| BellSouth is now part of the new AT&T. As we continue to consolidate and re-brand from BellSouth to AT&T, the BellSouth privacy policy will continue to apply to legacy BellSouth services and to your interactions with BellSouth Web sites. We will be updating our privacy policies to reflect this change.
At BellSouth we are committed to honoring the privacy
of our on-line customers and visitors to our Web sites. We recognize
the importance to you of maintaining an appropriate level of privacy
and security for the personal information we collect from you over the
Internet. The following discloses our Web site information gathering
and use practices and is limited to the protection and use of personal
information collected by us in the online environment. Your access to
and use of our site are subject to this policy and any other terms of
use or policies posted by us. Please note that this privacy statement
applies only to this site and not to the web sites of our advertisers
or of other companies or organizations to which we link. All references
to “BellSouth” throughout this policy statement include,
unless otherwise stated, all BellSouth affiliate companies, successors
and assigns.
How does BellSouth combat phishing?
We do not ask you to disclose sensitive personal information in an
email. Before you access your BellSouth account online and are asked
to disclose such information to us, you will be asked to enter your
login name and password for authentication purposes.
Our normal practice is to send you an email confirming significant
changes made to your account online, such as, updates to the email address
registered with us, payments on an account, or new services added.
You can protect yourself by regularly logging into your online account
to ensure that all transactions are legitimate. Other tips on how you
can protect yourself can be found at http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs.html.
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What Kinds of Information Does BellSouth Collect and Use?
The only personally identifiable information we collect about visitors
is provided voluntarily. In general, you can visit our Web site without
telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself.
However, some portions of our Web site may be accessible only to users
who have registered with us (and who may be asked to provide certain
information as part of the registration or login process). In addition,
our Web servers may use “cookies” (described below) to collect
information about visitors such as domain names, but not your e-mail
addresses. This information may be aggregated to measure such things
as the number of visits, average time spent on the site, number of pages
viewed, and methods by which our site was found. BellSouth uses such
information to evaluate the use of our site and to continuously improve
the content and services being provided.
At times we may ask you for contact information or conduct on-line
surveys in order to better understand your needs so that we can provide
you with a customized experience. If we wish to use this information
other than as set forth in this statement, we will let you know at the
time of collection. We will take commercially reasonable steps to safeguard
this information from unauthorized access.
When you access your account information, order a service or make a
payment on-line, request product or service information, send us e-mail,
register to receive news or information alerts, establish a “My
Yellow Pages,” submit a click wrap agreement or enter a contest
that we are sponsoring, we will ask you to provide individually-identifiable
information to us. Except as otherwise provided below under the heading
“Who Has Access to This Information?”, when you supply information
about yourself for a specific purpose, we use the information for that
purpose and to manage the internal operations and security of our Web
site consistent with the terms of use and policies established from
time to time governing this site. Such purpose may involve the disclosure
of such information to unaffiliated companies/vendors where necessary
to and for the limited purpose of processing your request, processing
a transaction authorized by you or providing you with products or services.
We also want you to be aware that certain information related to telecommunications
services provided to you by BellSouth, commonly referred to as “Customer
Proprietary Network Information” or “CPNI,” is subject
to special Federal laws and regulations, with which we are fully committed
to comply, both in the on-line environment and in all other respects.
For more information about these special rules and our related policies
regarding the use of CPNI, please visit – BellSouth’s Public
Policy website at http://bellsouthcorp.com/policy/.
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Who Has Access to This Information?
Unless we specifically disclose it to you at the time of collection
or subsequently obtain your approval, we will not make visitor or customer-specific
information that is gathered on our site available to unaffiliated organizations
for commercial purposes unrelated to the business of BellSouth. BellSouth
and its affiliated companies use this information to help us deliver
the services you have requested, or to design or offer specific products
or services that we believe will be useful to you. While we may use
this information to contact you or to send materials to you for marketing
purposes, we will take commercially reasonable steps to safeguard such
information from unauthorized access by any other parties. As we strive
to meet the needs or our customers, we may disclose personally identifiable
information we collect, as described above, to companies and vendors
that perform marketing or other services on our behalf or with whom
we have joint marketing agreements so that we may provide a full range
of products and services to you. Our policy is to prohibit these companies
from otherwise selling or disclosing the personal information we provide.
