PRIVACY POLICY

Elance, Inc. ("Elance", "us" or "we") respects the privacy of the visitors to its Web site, the home page of which is located at http://www.elance.com ("Site"). This Privacy Policy is intended to inform you of our policies and practices regarding the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information and Anonymous Information you submit to us through our Site. This Privacy Policy is hereby incorporated in our Terms of Service Agreement, and by registering for our Services you accept the terms of this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy applies only to Users; it does not apply to any information about companies or organizations that use the Services on the Site. In addition, if you are a person who is only visiting the Site (a "Visitor"), the provisions titled "Consent," "This Site Contains Links to Other Sites," "Automatically Gathered Information" (applicable parts only), "Service Providers and Buyers," "Legal Requests" and "Anonymous Information" apply to you.

"Personal Information" is information about you that is personally identifiable to you, like your name, address, email address or phone number, as well as other non-public information that is associated with the foregoing.

Elance is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build user's trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the Web site www.elance.com. Because this Web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact Customer Support at http://www.elance.com/service. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php. TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns.

By submitting Personal Information through the Site, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy and you expressly consent to the processing of your Personal Information according to this Privacy Policy. Your Personal Information may be processed by Elance in the country where it was collected, as well as other countries (including the United States) where laws regarding processing of Personal Information may be less stringent than the laws in your country.

Notification of Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as our Services change and expand. If we make substantial changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the updated policy on this page and we will post notice that this Privacy Policy has changed in the MyElance area of the Site and in this policy. The notification of revised terms will appear on the website 30 days prior to the changes taking place. Once any changes that we make to this Privacy Policy become effective, your continued use of the Site after such time will signify your acceptance of the new terms.

This Site Contains Links to Other Sites

Elance is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other websites to which the Site links or to which link to the Site. By clicking on a link, logo or other item, please note that you may no longer be on the Elance Site. To check what Internet location you are on, note the URL at the top and/or bottom of your browser. We encourage you to read the posted privacy statement of that website whenever interacting with any website.

The Workspace

This area of the Site is for the benefit of Users. The private and shared Workspace areas of the Site facilitate communication and the exchange and sharing of information between Buyers and Service Providers once a bid has been accepted. The information contained in private Workspaces shared between Buyers and Service Providers is not used for any purposes other than to facilitate communication and the exchange of information between the parties involved. Elance reserves the right to monitor communications in the Workspace in order to verify compliance with our Terms of Service, international, federal or state laws and/or our other stated policies.

Information We Gather

Registration

If you register to buy or sell Services using Elance, we collect and store Personal Information that specifically identifies you or your Account. At this time, the most information you would be required to submit is your first name, last name, User ID, password, preferred currency, street address, city, state, zip/postal code, country, phone number, email address and valid financial Account information. Other information requested on our Registration page, including the ability to receive promotional offers from Elance, is optional. We may, in the future, include other optional requests for information from you to help us to tailor the Site for you and deliver personalized information to you. Without your agreement, we will not share, rent or sell any personal information with third parties in any way other than what is disclosed in this privacy statement. To post projects in both Select and Limited, we require a valid credit card number and name as it appears on the credit card. A refundable $25 deposit is collected for Select Projects (refunded when you award the project), and no charges are made to the card if the project is posted in Limited.

Credit card information is transmitted via SSL ("Secure Socket Layer") encryption for your protection.

Package Service Providers and Affiliates

If you sign up under one of the Elance Package Service Provider or affiliate programs, you will be required to provide: a User ID, a password, email address, city, state, country and zip/postal code. The Package Service Provider and affiliate programs will also require a contact name, phone number, street address, phone number, preferred currency, tax classification and, for US Affiliates only, your Taxpayer Identification or Social Security Number for tax and other governmental reporting purposes. It further requests the URL of your Web site, the number of registered Users on your Site, and a brief general description of your Site. We will use this information for required tax and governmental reporting purposes and for our own internal purposes, including evaluating and developing new features that better meet the needs of our affiliates. We will use the email address that you provide to us to contact you regarding the status of your Account, and we will use the address that you provide to us to send you any payments owed to you under the terms of the affiliate or referral programs.

