1. What This Privacy Notice Covers
This notice covers how Weebly, Inc., a U.S. company ("Weebly," "we," "us," or "our") treats personal information that it collects and receives from its websites, website hosting services, communication tools, mobile applications, app marketplace, ecommerce tools, and other services (collectively, the “Service”).
We are not in the business of selling personal information about you. We use information shared with us for the purpose of running and improving our Service and in that capacity will operate as a data controller and, to the extent we process data, a data processor.
This notice tells you what information we collect, steps we take to protect and secure it, how we use and share information, and finally, how you can contact us with questions or concerns.
Weebly complies with the U.S.-E.U. Safe Harbor framework and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal data from European Union member countries and Switzerland. Weebly has certified that it adheres to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of notice, choice, onward transfer, security, data integrity, access, and enforcement. To learn more about the Safe Harbor program, and to view Weebly’s certification, please visit http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/.
2. Information We Collect
(a) Personal Information. We collect personal information (e.g., name, email address, phone number, etc.) when you:
4. Information Use, Sharing, Disclosure, and Retention(a) Use. Weebly uses information for providing products and services, identification and authentication, Service operation, analytics and improvements, support, contact (e.g., sending notifications related to use of the Service), research, and anonymous reporting. We may combine Automatically Collected Information with other information we collect about you to improve site functionality and the services we offer you, and for Service and internal marketing analytics.
5. 3rd Party Features and AppsOur Service includes various third party features and apps, including but not limited social media features, such as the Facebook Like button, apps you may add to your Site via the App Marketplace, and Widgets, such as the Share This button or interactive mini-programs that run on our Service (“3rd Party Features and Apps”). These 3rd Party Features and Apps may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the 3rd Party Features and Apps to function properly. 3rd Party Features and Apps are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Service. Your interactions with these 3rd Party Features and Apps may governed by the privacy policy of the company providing the 3rd Party Features and Apps, and you are responsible for viewing that company’s relevant privacy policy.
6. Links to 3rd Party SitesOur Service includes links to other Web sites whose privacy practices may differ from ours. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policy of any web site you visit.
7. Facebook Login; Google +You can log in to our Service using sign-in services such as Facebook Login, Google+, or an Open ID provider. These services will authenticate your identity and provide you the option to share certain personal information with us such as your name and email address to pre-populate our sign up form. Services like Facebook Login give you the option to post information about your activities on our Service to your profile page to share with others within your network. Learn how to control how information is shared on your Google+ profile here.
8.Confidentiality and SecurityWe use physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect personal information about you.
Data transmissions over the Internet are not 100% secure. Consequently, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we use reasonable efforts to ensure security on our systems.
Your account information is password-protected. Additionally, your account's password is stored using a salted, variable work factor, one-way hash algorithm.
In certain areas, Weebly uses industry-standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions (such as when entering credit card details). However, this is not a guarantee that such information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of a firewall or secure server software.
9. Changing your Preferences and Personal InformationYou can access and edit your account information with Weebly at any time. We will respond to your request to access within 30 days.
You can delete your applicable account by visiting the applicable account deletion page; however, some personal information, primarily your contact information, may remain in our records to the extent necessary to protect our legal interests or document compliance with regulatory requirements.
If your personal information changes, or if you no longer desire our Service, you may correct, update, or delete such information by making the change on your user account page, or by submitting a request through our help center.
10. Changes to this Privacy NoticeWeebly reserves the right to revise, modify, or update this notice at any time. We will notify you about material changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your particular Weebly account or by placing a prominent notice on our site prior to the change becoming effective.
11. Contacting WeeblyIf you have a privacy concern regarding Weebly, or this notice, and if you cannot satisfactorily resolve it through the Service, you should complete a support request at http://help.weebly.com, or you can write to us by email at [email protected] or by mail at:
Attention: Legal - Privacy
Weebly, Inc.
460 Bryant St., #100
San Francisco, California 94107 USA
12. TRUSTeThe TRUSTe program covers only information that is collected through this web site, www.weebly.com and does not include information that may be collected through our downloadable software, mobile applications and platform. In order to view our relationship with TRUSTe please visit the validation page visible by clicking on the TRUSTe seal. If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact TRUSTe.
