25 November 2005

At Asia City we recognize that your privacy is important. This document outlines the types of information we receive and collect when you use Asia City’s services, as well as some of the steps we take to safeguard information. We hope this will help you make an informed decision about sharing personal information with us.

Asia City is a lifestyle portal cum online social networking community that connects people through common networks of friends and interests. To accomplish this, our users create their own profiles which are shown to the people in their personal network and indicate their favorite things or events. A personal network consists of a user's friends as well as the extended group of people that a user is connected to via chains of mutual friends. Favorite things can include restaurants, CDs, books, film and etc. They may also highlight their personal event calendar on their profile. To fulfill the purpose of this site, some personal information we ask for is displayed to people within these personal networks.

Asia City collects user-submitted account information such as name and email address to identify users and send notifications related to the use of the service. Asia City also collects user-submitted profile information such as gender, age, occupation, location, etc.

This is information we collect that is not personally identifiable, such as URL, browser type, IP address, language and the date and time of request. This information is gathered for all users to the site.

Profile information as well as first name and photos are displayed to people in a user's personal network, to support the function of the site as social networking community where users can meet new people through their friends. Email address and full name are used when a user invites a friend via email to join the service, when a user requests to add another user to their friend list, and when we send notifications to a user related to their use of the service. Except when inviting or adding friends, a user's email address is not shared or displayed with people within a user's personal network. Users within a personal network communicate on Asia City with each other through the Asia City service, without disclosing email addresses. We may also use a user's email address to send weekly updates or news regarding our site, but the user may choose not to receive email of this type by accessing their My Asia City->Account/Preferences.

We may combine personal information collected from you with information from other Asia City services or third parties to provide a better user experience, including customizing content for you.

We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Asia City technologies and services.

In the event that we use third parties to assist us in processing your personal information, we require that they comply with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

Users who would rather not provide any of the user data requested by our registration process do not need to register with us. you can still view much of the content and use many of the services offered by Asia City without registering.

Information that users do not submit to us

We use your server, IP address, and browser-type related information in the general administration of our website.

As a matter of policy, except where you are expressly informed otherwise, we do not sell, rent, share, trade or give away any of your personal information unless required by law or for the protection of your membership. However, Asia City may share profile information and aggregate usage information in a non-personally identifiable manner to advertisers and other third parties in order to present to members more targeted advertising, products and services. In such situations we will never disclose information that will be used to personally identify you.

We may share information with third parties in limited circumstances, including when complying with legal process, preventing fraud or imminent harm, and ensuring the security of our network and services.

This site may contain links to other websites. Please be aware that Asia City is not responsible for the privacy practices of other Web sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. For the session ID cookie, once users close the browser, the cookie simply terminates. A persistent cookie is a text file stored on the user's hard drive for an extended period of time. Persistent cookies can be removed by following Internet browser help file directions. Users must enable cookies to use our site.

We use cookies and tracking technologies in a variety of ways, including:

1. Keeping count of return visits to our site or our advertisers' or partners' sites;
2. Accumulating and reporting anonymous, aggregate (data collected in mass), statistical information on Web-site and advertisement usage;
3. Determining which features our overall user population likes best;
4. Saving your password so you don't have to re-enter it each time you visit our sites;
5. Displaying the most appropriate advertising or content based on your interests.
6. Maintaining your previous selected city.

We do not and will not use cookies to collect private information from any user which they did not intentionally submit to us.

We also use technologies, including electronic images known as Web bugs—sometimes called transparent GIFs, clear GIFs, or beacons—that allow us to track general user-traffic patterns. We also automatically receive and record information from our servers and from your browser, including your IP address, the time of your visit to pages on our site, and information about pages you visited. Unless you have registered for our Services, the information we gather through the use of tracking technologies cannot be matched with any personally identifiable information about you.

Asia City users may modify or remove any of their personal information at any time by logging into their account and accessing features such as My Asia City -> Profile and My Asia City->Account/Preferences.

If we change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our web site so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. If we are going to use users' personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify users via email or by placing a prominent notice on our site.

If a user elects to use our Invite feature to invite a friend to our site, we ask them for the friend's email address. Asia City will automatically send the friend an email inviting them to join the site. Asia City stores this email address for the purpose of automatically adding the respondent to the friends list of the user sending the invitation, and also to send reminders of the invitation. Asia City does not sell these email addresses or use them to send any other communication besides invitations and invitation reminders. The friend may contact Asia City to request the removal of this information from our database.

Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online for example on message boards, through e-mail, or in chat areas - that information can be collected and used by others. In short, by posting personal information online that is publicly accessible, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.

Your Asia City account is password-protected. This web site takes every precaution to protect our users' information. We use industry standard measures to protect your information that is stored within our database. We limit the access to your information to those employees who need access to perform their job function such as our customer service personnel. If you have any questions about the security at our website, please contact us.

Users may opt not to receive our electronic newsletters or those of third parties when registering. Users who opt in may remove themselves from mailing lists at any time through the subscription-management pages or by following the instructions at the end of the email they received from us or by logging-in and changing their settings in the My Asia-City-> Account/Preferences section of the site.

The ads appearing on this Web site are delivered to users by our Web advertising partners. Our Web advertising partners may set cookies. Doing this allows the ad network to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement. In this way, ad networks may compile information about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw their advertisements and determine which ads are clicked on. This information allows an ad network to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. Asia City does not have access to or control of the cookies that may be placed by the third-party ad servers or ad networks.

This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by Asia City and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Business transfers

We are always seeking to improve our network of Web sites and our business. In accomplishing these objectives, we may buy or sell a company, or one or more of the companies in our corporate family may merge with or be acquired by another company. If we sell a business, we may transfer some or all of your information as a part of the sale in order that the service being provided to you may continue or for other business purposes.

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this Web site, please contact us.