Online Surveys and Contests

Occasionally, Elance conducts a User survey to collect information about our Users' preferences. These surveys are optional and if you choose to respond, your responses will be kept anonymous. Similarly, we may offer contests to qualifying Users in which we ask for contact and demographic information such as name, email address and mailing address. None of this information is shared with third parties, except in summary form, if at all. The demographic information that Elance collects in the registration process and through surveys is used to help us improve our Services to meet the needs and preferences of our Users. This may include targeting advertising to you about our Services. Information we gather through a contest may also be disclosed to third parties as necessary for prize fulfillment and other aspects of any contest or similar offering.

The Elance Payment System

The Elance Payment Service requires Members to pay with a credit card, wire transfer, ACH or debit card or check. Elance will collect your credit card number and/or other entered financial institution information such as bank account numbers and will use that information to bill your Service Provider membership fee and/or to perform the billing operation on behalf of the Service Provider, including but not limited to the use and disclosure of such credit card number and information to third parties as necessary to complete such billing operation. Verification of credit information, however, is accomplished solely by the User through the authentication process.

Service providers and Agents

We use credit card and other payment processing companies to bill you for goods and services and email marketing companies to send emails from Elance to opt-in users. We will share your personal information as necessary for third parties to provide these services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any other purposes.

Automatically Gathered Information

Elance automatically collects browser type and browser software version to tailor the presentation of the Site and the Services to the Visitor’s or User’s platform and to maintain a record of the User’s or Visitor’s activity on the Site. Elance uses cookies to enable Users to specify unique preferences and to track Visitor and User trends and patterns. Users and Visitors always have the option of disabling cookies via their browser preferences. If you disable cookies on your browser, please note that some parts of our Site may not function as effectively or may be considerably slower. As an automatic process, our Web server software records a log file of IP addresses that access the Site. We also collect IP address information but do not ordinarily link IP addresses to Users’ Personal Information. However, we can and will use IP addresses to identify a User when we, in our sole discretion, determine that it is necessary to enforce compliance with our Terms and Conditions of Use or to protect our service, Site, customers or others.

Email to Friends Feature and Referral Program

Elance lets you easily send project postings to friends via email. Elance also offers the ability to send friends emails about providing or purchasing Services through Elance. If you choose to use either feature, be assured that Elance only uses your friends’ email addresses on a one-time basis to send the requested posting, and we use your email address to copy you on the message or to send on your behalf. Your friends’ email addresses will be deleted from our database after the message is sent.

Public Information

As part of registration, you may set up a Profile describing your experience and qualifications. After becoming a member, in order to place bids, you must create a Profile, and in order to create a Profile, you will be required to provide some information about your company or business. If you decide to offer a service, potential buyers may review your Profile to help them decide whether to make a bid on your service. Information in your Profile is available for any other registered User to access. We will not have any obligation under this Privacy Policy with respect to information in your Profile or information you voluntarily provide to other Users via the Site.

How We Use and Disclose Information

Registration Information

We use Personal Information for our own internal purposes including contacting you via email to inform you about updates to our Services and providing you with information relating to e-commerce transactions that you conduct on the Site. We reserve the right to disclose your information as required by law. We do not rent or sell our Users' Personal Information to third parties. We do, however, provide you with the opportunity to receive newsletters via email. If you decide to opt in to receive newsletters, you may opt out of receiving these newsletters at any time by clicking on your Preferences and choosing Email Notifications to Unsubscribe.

Advertising

We may send you email communications including information that we think may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving these email communications either when you register to become a Member or via the Preferences section of your MyElance area. We do not send any of your Personal Information to our advertisers. You may see a cookie from a third-party banner server, and this cookie comes from the third-party banner server, not Elance. Again, we do not pass along any Personal Information to this party.

