Beeminder

Point the first: Liability

We're just here to record data for you and help keep you accountable to your own goals. You don't get to hold us responsible if you pick a stupid goal and injure yourself or whatever.

Point the second: Privacy

We're going to respect the privacy of your data; in other words, we won't sell your email addresses or steal your identity or anything. We also won't share your non-anonymized data unless you ask us to. (Though if you're really doing well, or have a unique goal that we think shows off Beeminder in a cool way, we may beg you to let us show you off, like featuring your graph on the front page!) In any case, your data is yours and we'll delete it at your request at any time. Otherwise, we reserve the right to anonymize your data and use it in the name of research.

Terms of Service:

This is thanks to WordPress who generously open-sourced their terms of service.

The following terms and conditions govern all use of the Beeminder.com website and all content, services, and products available at or through the website, including, but not limited to, GmailZero by Beeminder.com (“GmailZero”) and Runkeeper+Beeminder, etc (taken together, the Website). The Website is owned and operated by Beeminder, Inc. (“Beeminder”). The Website is offered subject to your acceptance without modification of all of the terms and conditions contained herein and all other operating rules, policies (including, without limitation, Beeminder’s Privacy Policy, below) and procedures that may be published from time to time on this Site by Beeminder (collectively, the “Agreement”).

By accessing or using any part of the web site, you agree to become bound by the terms and conditions of this agreement. (Lawyers seem to have a funny definition of “agree”.) If you do not agree to all the terms and conditions of this agreement, then you may not access the Website or use any services. If these terms and conditions are considered an offer by Beeminder, acceptance is expressly limited to these terms. The Website is available only to individuals who are at least 13 years old. Presumably there are paranoid "think of the children" laws about this sort of thing and saying that puts us in compliance? So, yeah, screw you, 12-year-olds! Get off our lawn!

Your Beeminder.com Account and Site. If you create an account on the Website, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and graphs, and you are fully responsible for all activities that occur under the account and any other actions taken in connection with your account. You must not describe or assign keywords to your account in a misleading or unlawful manner, including in a manner intended to trade on the name or reputation of others, and Beeminder may change or remove any description or keyword that it considers inappropriate or unlawful, or otherwise likely to cause Beeminder liability. You must immediately notify Beeminder of any unauthorized uses of your account or any other breaches of security. Beeminder will not be liable for any acts or omissions by You, including any damages of any kind incurred as a result of such acts or omissions.
Responsibility of Contributors. If you operate a graph, comment on a graph, post material to the Website, post links on the Website, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available by means of the Website (any such material, “Content”), You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content. That is the case regardless of whether the Content in question constitutes text, graphics, an audio file, or computer software. By making Content available, you represent and warrant that:
- the downloading, copying and use of the Content will not infringe the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any third party;
- if your employer has rights to intellectual property you create, you have either (i) received permission from your employer to post or make available the Content, including but not limited to any software, or (ii) secured from your employer a waiver as to all rights in or to the Content;
- you have fully complied with any third-party licenses relating to the Content, and have done all things necessary to successfully pass through to end users any required terms;
- the Content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;
- the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);
- the Content is not pornographic, does not contain threats or incite violence towards individuals or entities, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;
- your content is not getting advertised via unwanted electronic messages such as spam links on newsgroups, email lists, other blogs and web sites, and similar unsolicited promotional methods;
- your content is not named in a manner that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For example, your graph’s URL or name is not the name of a person other than yourself or company other than your own; and
- you have, in the case of Content that includes computer code, accurately categorized and/or described the type, nature, uses and effects of the materials, whether requested to do so by Beeminder or otherwise.
By submitting Content to Beeminder for inclusion on your Website, you grant Beeminder a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your graph. If you delete Content, Beeminder will use reasonable efforts to remove it from the Website, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable.

