Once you register on the Website, you are not anonymous to us. For various services on the Website, we may require you to provide appropriate information as indicated on the forms throughout the Website. Where possible, we indicate which fields are required and which fields are optional. You always have the option to not provide information by choosing not to use a particular service or feature.

For all of our services that require payment from you - in order to most efficiently serve you, credit card transactions and order fulfillment are handled by established third party banking and processing agents. They receive the information needed to verify, authorize and charge your credit card or other payment modes. We do not store payment information such as billing address, credit card number, credit card expiration date. We do collect information required by these third parties in order to ensure validity of transactions.

When you visit our Website, some information may be automatically collected, such as your computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address, your computer's operating system, the browser type, the address of a referring web site, and the time and date of your visit. We may use this information to protect, enhance or update our Website.

We use encryption where appropriate to safeguard your data. We use procedural and technical safeguards to protect your personal information against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access and disclosure to protect your privacy, including encryption, firewalls and secure socket layers, consistent with a website of our size. We treat data as an asset that must be protected against loss and unauthorized access. We employ many different security techniques to protect such data from unauthorized access by users inside and outside the company. However, please note that 100% security is not a realistic guarantee any website or service exposed to the internet can provide today and neither can we.

A "cookie" is a small text file placed on your computer's hard drive by a web server - which is acknowledged by your web browser. We use cookies for a variety of purposes, including, but not limited to the following: (a) To assist us in providing our services to you; (b) To allow you to change pages during your visit to our Website without repeatedly having to re-enter your password; (c) To track activity on our Website; (d) To introduce services to you on this and other websites. You can usually set parameters on your computer that allow you to elect to accept cookies or to have your browser notify you each time a cookie is offered. You can also usually delete cookies from your hard drive. You can find instructions on how to accept cookies, on how to be notified that a cookie is being offered, and on how to delete cookies through your Internet Browser. If your browser does not accept cookies from our website, some features we provide may not function properly. If your browser does not accept cookies from our website, some features we provide may not function properly.

If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails or letters, or if other users or third parties send us correspondence about your activities or postings on the Website, we may collect such information into a file specific to you.

When you register on our Website, you may provide us the following information. We describe how this information is used. If you do not agree to our usage of your information, please do not use our Website.

In this document, we categorize information as public, private or protected. Any information categorized as public will be shared with other members on the website without any further approval process. Any information categorized as private is never shared with other members. Any information categorized as protected is shared with other members only after your explicit approval. For sharing protected information with a member who is not affiliated to the same community as you, we will always ask permission from both of you explicitly. For sharing protected information with a member who is affiliated to the same community as you, we will do so without any further explicit approval process. When you affiliate successfully with a community listed on our Website, you authorize us to share your protected information with other members affiliated with that community without any further approval process.

Members affiliated to the same community as you, are either colleagues, classmates, associates or fellow members of that community and a trust is established between you and these members which allows exchanging protected information such as contact details without any further approval process.

• Your username is public and it identifies you to other members in the system. Your age is private and is never shared, however your age range is public.
• Your contact information such as name, email address, phone number, mobile phone number and SMS address is protected. When a member who is not affiliated to the same community as you, finds your trip itinerary as a carpool match, the member will see your username, trip information, preference information, vehicle make and mileage – however your contact information is not visible unless you explicitly approve the request for exchanging contact information.
• The textual address you enter is private and is not shared. However we convert the address into Latitude and Longitude co-ordinates which are public and will be shown as a location on the map to members who find your trip itinerary as a carpool match. Please note that the Latitude, Longitude co-ordinates we acquire have a high degree of precision (may be a few yards or meters from the locations you entered) and thus may be traceable to your home or your work place. If you want to avoid this high degree of match, you may provide a more general street address without house number or a near location you know, although this will reduce the accuracy of matches we can provide you.
• Your trip information such as your start location, end location, date and time of the journey is public, but only visible to members who find your trip itinerary as a match for carpool.
• Your preference information such as if you smoke in the car, if you find eating in your car acceptable, which radio station you listen to is public, but only visible to members who find your trip itinerary as a match for carpool.
• Your community affiliations identify which communities listed on our Website you have successfully affiliated to. For example, your community may be your residential community or the company you work for. Your community affiliations are public, but only visible to other members who have successfully affiliated with a community on our Website.
• The contact information of community administrator or employee transportation coordinator of your community is private and is never shared.
• For all of our services that require payment from you - in order to most efficiently serve you, credit card transactions and order fulfillment are handled by established third party banking and processing agents. They receive the information needed to verify, authorize and charge your credit card or other payment modes. We do not store payment information such as billing address, credit card number, and credit card expiration date. We do collect information required by these third parties in order to ensure validity of transactions.
• Vehicle information such as type of vehicle, number of miles the vehicle can cover per gallon, year manufactured, number of doors, seating capacity is public.
• Benefits information such as claims made and usage history for benefits provided by your community like Carpool Permit, Guaranteed Ride Home Program (GRH), Bike Lockers, Carpool Incentive, Vanpool Incentive, and any other benefits specified by your community is private but also accessible to your community administrator or employee transportation coordinator.
• Alternative transportation information such as carpool or vanpool mileage, current trips and carpool partners, reward miles accrued in the iCarpool system, actual miles accrued in the iCarpool system and historical website usage information is private but also accessible to your community administrator or employee transportation coordinator.

In order to begin using our services, we validate your email address by sending a confirmation email to that address with a verification code. There are many websites today which offer free or paid email accounts which you can subscribe to should you require an email address.

In order for you to be affiliated to a community on our website, you may have to provide an email address issued by that community. We may send an email to that email address to validate your affiliation with the community. In some cases, in order for you to be affiliated to a community on our website, you may have to provide details which will help a designated community administrator identify and approve your affiliation with that community. This designated community administrator is assigned by the community independently.

We may use any information you provide to facilitate the services you request, troubleshoot problems, identify abuse of our services, identify violation of our terms of use, help promote safe carpooling, measure consumer interest in our services and products and enhance our Website. We may compare and review your personal information for errors, omissions and for accuracy.

You agree that we may use personal information about you to improve our content and services. You agree that we may use your personal information to contact you and deliver notifications to you. We also reserve the right to send notifications of any changes or new features of our Website. By accepting the User Agreement and Privacy Policy, you agree to receive these notifications.   

Our Corporate Entities

We may share much of our data, including personal information about you, with our affiliates, subsidiaries, and joint ventures that are committed to serving your online carpool needs and related services and products, throughout the world. To the extent that these entities have access to your information, they will treat it at least as protectively as they treat information they obtain from their other users. Our affiliates, subsidiaries, and joint ventures follow privacy practices no less protective of users than our practices described in this document.

Disclosure of your information to third parties