November 2015: All Sections were updated to include section numbers. Introduced a defined term, “Service,” to cover all Weebly websites, services, applications, and tools and to make the notice easier to read. Global document changes to update disclosures on information collection, use, and sharing, the app marketplace, and Cookie-related information. Sections 2(d) and 3 were added to address analytics services and Do Not Track, respectively.
Weebly, Analytics, and Privacy Violations (Updated II)
Those who create and author technical systems can and do impose their politics, beliefs, and inclinations onto how technology is perceived, used, and understood. On the Internet, this unfortunately means that the technically savvy often recommend choices to users who are less knowledgeable. A number of these recommendations are tainted by existing biases, legal (mis)understandings, or stakeholder gamesmanship. In the case of website development firms, such as Weebly, recommendations can lead users to violate terms of service and legal provisions to the detriment of those users. In essence, bad advice from firms like Weebly can lead to harms befalling their blissfully ignorant users.
In this short post, I talk about how Weebly blatantly encourages its customers to conduct surveillance on websites without telling them of their obligations to notify website visitors that surveillance is being conducted. I also note how the company deceives those visiting Weebly’s own properties by obfuscating whether information is collected and who is involved in the collection of visitors’ data. I conclude by briefly noting that Google ought to behave responsibly and publicly call out, and lean on, the company to ensure that Google’s Analytics product is used responsibly and in concordance with its terms of service.
Weebly is a company driven to help people get online. To this end, they provide an easy to use interface that lets Weebly customers create websites. Its day-to-day functionality in designing and creating webpages have already been reviewed, so that’s not going to be something I address. Instead, I identify two problems: First, how the company instructs users to use Google Analytics; second, the company’s failure to disclose that they are applying Google Analytics to their users’ webpage without imposing privacy notices on users’ sites that disclose this practice.
Edit this text and tell your site visitors who you are
This notice covers how Weebly, Inc., a U.S. company ("Weebly," "we," "us," or "our") treats personal information that it collects and receives from its websites, website hosting services, communication tools, mobile applications, app marketplace, ecommerce tools, and other services (collectively, the “Service”).
We are not in the business of selling personal information about you. We use information shared with us for the purpose of running and improving our Service and in that capacity will operate as a data controller and, to the extent we process data, a data processor.
This notice tells you what information we collect, steps we take to protect and secure it, how we use and share information, and finally, how you can contact us with questions or concerns.
Weebly complies with the U.S.-E.U. Safe Harbor framework and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal data from European Union member countries and Switzerland. Weebly has certified that it adheres to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of notice, choice, onward transfer, security, data integrity, access, and enforcement. To learn more about the Safe Harbor program, and to view Weebly’s certification, please visit http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/.
2. Information We Collect
(a) Personal Information. We collect personal information (e.g., name, email address, phone number, etc.) when you:
- register an account with us;
- contact our customer support services;
- sign-up as, or are invited to be, a member of a Pro or Business account user’s site;
- are referred to us through our “invite a friend” referral feature;
- enter our promotions, contests, or sweepstakes;
- post content on a Weebly website or blog;
- sign-up to be an App Developer; and
- post an App review in our App Marketplace
4. Information Use, Sharing, Disclosure, and Retention(a) Use. Weebly uses information for providing products and services, identification and authentication, Service operation, analytics and improvements, support, contact (e.g., sending notifications related to use of the Service), research, and anonymous reporting. We may combine Automatically Collected Information with other information we collect about you to improve site functionality and the services we offer you, and for Service and internal marketing analytics.
5. 3rd Party Features and AppsOur Service includes various third party features and apps, including but not limited social media features, such as the Facebook Like button, apps you may add to your Site via the App Marketplace, and Widgets, such as the Share This button or interactive mini-programs that run on our Service (“3rd Party Features and Apps”). These 3rd Party Features and Apps may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the 3rd Party Features and Apps to function properly. 3rd Party Features and Apps are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Service. Your interactions with these 3rd Party Features and Apps may governed by the privacy policy of the company providing the 3rd Party Features and Apps, and you are responsible for viewing that company’s relevant privacy policy.