Without limiting any of those representations or warranties, Beeminder has the right (though not the obligation) to, in Beeminder’s sole discretion (i) refuse or remove any content that, in Beeminder’s reasonable opinion, violates any Beeminder policy or is in any way harmful or objectionable, or (ii) terminate or deny access to and use of the Website to any individual or entity for any reason, in Beeminder’s sole discretion. Beeminder will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid.
Payment and Renewal.
- General Terms.
  Optional paid services may be available on the Website (any such services, an “Upgrade”). By selecting an Upgrade you agree to pay Beeminder the monthly or annual subscription fees indicated for that service. Payments will be charged on a pre-pay basis on the day you sign up for an Upgrade and will cover the use of that service for a monthly or annual subscription period as indicated. Upgrade fees are not refundable.
Responsibility of Website Visitors. Beeminder has not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, posted to the Website, and cannot therefore be responsible for that material’s content, use or effects. By operating the Website, Beeminder does not represent or imply that it endorses the material there posted, or that it believes such material to be accurate, useful or non-harmful. You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. The Website may contain content that is offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable, as well as content containing technical inaccuracies, typographical mistakes, and other errors. The Website may also contain material that violates the privacy or publicity rights, or infringes the intellectual property and other proprietary rights, of third parties, or the downloading, copying or use of which is subject to additional terms and conditions, stated or unstated. Beeminder disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from the use by visitors of the Website, or from any downloading by those visitors of content there posted.
Content Posted on Other Websites. We have not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, made available through the websites and webpages to which Beeminder.com links, and that link to Beeminder.com. Beeminder does not have any control over those non-Beeminder websites and webpages, and is not responsible for their contents or their use. By linking to a non-Beeminder website or webpage, Beeminder does not represent or imply that it endorses such website or webpage. You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. Beeminder disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from your use of non-Beeminder websites and webpages.
Copyright Infringement and DMCA Policy. As Beeminder asks others to respect its intellectual property rights, it respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that material located on or linked to by Beeminder.com violates your copyright, you are encouraged to notify Beeminder in accordance with Automattic’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) Policy (our DMCA policy is identical but for the contact info, use dmca@beeminder.com, Beeminder, Inc., attn: Daniel Reeves, 3006 NE 58th Ave, Portland OR 97213). Beeminder will respond to all such notices, including as required or appropriate by removing the infringing material or disabling all links to the infringing material. Beeminder will terminate a visitor’s access to and use of the Website if, under appropriate circumstances, the visitor is determined to be a repeat infringer of the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of Beeminder or others. In the case of such termination, Beeminder will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid to Beeminder.
Intellectual Property. This Agreement does not transfer from Beeminder to you any Beeminder or third party intellectual property, and all right, title and interest in and to such property will remain (as between the parties) solely with Beeminder. Beeminder, Beeminder.com, GmailZero, the Beeminder logo, and all other trademarks, service marks, graphics and logos used in connection with Beeminder.com, or the Website are trademarks or registered trademarks of Beeminder or Beeminder’s licensors. Other trademarks, service marks, graphics and logos used in connection with the Website may be the trademarks of other third parties. Your use of the Website grants you no right or license to reproduce or otherwise use any Beeminder or third-party trademarks.
Advertisements. Beeminder reserves the right to display advertisements on your graph page unless you have purchased an Ad-free Upgrade or somesuch.
Attribution. Beeminder reserves the right to display attribution links on your graph page. This probably goes without saying right now since we don't really have any customization options that would give you the faintest idea that you might be able to strip Beeminder attribution from your graph! Footer credits and the Beeminder.com toolbar/navbar may not be removed regardless of upgrades purchased.
Domain Names. If you are registering a domain name, using or transferring a previously registered domain name, you acknowledge and agree that use of the domain name is also subject to the policies of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”), including their Registration Rights and Responsibilities. This doesn't currently apply to Beeminder in any way we can think of but what the heck. Yes, your use of domain names is subject to ICANN policies. You better agree or you can't use Beeminder!
Changes. Beeminder reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to modify or replace any part of this Agreement. It is your responsibility to check this Agreement periodically for changes. (Lawyers gots chutzpah, eh? But yeah, we'll probably change this.) Your continued use of or access to the Website following the posting of any changes to this Agreement constitutes acceptance of those changes. Beeminder may also, in the future, offer new services and/or features through the Website (including, the release of new tools and resources). Such new features and/or services shall be subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