We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate,
prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud,
situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any
person, violations of BellSouth’s Terms of Use, or as otherwise
required by law.
Certain federal, state and local laws or government regulations may
require us to disclose non-public personal information about you. In
these circumstances, we will use reasonable efforts to disclose only
the information required by law, subpoena or court order to be disclosed.
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Cookies
Our site may make use of cookies (or a similar technology) to better
manage our sites and to assist us in providing you with tailored information
and services. A cookie is a tiny element of data that a Web site can
send to your browser, which is stored on your hard drive so that we
can do things such as better serve you as you navigate through our site
or when you return. You may set your browser to notify you or decline
the receipt of a cookie; however, certain features of our sites may
not function properly or be available if your browser is configured
to disable cookies.
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E-Mail
BellSouth’s policy is not to read or disclose private e-mail
communications that are transmitted using BellSouth services except
to respond, if directed to us, or as required to operate the service,
as set forth in the terms of use and policies established from time
to time governing the service, or as otherwise required by law.
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Children
BellSouth recognizes the importance of children’s safety and
privacy on the Internet. For this reason and to comply with certain
laws, we do not intentionally collect personal, individually identifiable
information from children under the age of 13, nor do we offer content
targeted to children under 13.Children should always ask their parents
or guardians for permission before disclosing any information online.
Several software companies can provide children’s safety software,
including some that may have reduced prices or other special offers
for certain BellSouth customers.
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Security
BellSouth maintains physical, electronic and procedural safeguards
designed to protect the confidentiality of personal information provided
by you at our Web site. For example, unique passcodes or passwords are
required to access a number of our Web site services. In addition to
requiring the use of a unique passcode or password, all payments processed
through our Web site require personal transactional information provided
by you to be sent in a “Secure Session” using Secure Socket
Layer encryption technology. This technology encrypts – or scrambles
– your financial or credit card account information to help prevent
unauthorized parties from reading it. We regularly test and update our
technology to help protect your personal information. However, such
precautions do not guarantee that our Web site is invulnerable to all
security breaches. BellSouth makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation
that use of our Web site is protected from all viruses, security threats
or other vulnerabilities and that your information will always be secure.
When doing business with others, such as advertisers to whom you can
link from our site, you should consider the separate security and privacy
policies of those other sites.
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Discussion Areas
This site may provide discussion areas so that customers and visitors
can communicate freely and share ideas. Please remember that any information
that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you
should exercise caution when disclosing such information. These discussion
areas may be monitored occasionally in order to enhance the safety and
respect for all of our customers and visitors, and off-topic, unlawful
or otherwise inappropriate content of materials of which we become aware
may or may not be removed from the site during the course of such monitoring.
However, BellSouth is not responsible for any information posted or
remaining on these discussion areas.
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Links to Other Sites
For the convenience of our visitors and customers, this Web site may
contain links to other sites. While we generally try to link only to
sites that share similar high standards and respect for privacy, we
are not responsible for the content, products or services offered or
the privacy and security practices employed by these other sites.
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Third Party Ad Servers
We use a third-party advertising company to serve ads when you visit
our Site. This company may use information (not including your name,
address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to our
and other web sites, in combination non-personally identifiable information
about your purchases and interests from other online and offline sources,
in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest
to you. In addition, we share web site usage information about our visitors
to our sites with this company for the purpose of managing and targeting
advertisements and for market research analysis on our site and other
sites. For these purposes, we and our third-party advertising company
may note some of the pages you visit on our site through the use of
pixel tags (also called clear gifs) or other similar tracking mechanisms.
In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party
advertiser may place or recognize a unique “cookie” on your
computer.
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Revisions
Because of the evolving nature of the technologies that we use and
the way that we conduct business, we may amend this policy from time
to time. We will post any revisions on this site.
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