6. Links to 3rd Party SitesOur Service includes links to other Web sites whose privacy practices may differ from ours. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policy of any web site you visit.
7. Facebook Login; Google +You can log in to our Service using sign-in services such as Facebook Login, Google+, or an Open ID provider. These services will authenticate your identity and provide you the option to share certain personal information with us such as your name and email address to pre-populate our sign up form. Services like Facebook Login give you the option to post information about your activities on our Service to your profile page to share with others within your network. Learn how to control how information is shared on your Google+ profile here.
8.Confidentiality and SecurityWe use physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect personal information about you.
Data transmissions over the Internet are not 100% secure. Consequently, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we use reasonable efforts to ensure security on our systems.
Your account information is password-protected. Additionally, your account's password is stored using a salted, variable work factor, one-way hash algorithm.
In certain areas, Weebly uses industry-standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions (such as when entering credit card details). However, this is not a guarantee that such information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of a firewall or secure server software.
9. Changing your Preferences and Personal InformationYou can access and edit your account information with Weebly at any time. We will respond to your request to access within 30 days.
You can delete your applicable account by visiting the applicable account deletion page; however, some personal information, primarily your contact information, may remain in our records to the extent necessary to protect our legal interests or document compliance with regulatory requirements.
If your personal information changes, or if you no longer desire our Service, you may correct, update, or delete such information by making the change on your user account page, or by submitting a request through our help center.
10. Changes to this Privacy NoticeWeebly reserves the right to revise, modify, or update this notice at any time. We will notify you about material changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your particular Weebly account or by placing a prominent notice on our site prior to the change becoming effective.
11. Contacting WeeblyIf you have a privacy concern regarding Weebly, or this notice, and if you cannot satisfactorily resolve it through the Service, you should complete a support request at http://help.weebly.com, or you can write to us by email at [email protected] or by mail at:
Attention: Legal - Privacy
Weebly, Inc.
460 Bryant St., #100
San Francisco, California 94107 USA
12. TRUSTeThe TRUSTe program covers only information that is collected through this web site, www.weebly.com and does not include information that may be collected through our downloadable software, mobile applications and platform. In order to view our relationship with TRUSTe please visit the validation page visible by clicking on the TRUSTe seal. If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact TRUSTe.
November 2015: All Sections were updated to include section numbers. Introduced a defined term, “Service,” to cover all Weebly websites, services, applications, and tools and to make the notice easier to read. Global document changes to update disclosures on information collection, use, and sharing, the app marketplace, and Cookie-related information. Sections 2(d) and 3 were added to address analytics services and Do Not Track, respectively.
Weebly, Analytics, and Privacy Violations (Updated II)
Those who create and author technical systems can and do impose their politics, beliefs, and inclinations onto how technology is perceived, used, and understood. On the Internet, this unfortunately means that the technically savvy often recommend choices to users who are less knowledgeable. A number of these recommendations are tainted by existing biases, legal (mis)understandings, or stakeholder gamesmanship. In the case of website development firms, such as Weebly, recommendations can lead users to violate terms of service and legal provisions to the detriment of those users. In essence, bad advice from firms like Weebly can lead to harms befalling their blissfully ignorant users.
In this short post, I talk about how Weebly blatantly encourages its customers to conduct surveillance on websites without telling them of their obligations to notify website visitors that surveillance is being conducted. I also note how the company deceives those visiting Weebly’s own properties by obfuscating whether information is collected and who is involved in the collection of visitors’ data. I conclude by briefly noting that Google ought to behave responsibly and publicly call out, and lean on, the company to ensure that Google’s Analytics product is used responsibly and in concordance with its terms of service.
Weebly is a company driven to help people get online. To this end, they provide an easy to use interface that lets Weebly customers create websites. Its day-to-day functionality in designing and creating webpages have already been reviewed, so that’s not going to be something I address. Instead, I identify two problems: First, how the company instructs users to use Google Analytics; second, the company’s failure to disclose that they are applying Google Analytics to their users’ webpage without imposing privacy notices on users’ sites that disclose this practice.
Edit this text and tell your site visitors who you are