Termination. Beeminder may terminate your access to all or any part of the Website at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately. If you wish to terminate this Agreement or your Beeminder.com account (if you have one), you may simply discontinue using the Website. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if you have any special kind of paid account, such account can only be terminated by Beeminder if you materially breach this Agreement and fail to cure such breach within thirty (30, one score and ten, XXX, are we clear?) days from Beeminder’s notice to you thereof; provided that, Beeminder can terminate the Website immediately as part of a general shut down of our service. All provisions of this Agreement which by their nature should survive termination shall survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity and limitations of liability.
Disclaimer of Warranties. The Website is provided “as is”. Beeminder and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Beeminder nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Website will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted. If you’re actually reading this, here’s a treat. (WordPress had that little easter egg in there so, what the hay, we'll leave it there too. In the spirit of this agreement we feel we should warn you that it's a very vegan-unfriendly treat and we accept no responsibility, express or implied, ipso facto vis a vis holy crap is this getting tedious.) You understand that you download from, or otherwise obtain content or services through, the Website at your own discretion and risk.
Limitation of Liability. In no event will Beeminder, or its suppliers or licensors, be liable with respect to any subject matter of this agreement under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other legal or equitable theory for: (i) any special, incidental or consequential damages; (ii) the cost of procurement for substitute products or services; (iii) for interruption of use or loss or corruption of data; or (iv) for any amounts that exceed the fees paid by you to Beeminder under this agreement during the twelve (12, a dozen, the number written with a one in the ten's place and a two in the one's place) month period prior to the cause of action. Beeminder shall have no liability for any failure or delay due to matters beyond their reasonable control. The foregoing shall not apply to the extent prohibited by applicable law. You'd think “except as prohibited by law” would just go without saying. Or maybe it's legalese for “ok, we admit, what we just said might not fly but we thought it was worth a shot”. Did we mention we're just copying all this from WordPress? Thanks again, WordPress!
General Representation and Warranty. You represent and warrant that (i) your use of the Website will be in strict accordance with the Beeminder Privacy Policy (below), with this Agreement and with all applicable laws and regulations (including without limitation any local laws or regulations in your country, state, city, or other governmental area, regarding online conduct and acceptable content, and including all applicable laws regarding the transmission of technical data exported from the United States or the country in which you reside) and (ii) your use of the Website will not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any third party.
Indemnification. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Beeminder, its contractors, and its licensors, and their respective directors, officers, employees and agents from and against any and all claims and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of the Website, including but not limited to your violation of this Agreement.
Miscellaneous. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between Beeminder and you concerning the subject matter hereof, and they may only be modified by a written amendment signed by an authorized executive of Beeminder, or by the posting by Beeminder of a revised version. Except to the extent applicable law, if any, provides otherwise, this Agreement, any access to or use of the Website will be governed by the laws of the state of California, U.S.A., or maybe Oregon since Beeminder is an Oregon corporation excluding its conflict of law provisions, and the proper venue for any disputes arising out of or relating to any of the same will be the state and federal courts located in San Francisco County, California, or maybe whatever county Portland is in. Multnomah County, maybe? Except for claims for injunctive or equitable relief or claims regarding intellectual property rights (which may be brought in any competent court without the posting of a bond), any dispute arising under this Agreement shall be finally settled in accordance with the Comprehensive Arbitration Rules of the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service, Inc. (“JAMS”) by three arbitrators appointed in accordance with such Rules. The arbitration shall take place in Portland, Oregon, in the English language (we might accept German or Russian, or any major programming language) and the arbitral decision may be enforced in any court. The prevailing party in any action or proceeding to enforce this Agreement shall be entitled to costs and attorneys’ fees. If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the parties’ original intent, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. A waiver by either party of any term or condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent breach thereof. You may assign your rights under this Agreement to any party that consents to, and agrees to be bound by, its terms and conditions; Beeminder may assign its rights under this Agreement without condition. This Agreement will be binding upon and will inure to the benefit of the parties, their successors and permitted assigns.

