Last Update: April 1, 2012
This policy describes the ways we collect, store, use and
protect your personal information. You accept this Privacy Policy when
you sign up for or use our products, services or any other features,
technologies or functionalities offered by us on our website,
application or through any other means (collectively the "PayPal
Services"). We may amend this policy at any time by posting a revised
version on our website. The revised version will be effective at the
time we post it. In
addition, if the revised version includes a substantial change, we will
provide you with 30 days' prior notice by posting notice of the change
on the "Policy Updates" page of our website.
Binding Corporate Rules
In addition to the privacy practices set out in this Privacy
Policy, eBay Inc. has established a set of Corporate Rules (also
referred to as Binding Corporate Rules), approved by a number of
European Union privacy regulators. These Corporate Rules are a
commitment by eBay Inc. to adequately protect your personal information
regardless of where the data resides, and depending upon your location,
may provide additional privacy rights through your privacy regulator or a
court. If you
would like additional information regarding the Corporate Rules contact
us via the contact details below.
How we collect information about you
When you visit the PayPal website or use the PayPal Services
or PayPal application, we collect information sent to us by your
computer, mobile phone or other access device. This information may
include your IP address, device information including but not limited to
identifier, name and type, operating system, location, mobile network
information and standard web log information, such as your browser type,
traffic to and from our site and the pages you accessed on our website.
If you open an account or use the PayPal Services, we may collect the following types of information:
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Contact information - your name, address, phone, email, Skype ID and other similar information.
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Financial information - the full bank account numbers and/or
credit card numbers that you link to your PayPal account or give us
when you use the PayPal Services.
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Before permitting you to use the PayPal Services, we may
require you to provide additional information we can use to verify your
identity or address or manage risk, such as your date of birth, social
security number or other information. We may also obtain information
about you from third parties such as credit bureaus and identity
verification services.
When you use the PayPal Services, we collect information
about your transactions and your other activities on our website,
application or when using the PayPal Services and we may collect
information about your computer or other access device for fraud
prevention purposes.
You may choose to provide us with access to certain personal
information stored by third parties such as social media sites (such as
Facebook and Twitter). The information we have access to varies by site
and is controlled by your privacy settings on that site and your
authorization. By associating an account managed by a third party with
your PayPal account and authorizing PayPal to have access to this
information, you agree that PayPal may collect, store and use this
information
in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
In order to help protect you from fraud and misuse of your
personal information, we may collect information about your use and
interaction with our website, application or the PayPal Services. For
example, we may evaluate your computer, mobile phone or other access
device to identify any malicious software or activity that may affect
the availability of the PayPal Services.
Finally, we may collect additional information from or about
you in other ways such as contacts with our customer support team or
results when you respond to a survey and from interactions with members
of the eBay Inc. corporate family, and from other companies.
How we use cookies
When you access our website or content or use our application
or the PayPal Services, we or companies we work with, may place small
data files called cookies or pixel tags on your computer or other
device. We use these technologies to recognize you as a PayPal customer,
customize the PayPal Services, content and advertising, measure
promotional effectiveness, collect information about your computer or
other access device to mitigate risk, help prevent fraud and promote
trust and
safety.
We use both session and persistent cookies when you access
our website or content. Session cookies expire and no longer have any
effect when you log out of your account or close your browser.
Persistent cookies remain on your browser until you erase them or they
expire.
We also use Local Shared Objects, commonly referred to as
"Flash cookies", to help ensure that your account security is not
compromised, to spot irregularities in behavior to help prevent fraud
and to support our sites and services.
We encode our cookies so that only we can interpret the
information stored in them. You are free to decline our cookies if your
browser or browser add-on permits, but doing so may interfere with your
use of our website. The help section of most browsers or browser add-ons
provides instructions on blocking, deleting or disabling cookies.
You may encounter PayPal cookies or pixel tags on websites
that we do not control. For example, if you view a web page created by a
third party or use an application developed by a third party, there may
be a cookie or pixel tag placed by the web page or application.
