In general, we will ask you when we need information that personally identifies you or allows us to contact you. For example, personal information is requested when you are asked to register before ordering e-mail newsletters, submitting a company, becoming a Featured Company, or when purchasing and registering Software Opportunities products.

The amount of personal information you are required to supply will normally be limited to that which is necessary to supply the service or carry out the transaction that you have requested. If other information is requested, it will be labelled as optional.

The Software Opportunities site provides links to sites and services operated by other companies or organizations. We encourage you to review the privacy statements of those sites and services that you choose to visit, so that you can understand how they may collect, use, and share your personal information. Software Opportunities is not responsible for the privacy statements or practices of sites and services controlled by other companies or organizations.

We are a P3P enabled site (see below for more details of what this means). Our P3P policy can be viewed in Internet Explorer 6 by selecting 'Privacy Report...' from the View menu and then clicking on one of the lines displayed and 'Summary'. Please note that some of our business partners do not have privacy policies and so their sites may be blocked, depending on the settings in your browser.

Use of Your Personal Information

The personal information we collect from you will be used by Software Opportunities to provide the service or carry out the transaction you have requested or authorized. This may include using the personal information for the following purposes:

• To provide you with important information about the product or service that you are using.
• To make a site or service easier to use by eliminating the need for you to repeatedly enter the same information or by customizing the site or service to your particular interests or preferences.
• To improve the product or service and to provide better customer service to users.

Except as described below, Software Opportunities does not transfer your personal information to third parties without your consent. Software Opportunities may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personal information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party.

We occasionally hire other companies to provide limited services on our behalf, such as packaging, sending, and delivering purchases and other mailings; answering customer questions about products or services; processing event registration; or performing statistical analysis of our services. We will only provide those companies the personal information they need to deliver the service, and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose.

Software Opportunities may disclose personal information if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on Software Opportunities or the site; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of Software Opportunities and its family of Web sites, or (c) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of Software Opportunities employees, users of Software Opportunities products or services, or members of the public.

Personal information collected by Software Opportunities is stored and processed in the United Kingdom.

Controlling and Accessing Your Personal Information

Software Opportunities believes that you should be able to exercise control over how the personal information you provide will be used. If you provide personal information to Software Opportunities for one purpose, you will be able to opt-out of that personal information being used for other unrelated purposes.

Software Opportunities also believes that you should be able to access the personal information you have provided, so that you can update or amend the data where it is inaccurate.

Security of Your Personal Information

Software Opportunities is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For example, we store the personal information you provide on computer servers with limited access, which are located in controlled facilities. Additionally, when we need to process sensitive personal information (such as a credit card number) over the Internet, we protect it through the use of WorldPay, which uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol for encryption.

Use of Cookies or Web Beacons On Software Opportunities Sites

The Software Opportunities web site uses "cookies" to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you or your computer, and can only be read by a Web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. For example, when you register with the Software Opportunities site, a cookie helps us to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as username, email or postal addresses, and so on. When you return to the Software Opportunities web site, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the features that you customized. The cookies contain your email address, your user name, the number of visits and the date and time you last visited.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. However, if you choose to decline cookies, you will not be able to experience the features of the site.

Software Opportunities Web pages may also contain electronic images known as "Web beacons" -sometimes called single-pixel gifs - that allow Software Opportunities to count users who have visited those pages. Web beacons are not used to access your personally identifiable information. They are a technique we use to compile aggregated statistics about Web site usage. The Software Opportunities site may also contain Web beacons placed there by our advertising partners, to help us determine the effectiveness of the sites advertising campaigns.

The cookie settings required to use the site are explained in the use of cookies section.

The Privacy Preferences Project (P3P)

The guidelines used to determine privacy are based on the World Wide Web Committee's Privacy Preferences Project (P3P). The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) has been designed to be flexible and support a diverse set of user preferences, public policies, service provider polices, and applications.

Information Privacy

P3P has been designed to promote privacy and trust on the Web by enabling service providers to disclose their information practices, and enabling individuals to make informed decisions about the collection and use of their personal information.

The following is a list of privacy principles and guidelines that helped inform the development of P3P and may be useful to those who use P3P:

• CMA Code of Ethics & Standards of Practice: Protection of Personal Privacy
• 1981 Council of Europe Convention For the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data
• CSA--Q830-96 Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information
• Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data
• The DMA's Marketing Online Privacy Principles and Guidance and The DMA Guidelines for Ethical Business Practice
• OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data
• Online Privacy Alliance Guidelines for Online Privacy Policies

Notice and Communication

In line with the guidelines Software Opportunities provides timely and effective notice of its information practices and effective tools for users to access these notices and make decisions based on them.

Software Opportunities:

• Communicates explicitly about data collection and use, expressing the purpose for which personal information is collected and the extent to which it may be shared.
• Uses P3P privacy policies to communicate about all information collected through a Web interaction.
• Provides clear, human-readable privacy policies.
• Does not configure by default to transfer personal information to a third-party without the user's consent.

Choice and Control

Users are given the ability to make meaningful choices about the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information. Users retain control over their personal information and decide the conditions under which they will share it.

Software Opportunities:

• Limit its requests to information necessary for fulfilling the level of service desired by the user. It believes this reduces user frustration, increases trust, and enables relationships with many users, including those who may wish to have an anonymous, pseudonymous, customized, or personalized relationship with the web site.
• Obtains informed consent prior to the collection and use of personal information.
• Provides information about the ability to review and if appropriate correct personal information.

Fairness and Integrity

Software Opportunities treats users and their personal information with fairness and integrity. This, it believes, is essential for protecting privacy and promoting trust.

Software Opportunities:

• Accurately represent its information practices in a clear and unambiguous manner - never with the intention of misleading users.
• Uses information only for the stated purpose and retains it only as long as necessary.
• Ensure that information is accurate, complete, and up-to-date.
• Discloses accountability and means for recourse.
• For as long as information is retained, continues to treat information according to the policy in effect when the information was collected, unless users give their informed consent to a new policy.

Security

Software Opportunities protects users' personal information with reasonable security safeguards in keeping with the sensitivity of the information.

Software Opportunities:

• Provides mechanisms for protecting all the personal information it collects.
• Uses appropriate trusted protocols for the secure transmission of data.