Privacy

Cosmic Blobs Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting the Cosmic Blobs Web site. Cosmic Blobs is a creation of SolidWorks Corporation (“we”, “us”), a subsidiary of Dassault Systemes, S.A.. The site is intended as a location where children and adults can learn about Cosmic Blobs, our “electronic modeling clay” or 3D modeling software. We have designed the site to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and we take care to ensure that the site is appropriate for children. Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the collection and use of the personal information you submit on Web pages where this policy is posted. The content and services we provide visitors may change over time. However, we will treat all personal information we collect in accordance with the privacy notice in effect at the time the information is collected.

THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM VISITORS TO THE WEBSITE

In general, you can visit the Cosmic Blobs website without telling us who you are or revealing any personal information about yourself, such as your name, phone number or postal or email address. We may collect non-personally identifiable information from visitors (such as screen name, birthday, gender, state and country of residence) to allow visitors, including children, to participate in various activities, such as posting Blobs to our gallery, without giving unnecessary personal information.

In addition, our web server collects certain non-personally identifiable information when you visit many of our Web pages such as the type of browser you are using (e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer), the type of operating system you are using (e.g., Windows 2000 or Mac OS), and the domain name of your Internet service provider (e.g., America Online, Earthlink). It also collects IP addresses to obtain certain aggregate information concerning the use of our website. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you’re surfing the web. We do not link IP addresses to any personally identifiable information. Therefore you can remain anonymous when you visit our website.

Our web servers also collect information such as number of visits, average time spent on the site, pages viewed, etc., but this information is not traceable back to an individual user. SolidWorks uses this information to analyze how people use our site and generate ideas on how the site might be improved.

Occasionally we do request personally identifiable information, such as when you want to download software, respond to a survey, give feedback on the product, request customer or technical support, or enter a contest from our website. Supplying such information to us is optional, but you may be unable to complete certain transactions without giving us such information. We also collect from parents/adults additional types of information (e.g., credit card and billing information) when they purchase products and offerings at our site.

HOW WE USE THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY VISITORS, INCLUDING CHILDREN

Contests and Sweepstakes. We run contests and sweepstakes online, generally involving the submission of Cosmic Blobs created by users of our software. To participate in a contest, a user, who could be child, is asked to provide his or her first and last name and email address with the blob submission. Blob submissions are posted without any of the child’s personally identifiable information but the email address is retained pending the decision as to the winner of the contest. If we need to have more than a one-time contact with the child, we will also ask for the email address of the child’s parent. We will then inform the child’s parent of the child’s entry in the contest and give the parent the option to have the child’s entry deleted. If the child wins a contest and there is a prize to be awarded, we will send an email to the child and request that a parent call us at the phone number supplied in order to give us permission to mail the prize and to give us an appropriate mailing address. We will not ask the child for his or her address.

The information collected pursuant to a contest is used only for the purpose of conducting the contest or sweepstakes. Information may be passed to a fulfillment house to help run the contest or sweepstakes and the fulfillment house is obligated to maintain the confidentiality of the information and not use it for any other purpose or share it with any other third party. Once the contest or sweepstakes is finished, the personally identifiable information is deleted.

Electronic Newsletter Subscription. Cosmic Blobs offers children the opportunity to sign up to receive the "Blab" newsletter by e-mail. When a childs asks to receive the email newsletter, they are asked to provide his or her name, email address and the email address of his or her parent. Within two business days of receiving this information, we send the child's parent a notification e-mail informing him or her of the child's request to receive by e-mail the "Blab" newsletter on an ongoing basis and give the parent the option to have his or her child's information be removed from our newsletter database. At any time after receiving this notification e-mail, the child's parent has the opportunity to exercise the option to request that we stop sending the child the "Blab" newsletter and have the child's information removed from our newsletter database by following the "unsubscribe" instructions found on the Newsletter page of the website, or in the notification e-mail or at the end of any of the newsletter e-mails. In addition, parents may at any time review any identifiable information collected about their child by submitting a request to support@cosmicblobs.com. All information collected for the "Blab" newsletter is used only to send the child the electronic newsletter.

No Friends’ Email Addresses Requested. Although we hope your child enjoys our website and the Cosmic Blobs software, we will never ask them to provide us with email addresses or names of their friends who may also be interested in Cosmic Blobs. Instead, we will encourage your child to tell his or her friends about our website and encourage the friends to visit the Cosmic Blobs website themselves.