Likewise, these third parties may place cookies or pixel tags that are
not subject to our control and the PayPal Privacy Policy does not cover
their use.
How we protect and store personal information
Throughout this policy, we use the term "personal
information" to describe information that can be associated with a
specific person and can be used to identify that person. We do not
consider personal information to include information that has been
anonymized so that it does not identify a specific user.
We store and process your personal information on our
computers in the US and elsewhere in the world where PayPal facilities
or our service providers are located, and we protect it by maintaining
physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in compliance with
applicable US federal and state regulations. We use computer safeguards
such as firewalls and data encryption, we enforce physical access
controls to our buildings and files, and we authorize access to personal
information
only for those employees who require it to fulfill their job
responsibilities.
How we use the personal information we collect
Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to
provide you with a secure, smooth, efficient, and customized experience.
We may use your personal information to:
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provide the PayPal Services and customer support you request;
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process transactions and send notices about your transactions;
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resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems;
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prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and enforce our User Agreement;
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customize, measure, and improve the PayPal Services and the content and layout of our website and applications;
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deliver targeted marketing, service update notices, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences;
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compare information for accuracy and verify it with third parties.
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Marketing
We don't sell or rent your personal information to third
parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We
may combine your information with information we collect from other
companies and use it to improve and personalize the PayPal Services,
content and advertising. If you don't wish to receive marketing
communications from us or participate in our ad-customization programs,
simply indicate your preference by logging into your account and going
to the
Profile subtab under the My Account tab and adjusting your preferences
under Account Information, or by following the directions provided with
the communication or advertisement.
If you no longer wish to receive notifications via our
application, you can adjust your preferences by visiting the settings
page of the application.
You can opt out of receiving SMS messages by texting STOP to
the number we send from for that particular service. Alternatively, you
can indicate your preference by logging into your account and adjusting
your preferences under Account Information or by following the
directions provided with the communication.
How we share personal information with other PayPal users
To process your payments, we may share some of your personal
information with the person or company that you are paying or that is
paying you. Your contact information, date of sign-up, the number of
payments you have received from verified PayPal users, and whether you
have verified control of a bank account are provided to other PayPal
users who you transact with through PayPal. In addition, this and other
information may also be shared with third parties when you use these
third
parties to access the PayPal Services. Unless you have agreed to it,
these third parties are not allowed to use this information for any
purpose other than to enable the PayPal Services.
If you are buying goods or services and pay through PayPal,
we may also provide the seller with your shipping and confirmed credit
card billing address to help complete your transaction with the seller.
The seller is not allowed to use this information to market their
services to you unless you have agreed to it. If an attempt to pay your
seller fails, or is later invalidated, we may also provide your seller
with details of the unsuccessful payment. To facilitate dispute
resolutions, we may provide a buyer with the seller's address so that
goods can be returned to the seller.
We work with third parties, including merchants, to enable
them to accept or facilitate payments from or to you using PayPal. In
doing so, a third party may share information about you with us, such as
your email address or mobile phone number to inform you that a payment
is sent to you or when you attempt to pay that merchant or through that
third party. We use this information to confirm that you are a PayPal
customer and that PayPal as a form of payment can be enabled, or where a
payment is sent to you to send you notification that you have received a
payment. Also, if you request that we validate your status as a PayPal
customer with a third party, we will do so. Please note that merchants
you buy from and contract with have their own privacy policies, and
PayPal may not be held responsible for their operations, including, but
not limited to, their information practices.
Regardless, we will not disclose your credit card number or
bank account number to anyone you have paid or who has paid you through
PayPal or with the third parties that offer or use the PayPal Services,
except with your express permission or if we are required to do so to
comply with a credit card rules, subpoena or other legal process.
How we share personal information with other parties
We may share your personal information with:
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Members of the eBay Inc. corporate family -- like eBay,
Shopping.com or Bill Me Later, Inc.-- to provide joint content, products
and services (like registration, transactions and customer support), to
help detect and prevent potentially illegal acts and violations of our
policies, and to guide decisions about their products, services and
communications. Members of our corporate family will use this
information to send you marketing communications only if you have
requested their services.
