PRIVACY POLICY - Last updated on January 30, 2008.

Protecting the Privacy of Your Personal Information

1. Description of Service

When you sign up with Swiss Picture Bank®, a service provided by Swiss Picturebank AG ("Swiss Picturebank") a stand-alone joint-stock company (Aktiengesellschaft), organized under the laws of Switzerland, you establish a password-protected personal account for storing your digital images with Swiss Picturebank, as well as for using our other services. In order to establish your account at Swiss Picturebank, we will need your name, email address and password. This Privacy Policy applies to all information collected and used by Swiss Picturebank or its corporate parent or affiliates.

The password will allow you access to your account; as such, it needs to be as secure as possible. A good password includes seemingly random letters and numbers, and isn't obvious (i.e. does not include the name of a spouse, child, or pet). You can update your account information and change your password at any time on your Manage My Account page. If you have forgotten your password, you can set a new one by contacting support@swisspicturebank.com.

When you order prints or other paid products or services, we will need your shipping address, billing name and address, as well as your credit card number and expiration date. Also, when you convert from a promotional account at Swiss to a paid account, or otherwise sign up for a paid account, we will need (and retain) your credit card number and expiration data.

We may occasionally request information from users through surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary. The information requested may include Personal Information, demographic information or attitudinal information. Rest assured, the information collected is only used for purposes of improving user satisfaction with Swiss Picturebank services.

Any information you provide will be treated in accordance with the Swiss Data Protection law and regulations, in particular the Swiss Data Protection Act of June 19, 1992 (as amended) and any implementing and/or amending legislation that may be adopted from time to time.

Swiss Picturebank self-certifies compliance with the Safe Harbor framework to the U.S. Department of Commerce in any data exchange with the U.S.A.

Any contact with our Customer Service team or other communication from you, such as chat or emails, may be recorded to help us provide better service.

Swiss Picturebank uses state-of-the-art protection, including Secure Socket Layers (SSLs), to encrypt pages when collecting sensitive personal and financial information such as your credit card number. This measure is designed to guard against interception of this information while it is on the Internet. You can tell if you are using a secure page by looking at the bottom of your browser window where you will see a lock. If it's in a closed state, the page is encrypted.

Swiss Picturebank keeps your photos on servers that are protected against intrusion or unauthorized access by firewalls and other technological means. Only Swiss Picturebank employees and agents are given access to the information on a need-to-know basis. All of Swiss Picturebank's employees and agents are bound by state of the art confidentiality agreements.

Protecting the Privacy of Your Pictures

Swiss Picturebank systems are designed so that you can control who may view the pictures stored in your account. We are committed to keeping your pictures private and secure. We will never make your pictures publicly accessible, except as otherwise noted in this policy or by your own explicit action. Please note that if you share your pictures with your friends or family members and they post your pictures on a website or forward them to other individuals, these pictures may be accessible to others who view the email or visit these websites.

In order to provide quality products, Swiss Picturebank's, its parent's or affiliate's employees and third-party service providers fulfilling your order or providing Customer Support to you may see your pictures. All Swiss Picturebank employees and agents that may view your pictures in this capacity are bound by state of the art confidentiality agreements.

Your pictures are held in your account with Swiss Picturebank, unless you tell us otherwise. To learn more about how our service works, please click here. When you delete pictures, we will request that you confirm deletion by entering your password. Swiss Picturebank will then send you a warning email detailing which photos have been deleted and will hold pictures for at least thirty (30) days after subsequent to issuing the email. Thereafter we may remove them from our servers at our sole discretion. If you accidentally delete your pictures or change your mind after deleting them, you'll have up to approximately thirty (30) days to recover them by clicking on the restore links in the notification email you receive after you delete them. You can also attempt to restore your pictures by contacting us at support@swisspicturebank.com. We'll do our best to restore all of the pictures you've deleted, if they are available, and send you a confirmation email. We may charge you a fee for restoring any pictures which you deleted more than thirty (30) days prior to requesting restoration. Swiss Picturebank is not responsible for the irreversible loss of data that has been deleted by you.

Who Can See Your Pictures

You can share the pictures stored in your account. Initially you will be able to do this by sending them to a third party website such as Flickr. Subsequently, we may supplement or replace this option by providing a sharing service allowing you to send an email to someone which will contain a link to the pictures you choose to share. This link will be specifically designed for the purpose of sharing particular photos and it will not link directly into your account. When you choose to share your stored photos with others, those individuals will be able to view them, forward them, download them, copy them, print them, or post them to other websites on the Internet.

