Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information
Certain visitors to Automattic’s websites choose to interact with Automattic in ways that require Automattic to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Automattic gathers depends on the nature of the interaction.
For example, we ask visitors who sign up for a blog at WordPress.com to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with Automattic – by purchasing access to the Akismet comment spam prevention service, for example – are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions.
In each case, Automattic collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Automattic. Automattic 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
Automattic may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, Automattic may monitor the most popular blogs on the WordPress.com site or use spam screened by the Akismet service to help identify spam. Automattic may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Automattic does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.
Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information
Automattic 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 Automattic’s behalf or to provide services available at Automattic’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 Automattic’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Automattic 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, Automattic discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Automattic believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an Automattic website and have supplied your email address, Automattic 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 Automattic and our products. We primarily use our various product blogs to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. 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. Automattic takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.