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Service providers under contract who help with parts of our
business operations such as fraud prevention, bill collection, marketing
and technology services. Our contracts dictate that these service
providers only use your information in connection with the services they
perform for us and not for their own benefit.
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Financial institutions that we partner with to jointly
create and offer a product such as the PayPal Extras credit card where
we share information with GE Capital to determine whether you should
receive pre-approved offers for the PayPal Extras credit card. These
financial institutions may only use this information to market
PayPal-related products, unless you have given consent for other uses.
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Credit bureaus to report account information, as permitted by law.
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Banking partners as required by credit card association
rules for inclusion on their list of terminated merchants (in the event
that you meet their criteria which includes having PayPal close your
PayPal Account due to your breach of the PayPal User Agreement).
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Companies that we plan to merge with or be acquired by.
(Should such a combination occur, we will require that the new combined
entity follow this privacy policy with respect to your personal
information. If your personal information could be used contrary to this
policy, you will receive prior notice.)
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Law enforcement, government officials, or other third parties when
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we are compelled to do so by a subpoena, court order or similar legal procedure
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we need to do so to comply with law or credit card rules
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we believe in good faith that the disclosure of personal
information is necessary to prevent physical harm or financial loss, to
report suspected illegal activity or to investigate violations of our
User Agreement.
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Other third parties with your consent or direction to do so.
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PayPal will not sell or rent any of your personal information
to third parties for their marketing purposes and only shares your
personal information with third parties as described in this policy.
If you open a PayPal account directly on a third party
website or via a third party application, any information that you enter
on that website or application (and not directly on a PayPal website)
will be shared with the owner of the third party website or application
and your information may be subject to their privacy policies.
How you can restrict PayPal from sharing your personal information
Federal and state laws allow you to restrict the sharing of
your personal information in certain instances. However, these laws also
state that you cannot restrict other types of sharing. Because we have
chosen to refrain from certain types of data sharing, the only type of
sharing of your personal information that you may restrict is as
follows:
If you do not want PayPal to share your personal information
with eBay companies for the purpose of marketing their products or with
other financial institutions for the purpose of marketing our jointly
offered products to you, please log in to your account and uncheck the
box in the Information Sharing section of the Notifications and
Information Sharing page. This page can be accessed by going to the
Profile subtab under the
My
Account tab.
You can also control how we use your contact information to
market the PayPal Services to you in the notifications preferences.
How you can access or change your personal information
You can review and edit your personal information at any time by logging in to your account and clicking the
Profile subtab under the
My Account
tab. You can also close your account through the PayPal website. If you
close your PayPal account, we will mark your account in our database as
"Closed," but will keep your account information in our database. This
is necessary in order to deter fraud, by ensuring that persons who
try to commit fraud will not be able to avoid detection simply by
closing their account and opening a new account. However, if you close
your account, your personally identifiable information will not be used
by us for any further purposes, nor sold or shared with third parties,
except as necessary to prevent fraud and assist law enforcement, as
required by law or in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
How you can contact us about privacy questions
If you have questions or concerns regarding this policy, you should contact us by using
this form
or writing to us at PayPal, Attn: Privacy Department, P.O. Box 45950,
Omaha, NE 68145-0950. PayPal maintains offices at 2211 N. First Street,
San Jose, CA.
PayPal has been awarded TRUSTe's Privacy Seal signifying that
this privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for
compliance with
TRUSTe's program requirements
including transparency, accountability and choice regarding the
collection and use of your personal information. If after contacting
PayPal our response to your privacy concern is unsatisfactory, then you
may contact TRUSTe by completing the form located at
http://watchdog.truste.com/pvr.php?page=complaint.
The TRUSTe program covers only information that is collected
through this Web site, www.paypal.com and does not cover information
that may be collected through our mobile applications or downloadable
software.