Elance’s Contractors

To the extent necessary to provide you with the services on the Site, we may provide your Personal Information to third party contractors who work on behalf of or with Elance to provide you with such services, to help us communicate with you or to maintain the Site. However, these contractors do not have any independent right to share this information.

Other Members

We share the email addresses of Service Providers and Buyers to each other once a project is awarded on our Site to enable work on the project to be completed. In addition, Members involved in a transaction may request full contact information of the other party, including name, company name, phone number and mailing address. If you request the contact information of another User, your contact information will also be released to that User. If another User requests your contact information, we will disclose it to him or her. You agree not to use the disclosed information of other Users for any purpose other than providing the applicable Services or resolving a dispute.

Legal Requests

Elance cooperates with law enforcement inquiries, as well as other third parties to enforce laws, such as: intellectual property rights, fraud, theft, harassment and other rights. We can (and you authorize us to) disclose any information about you if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to (a) comply with relevant laws or to respond to subpoenas or warrants served on us; (b) protect or defend the rights or property of Elance or third parties; or (c) assist in an investigation.

Affiliates

Although we currently do not have a parent company, any subsidiaries, joint ventures or other companies under a common control (collectively, "Affiliates"), we may in the future. We may share some or all of your Personal Information with these Affiliates, in which case we will require our Affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy.

Business Transaction

If our company or our assets related to the Site are acquired by another company, we will attempt to notify you so that you may make an informed decision about this new use of your personal information. See the "Notification of Changes" section above to find out how we will notify you.

Anonymous Information

We may create Anonymous Information records from Personal Information by excluding information (such as names) that make the information personally identifiable to you. We may use this Anonymous Information to analyze inquiry, request and usage patterns so that we may enhance Services and the Site. We reserve the right to use and disclose Anonymous Information to third parties in our discretion. “Anonymous Information” means information that is not associated with or linked to your Personal Information; Anonymous Information does not permit the identification of individual persons.

Comments Submitted by Users

Elance constantly seeks to improve the quality of the services we provide and the User experience on the Site. We value your input and encourage you to help us expand and make improvements to the Site by providing us with any thoughts or comments you might have regarding our services or the operation of the Site. You can submit any comments you have to us by clicking on the link “Email us” at the top of most of the pages on the Site. The “Email Us” page asks for your email address and Username. Your Username is optional. If you provide this information, we will only use it to acknowledge or respond to your comments. Submitting comments via email will not cause you to receive any secondary or promotional material, unless specifically requested by you. In certain circumstances, we may ask for your permission to post your comments in marketing or promotional materials.

Security

We will use commercially reasonable methods to keep Personal Information securely in our files and systems. Our Payment System is operated using secure Internet connections, using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption, to help protect your financial data. Please note that with current technology, we cannot guarantee the security of your data as it travels over the Internet.

Regarding Children

We do not intentionally gather Personal Information about Visitors who are under the age of 13.

Terminating Your Membership

We save your Personal Information until your membership with us is terminated and you unsubscribe to email notifications. To terminate your membership, contact Customer Service. If you terminate your membership, your Personal Information cannot be recovered. You may continue to receive email communications for a short period of time until we have updated all of our databases. After termination of your membership, your Personal Information may remain on our archived database and records. Notwithstanding the above, we will maintain information on Users who have been removed for violating our Membership Agreement.

Correcting/Updating Your Information and Opting Out

This Site gives the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided:

1. You may update your registration information using the Preferences page, under MyElance, in the Elance navigation bar after you register.
2. You may update your credit card information using the Account page, under the MyElance section of the Site.
3. This Site provides Users the opportunity to opt out of receiving promotional email communications from us, Elance newsletters and other Site information using Preferences, Email Notifications under the MyElance section of the Site or by contacting Customer Service. However, you may not opt out of receiving administrative communications from Elance regarding the Services or the Site, except by terminating your membership. In addition, you may not opt out of Elance sending you legal notices related to the Services or the Site.
4. For other requests, please contact Customer Service.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the practices of this Site, you may contact Customer Service

Elance, Inc., 510 Logue Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043

Effective Date: April 26, 2007