Athletes.com

ATHLETES.COM PRIVACY POLICY

Use of this site signifies your acceptance of the terms and conditions.

Athletes.com [and its family of companies and / or Bodybuilding.com, LLC ("Athletes.com"), the operator of this website, is committed to protecting your online privacy when visiting a website operated by us. We do not collect and keep any personal information online from you unless you volunteer it and you are 13 or older. We also do not collect and keep personal information online from children under the age of 13 without consent of a parent or legal guardian, except in limited circumstances authorized by law and described in this policy. Please review the information below to familiarize yourself with our policies on website privacy, so that you can take full advantage of the Athletes.com site. Please remember that this site and the servers that make this site available are located in the U.S. By using this site you agree to the transfer, collection, processing and use of data by this site.

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR PARENTS AND LEGAL GUARDIANS:

No area of our site is directed at children under 13 years of age, but our site asks for age-identifying information from our visitors. Athletes.com respects the privacy of children, and does not collect any more personal information than reasonably necessary to enable them to participate in the activities we offer at our Website. We also adhere to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and the guidelines of the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. You can help by spending time online with your children and monitoring your children's online use. Please help us protect your child's privacy by instructing them never to provide personal information on this site or any other without your permission.

If you are under 18, please be sure to read this policy with your parents or legal guardians and ask questions about things you do not understand. Children under 13 should get your parent's or legal guardian's permission before giving out your e-mail address or any other personal information to Athletes.com or to anyone else on the Internet.

1. Does Athletes.com Collect Any Personal Information About Me If I'm 13 Or Older?

Athletes.com doesn't require anyone to share any personal information about themselves in order to enjoy our website. That means you can visit our site without any need to register with us. However, the site contains special sections and privileges for members that register. We do not collect any personal information from you or your teenager unless it is voluntarily provided, for instance when signing up for a free membership. The personal information we ask for is usually a user name, email address, password and date of birth See below for how we use this information.

2. Does Athletes.com Collect Any Personal Information About Anyone Under 13?

We use a neutral age-screening mechanism in order to avoid collecting personal information online from children under 13 without consent of a parent or legal guardian except in special, limited circumstances. If your child is under 13 and wants to use the special features our site offers, like chat with other athletes about topics of mutual interest or have a personalized page available to members, parental consent is required. We require that a parent or guardian fax or mail back a signed permission form before we grant membership. We will not complete your child's free registration process (and keep your child's e-mail address) unless you tell us it is okay to do so.

Otherwise, the registration process is the same for everyone. Persons interested in obtaining a free membership to the website can do so by providing a user name, password, e-mail address and date of birth. We encourage participants to use a "screen name" (not their real name) that only they know; however many members elect to disclose their real names. We ask everyone to make up a special password so that only they can see their customized areas on the site. Members have the option to provide additional non-required personal information about themselves on their personal pages, such as pictures, biographical sketches, hobbies, sports activities and other personal information of their choice, some of which may allow others to contact them.

Athletes.com might collect an e-mail address and name from your child under 13 without your consent, but only in the following special cases: If a child under 13 sends a question or other request to us, we keep their e-mail (and the information it contains) for long enough to respond to them. Athletes.com deletes this information from our system after we answer their question. Occasionally, Athletes.com may have special site activities or promotions like sweepstakes or contests that are open to children even if they are under 13. In these activities, we are not allowed to ask for more information from your child than what is necessary for your child to participate in the activity. In the latter situation we require your child to give us your e-mail address, too, so that we can tell you that they have registered in a promotion or for a service. If we need more than an e-mail address and first name (or screen name) to enter your child in the promotion or offer the service, we will notify you, explain what information we need and why, and generally ask that you (not your child) provide it. For instance, we might ask you for your mailing address so that we can send to you, for your child, any prizes your child wins, or for your telephone number so that we can tell you when your child has won. Any information you or your child give us in the above special circumstances will be deleted from our database once the promotion, program or activity is concluded, and after any legally required period for keeping such information is complete. We do not require a child to disclose more information than is reasonably necessary to participate in a contest, game or other activity as a condition of participation. Upon proper identification, parents or legal guardians may review the personal information we have collected about their child, request deletion, or refuse to allow further collection or use of the information.

