MacFarlane Chang DC Soccer L.L.C d/b/a D.C. United, as agent for Major
League Soccer, L.L.C.("we/our/us"), produces dcunited.com, the
Official Website of D.C. United (the "Website"). We are committed
to safeguarding your privacy online. This Privacy Policy is applicable to
this Website only.
This Privacy Policy explains our policy regarding the collection, use
and disclosure of your personal information. As we update and expand our
services, this Privacy Policy may change, so please refer back to it
periodically. By accessing our Website or using our services, you consent
to our information practices and to our Terms of Use.
1. Collection and Use of Personal Information
- General
Personal information means information that can be used to identify
and contact you, specifically your name, postal delivery address, e-mail
address, payment method (e.g., credit card or debit card), age or
birthdate, and telephone number, as well as other information when such
information is combined with your personal information.
If you submit any personal information to us, MLS, SUM or to our
third party service providers acting on our behalf, we will not sell,
lease, or share your personal information with or to anyone else, except as
follows:
- to our third party service providers, and only so that they may
help us provide the services you've requested and in certain circumstances
to provide you with ticket related offers;
- to MLS, Soccer United Marketing, LLC ("SUM") or one
or more MLS Member Clubs, to the extent that you've submitted information
that relates specifically to them (e.g., you've asked to receive the
newsletter of one or more Member Clubs via email; or you've purchased
Member Club-specific merchandise from the store), so that they may learn
more about fans like you, and provide better services to you; and
- on occasion, we may offer a special promotion (such as a
sweepstakes, contest, fantasy soccer or a free subscription to goods and
services) on the Website in conjunction with MLS, SUM,third party service
provider, sponsor, or promotional partner, and share your information with
MLS, SUM, that third party service provider, sponsor, or promotional
partner so that it can send you other special promotions it offers, but
only if you give us permission to do so.
- Special Offers and Promotions
With your permission, we (or MLS or SUM) may also send you e-mails
with special offers and promotions. If you don't want to receive these, you
may change your preferences.
- Cookies
To help us serve you better, we (or MLS or SUM) collect information
that does not identify you personally, but rather identifies your computer
or browser. This is done by using little files called "cookies"
and by tracking IP addresses. A cookie is a small amount of data, which
often includes an anonymous unique identifier that is sent to your browser
from a Website's computers and stored on your computer's hard drive.
Cookies operate in the background, and you can turn them off if you wish,
but doing so may impair your ability to use some of the features on the
Website. We (or MLS or SUM) may use cookies to make the Website work better
by, for example, keeping track of your login name, password and, if you
want to buy things while on the Website, your "shopping
cart."
We (or MLS or SUM) may also allow other companies that are
presenting advertisements or providing services on our pages to set and
access cookies on your computer. Those companies' use of cookies will be
covered by their own privacy policies, not ours.
Specifically, we use a third-party advertising company to serve ads
when you visit certain pages of the Website. This company may use
aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or
telephone number) about your visits to the Website in order to provide
advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.
If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies,
there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows the user to accept
or reject cookies. If you set your browser not to accept cookies, you may
not be able to take advantage of certain services on the Website.
We (or MLS or SUM) may also use IP addresses to analyze trends,
help us administer the Website, track the movement of visitors, and gather
broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not
linked to personally identifiable information, except as may be necessary
to verify users' locations to determine the applicability of blackout
restrictions for dcunited.com or MLSnet.com video/audio subscription
products, as applicable.
- Aggregated Demographic Information
We (or MLS or SUM) may share aggregated demographic information with
third parties, but this information is not linked to any personal
information that can identify you or another individual person. Therefore,
no personal information is disclosed in this manner.
- Business Transfers
As time passes, D.C. United, Major League Soccer, L.L.C. or SUM may
be sold along with its assets, or other transactions may occur in which
customer information is one of the business assets transferred. In such a
case, the customer information that we have gathered may be one of the
business assets we transfer.
- Disclosure for Legal Purposes
The law requires that we (or MLS or SUM) may be required to share
your personal information and non-personal information (see
"Cookies" section above for examples of non-personal information)
pursuant to judicial or governmental subpoenas, warrants or orders. If (or
MLS or SUM) are required to do so, (or MLS or SUM) will, of course, obey
the law. In addition, notwithstanding any term to the contrary in this
Privacy Policy, (or MLS or SUM) reserve the right to use and disclose share
your personal and non-personal 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 this Website's Terms of Use, or as otherwise required
by law.