Privacy Policy:

We won't sell your data but we do want to use your data for science! We're extremely careful with your payment information (we don't even store it on our own servers) and we take the reasonable precautions that you'd expect in a Ruby on Rails app with information like your email address and phone number. Definitely contact us (support@beeminder.com) if you have any questions or concerns.

For completeness, here's the official policy, which is modeled on WordPress's generously shared terms of service.

Website Visitors

Like most website operators, Beeminder collects non-personally-identifying information (but see the link above about that!) of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Beeminder’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Beeminder’s visitors use its website. From time to time, Beeminder may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.

Beeminder also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments or whatnot. Beeminder only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that commenter IP addresses may be visible and disclosed to the administrators of the page where the comment was left.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to Beeminder’s websites choose to interact with Beeminder in ways that require Beeminder to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Beeminder gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for an account at Beeminder.com to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with Beeminder — like by pledging money on a goal — are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, Beeminder collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Beeminder. Beeminder does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

Aggregated Statistics

Beeminder may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, Beeminder may monitor the most popular goals on the Beeminder.com site or use spam screened by the Akismet service or maybe Disqus to help identify spam. Beeminder may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Beeminder does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

Beeminder discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Beeminder’s behalf or to provide services available at Beeminder’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors, and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Beeminder’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Beeminder will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors, and affiliated organizations, as described above, Beeminder discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Beeminder believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Beeminder, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of a Beeminder website and have supplied your email address, Beeminder may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Beeminder and our products. We're pretty paranoid about being spammy so that kind of thing is minimal and always with instant unsubscribe links, etc. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Beeminder takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a Beeminder account to provide a username and email address–and that’s it. You may provide us with more information–like your name–but we don’t require that information to create a Beeminder account.
Public Profile Information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a Beeminder account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, such as a photo or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that–public–so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
Transaction and Billing Information: If you buy something from us–a subscription to a Beeminder plan, a premium theme, or a custom domain, for example–you will provide additional personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information.
Content Information: Depending on the Services you use, you may also provide us with information about you in draft and published content (such as for your website or your Polldaddy survey). For example, if you write a blog post that includes biographic information about you, we will have that information, and so will anyone with access to the Internet if you choose to publish the post publicly. This might be obvious to you…but it’s not to everyone!
Credentials: Depending on the Services you use, you may provide us with credentials for your website (like SSH, FTP, and SFTP username and password). For example, Jetpack and VaultPress users may provide us with these credentials in order to use our one-click restore feature if there is a problem with their site, or to allow us to troubleshoot problems on their site more quickly.
Communications With Us (Hi There!): You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our Happiness Engineers about a support question, or post a question about your site in our public forums.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

Log Information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services–for example, when you create or make changes to your website on Beeminder.
Usage Information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that site administrators and users perform on a site using our Beeminder services -- in other words, who did what, when and to what thing on a site (e.g., [Beeminder username] reactivated their account at [time/date]). We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.
Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Beeminder uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads. For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example, if you create or log into your Beeminder account through another service (like Google) or if you connect your website or account to an integration partner, we will receive information from that service via the authorization procedures used by that service. The information we receive depends on which services you authorize and any options that are available.

We may also get information, such as a mailing address, from third party services about individuals who are not yet our users (…but we hope will be!), which we may use, for example, for marketing and advertising purposes like postcards and other mailers advertising our services. (This was in Automattic's policy; we haven't ever done this and don't have plans to, but we're leaving it in in case a really good opportunity like this occurs.)

