Ready to bid? Sign up here.

What is uBid's Privacy & Security Policy?

uBid has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to protecting your privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this website. As this policy may change from time to time, please check back periodically.

uBid uses the information we collect about you to, among other things, process orders. When you register at uBid, we collect your name, email addresses, mailing address, credit card number, and expiration date in order to process and fulfill your order. In some instances, products ordered at uBid are shipped directly from our vendors, and some of your information is shared with these vendors to enable them to fulfill and ship your order.

When you sign up for uBid Auction Alerts, we need only an email address to send you the email topics that you have selected. We also use your email address to send you email notice of your bid and order status, and we may use your email address to send you notice of upgrades or changes to uBid, new services, and special offers. We do not currently sell, trade, or rent our list of email addresses to any third parties, although we do occasionally allow third parties to insert messages in our emails to you. You may choose not to receive any of these emails when you register or at a later date by accessing uBid Auction Alerts.

We occasionally will ask for additional information from you. For instance, we may ask for your name, address, and e-mail address in connection with a contest or other promotional feature in which you participate, so we can administer the contest and notify winners. We may offer contests or promotions with third parties; policies concerning use of your personal data gathered in connection with any such contest or promotion will be specifically set forth in the rules and policies applicable to the contest or promotion.

uBid offers a service called "Tell a Buddy" that allows you to notify friends about open auctions. Please note, however, that uBid opposes the practice of sending unsolicited commercial emails, also known as "spam." Therefore, we request that you send "Tell a Buddy" emails only to people known by you who may be interested in the auction. If someone asks you not to send these emails to him or her, please comply. Your friends' email addresses will not be used for promotional purposes nor disclosed to a third party.

When you submit ratings or comments on the Consumer Exchange Ratings page, all such ratings and comments will be publicly available, together with the uBid Login IDs of both parties (the rating party and the party being rated). You may be contacted about your experiences.

When you bid on an item, you must enter the amount of your bid, your uBid Login ID and your password. Your initials, city and state and your bid will be publicly available in the Current Winning Bids history.

Recognizing the global nature of the Internet, you agree to comply with all applicable local laws and rules regarding online conduct and privacy, as well as content. Specifically, but not as a limitation, you agree to comply with all applicable laws regarding transmission of technical and personal data exported from the United States or the country in which you reside.

uBid cannot and does not control information users make available to others in the Consumer Exchange, including but not limited to information disclosed by you in connection with creating an auction as a seller in the Consumer Exchange. Though prohibited, users may provide information that is false, deceptive, harmful or offensive to other users. Please exercise care in determining what information you share with others in using this service.

Cookies
"Cookies" are pieces of information that are passed to your browser and stored on your computer's hard drive. uBid uses cookies to recognize repeat visitors, to automatically enter your login ID in our bid form, and to provide additional features to make shopping at uBid easier and more efficient. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can turn them off using your browser's settings.

Sharing data with third parties
Upon registration with uBid, each of our customers is assigned a random and anonymous customer number, which we use to track customer orders. This customer number is different from any custom login ID selected by you and may be passed to third party vendors with whom we work to provide more efficient and relevant services to our users. These third parties are unable to connect or associate this randomly generated number with an individual email address, phone number, mailing address or any other data that may be used to specifically identify you. However, our anonymous customer numbers may be used to measure traffic and visiting patterns on uBid and on other websites on the Internet. We may also compile statistics and other data about our customers on an aggregated basis, and may share such aggregated data with selected third parties. This aggregated data will not specifically identify you. uBid can (and you authorize us to) release any information when we believe that such release is reasonably necessary to comply with law, enforce or apply the terms of any of our user agreements or protect the rights, property or safety of uBid, our users, or others. Further, as permitted by applicable law, uBid can (and you authorize us to) disclose your login ID, name, street, address, city, state, zip code, country, phone number, email and/or company to other uBid users in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy or other unlawful activity whenever uBid in its sole discretion believes necessary or appropriate. uBid does not presently sell, trade or rent personal information to other parties. We reserve the right to do so in the future, but will allow individuals to opt out of this process. Nothing in this privacy policy shall affect or restrict uBid's ability to sell or transfer such data as part of a sale or transfer of all or substantially all of its assets and you consent to our doing so. You may change your personal information at any time, including email address, phone number, mailing address, and credit card information in My Account, located in My Page. You may choose whether or not to receive Outbid and order processing emails in My Account and in My Mailbox. By registering at uBid, you consent to the collection and use of this information by uBid. In the event of changes in our privacy policy, this page will be updated with the current information.

Security

How your information is encrypted
There are two areas on the site where you may enter and submit private information. Both areas are protected using SSL encrypted transmissions between your Web browser and our Web server. This protects against the remote chance that someone (e.g. on your network at work or at your Internet service provider) may try to compromise your private information as it travels from your Web browser to our secure server. You'll know when transmitted data is safe by a security notice when you enter a secure page, and by the presence of an icon on your browser, either a key for Netscape or a lock for Microsoft Internet Explorer. The pages where you submit your account information, place a bid, and receive confirmation of a successful bid are all secure. We would never intentionally take chances with your private information, and we have taken every precaution to ensure your personal security.

Protecting your login ID and password
Always keep your uBid account number and password secret. They are your only identification for bidding purposes. If you receive information about a bid you did not place, or questionable communications regarding your account, please contact uBid Customer Support immediately. One potential way for someone to steal your login ID and password is if you bookmark any area on MyPage or a bid submission page. This is a concern if your browser is available to other people at work, home, or especially if you use a browser at a public internet cafe. You should not bookmark such pages and you should clear the browser cache and quit the browser completely when you are done surfing uBid. We have also worked to protect you against such a mistake. Even if someone obtains both your login ID and password, they cannot get your credit card information because that field is cleared when they log in to My Page. Information cannot be changed without submitting a new credit card.

About SSL, security, and firewall problems
Some older browsers (such as IE 3.0.2) have known SSL bugs. These can result in the browser crashing on SSL pages or giving error messages. We recommend that you upgrade to the latest version of whatever browser you prefer. For AOL users, you may be able to upgrade your security by downloading and replacing the schannel.dll from Microsoft. For users behind corporate firewalls, you need to configure your web browser security settings. This includes setting https or secure proxy settings. To determine if you have such a security problem, you can edit a secure URL, replacing 'https' (secure) with 'http' (insecure). If the page works with http:// but not https://, then you have a problem with your security settings. You should contact your system administrator for assistance.

Technical Details About Encryption
uBid operates with a VeriSign Digital Server Certificate, featuring today's strongest cryptographic techniques to ensure that Digital IDs are not forged or tampered with. These techniques, developed by RSA Data Security, use a matched pair of encryption and decryption keys. This use of matched-key cryptography with a 1024-bit key length provides a level of security unavailable with conventional secret key cryptography.