orkut Privacy Notice

18 February 2009

The Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use Google's products and services, including information provided when you use orkut. In addition, the following describes our additional privacy practices that are specific to orkut. If you are using Google Talk in conjunction with orkut, please refer to the Google Talk Privacy Notice for information about our privacy practices that are specific to Talk.

Personal information

• You need a Google Account to use orkut. Google asks for some personal information when you create a Google Account, including your email address and a password, which is used to protect your account from unauthorised access. A Google Account allows you to access many of our services that require registration.
• As an orkut member, you can create a profile or orkut community that includes personal information, such as your gender, age, occupation, hobbies and interests, plus other content, such as photos. This information may be accessed and viewed by other orkut members, as determined by your privacy settings.
• When you invite new members into your network or send messages through orkut, we collect and maintain information associated with those messages, including email addresses and content.
• When you send and receive SMS messages to or from the orkut website, we collect and maintain information associated with those messages, such as the phone number, the wireless operator associated with the phone number, the content of the message and the date and time of the transaction.

Uses and Information Sharing

• Google maintains and processes your personal information and the content of your communications in order to provide your orkut account, access to that account and use of orkut services, in addition to the purposes described in the Google Privacy Policy. Your profile information is displayed according to the preferences that you set in your account.
• When you send messages through orkut, your name and email address will be identified in the message. We also use your name and email address to notify you of new members, messages or other information, such as invitations to join friends' networks, new testimonials or "fan" ratings and crush notices.
• If you invite another person to join orkut, we use the name and email addressthat you provide us with to contact that person and, if necessary, remind that person that he/she has been invited to join orkut. All invitees are given the option not to receive further invitations from orkut.
• Friends or other persons who know your email address can use that address to look up whether you have an orkut profile registered under that email address and which orkut profile has been created under that email address.
• When you send and receive SMS messages to or from the orkut website, we use the data that we collect to operate, develop and improve our services. Our third-party providers may also collect data about your SMS usage in order to provide the service. In addition, your wireless operator collects data about your SMS usage. Their practices are governed by their own privacy policies.
• Orkut allows third-party developers to upload applications to the orkut application directory. You may choose to use an application by adding it to your profile. If you add an application to your profile, the application may collect information from your profile or other information about your activities on orkut and share that information with others. Please see our Terms of Use of Applications for details about data sharing when you add an application.
• When one of your orkut friends adds an application to their profile page, your public profile name, profile URL and profile photo will be shared with the developer of the application and with other users and viewers of the application, even if you have not added that application to your profile.

Ads served by third parties on orkut

• Ads served on orkut outside of applications: Google uses Google AdSense technology to serve ads on the orkut website. Most of the ads that you see on orkut (outside of applications) are served by Google through Google AdSense. However, Google also allows advertisers to choose to use a third-party ad server to serve ads through AdSense. Those third-party ad servers may use cookies or web beacons to recognise your computer for purposes of tailoring advertising content or measuring ad effectiveness. A list of those third-party servers is available here, along with links to their websites which provide information about how to opt out of their cookies if such functionality is available from the ad server.
• Ads served within applications: Application developers may choose to use a third-party ad server to serve ads into the developer's applications on the orkut site. Such ad servers may use cookies or web beacons to recognise your computer for purposes of tailoring advertising content or measuring ad effectiveness. We encourage you to contact the application developers to obtain more information about which ad servers the developers use and/or if you are seeking information about how to opt out of the cookie for such ad servers (if such functionality is available from the ad servers).

Your choices

• Google provides a number of tools to restrict who can view your profile and other personal information. When you create your profile, look for the "golden key" icon, which allows you to limit viewing certain information to yourself, your friends, friends of friends or to make the information available to all orkut members.
• You can update your profile information at any time by clicking the "edit" button in your profile setting.
• Messages that you receive from orkut can be sent to your primary email address or orkut inbox, depending on the preferences that you choose in the "my settings" page.
• You can terminate your account at any time. To learn how, click here. If you terminate your account, your profile, including any messages in your inbox, will be removed from the site and deleted from orkut servers. Due to the way we maintain this service, such deletion may not be immediate and residual copies of your profile information may remain on backup media.

More information

Google adheres to the US Safe Harbour privacy principles. For more information about the Safe Harbour framework or our registration, see the US Department of Commerce's website.

Further information about orkut is available here.

For more information about our privacy practices, go to the full privacy policy. If you have additional questions, please contact us any time. Or write to us at:

Privacy Matters
c/o Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043 (USA)