Google

Beeminder can integrate with Google. If you log in with Google, Beeminder stores your Google username and uses it to authenticate you. If you use the Gmail integration, Beeminder uses your user-configurable tag, asks Gmail how many messages match that tag, and stores that number in your goal's datapoints. No messages are read or saved. No Google user data is shared. Your goal, if it is public, may share information about the number of messages in that tag. (You can control each goal's public visibility and privacy settings.)

YNAB

Beeminder can integrate with YNAB. If you set up an automatically tracked YNAB goal, we will ask you to authorize us to read your data from YNAB. We do not ask for write permission. Once you've authorized us, you specify which account or category you want to track and then Beeminder records the balance daily. No information obtained through the YNAB API will be unknowingly passed to any third party. Your goal, if it is public, may share information about the balance of the connected account or category, however you control each goal's public visibility and privacy settings.

The connection to YNAB can be revoked by you at any time both from your YNAB account, or also in your Beeminder account settings. If you revoke access, we will not be able to read further information from your YNAB account but this does not automatically end the goal. We will continue to store the data in your Beeminder goal until you delete the goal, or your Beeminder account.

How And Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

To provide our Services–for example, to set up and maintain your account, host your goals, or charge you for any of our paid Services;
To further develop and improve our Services–for example by adding new features that we think our users will enjoy or will help them to achieve their goals more effectively;
To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
To measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing, and better understand user retention and attrition–for example, we may analyze how many individuals purchased a plan after receiving a marketing message or the features used by those who continue to use our Services after a certain length of time;
To monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, protect the security of our Services, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of Beeminder and others, which may result in us declining a transaction or the use of our Services;
To communicate with you, for example through an email, about offers and promotions offered by Beeminder and others we think will be of interest to you, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on Beeminder and our products; and
To personalize your experience using our Services, provide content recommendations, and target our marketing messages to groups of our users (for example, those who have a particular plan with us or have been our user for a certain length of time).

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

(1) The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under our Terms of Service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account–for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or

(2) The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or

(3) The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or

(4) We have a legitimate interest in using your information–for example, to provide and update our Services, to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience, to safeguard our Services, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition, to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, and to personalize your experience; or

(5) You have given us your consent.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We do not sell our users’ private personal information.

We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

Employees and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our employees and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our employees and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
Third Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like Stripe, the payment provider that process your credit and debit card information, fraud prevention services that allow us to analyze fraudulent payment transactions, postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you, those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g. by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns), and those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers)..
Legal Requests: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request. So far this hasn't happened.
To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Beeminder, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay. (This has also never happened so far.)
Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Beeminder goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy. We wouldn't ever sell Beeminder to people we didn't trust to follow not just the letter of this policy but the spirit of caring for users as a first priority.
With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so, .
Aggregated or De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services.
Published Support Requests: And if you send us a request (for example, via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. We usually ask before we do this, and if for whatever reason you wanted your question edited further after publication, let us know.

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is–you guessed it–disclosed publicly.

This is optional; you can make all of your goals private, or make them public or any-user-visible to share your progress with friends.

Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.

How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when we no longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it–which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information–and we are not legally required to continue to keep it.

For example, we keep the web server logs that record information about a visitor to one of Beeminder’s websites, such as the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyze traffic to Beeminder’s websites and investigate issues if something goes wrong on one of our websites.

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Beeminder uses cookies to help Beeminder identify and track visitors, their usage of Beeminder, and their website access preferences. Beeminder visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Beeminder’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Beeminder’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Business Transfers

If Beeminder, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that Beeminder goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Beeminder may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy. This clause seems a little worrisome since part of this policy is that it can be changed in any way at any time! If it's any consolation, you have our assurance that we wouldn't ever sell Beeminder to anyone we didn't feel was on board with the spirit of all this.

