Engage's Profiling Philosophy www.engage.com/privacy/profiling.htm

"Effective online marketing without compromising personal privacy"

1.  Anonymous profiling - a successful means of maintaining consumer privacy. Since its inception in 1995, Engage has promoted the concept of anonymous profiling as a way to maintain consumers' online privacy while providing marketers with the targeting tools they need to more effectively use the Internet. When executed properly, profiling benefits all parties. More importantly, anonymous profiling provides marketers with tools for targeting and messaging and ad-supported sites with more effective advertising to offer marketers. It also benefits the consumers in several ways, such as perpetuation of an enormous amount of FREE content for consumers through online advertising. If profiling can make advertising more effective, it will continue to support this free content. Also, profiling helps consumers receive more relevant promotions and offers, which, in turn, makes the consumers want to spend more time online and purchase more products and services.

2.  Engage's unique Anonymous Profiling System. Engage's system is unique in the market because it is designed to ensure anonymity. It was designed as the optimal way to balance a marketer's desire to target messages and a consumer's desire to safeguard their personal and sensitive data. Engage has held fast to this business philosophy. The recent initiatives of less thoughtful competitors have highlighted the value of a responsible and balanced approach.

3.  Engage Knowledge's Non-PII (Non-Personally Identifiable Information) for online profiling. Engage Knowledge does not store ANY personally identifiable information or even combinations of data that can be potentially personally identifiable, such as date of birth and zip code. It does not store controversial or sensitive data, such as medical information or adult content interests. Nor does it retain IP addresses or record specific pages that have been visited.

4.  Personalized marketing without personal identity. Engage believes that the Internet is a medium where very targeted, personalized marketing can occur without ever having to know a person's identity. For example, if we know a browser has traveled through several skiing sites, we can infer that the person browsing is interested in skiing, then show him/her skiing ads and offers without ever needing to know the person's identity.

5.  Implementing guidelines and restrictions to ensure consumer privacy. Engage believes companies within the industry are in the best position to self-regulate online profiling practices. We have built our business on the fundamental belief that consumers will feel comfortable with a technology specifically designed to protect their privacy. Consumer comfort and security is just as critical to our business customers. Advertisers and Web site publishers wanting to protect their brand and retain loyal customers cannot afford to do business with companies who ignore consumer privacy concerns; we must not ostracize them. And, of necessity, they will ultimately embrace only those technologies, service, and practices that can provide tailored and effective online advertising without compromising consumer privacy. This is a powerful marketplace force where the growing industry support of our technology is proof that the business model is working.

6.  Engage - leader and active participant in establishing online privacy standards. Engage considers the protection of individual privacy to be required for ethical commerce/interaction on the Internet. We are long-time members of TRUSTe, Online Privacy Alliance, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and, most recently, the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI). We fully embrace the NAI principles as standards for our industry. As a company, however, we have chosen to go far beyond them.

7.  Engage's technology - considered by some privacy advocates as the "high water" mark for online profiling. Engage's patented "dual blind" technology ensures the privacy of any individual, in addition to the security of that data. It warrants that individual Web sites never have access to the Engage Knowledge identifier or the cross-reference information, thereby maintaining security.

8.  Engage - welcoming heightened scrutiny of online privacy. Engage believes that the increased awareness will help better-educate consumers about their rights and Engage's own data collection practices.

9.  Engage Knowledge - containing over 70 million Non-PII interest profiles. These Non-PII profiles enable media buyers and advertisers to tailor marketing programs based on demographics, geographics, and over 800 interest categories. Engage Knowledge works by assigning each browser a unique identifier, then building an interest profile based on Web content viewed, time spent viewing, and recency and frequency of visits to a particular interest category or site. The data used for these profiles is collected with notice to consumers and the ability to opt-out of the Engage Knowledge database at any time.

Added: Aug 05-00

This entire Profiling Philosophy is © Engage Technologies, Inc.

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