Experts Exchange Privacy Policy

This policy is presented to you in order to help you make an informed decision about using this service and to explain to you what information we collect, how we store that information and how we may use it. By using our products and/or services, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and/or processed in the United States in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Experts Exchange, LLC complies with the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF), the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. DPF, and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (Swiss-U.S. DPF) as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Experts Exchange has certified to the U.S. Department of Commerce that it adheres to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Principles (EU-U.S. DPF Principles) with regard to the processing of personal data received from the European Union in reliance on the EU-U.S. DPF and from the United Kingdom (and Gibraltar) in reliance on the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. DPF. Experts Exchange has certified to the U.S. Department of Commerce that it adheres to the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Principles (Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles) with regard to the processing of personal data received from Switzerland in reliance on the Swiss-U.S. DPF. If there is any conflict between the terms in this privacy policy and the EU-U.S. DPF Principles and/or the Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles, the Principles shall govern. To learn more about the Data Privacy Framework (DPF) program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov.

1. What information do we collect?

When you enter Experts Exchange, we collect your browser information (which typically includes browser type, version, host operating system and browser language) and IP address. Experts Exchange uses your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and for other administrative purposes including, but not limited to, directing you to a geographically closer data center, providing you a registration page in your country's local currency. We also use IP addresses to gather broad demographic information from all visitors. You can browse portions of this website without giving us any additional information. EU, UK, and Swiss individuals whose personal data we are processing under the Data Privacy Frameworks have the right to access, correct, or delete their personal data by contacting us at customer_support@experts-exchange.com or calling at +1 (877) 211-8911.

Most of the services offered on Experts Exchange are only made available if we have certain information about you. To access these services, you will, from time to time, be asked to submit personal information about yourself. Experts Exchange's site registration form requires you to give us contact information (such as your name and email address), billing information (such as your credit card information) and demographic information (such as your zip code). Aggregate demographic, sales and traffic information data is also collected at our site. We may use this data for improving the services offered on Experts Exchange and developing marketing programs. Experts Exchange may also provide aggregate (but not personally identifiable) statistics about our members, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to advertisers and third-party vendors.

Should you choose to include additional personally identifiable information to be displayed on your user profile on our website, we will necessarily process these details. Voluntarily submitted profile details we may also collect from you may include:

  • more detailed contact information (including a picture of yourself);
  • information regarding your personal or professional experience and interests; and
  • information regarding your experiences with our services.

You have the right to change or remove the information in your profile at any time by editing your profile.

If you make any postings to public areas, such as public forums or by providing content, then this information will be stored on our databases for public viewing, and in such case, any personally identifiable information you submit will be publicly available and can be read, collected and used by other users, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages.

By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable Experts Exchange and its service providers to provide you with the services you select. Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat that information in accordance with this policy.

2. Information on visitors – Use of Cookies

During the course of any visit to Experts Exchange, the pages you see are downloaded to your computer along with something called a "cookie". Cookies are text files that identify your computer to our server. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used. Cookies themselves record those areas of the site that have been visited by the computer in question, and for how long. Most websites use cookies because cookies allow the website publisher to ascertain whether the computer has visited the site before. In addition to browsing history, cookies may store the geographic location of a computer and the preferences associated with that computer on Experts Exchange.

Any information that is supplied by cookies can help us to provide you with a better service and assists us to analyze the profile of our visitors. They make it easier for you to maintain your preferences on Experts Exchange, and by seeing how you use Experts Exchange; we can tailor our website around your preferences.

Experts Exchange works with third parties to serve ads on our site. These ads may contain cookies. This policy only covers the use of cookies by Experts Exchange and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers. Experts Exchange does not have control, nor access to the information contained in its advertisers' cookies.

3. Your ability to monitor and control cookies

Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these, of course, means that certain personalized services cannot then be provided to that user. You can, should you choose, disable the cookies from your browser and delete all cookies currently stored on your computer. This may, however, prevent you from taking advantage of services that Experts Exchange has to offer.

More information can be obtained on cookies by visiting https://allaboutcookies.org/how-to-manage-cookies which is run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

4. Our primary use of your personal information

The information you provide to Experts Exchange will be used for the following reasons:

  • to ensure that content from our site is presented to you in the most effective manner and to personalize your visit to our site;

  • to enable us to continuously enhance the Experts Exchange service, to serve advertising, and to provide to you information, products or services which we feel may be of interest to you;

  • to occasionally carry out market research including internal analytical research which will enable us to constantly improve your experience on Experts Exchange;

  • to carry out our obligations arising from any agreements that may have been entered into between you and us;

  • to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so; and

  • to notify you about changes to or other information about our service.