Ads appearing on any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Beeminder and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Beeminder may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Beeminder’s sole discretion. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Our Privacy Policy explains our principles when it comes to the collection, processing, and storage of your information. This policy specifically explains how we, our partners, and users of our services deploy cookies, as well as the options you have to control them. Like the Privacy Policy, this document is also adapted from Automattic's.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of data, stored in text files, that are stored on your computer or other device when websites are loaded in a browser. They are widely used to “remember” you and your preferences, either for a single visit (through a “session cookie”) or for multiple repeat visits (using a “persistent cookie”). They ensure a consistent and efficient experience for visitors, and perform essential functions such as allowing users to register and remain logged in. Cookies may be set by the site that you are visiting (known as “first party cookies”), or by third parties, such as those who serve content or provide advertising or analytics services on the website (“third party cookies”).

Both websites and HTML emails may also contain other tracking technologies such as “web beacons” or “pixels.” These are typically small transparent images that provide us with statistics, for similar purposes as cookies. They are often used in conjunction with cookies, though they are not stored on your computer in the same way. As a result, if you disable cookies, web beacons may still load, but their functionality will be restricted.

How we use cookies

We use cookies for a number of different purposes. Some cookies are necessary for technical reasons; some enable a personalized experience for both visitors and registered users; and some allow the display of advertising from selected third party networks. Some of these cookies may be set when a page is loaded, or when a visitor takes a particular action (clicking the “like” or “follow” button on a post, for example).

Many of the cookies we use are only set if you are a registered Beeminder user (so you don’t have to log in every time, for example), while others are set whenever you visit one of our websites, irrespective of whether you have an account.

For more information on the choices you have about the cookies we use, please see the Controlling Cookies section below.

Where we place cookies

We use cookies on our website (beeminder.com, blog.beeminder.com).

Types of Cookie

The table below explains the types of cookies we use on our websites and why we use them.

Category of cookies	Why we use these cookies
Strictly Necessary	These cookies are essential for websites on our services to perform their basic functions. These include those required to allow registered users to authenticate and perform account related functions, as well as to save the contents of virtual “carts” on sites that have an ecommerce functionality.
Functionality	These cookies are used to store preferences set by users such as account name, language, and location.
Security	We use these cookies to help identify and prevent potential security risks.
Analytics and Performance	Performance cookies collect information on how users interact with our websites, including what pages are visited most, as well as other analytical data. We use these details to improve how our websites function and to understand how users interact with them.
Advertising	These cookies are used to display relevant advertising to visitors who use our services or visit websites we host or provide, as well as to understand and report on the efficacy of ads served on our websites. They track details such as the number of unique visitors, the number of times particular ads have been displayed, and the number of clicks the ads have received. They are also used to build user profiles, including showing you ads based on products you’ve viewed or acts you have taken on our (and other) websites. These are set by Beeminder and trusted third party networks, and are generally persistent in nature.
Third Party / Embedded Content	Content hosted on Beeminder make use of different third party applications and services to enhance the experience of website visitors. These include social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (through the use of sharing buttons), or embedded content from Youtube and Vimeo. As a result, cookies may be set by these third parties, and used by them to track your online activity. We have no direct control over the information that is collected by these cookies.

Examples

Below are examples of the cookies set by Beeminder, with explanations of their purpose. Some of these cookies are set across our whole network, whereas some are specific to individual services (e.g. Beeminder, Longreads, etc). Please note that this is not an exhaustive list, but rather aims to be representative. Information about cookies that may be set by third parties, such as our ads partners, is below.

In addition, people and companies that use our services to publish or host their own sites may place additional cookies. We provide more information on these cookies below.