However, if you ask us to delete your child's information, we may have to ask your child not to participate in our activities.

3. What Does Athletes.com Do With The Information We Collect?

We use the personal information we collect for the purposes indicated at the time you or your teenager or child (with your consent) provides such information. For instance, if you sign up to become a member, we might e-mail or mail you or your teenager or your child to provide information on upcoming Athletes.com services, website updates and promotions. If you register in a contest, we will use the registration information to notify contest winners. With your consent, we may also share information with other Athletes.com family companies so that they can let you and your family know about other products or services that might be of interest. If you want to stop receiving such updates and product information at any time, just contact us at support@athletes.com or call us at 208-377-3326. Our mailings and e-mail will also include information allowing you to ask not to receive such information in the future.

4. Does Athletes.com Share Information About Me With Others?

If you consent, Athletes.com may provide your information to outside companies that offer products or services that may be of interest, and if your teenager 13 or older consents, we may likewise provide their information. Except as described in this policy, we never share personal information that we receive online from children under 13 with other companies outside the Athletes.com family. We will remove your name from the list we provide to outside companies if you contact us at support@athletes.com or call us at 208-377-3326, and we will do the same for your teenager's name if they request removal. In special circumstances, Athletes.com may give other companies access to our information database, but only if necessary to allow them to provide database or server maintenance or security, help us process and fulfill requests, or provide other similar services to Athletes.com. If we do provide access, we require those other companies to sign confidentiality agreements promising to keep secret any information they see. If Athletes.com believes that anyone's behavior on our sites may damage us or our sites or anyone else, we may disclose the relevant personal information in order to prevent this harm. In that case, we might try to identify the wrongdoer, contact them or bring legal action against them. We may also disclose personal information if we believe that the disclosure is required by law, or in response to a legal request.

5. How Does Athletes.com Use Cookies?

A "cookie" is a small file that we save on your computer's hard drive that contains non-personal information. Our cookies help to give you faster access to pages you have already visited; they allow you to personalize your pages and us to customize our offerings; and they help you to participate in some activities or events on the site. We also use cookies to help us figure out how many people visit our sites, which of our Web pages they stop at and how long they stay there. This information helps us figure out which of our Web features are successes and what sites might need improvement. For administrative purposes, we collect IP addresses, which is the automatic number assigned to your computer when you surf the Web. Certain Internet Service Providers may assign the same IP address to many users. The IP address allows us to count the total number of "hits" on our sites. However, your IP address and cookie are not connected to any personally identifiable or online contact information like a name and address, so you and your family remain anonymous. We also use other technology, called clear GIFs, to provide us with other important anonymous information, such as when an e-mail has been opened. Finally, we also use cookies in connection with the age verification process that is part of any attempt to become a free Athletes.com member. In order to do so, the site asks for date of birth. We use a session cookie that prevents children from back clicking to change their age once they realize that parental consent is required to collect their registration information.

6. Does Athletes.com Ever Collect Information Without Consent?

Athletes.com does not collect information passively through cookies or other tracking mechanisms except in the circumstances described above. Cookies DON'T contain any personal information about a specific user. We don't use cookies or other non-consensual methods to take personally identifiable or online contact information about you or your family off of your computer. Cookies are also not used to collect information specifically about you or your family for sharing with third parties.

7. Do Athletes.com's Third-Party Advertisers Use Cookies?

In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertisers may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.

8. Thank You

We want you and your family to have fun surfing our site and urge that you always use common sense whenever disclosing personal information - on Athletes.com or anywhere on the Internet.

Thanks for reading our privacy policy. We hope you have a better understanding of our website and the ways in which we are committed to safeguarding online privacy. Remember, we may change our policy from time to time. When this happens we will notify you of the new policy by posting it on our site.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us!

Athletes.com, Inc.
2026 Silverstone Way
Meridian, ID 83642
Telephone: 208-377-3326
support@athletes.com

(Last modified on July 31, 2008)