Experts Exchange periodically contacts members using information supplied by members. Members may opt-out of receiving certain future mailings, such as the Experts Exchange newsletter and marketing mailings, in the following manners: (i) during the registration process, (ii) by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of such mailings, or (iii) by unsubscribing in the Settings page.

Experts Exchange may contact you for a number of purposes related to the service you have signed up for. For example, we may wish to notify you that a particular service has been improved or suspended.

5. Additional Uses of Your Personal Information

Surveys.

Our online surveys ask members for contact information (like their email address) and demographic information (like their zip code, age, or income level). Personal information collected in this manner is used for site development purposes in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Contests.

We run contests on our site in which we ask members for contact information (like their email address) and demographic information (like their zip code). Personal information collected in this manner is used to facilitate the member's participation in the contest, and for site development purposes, in accordance with this Privacy Policy, and in accordance with the Terms and Conditions applicable to this contest.

Sharing.

If a member elects to use the Share icon for informing a friend of activity on our site, we ask the member for the friend's name and email address. Experts Exchange will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting the friend to visit the site. This email will include the name and email address of the member making the referral. Personal information collected in this manner is used in accordance with this Privacy Policy. By sharing the personal information described in this section, you affirm that you have the referred person’s consent for such distribution.

6. Disclosure of your personal information

We will not pass on your personal information to third parties, except in accordance with this Privacy Policy. We do not share, sell, rent or trade personal information with third parties for their promotional purposes.

We reserve the right to disclose your personal information, without prior notice to you, as required by law, or when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our web site. Additionally, we may share your personal information when we believe it is necessary to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Experts Exchange service or using the Experts Exchange name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies. Please be aware that Experts Exchange may be required to disclose an individual’s personal information in response to a lawful request by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

We employ service providers and other companies and individuals to perform functions and provide services on our behalf who may have access to your member information needed to perform their functions and also to provide you with the services that you have requested, but these service providers may not use it for any other purpose. Such service providers may include credit card transaction processors, communication platform providers, and hosting services providers, and the information that could be provided to these service providers may include names, credit card numbers, email addresses and mobile phone numbers. Such service providers will be subject to appropriate contractual arrangements and security obligations as required by applicable law and are contractually obligated to maintain the confidentiality of personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy, the EU-US DPF Principles, and the Swiss-US DPF Principles.

7. Direct Marketing - Opting in and Opting out

We would like to provide you with information via email about new products, promotions, special offers and other information which we think you may find interesting. We fully appreciate that “spam” has become a problem in recent years and this is why we make sure you have the power to choose whether or not you want to receive such mailings. Members may opt-in to receive information from Experts Exchange regarding products or services that are considered of value by us and this is accomplished by selecting to receive such information during registration or by changing the preferences on the member's Settings page.

Experts Exchange does not share your information with any third party unless you specifically grant permission to Experts Exchange by consenting via an opt-in offer or promotion. All contracted third parties are contractually obligated to maintain the confidentiality of personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy, the EU-US DPF, and the Swiss-US DPF.

Experts Exchange is not responsible for removing information from third party lists that members have previously granted authorization to share. To opt-out of receiving future communications, you may do one of the following:

  • You can send email to opt-out@experts-exchange.com
  • You can send mail to the following postal address: Experts Exchange, LLC, Attn: Chief Privacy Officer, P.O. Box 469 Chattanooga, TN 37401

Experts Exchange is liable for appropriate onward transfers of personal EU, UK, and Swiss data to third parties acting as our agents unless we can prove we were not a party giving rise to the damages.

8. Our storage of your personal information

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as you use the services you have requested. If your membership with Experts Exchange lapses, we will maintain your information for a reasonable period of time after it lapses to permit you re-establish your membership and maintain any benefits you accrued while your prior membership was in effect. In some circumstances it may be necessary to retain your personal information to deal with any disputes. Accordingly, Experts Exchange may store messaging transcript data (including message content, member names, times and dates) arising from the use of Experts Exchange Community services for a period necessary to fulfill such purpose. We will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely. In accordance with the EU-US DPF Principles and other privacy regulations, in certain circumstances, European Union individuals have the right to access the personal data we hold, to correct or delete information, to request that we cease processing your data, to object to profiling or solely automated processing, and to request that your data be transferred to another party. To exercise any or all of these rights please contact Experts Exchange, LLC via the contact information listed in Section 14 of this Privacy Policy. Your contribution to information exchanges on Experts Exchange, may be maintained indefinitely by Experts Exchange in order to serve the site's intended purpose.