Cookie	Purpose
`XSRF-TOKEN`	Security: Used to ensure that your account is secure from malicious form submissions on other websites.
`_ga` / `_gid`	Analytics: Google Analytics. Gathers information that helps us understand how visitors interact with our websites, which allow us to create a better experience for our visitors.
`connect.sid`	Functionality: Used to maintain login state during a session.
`remember_me`	Functionality: Used to maintain login state between sessions.
`io`	Functionality: Used for socket.io, a system for our server to talk to your browser.
`intercom-session-uie8xb07`	Third-Party; Functionality: Used by intercom.io, the service that provides the in-app customer support widget in the bottom-right.
`_stripe_mid`	Third-Party; Functionality: Used for Stripe, our payments processor. Here's their Privacy Policy
`__smListBuilderOptOut` / `__smToken`	Third-Party: Used by SumoMe, a plug-in that allows people to easily subscribe to our newsletter. Read details on their use of cookies.
`fr`	Analytics & Advertising: Facebook tracking, used to determine success of Facebook advertisements. As of May 25, 2018, the Facebook pixel is not used when DoNotTrack header is enabled.

Please note that this section is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather aims to be representative.

Note also that if you use third-party browser extensions, they may insert cookies while on the Beeminder website. We have no control over this. For example, the extension The Great Suspender may use cookies like gsScrollPos-424, which tracks where the page was scrolled to when it was suspended by the extension.

Controlling Cookies

Visitors may wish to restrict the use of cookies or completely prevent them from being set. Most browsers provide for ways to control cookie behavior such as the length of time they are stored – either through built-in functionality or by utilizing third party plugins. If you disable cookies, please be aware that some of the features of our service may not function correctly.

To find out more on how to manage and delete cookies, visit aboutcookies.org. For more details on your choices regarding use of your web browsing activity for interest-based advertising visit youronlinechoices.eu (EU based) or optout.aboutads.info (US based). On a mobile device, you may also be to adjust your settings to limit ad tracking.

You can opt out of Google Analytics by installing Google’s opt-out browser add-on.

Change log:

2012 Sep 7: Original version is just mutatis mutandis from WordPress's generously shared version. Thanks again, WordPress!
2012 Sep 8: Added Privacy Policy from WordPress as well. Edited references to it in the Terms of Service.
2012 Sep 9: Updated the reference to Automattic's DMCA policy and added Beeminder's contact information.
2015 May 27: Updated broken link to "first truly honest privacy policy".
2018 May 25: GDPR language and Cookie policy
2019 Feb 5: Fixed broken link to privacy policy and clarified about information we get from GmailZero.
2019 Feb 14: Further clarification that GmailZero doesn't read or save email messages.
2020 Jul 6: Added direct link to Privacy Policy section (not that this counts as a change to this document itself).
2020 Jul 6: Reworded intro paragraphs, removed reference to resident fitness expert, added emphasis that sharing anonymized data for research purposes is kosher.
2020 Jul 6: In the Privacy Policy section, removed the reference to whoring out your email addresses. We definitely are still not going to do that but, this being a Very Serious Legal Document, we now just say that we won't sell your email addresses (or "steal your identity or anything"). But if there are any other nefarious things that fall under the "whoring out" umbrella, we're still committed to not doing those either!
2020 Jul 6: Removed the reference to "The First Truly Honest Privacy Policy" because it's not like that baby we swear it. (It's a parody, it's kinda funny, or was in 2012, you can google it if you're curious. But humor clearly has no place in Serious Legal Documents. So let the record state that we disavow the so-called "First Truly Honest Privacy Policy" and solemnly aver that this Privacy Policy is also Truly Honest. Also the previous sentence is not a lie.)
2020 Jul 6: Created Google section of "Information We Collect from Other Sources" to keep all the Google information in one area. Changed "user-configurable search" to "user-configurable tag" because our Google integration changed to only allow the latter. Slight additional but inconsequential clarifications related to that. Added this reassurance: "No Google user data is shared. Your goal, if it is public, may share information about the number of messages in that tag. (You can control each goal's public visibility and privacy settings.)"
2020 Jul 6: Added another link to WordPress's terms of service in the Privacy Policy section.
2020 Jul 9: Fixed typos (a missing space, "login" is not a verb) and spelled out the changes from 2020 Jul 6 more meticulously.
2024 Aug 1: Added a YNAB section to "Information We Collect from Other Sources", mutatis mutandis from the Google section.