Your privacy is very important to us. At TheScienceofOwnership.org (TSOO) we have a few fundamental principles that we follow:

• We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it.
• We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law or protect our rights.
• We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of our site.

It is our policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating this blog.

If you continue to browse and use this website you are agreeing to comply with and be bound by the following terms and conditions of use.

General information

This website is for information purposes only. The content may change or be removed at any moment without prior notice. Whilst every effort is made to provide accurate information, we explicitly exclude liability for any errors or inaccuracies in the content. We take no responsibility for the website being temporarily unavailable due to technical problems beyond our control.

Copyright notice

TSOO.org and its content are copyright of the Institute for Marketing & Consumer Research, unless otherwise stated. Any redistribution or reproduction of text or images without our explicit prior consent is strictly prohibited.

You are free to link to TSOO.org or quote the website as long as TSOO (www.thescienceofownership.org) is credited. If you are interested in using images or an article, please contact us.

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Pictures that were not taken by us do not belong to us. We do not claim the copyright for these images, nor do we own them. If there is a copyright problem with images published on this blog, please email us at mcore@wu.ac.at and we will be sure to remove them as soon as possible.

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. TSOO uses cookies to help us identify and track visitors, their usage of TSOO, and their website access preferences. TSOO visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using TSOO, with the drawback that certain features of TSOO may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Privacy and data collection

Generally, TSOO does not collect any personally-identifying information about its users. Visitors can use the site without registering or revealing any personal information about them. As for most websites, our web server collects anonymous statistical data such as number of visits, pages viewed, browser used, keywords typed, etc. The visitor’s IP address is collected for this purpose. In order to post a comment, visitors are required to provide their email address and name (or pseudonym).

Users’ email addresses will never be shared or sold to any third party unless required by law. Security measures such as passwords, firewalls and antivirus programs are in place to prevent any unauthorized access to this information. While every effort is made to protect users’ personal information, we cannot be held liable for any fraudulent access by an unauthorized third party. If you choose to disclose your personal information, you do so at your own risk. You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages and we reserve the right to delete any message at our discretion.

Website Visitors

As briefly mentioned above, TSOO, like most website operators, 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. TSOO’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how our visitors use this blog. From time to time, TSOO may release non-personally-identifying information in aggregate format, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of this blog.

TSOO also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on our blog. TSOO only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog commenter IP addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.

Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to TSOO websites choose to interact with TSOO in ways that require TSOO to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that TSOO gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who comment on our blog to provide a username and email address. Those who wish to receive TSOO updates via email, we collect their emails. In each case, TSOO collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with TSOO. TSOO 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

TSOO may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, we may monitor where our visitors come from or which posts and pages are most popular. TSOO may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, TSOO does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

TTSOO discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when TSOO believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of TSOO, third parties or the public at large.

If you are a registered user of TSOO and have supplied your email address, TSOO may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new posts and topics, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with TSOO. We primarily use our blog 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 our contact form), 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. TSOO uses all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

Comments

Comments and other content submitted to Akismet anti-spam service are not saved on our servers 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.

Links

TSOO contains links to third-party websites. We have no control over the content or the availability of those sites and are in no way liable for them. The inclusion of a link does not necessarily imply that we recommend the site linked to or endorse the views expressed on this blog.

Google Analytics

This website (www.thescienceofownership.org) uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer to help the website analyze how visitors use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Social Plugins (eg. Facebook, Twitter, …)

This blog uses social plugins (“plugins”) provided by the social network facebook.com, operated by Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA (“Facebook”). The plugins are identifiable by a Facebook logo. When you visit a page of our website that contains a social plugin, your browser establishes a direct connection to Facebook servers. Facebook directly transfers the plugin content to your browser which embeds the latter into the website, enabling Facebook to receive information about your having accessed the respective page of our website. Thus we have no influence on the data gathered by the plugin and inform you according to our state of knowledge: The embedded plugins provide Facebook with the information that you have accessed the corresponding page of our website. If you are logged into Facebook, your visit can be assigned to your Facebook account. If you interact with the plugins, for example by clicking “Like”, or entering a comment, the corresponding information is transmitted from your browser directly to Facebook and stored by it. Even if you are not logged into Facebook, there is possibility that the plugins transmits your IP-address to Facebook. For the information on the purpose and scope of data collection and procession by Facebook, as well as your rights in this respect and settings options for protecting your privacy please visit Facebook’s privacy policy:http://www.facebook.com/policy.php. If you are a Facebook member and do not want Facebook to connect the data concerning your visit to our website with your member data already stored by Facebook, please log off Facebook before entering our website. The same may apply for other Social Plugins, such as Twitter or Instagram.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, TSOO may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in TSOO’s sole discretion. TSOO 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.

Legal rights

Principally, you have the right to receive information about, correct, delete, restrict, transfer, revoke and oppose to the data you have made available to us at any time. If you believe that the processing of your data violates data protection law or if your data protection claims have been infringed in another way, you can contact the Data Protection Authority.

Contact

You can reach us at:

Institute for Marketing & Consumer Research
Department of Marketing
@WU Vienna – Vienna University of Economics & Business
Welthandelsplatz 1 – A-1020 Vienna
E-Mail: mcore@wu.ac.at
Website: www.wu.ac.at/mcore