Privacy Policy

Thanks to Automattic for providing this privacy policy under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. Be sure to check out wordjot.com

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Pear Software we have a few fundamental principles:

• We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it. (We can’t stand services that ask you for things like your gender or income level for no apparent reason.)
• We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.
• We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of one of our services. (For example: we don’t save comments that get submitted to our Akismet comment spam blocking service unless they were marked as false positives; in which case we store them long enough to use them to improve the service to avoid future false positives.)

Below is our privacy policy which incorporates these goals:

Pear Ltd. ("Pear Software") operates several websites including pear.co.nz, wordjot.com and bla.st. It is Pear Software's policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.

Website Visitors

Like most website operators, Pear Software collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Pear Software’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Pear Software’s visitors use its website. From time to time, Pear Software may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.

Pear Software also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Pear Software does not use such information to identify its visitors, however, and does not disclose such information, other than under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information, as described below.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to Pear Software's websites choose to interact with Pear Software in ways that require Pear Software to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Pear Software gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for a blog at wordjot.com to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with Pear Software – 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, Pear Software collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor's interaction with Pear Software. Pear Software 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

Pear Software may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, Pear Software may monitor the most popular blogs on the wordjot.com site or use spam screened by the Akismet service to help identify spam. Pear Software may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Pear Software does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

Pear Software 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 Pear Software's behalf or to provide services available at Pear Software'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 Pear Software's websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Pear Software 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, Pear Software discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only when required to do so by law, or when Pear Software believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Pear Software, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an Pear Software website and have supplied your email address, Pear Software 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 Pear Software 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. Pear Software takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor's computer, and that the visitor's browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pear Software uses cookies to help Pear Software identify and track visitors, their usage of Pear Software website, and their website access preferences. Pear Software visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Pear Software's websites, with the drawback that certain features of Pear Software's websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Pear Software may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Pear Software's sole discretion. Pear Software encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.