Cookies, Tages & Other Tracking Technologies

We and our service providers and advertising partners may collect non-personal information relating to your visit or use of our online services through various means, such as cookies and tags.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file containing certain pieces of data that is created and stored when you visit a website using a computer or mobile device. When you visit a website, a cookie may be used to track the activities of your browser and also provide you with a more consistent, efficient online experience. We and our service providers and advertising partners use three common types of cookies: session cookies, persistent cookies and flash cookies.

Session cookies store information only for the length of time that you are visiting a website; they are not written onto your hard drive. Once you leave the website, they expire and are no longer active.

Persistent cookies are more permanent and store information on your hard drive. Persistent cookies can be re-read when you return to the website that created them.

Flash cookies (also called locally shared objects) are data files created when you visit a website, and are most often used to enhance your browsing experience.

Session cookies are used on our websites to help determine:

• What pages you visit and actions you take.
• The address of websites and advertisements that you use to link to one of our websites and that you visit after leaving one of our websites.
• Keywords used for searches that brought you to one of our websites.
• Your browser version, hardware and operating system.
• Your Internet Protocol (IP) address.
• Your internet service provider (ISP) and the region from which you connect to our site.

Session cookies are also used on our websites as a type of digital signature to identify your current session to our website servers.

On secure pages on our websites, session cookies may also be used temporarily to store your account number in order to identify multiple user IDs associated with one account number. Cookies containing account numbers are protected through encryption and are used to enable you to load a new secure page on our websites during the same session without having to enter your password.

Persistent cookies are used on our websites to:

• Remember your language preferences.
• Input your user ID automatically, if you choose that option.
• Assist us in authenticating you and your computer or mobile device.
• Reduce the likelihood that an online offer you have already responded to is presented to you again.
• Analyze products and services you have used, which allows optimization of our websites and a more personalized experience.
• Collect information about your computer or mobile device, such as location information so that we can present content specific to your region.

Once you have successfully logged into a secure page on one of our websites, we or our service providers associate you with an internal identifier that identifies you as our customer. Although the internal identifier allows us or our service providers to know who you are, the cookie will never contain information that would tell a third party who you are, such as your name, address, social security number, account number, telephone number or email address.

The internal identifier enables us or our service providers to:

• Monitor your browsing habits on our websites and deliver online marketing offers and advertisements on our websites that may be of interest to you.
• Help personalize our website content, and contact you with marketing offers that may be of interest to you (subject to applicable law and any marketing preferences that we offer and you have registered with us).

Both session and persistent cookies are used on our websites to:

• Aid in identifying and addressing application support issues and to aid in fraud prevention and investigations.
• Determine how many people visit our websites, and which sections of our websites are visited most frequently. This helps us to understand what type of information is most useful to our website visitors so that we can improve our websites and make them easier for our website visitors to access information.

Some of our websites use cookies and JavaScript associated with analytics services provided by our service providers, including Adobe and Google, to help compile aggregated usage statistics to monitor usage patterns and monitor inbound traffic to our websites. For more information about these analytics services, including any opt out rights offered by Adobe and Google, please visit their websites.

Most browsers automatically accept cookies by default. If you object to the use of session or persistent cookies for tracking or other purposes, it may be possible to block and remove such cookies that you may receive from our websites through the settings in your browser. This process varies depending on your browser and version. To learn more about your browser’s options for cookies and online security, please refer to your browser’s documentation or online help. Please be aware that if you buy a new device, change browsers or access one of our websites from a different device, you may need to set your cookie preferences again. Please also note that our websites may not function properly or optimally if you block or delete cookies. For example, you will not be able to access secure pages on our websites that use cookies for layered security, fraud prevention or investigative purposes.

Tags & Other Tracking Technologies

We and our service providers and advertising partners may also use small images encoded with tags (also known as tags or web beacons) and other tracking technologies through our online services for various purposes, including the following:

• To deliver cookies, to count users who have visited certain pages on our websites, and to help us compile aggregated usage statistics to monitor usage patterns and monitor inbound traffic to our websites.
• In email messages to you or on one of our websites to determine whether you have opened an email message from us, clicked on an embedded website link, acted in response to the email message, or otherwise visited one of our websites.
• To help us, our service providers and our marketing service providers identify your interests, deliver advertisements tailored to your interests, determine the effectiveness of our online advertising, track what happens after you view or click on one of our advertisements on one of our websites or a third party website and measure how many people respond to our advertisements.
• If we send you an email for marketing purposes, the email may contain one or more weblinks to our website or a third party website operated by one of our marketing service providers. Such weblinks may be encoded with reference information which allows us to identify you online, but will never contain information that would tell a third party who you are, such as your name, address, social security number, account number, telephone number or email address.