Columbia House Privacy Policy
Your privacy is very important to The Columbia House Company. This privacy policy spells out Columbia House's commitment to respecting the privacy of the members of Columbia House's various music, video, and DVD Clubs and visitors to our websites. Columbia House reserves the right to change this policy.

Whether you enroll online or offline, or are just a visitor, we are very careful with what we do with your information. Collection of information is usually grouped into two categories: personal, which is information identifiable to a specific member, and aggregate, which is general demographic information that does not identify any individual member. Columbia House may use or disclose aggregate information for any purpose.

How we use our members' personal information

Club offers and special promotions
Columbia House first uses your personal information to process and review your application for enrollment. Once you have joined, we use your information to process your orders, personalize Columbia House mailings and the Columbiahouse.com website based on your interests, including making you aware of special offers, newsletters, and commercial offerings that may be of interest. Columbia House mostly does this by the periodic mailings sent to your postal address or to your email address. As a Club member you agreed to receive these mailings, and it is how your membership works. In order to provide services that better meet your needs, we also may supplement the information that you provide to us with other information that we receive from third parties.

We maintain a list of member-provided email addresses, for the purpose of sending order confirmations and status reports, reminders, promotional information about Club news, products and special offers. If you join Columbia House through one of our online sites, you will receive our free electronic newsletters. All Club members also have the option of signing up for this and other Club newsletters too. If you wish to have your name removed from our email list, or you want to sign up for additional Club newsletters, please visit the Email Preferences section of the Account Info area of our site. If you change your mind about receiving email or a particular newsletter, simply go back to edit your preferences. We also provide email opt-out information in our emails. We also may call you with special offers, for example, to join one of our other Clubs. If you do not wish to receive such phone calls please write to us, including any and all Club account numbers you have, at: Columbia House DVD Club, P.O.Box 91602, Indianapolis, IN 46291-0616 or give us a call at the number provided in your Membership Agreement.

We never sell or rent your name and email address to other online marketers of products or services without your consent. However, Columbia House may send email communications to members on behalf of these outside parties. If you do not want your name, address, email address or other personal information to be used for such purposes, please visit the Email Preferences section of the Account Info area of our site. If you change your mind, simply go back to edit your preferences. We also provide email opt-out information in our emails.

Sweepstakes

In our periodic mailings to our members, whether by email or postal mail, we may include sweepstakes and contest entry opportunities. While we believe these are exciting opportunities to win great prizes without any further obligation on your part, we also understand that you may not want to hear about all the details. If you do not want to receive details about sweepstakes or contests by email (you will still get sweepstakes postal mail), please email us from the email address you want excluded at dvdnosweeps@columbiahouse.com. This is only for our members to opt out of sweepstakes email. Members who wish to opt out of receiving sweepstakes entry opportunities via postal mail (you will still get sweepstakes email) should write to us, and include any and all Club account numbers you have, at: Columbia House DVD Club, P.O.Box 91602, Indianapolis, IN 46291-0616. Please contact us via both methods to opt out of receiving sweepstakes offers through both email and postal mail. For both our members and visitors, we may use information you provide us when registering for these sweepstakes to administer prize awards, or to make offers about our services. Please check the official rules for each sweepstakes for more privacy information.

Other uses of your information
In the daily course of business, we may use your information to assist you if you have questions or problems, or to perform normal business operations, such as billing, collection, and accounting. If you provide personal information in an application that is eventually rejected, we retain that information in case you apply again.

Columbia House uses strict procedures and safeguards designed to protect the privacy of all personal information. All Columbia House employees with access to personal information are required to follow specific practices concerning its proper handling. Our vendors and their employees who may need access to member information, such as customer service and fulfillment vendors, are held to strict confidentiality requirements. At times we may retain third parties to analyze data we collect on our Clubs and web sites, solely to help us improve our products, services, and web sites. These suppliers and other third parties are not authorized by us to use your personal information in any other way. We may have to use personal information to investigate complaints and protect Columbia House and its members, in compliance with the law, your Membership Agreements, and Columbia House policies. Columbia House may release your information if required to do so by law, including inquiries that are subject to a subpoena, court order or warrant.

Our online technology
Columbiahouse.com is a safe and secure environment for making purchases online. When you make a purchase or join one of our Clubs using your credit card, the transactional information, including your credit card number, is stored on our server for archival purposes only. That information is encoded within industrial-strength 64-bit encryption. Your credit card information is encoded and protected using Secure Sockets Layering ("SSL") technology. For your shopping convenience, once you have entered your member ID and password and you check out, the site displays the last four digits of your credit card number so you always know which card you used. We also offer SSL encryption on new member applications.

We use "cookie" technology on a limited basis. Cookies are pieces of information that an Internet site transfers to your hard drive for record-keeping purposes. The use of cookies is an industry standard -- you'll find them almost everywhere on the Internet. Columbia House uses cookies to recognize members when they return to our sites. Once we know it's you, we can customize your online visit. We can show you hot new releases based on your preferences, alert you to new website features, or tell you what your featured Selection is. We may also evaluate our content and services and tailor our websites, for members and visitors, based on other information we collect such as IP addresses, which are numbers assigned to your computer whenever you use the Internet, pixel tags (or clear gifs), and the type of Internet browser or operating system you are using. This information is collected in the aggregate, but we may tie it to your personal information through cookie use as described above.

If a member enters our pages from the site of one of Columbia House's partners, our system will recognize the path the visitor has taken. Columbia House advertises on such partners' sites or we've entered into a promotional partnership with them. We track the number of visitors to see the success of our online marketing or promotional campaign. These partners will not know your personal information, unless you are notified in advance, if you have given it to them separately or consented to give it to them through us. In cases where such partners have access to your information, we contractually bind them to keep your information confidential.

Our company contracts under the confidentiality restrictions mentioned above with service partners whose services may include site-activity data collection and reporting and ad-serving technology. These companies may use cookies on our behalf and may receive information about your browsing and buying activity.

Our company contracts under the confidentiality restrictions mentioned above, with Coremetrics, a service partner, to provide data collection and reports regarding our customers' activities on our site. Coremetrics may use cookies on our behalf and may receive information about your browsing and buying activity. Coremetrics may store member ID, city, state, zip code, and email address on our behalf. If you would like to opt out of these particular services, please click here.

Date: December 1, 2008