2. Our Security Practices
Your preferences are password protected for your privacy and security.
In certain areas, we use industry-standard SSL encryption to protect data
transmissions.
3. How You Can Review Your Personal Information
If you want to review your personal information, you can revise your
preferences. Your preferences include your shipping, payment and account
information, as well as whether you want to receive communications from
us.
If you want to close your account with us and have us delete the
personal information in it (except for information that we keep for
record-keeping purposes), you should contact our Director of Customer
Service.
4. Choice
Our registration and order forms contain a box for you to indicate
whether or not you consent to receive e-mail messages from us. Unless you
give us your consent to use your personal information for these purposes,
we and our partners will only use it to complete the transaction or provide
the service or product you have requested. If you indicate that you consent
to receive e-mail communications or solicitations, but you later change
your mind, you can revise your preferences.
5. Links
The Website contains links to other sites produced by MLS. MLS teams,
SUM and websites operated by unrelated third parties. We are not
responsible for the privacy practices of third party websites. We encourage
you to be aware of this when your leave the Website and to read the privacy
policies of every website that collects personally identifiable information
from you. The Privacy Policy applies only to this Website.
6. Special Rules For Children
Because of federal law, we cannot collect any personal information from
a child under the age of thirteen without the consent of that child's
parent. The statements in this Privacy Policy generally about our
collection and use of personal information also apply to our treatment of
personal information from children under the age of thirteen, with the
added protection of the special rules that follow.
- Parental Consent
Some services on the Website (e.g., Buying or ordering tickets)
require the submission of a credit card number along with personal
information, and are therefore not available to children. Other services on
the Website (e.g., fantasy soccer) are not available to children under the
age of thirteen. For services that are available to children under the age
of thirteen, if a child under the age of thirteen attempts to complete any
registration form on the Website a screen will appear that says
"Please get permission from your parents or guardian." We will
then instruct the child to have a parent or guardian complete the
registration form, either in person or by e-mail. We will provide the
parent or guardian with a notice describing the Privacy Policy and will ask
for the parent's consent to our collection and use of personal information
from or about their child. The parent will also be asked to submit a credit
card number (the card will not be charged) for verification purposes
only.
If the registration form is not completed with a credit card number
to verify parental or guardian consent, the child will not be able to
access those of our activities requiring registration and we will not
collect any personal information from that child. Failure to complete the
registration form will also prevent the child from entering online
discussions or otherwise making personal information available to the
public on the Website. A child's parent or guardian has the option to
consent to the collection and use of their child's personal information
without consenting to the disclosure of that information to third parties,
but if such disclosure is necessary to make available a service which has
been requested, then the child will not have access to such service.
- Information Collected
Depending on the special service requested, personal information
collected may include a name, email address, address or age of a child. We
will not condition a child's participation in any activity on the Website,
such as fantasy soccer, on the child's disclosing more information than is
reasonably necessary to participate in that activity. A parent can review
his or her child's personal information by accessing the child's
preferences. A parent can instruct us to delete the child's personal
information or to stop collecting or using the child's personal information
by contacting the Privacy Administrator.
- Information Use
We may use the personal information to provide the child with the
special services for which he or she has registered, as well as for
fulfilling a requested transaction, record keeping, marketing back to the
child or making it publicly available through a chat room. (Please note
that when anyone, including a child, uses a message board or online
discussion on the Website, the communications are publicly available to the
other participants.)
- Information Disclosure
After obtaining the consent of the child's parent or guardian, we,
our service providers, MLS, SUM and MLS Member Clubs (to the extent that
any information disclosed is specific to them), will maintain the
confidentiality, security, and integrity of the personal information
collected about the child. A child's information will only be disclosed to
our third party service providers and the applicable Member Club(s) as
described in this Privacy Policy.
7. Contact Us
If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, you can
contact us at:
D.C. United Customer Service
RFK Stadium
2400 E Capitol ST SE
Washington, DC 20003
202-587-5000
dcucustomerservice@dcunited.com
8. Notification of Changes
If we decide to make an important change to our Privacy Policy, we will
post a notification and link on our homepage so that you can review the
updated policy. If at any point we wish to use your personal information in
a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will
notify you by means of an e-mail and give you the opportunity to indicate
whether you consent to the proposed use.
Date of last revision: March 5, 2009