unsubscribe" button in any RiverGuide email. By adjusting the settings in your browser, you can refuse to accept cookies or give yourself the opportunity to accept or reject cookies, or receive notice of cookies. Software programs are available that block cookies. Refusing cookies may impinge or block altogether your user experience on our Website by eliminating personalization or other features.

CORRECTING OR CHANGING YOUR INFORMATION
If you wish to amend, correct, update, delete or opt-out of any information to which you have previously opted-in or wish to review information we have collected about you, please contact RiverGuide via e-mail at privacy@softwareadvice.com, and we will attend to your request and make any necessary revisions.

This provision applies only to personally identifiable information collected via our Website and not to: (i) information that is furnished to or otherwise acquired by us by other means, as set forth in this Privacy Policy; (ii) non-personally identifiable information that may be gathered by cookies or from IP addresses or (iii) aggregate information. We reserve the right not to allow access to your information if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is prohibited by law or if the rights of another individual might be violated.

SECURITY PROCEDURES
We are concerned with the security of your personally identifiable information and try to provide secure transmission of your information from your PC to our servers. For certain transactions on certain of our Websites, we may use Secured Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to secure the transfer of information. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be absolutely secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information transmitted over the Internet.

If you have a user name and password for any of the features on our Website, you have the responsibility of keeping your password secret. You should not reveal your password to anyone. We will not ask you in an unsolicited telephone call or e-mail for your password. In addition, you should take reasonable precautions when using a computer that is not your own or in a public setting.

CHANGES IN TERMS
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time, and we will change the Effective Date located at the beginning of this Privacy Policy. You are encouraged periodically to check the effective date to see if a change has been made. Use of the Website after the changed effective date will be deemed to be assent to the changed terms.

CONTACTING RiverGuide
If you have any specific questions regarding any issues about privacy on our Website, please contact RiverGuide via e-mail at privacy@softwareadvice.com, and we will attend to your request and make any necessary revisions.

APPLICABLE LAW
Our collection and use of information shall be governed by laws of the United States.

CONSENT
By using our Website and providing personally identifiable information about yourself, you are consenting to (and hereby consent to) (1) our collection, use, and sharing of data as described in this Privacy Policy; (2) the notice, choice, access, and security we are providing, as described above; and (3) the methods we have described to notify you of changes to this Privacy Policy.