Protecting the Privacy of Children

Our website is not intended for use by children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of 13. Please do not register with Swiss Picturebank if you are under the age of 13.

Keeping You Informed Through Email & Mail

As a Swiss Picturebank customer, we will notify you in email or through the mail about new features, products and promotions. You may unsubscribe to these notification services through your account profile at www.swisspicturebank.com. Simply go to Manage My Account and change your Receive Promotional Information settings in order to do so.

From time to time, we may send you service announcement updates with important information about Swiss Picturebank and/or your account. We will also send you periodic account statements. Service announcements and account statements may contain information vital to your account, so subscribers may not unsubscribe from service announcements and account statements.

Improving Your Site Experience with Technology such as Cookies

Cookies are small data files stored by your web browser on your computer's hard drive. Cookies enable you to use our site and services. Swiss Picturebank never saves information, such as your password or your credit card number, on cookies. You may modify your browser preference to provide you with choices relating to cookies. If you choose to reject all cookies, you may not be able to access Swiss Picturebank services.

We may also use other technologies such as clear gifs, pixel tags, and scanning navigational data to collect anonymous information about our users in order to help us deliver better service and user experience. Anonymous information could include the web site you were on before coming to Swiss Picturebank, IP addresses, or areas of site being clicked on most frequently.

Our third-party service providers may also use Cookies or other technologies to help us manage our marketing efforts (these include ad servers, outbound email vendors, affiliate vendors and search engine advertising agencies, and web analytics tools). Swiss Picturebank has carefully selected these service providers and instructed these service providers not to collect personally identifiable information or share the anonymous information with anyone other than Swiss Picturebank. You may find more information about opting out of most third-party service cookies at www.networkadvertising.org or other related sites.

Providing Services through Third Parties and Sharing of Personal Information

If you "opt-in" when registering for Swiss Picturebank, you agree that Swiss Picturebank may share your Personal Information with our suppliers when participating in joint promotional activities in order to advise you of upcoming offerings and promotions. We may also share your Personal Information with business partners in order that they may notify you of their offerings. If you apply for or request certain products or services directly from our business partners, you may receive information directly from them regarding their products or services. Swiss Picturebank may share your Personal Information when we partner with another company to offer or provide products, service, contests, or promotions. In this case, Swiss Picturebank and the partner company may cross-reference our customer databases to identify common customers. Additionally, such information may be shared with the partner company to notify winners or to fulfill promotional obligations.

Even if you originally choose to "opt-in", you may unsubscribe to any of these promotional activities at any time by clicking on Manage My Account and deselecting the check box next to "I would like to receive information about additional products and services from Swiss Picturebank AG and its partners."

Swiss Picturebank may share very general information about our customers as a group with business partners, sponsors and other third parties. For example, we might say that a certain percentage of our customers live in the United States, while a different percentage live in France.

Abiding by the Law

Swiss Picturebank or its corporate parent or affiliates may be required by law to disclose Personal Information and/or pictures to proper law enforcement authorities even though you might have requested that we don't share your information. This information may be necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against anyone who may attempt to cause injury to another's rights or property.

If we receive notification that you are using your account for illegal purposes, we will investigate your account and will review your Personal Information and the pictures in your account. If we determine that you are in potential violation of the law, we will report the potential illegal activity and will share your Personal Information and pictures with the proper law enforcement authorities.

If we merge with, or are acquired by another company, the resulting combined company will use the Personal Information you have provided as described in this policy. If we cease operation, your Personal Information may be transferred to and used by another company that offers similar or related products or services.

Changes and Notification

We reserve the right to modify our Privacy Policy at any time. If our privacy policy changes, the revised policy will be posted on this site and we will change the "updated" date at the top of this page to reflect the date of the modification. Please check back periodically.

Contact us

We at Swiss Picturebank will do our utmost to keep all your information up to date when you provide it to us, and to guard your privacy by continuously evaluating the enforcement and nature of our policies.

If any of your Personal Information changes, or you identify a mistake in our records, please use the Manage My Account page to update your data, or contact us and we will update your data right away.

Please email us at contact@swisspicturebank.com to communicate any questions or concerns.