Purchasing the Cosmic Blobs Software. When visitors want to purchase a license to the Cosmic Blobs software from the site, we require them to give us their full name, billing address, email address and credit card number/expiration date. (We presume that this information is provided by adults rather than children.) This purchase activity (including the collection of information) is conducted by a third party fulfillment house which is obligated to maintain the confidentiality of the information. Once the order is fulfilled (the product may be downloaded from the site), the credit card information is deleted. At the time the order is placed we may ask you to “opt in” for further contact regarding such things as sales and special offers and we may contact you following that “opt in” permission. We may also share your information with other companies and organizations whose products we think may be of interest to you so that they may contact you.

Customer/Technical Support. We provide support for the Cosmic Blobs software and this website via email request only. The email address, whether from a child or an adult, is personally identifiable information. We use the email address only to respond, once, to the technical support inquiry. If we believe the email address belongs to a child and requires more than one response, we will request a parent’s email address and will then correspond with the parent. We may share the email address with a third party that helps us provide customer or technical support. The third party cannot use the email address for any purpose other than responding to the support request and must maintain the confidentiality of the information. After we have responded to the technical support request, the email address is deleted (although the question and response may be maintained in a technical support database).

Feedback About the Cosmic Blobs Product. Occasionally we may solicit feedback on the use of the Cosmic Blobs software. SolidWorks will use the feedback information solely for internal purposes, such as to analyze your or your child’s reaction to the Cosmic Blobs software with the reaction of other users of similar or dissimilar demographics and to test reactions to proposed and actual changes to the Cosmic Blobs software. Some of the feedback information will be collected by third parties who specialize in conducting on-line surveys or who are assisting us with developing the Cosmic Blobs website. They are obligated to maintain the privacy of your information.

We may also solicit your endorsement of the product for promotional purposes. We will ask for your separate, specific permission to use your personally identifiable endorsement for promotional purposes.

We may disclose personally identifiable information in response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena. We also may disclose such information in response to a law enforcement agency's request or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our terms of use, or as otherwise required by law. In addition, we may transfer information about you if we are acquired by or merged with another company.

Agents and contractors of SolidWorks Corporation who have access to personally identifiable information are required to protect this information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy by, for example, not using the information for any purpose other than to carry out the services they are performing for SolidWorks.

Although we take appropriate measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personally identifiable information that we collect will never be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

LINKS TO THIRD PARTY SITES

Our site contains links to other sites (identified by a different URL address on the address box of your internet browser), which may have different policies with respect to privacy. You should consult the privacy policy of each site you visit to understand how they handle your personal information.

OUR COMMITMENT TO SECURITY

We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online.

HOW YOU CAN ACCESS OR CORRECT INFORMATION

To access the personally identifiable information that this Cosmic Blobs Web site has collected about you online from the pages on which this Privacy Policy is posted or to correct factual errors in such information, please send an email to privacy@solidworks.com.

To protect your privacy and security, we will take reasonable steps to help verify your identity before granting access or making corrections.

CHILDREN'S PRIVACY

Visitors to this site may navigate the site without providing any personally identifiable information. And generally the only personally identifiable information we collect from a child is an email address. If we have an occasion to collect more information from a person, such as name and address and the person and the person indicates they are under 13, we will inform the child that a parent's verifiable consent is required or we will collect the e-mail address of the user's parent in lieu of the user's e-mail address. We use the parent's e-mail address to seek the parent's verifiable consent or notify the parent of his/her child's online activities and enable the parent to unsubscribe his/her child from participation in the activity. If a user is under 13, we will not condition his/her participation in an online activity on the disclosure of more information than is reasonably necessary to participate in the activity, however, certain activities, such as contests, may not be available. We do not share children's information with outside third parties not bound by this Privacy Policy.

If you would like to review any personally identifiable information that we have collected online from your child, have this information deleted, and/or request that there be no further collection or use of your child's information or if you have questions about these information practices, you may contact us at privacy@solidworks.com, or at SolidWorks Corporation – Cosmic Blobs, Attn. Cosmic Blobs Privacy Officer, 300 Baker Avenue, Concord, MA 01742 (978) 318-5418. Please provide a telephone number where we can reach you. We will take steps to verify the identity of anyone requesting information about a child and to ensure that the person is in fact the child’s parent or legal guardian.

HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or its implementation you may contact us at: privacy@solidworks.com or at

SolidWorks Corporation – Cosmic Blobs
300 Baker Avenue, Concord, MA 01742.
Attn. Cosmic Blobs Privacy Officer

The Cosmic Blobs Website is intended for domestic U.S. users and is consequently directed only toward residents of the United States.

This privacy policy was last updated October 22, 2004.