Privacy Policy

Doodle takes great care to protect your privacy and to secure the data that is stored on the Doodle servers. Doodle employs several security professionals who implement the technical and organizational security during development and operations. Doodle takes measures to protect personal information against loss, misuse, unauthorized access, unauthorized disclosure, manipulation, or destruction.

This Privacy Policy describes how Doodle handles the data it has access to.

Overview

When you use Doodle, you send pieces of data to Doodle; this can be a name, an e-mail address, or information relating to your appointment. Other data is generated implicitly by your use of Doodle, e.g. log data.

Doodle is designed to allow you to use the service almost anonymously if you wish: You can use Doodle without registration and without entering any e-mail address.

Data being accessible through plugins

Doodle provides optional plugins which extend the service by integrating it into third-party calendars. A plugin is a software that you download and install on your computer, and which has access to your calendar. Doodle will access your calendar only for the intended purpose. No additional calendar information or other information will be read from or written to your calendar without your consent.

Log data

Doodle records certain requests and transactions in log files. This log data is used for troubleshooting, statistics, quality assurance, and to monitor system security and can be analyzed to that end.

Doodle also uses Google Analytics to compile usage statistics. Analytics is a service provided by Google, Inc. Google’s privacy policy can be accessed here: http://www.google.com/privacy.html

For all requests originating in Switzerland, Doodle also employs Net-Metrix to certify its traffic statistics. Detailed information (in German) on how this certification works and what information is collected can be found here: http://www.net-metrix.ch/index.php?nodeId=157

Cookies

When you use Doodle, the service can store cookies on your computer. Cookies are little pieces of information that can help identify your browser and that can store information, e.g. application settings. Doodle uses cookies to track usage, to improve ease-of-use and the overall user experience, and to manage advertising inventories.

Advertising

Advertising is one of Doodle’s revenue streams. Therefore, Doodle displays advertisements on some of the services, e.g. on certain web pages or in e-mails. These advertisements can be targeted based on the information that is available to Doodle, e.g. language, IP address, poll content, etc. This targeting is always an automated process; none of the information used for targeting is analyzed manually or made available to advertising customers. In some cases, Doodle displays advertisements from Google’s AdSense network. These advertisements can be targeted based on the poll content. Google does not disclose that information and only uses it for the intended purpose. You can review Google’s Privacy Policy here: http://www.google.com/privacy.html

Outdated and completed polls

You can delete outdated or completed (or, in fact, any) polls manually at any time using the admin link. When deleting a poll, that poll’s information will be deleted from the Doodle databases. Furthermore, outdated polls are automatically deleted from time to time, but no earlier than 30 days after the last date in the poll, or 30 days after the last access to a poll without dates.

Optional attachments to polls are stored and managed by our partner drop.io. These attachments will not be deleted automatically when you delete your poll; you have to delete them manually.

Unauthorized access

Doodle implements several mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access to polls, accounts, or other data.

To access a poll, you use the unique link which Doodle provides and which contains a random access code. This link is an important element to prevent unauthorized access to a poll. You should send this link only to authorized people, i.e., the people you wish to participate in your poll.

Doodle accounts are protected by passwords. You should choose a secure password and ensure its confidentiality to prevent unauthorized access to your account.

Participants' e-mail addresses

As an option, you can contact and invite people to participate in a poll from Doodle. In this case, Doodle needs to know the e-mail addresses of the people to be contacted. You can enter these e-mail addresses in the corresponding form. Doodle stores these e-mail addresses in you user account (MyDoodle) for your convenience; Doodle will be able to offer you the same contacts again next time you use the service. You can have Doodle delete all stored e-mail addresses any time using the corresponding function in your user account (MyDoodle).

Alternatively, or complementary, you can use your existing Google address book to gain access to the e-mail addresses of the people to be contacted. In this case, you authorize Doodle to access the Google address book. Your Google address book will still be stored at Google exclusively; Doodle only stores the e-mail addresses you selected for as long as the corresponding Doodle poll exists. Please note also: The process of accessing your Google address book is set up to make sure that Doodle at no time has access to your Google password.

General remark: Like all other personal information, Doodle will not share participants' e-mail addresses with third parties. Doodle will not send any e-mail communication participants' e-mail addresses without your consent.

Communication between you and Doodle

If you send Doodle a message, this message can be stored to process it, to compile statistical information, to improve our services and support, or to get in touch with you.

Payment processing

Doodle supports two of the leading payment processing providers, Moneybookers and PayPal. You can find their privacy policies here: Moneybookers, PayPal. To make payments as easy and user-friendly as possible, Doodle sends your name and e-mail address to these providers during a payment process. All this information would be requested by the provider anway.

Sharing personal information

Doodle uses personal information according to the Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy.

Doodle may share personal information with other companies or individuals only in the following limited circumstances: (i) Doodle has your consent; (ii) Doodle has good faith that there is a legal obligation to share the data; (iii) Doodle needs to access or share the data to protect the security of the service or of others users’ data; (iv) Doodle needs to access or share the data to protect Doodle’s rights and property or to enforce the Terms of Service.

Changes

Doodle reserves the right to update this Privacy Policy at any time. The most current version of this policy is available at http://doodle.com/about/policy.html.

Oct 26 2009