Your personal data will be stored on our backup system, which is kept in case of loss of data. It may be that where data is lost, the personal data held on you as part of our backup system is used to restore your account to its status before the loss of data. All personal data (including communication data) stored on the backup system shall be held in a secure manner in compliance with applicable law. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use procedures and security features that are designed to prevent unauthorized access.

9. Advertisers and Links to other Web sites

Experts Exchange does contain third party advertising and sponsorship. These third-party websites and advertisers, or Internet advertising companies working on their behalf, sometimes use technology to send (or "serve") the advertisements that appear on our website directly to your browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also use cookies, JavaScript, web beacons (also known as action tags or single-pixel gifs), and other technologies to measure the effectiveness of their ads, to personalize advertising content, to compile anonymous statistics and otherwise monitor the effectiveness of their campaigns. We do not have access to or control over cookies or other features that they may use, and the information practices of these advertisers and third-party websites are not covered by this policy.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. In order to grow our site, we form relationships with partners to promote Experts Exchange and encourage new members to join our Network. One form of these relationships is a co-branded website which combines the partner's look-and-feel with our topic areas and content. These co-branded pages allow us to keep the member information and content hosted on our secure servers. Each new member must accept our terms and conditions, including this privacy statement. Because some partners are helping us grow our Network by promoting the Experts Exchange name and co-branded page, we may sometimes share information about the members that sign up through the partner's co-branded page. In all cases, our partners will commit to honoring our privacy policy.

This site contains links to other sites. Experts Exchange is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites. Therefore, if you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

10. Children

If you are under the age of 13, you are not permitted to register as a user of the Experts Exchange Web site (In some countries, stricter age limits may apply). A Note for Parents Concerning Privacy. Experts Exchange is not intended for use by children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. Experts Exchange seeks to encourage children to consult with their parents before submitting their data. However, Experts Exchange believes that parents should supervise their children's online activities and consider using parental control tools available from online services and software manufacturers that help provide a safe online environment for children to work within. These tools can also prevent children from disclosing personal information without parental permission. For additional information about parental control tools, please consult the "Consumer Assistance" page of the Direct Marketing Association home page which can be found at https://thedma.org.

11. Ownership Changes

If the ownership of all or substantially all of the Experts Exchange business, or individual business units owned by Experts Exchange, LLC, were to change, your user information may be transferred to the new owner so the service can continue operations, without prior notice to you. In any such transfer of information, your user information would remain subject to the provisions of any the current privacy policy.

12. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently and at least each time you submit personal information to Experts Exchange. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our homepage. The date of the most recent revisions will also appear on this page. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.

13. Contact Experts Exchange

If you have questions or concerns regarding this privacy policy, you should first contact our privacy staff as follows:

Mail: Experts Exchange, LLC Attn: Chief Privacy Officer, P.O. Box 469 Chattanooga, TN 37401

Email: privacy@experts-exchange.com

Telephone: +1 (877) 211-8911

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information Experts Exchange holds about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. All such enquiries should be sent to our Chief Privacy Officer. Additionally, you may at any time change your information by updating your profile and/or settings.

14. Privacy Complaints by European Union, United Kingdom, and Swiss Citizens, Recourse, Enforcement

In compliance with the EU-U.S Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S DPF), the UK Extension to the EU-U.S DPF, and the Swiss-U.S Data Privacy Framework (Swiss-U.S DPF) Principles, Experts Exchange commits to resolve complaints about your privacy and our collection or use of your personal information transferred to the United States pursuant to the EU-U.S DPF, the UK extension to the EU-U.S DPF, and the Swiss-U.S Data Privacy Framework Principles. European Union, United Kingdom, and Swiss individuals with inquiries or complaints should first contact:

Mail: Experts Exchange, LLC Attn: Chief Privacy Officer, P.O. Box 469 Chattanooga, TN 37401

Email: privacy@experts-exchange.com

Telephone: +1 (877) 211-8911

Experts Exchange, LLC has further committed to refer unresolved privacy complaints under the Data Privacy Framework program to an independent dispute resolution mechanism, Data Privacy Framework Services, operated by BBB National Programs. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your complaint, or if your complaint is not satisfactorily addressed, please visit https://bbbprograms.org/programs/all-programs/dpf-consumers/ProcessForConsumers for more information and to file a complaint. This service is provided free of charge to you.

This service verifies adherence to both the EU-US and Swiss Data Privacy Framework Policy by means of in-house verification by the management of this company. Experts Exchange, LLC is subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the Federal Trade Commission.

If your DPF complaint cannot be resolved through the above channels, under certain conditions, you may invoke binding arbitration for some residual claims not resolved by other redress mechanisms. See https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/s/article/G-Arbitration-Procedures-dpf?tabset-35584=2.


This policy was last modified on 19 October, 2023