Date: August 2003

Madison Avenue Research Group (Madison Avenue Research") respects your privacy and is committed to the protection of it.

This privacy policy explains why and when we collect your personal information, and what use we make of that information. The policy also explains where and why your information may be disclosed to third parties, and the security measures used by Madison Avenue Research to help protect your personal information.

•           Why and when Madison Avenue Research collects your information

•           How Madison Avenue Research uses your information

•           Disclosure of your information to third parties

•           Accuracy

•           Security

•           Changes

•           Further information or comments

Why and when Madison Avenue Research collects your information
 

• Personal information you give us

Madison Avenue Research collects the information you give us, either online or by email or facsimile. In most cases, the personal information Madison Avenue Research will collect from you is the personal information we are required to obtain and pass on to the owner of reports (our client). This information includes your full name, mailing address, phone number, email address and where applicable, your facsimile number. Madison Avenue Research also collects your payment details from you when you apply to services, such as your credit card number or bank account details.

If you purchase a digital certificate through us, we are required by the provider of those certificates to collect personal information from you to pass back to that provider. We will also collect your payment details from you such as your credit card number or bank account details.

• Website information (including cookies)

Madison Avenue Research makes limited use of cookies on this website. A cookie is a small message given to your web browser by our web server. The browser stores the message, and sends the message back to the server each time you request a page from the server.

Madison Avenue Research only uses cookies to tell us when you have set up an account with us previously (i.e. when you are a "registered user" of our website), and sometimes to let us know how you found our website. Where the cookies tell us that you are a registered user, cookies also allow us to automatically link you to your personalised accounts so that you can easily access any products or services only made available to our registered users, without your having to provide us with your username and password on every web page. The cookies allow us only to identify you in our database if you are a registered user, and to connect you to the relevant products and services on our website, but not to track the pages you visited on our website.

You always have the option to disable cookies by turning them off in your browser. However, you should be aware that many of the services available on the Madison Avenue Research website will not work if you have chosen to do this.

In addition to cookies, Madison Avenue Research servers register the type of web browser you are using and your IP address when you access our website.

How Madison Avenue Research uses your information

• Uses
• Madison Avenue Research may use your information to measure your experience of our services and products and to inform you of new product developments and associated services that we believe will interest you. If you do not wish to receive email notices or other communications from Madison Avenue Research regarding additional products and services, simply use the newsletter unsubscribe function available here to notify us that you wish to opt out of this service.
• We may use your information in statistical form to analyze your purchasing preferences. This information is not used to track your individual preferences but rather to give us a general picture of the products and services our customers prefer. We might also gather information in statistical form such as the number of visitors who visit the Madison Avenue Research website on a daily basis. Again this is not used to track any individual customer's browsing habits.
• We may use your email communications with Madison Avenue Research to analyze customer service issues as a way of identifying potential improvements for Madison Avenue Research products and services. In addition, we may occasionally monitor telephone conversations with you in order to facilitate staff training and to maintain our high levels of customer service. We will always inform you prior to any telephone conversation which is monitored in this way to obtain your prior approval.
• We may use your IP address to contact your Internet Service Provider to let you know of any problems with payments you have made to us where we believe this is reasonably necessary to protect against fraud and credit card misuse.
• Where you purchase a digital certificate through us, we are required by the provider of those certificates to collect personal information from you to pass back to that provider (other than your payment details, which we hold internally). If you would like to see how your digital certificates provider will treat your personal information.

Disclosure of your information to third parties

• International subsidiary companies

Any information which you supply to Madison Avenue Research or any of its international subsidiary companies will be shared within the internal company group to facilitate our provision of products and services to you. Each of our international subsidiary companies is committed to protecting your personal information in accordance with the principles set out in this privacy policy.

• Third party service providers

On occasion, we may supply your personal information to third parties to perform services on our behalf, such as the following:

• the distribution of marketing information to you (except where you have chosen to opt out of receiving this information from us);
• the supply of datacentre storage and maintenance services for our IT systems and infrastructure;
• the supply of credit related services such as credit worthiness, credit provision and credit rating, or bank related services; or
• the supply of billing and payment services.

Our relationships with such third party service providers are governed by our contracts with them. Those service providers are required to hold your personal information strictly confidential.

Accuracy

If you believe that Madison Avenue Research may hold other personal information about you which is inaccurate, please contact us by using and we will take reasonable steps to ensure that it is corrected.

Security

The transfer of information across any media may involve a certain degree of risk, and the Internet is no different. However, helping you to keep your information secure is very important to Madison Avenue Research. We do not guarantee data security however use a reasonable effort to keep your information secure including encrypted transfer of data for credit cards, but NOT for free requests for reports.

You can also use simple precautions to help protect your security, such as protecting against the unauthorized use of your username or password or other authentication id.

Changes

Madison Avenue Research may make changes to its privacy policy from time to time. You should check our privacy policy from time to time to see if we have made any changes to it.

Further information or queries

If you have any queries or comments, or would like more information concerning Madison Avenue Research's privacy policy please contact us.