Thanks for using Skipper. Our goal at Skipper is simple: make the internet better; and we are starting with retail. We understand that online search activity can be very personal. As such, we take very seriously the respect and protection of your privacy and security. We are committed to following and continuously evolving best practices to support this principle.

We — meaning the Center for Knowledge Acceleration at Carnegie Mellon University — put together this Privacy Policy to help you understand what we information might collect, aggregate, use, and disclose to third parties through the suite of Skipper tools, external tools that integrate with the Skipper system, or other services provided to you by Skipper (collectively referred to as “Services”).

By accessing or using the Services, you agree to this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service.

What Information We Collect

What types of information we collect from you depends on how you use the Services, what Services you use, and what information you choose to provide or make available to us. We collect information from you when you:

• Create or register an account, and when you administer your account
• Input information or data into any of our Services, or post or upload Content to our Services
• Submit questions, requests, other communications to us via forms, email, or other communication media
• Contact us for customer support or technical support
• Visit any of our websites or download any of our apps
• Participate in any promotions, demonstrations, contests, surveys, or other marketing events
• Interact with other Skipper users and guests on our community forums
• Integrate third-party products and services with your Skipper account

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Content

One of the core capabilities of the Skipper system is the ability to save your own personalized notes and custom ratings. We call any information uploaded or inputted into the Skipper system “Content”. You (and anyone who can interact with your use of the Skipper system) ultimately controls the nature of the Content, and our collection, use, and disclosure practices with respect to Content are separate from those with respect to other sorts of information we collect, including Customer Information.

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Information collected automatically through your use of the Services

We collect information about how you use the Services and your actions on the Services, including IP addresses, what software and hardware you use (such as browser types, operating systems, ISPs, platform type, device type, mobile device identifiers such as make and model, mobile carrier), pages or features of Skipper used and associated dates and time stamps, links you click within Skipper, whether you open messages sent to your account, and other statistics related to your usage of the Services. We may also use tools, including third-party tools, to collect analytics data. Some of this information is collected through the use of "cookies" and other tracking technologies, such as web beacons, session replay scripts, and similar technologies ("tracking technologies"). We may also work with third party partners to employ tracking technologies.

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Aggregated and anonymized information

We may collect information by aggregating and anonymizing other information. The aggregation and anonymization process prevents the information from being reassociated or identified with any one customer account, user, or individual. We may use aggregated and anonymized information for a wide variety of statistical and analytical purposes.

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How we use the information we collect

We use the information we collect for a variety of purposes, and how we use it depends on what we collect and what Services you use (or features of the Services). These purposes may include:

• Providing the Services to you
• Responding to requests or inquiries from you
• Providing customer support or technical assistance
• Contacting you to provide product updates, information about products you have requested or purchased
• Marketing Skipper products, services and features that you may be interested in, and monitoring the performance of our advertisements and marketing efforts
• Deriving market insights, ways to improve the Services, and other business analysis or research purposes
• Customizing existing and future product offerings and other aspects of the Services to you and other users
• Securing the Services and our systems, and protecting your information and data
• Modeling behavioral patterns among users in the Skipper system
• Sharing with third parties for the purposes discussed in "How we share information", below
• Any legitimate business or research purpose purpose, provided that the information is aggregated and anonymized

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Use of Content

Notwithstanding anything else in this Privacy Policy to the contrary, we will not use or access your Content except in the following cases: for providing the Services to you; where you (or, if you are an end user, the Skipper customer through which you have an account) explicitly approve access (e.g., during a customer support inquiry); where compelled to do so in response to lawful requests by law enforcement or government regulators; where necessary to ensure the stability and security of the Services and our systems (e.g., where we have reason to believe specific Content is degrading server stability); and where necessary to protect the rights, privacy, safety, or property of you, us, or others. We may also analyze metadata related to Content (such as total number of records, file size, API volume, access logs, etc.).

How we share information

We disclose information we collect in the following cases:

• You asked us to, or otherwise gave your specific consent (for example, by sharing Content using the Condense link sharing feature, you consent to our sharing that Content with other Skipper users).
• With vendors we engage to provide you with aspects of the Services, such as data storage, hosting, and payment processing.
• With third-party service providers who enable certain features or functionalities of the Services that you’ve requested.
• With vendors we engage to help us gain insights and analytics into how the Services are used and how they might be improved (for example, we may use third-party data enrichment services to match Customer Information or other personally identifiable information we collect with publicly available database information in order to communicate more effectively with you).
• As necessary to comply with applicable law, including governmental requests, law enforcement requests, and otherwise to protect the rights, privacy, safety, or property of you, us, or others.
• With others for any legitimate business or research purpose, provided the information is aggregated and anonymized.
• With the Carnegie Mellon IRB as per their review requirements
• In its anonymized form, published and/or disclosed by Carnegie Mellon University as a research result / artifact.

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How we secure your information

Skipper is powered by Google’s Firebase, as such information is encrypted and secured on the Google Cloud (https://cloud.google.com/firestore/docs/server-side-encryption). Additionally, we implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect the information we collect and store. Unfortunately, no security measures are 100% foolproof, and as such no network or system (including ours) can be guaranteed to be 100% secure against destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to information we collect and store. If you believe your information may not be secure for any reason, please contact us immediately at support@skipper.co

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