Purpose of Site
The Investment Company Institute sponsors this award-winning website as part of its efforts to enhance public understanding of the investment company industry and the policy issues that affect it. This site is not intended to address questions about your individual investments; for these, please contact the mutual fund itself or your broker or other financial professional. We welcome your feedback on this site through our user survey. You may also use the survey to request automatic email notification whenever we update the site.

Document Formats
Graphics
Due to the graphical nature of our materials, many of the documents on the Institute's website, as well as on thousands of other websites, are stored as .pdf files (Portable Document Format). This format supports design-intensive documents independent of computer platform. The Acrobat Reader is required to view these files. It can be downloaded free of charge from Adobe's website. Although .pdf files are typically larger than .html files (the web's default format), you may find the images, graphs, illustrations, colors, fonts and other features well worth the longer download times. We have "optimized" these files so that you may begin viewing them before they have finished downloading. The 4.0 Reader or higher is needed to view optimized .pdf files. Once you have downloaded a document the first time, it is "cached" in your system and will load faster thereafter. To determine how long a document will take to download, we recommend the File Download Time Calculator.

When viewing .pdf files, use the page icons on the toolbar to size the page within your screen. Use the magnifying glass icons to zoom in or pull back from the page. The hand icon allows you to move the page onscreen. You can move from page to page by using the arrow icons or the thumbnail pages in the left margin. Unlike .html files, where links are color-coded, links in .pdf files can be identified by a change in the cursor: the hand icon becomes a pointing finger.

Please note that the onscreen electronic page numbers generated by the Acrobat reader do not correspond to the publication's printed page numbers.

Audio/Video
This website also includes sound bites (audio files) and video clips. You will need speakers (or headphones) and the RealPlayer plug-in for listening to audio and viewing video. A free plug-in can be downloaded from RealPlayer's website. Some pages may also include Flash video or animations. A free plug-in can be downloaded from Adobe's website.

Privacy Policy
Your privacy is important to us. When you visit our site, we do not collect any personal, identifying information about you unless you volunteer that information in our user survey. (If you ask us questions in the user survey and do not volunteer an email address or other identifying information, we cannot respond to you.) We do not use individual survey information for commercial purposes nor do we share this information with any other organization. You will not receive any email from us as a result of using our website unless you request to be notified of website updates through our user survey and supply us with your email address.

We do not place a "cookie" in your browser files (among other things, cookies allow websites to be customized for each user) except in the following situation: If you elect to "turn off" the hyperlink alert (the popup box that informs you that you are leaving ici.org when you click on a link to another website), a cookie is placed in your browser to disable the alert for as long as your browser is open. Because it is not a permanent cookie, you will need to "turn off" the hyperlink alert each time you visit our site in order to disable it for that visit. If you do not want this temporary cookie in your browser file, leave the hyperlink alert on.

In addition to information you choose to provide us through our user survey, we gather information about how our site is used. For instance, our web server automatically collects each visitor's domain name (the internet name of the organization through which the visitor connects to us; examples of domain names include ici.org, sec.gov, and aol.com). We also collect aggregate information about user visits, such as when the site is visited most often and which areas of the site are accessed most often.

We use both kinds of information-the information you volunteer through user surveys and the information we automatically collect-to analyze how to improve our site. We also use this information to report to our member organizations aggregate statistics on how the site is used.

This site also includes a section devoted to the fund industry's views on consumer privacy.

Copyright and Linking Policies
The Investment Company Institute makes the information on its website available to anyone. You may store any of this information on your own computer for your personal use only, you may print copies of the information for your personal use only, and you may link to this information from your website. You may cite or refer to the information in this site in any media provided you include proper attribution indicating Investment Company Institute as the source and http://www.ici.org as the URL.

Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this website, including text and images, belong exclusively to the Investment Company Institute (ICI). With the exception of brief excerpts properly attributed, you may not distribute the text or graphics to others (except through hyperlink); you may not reproduce, modify, or reuse the text or graphics; and you may not "mirror" or "frame" this information on your own server.

Disclaimers
As a convenience to our users, many of the documents on our website contain links to information created and maintained by other organizations. Please note that ICI does not control, and is not responsible for, the accuracy, timeliness, or even the continued availability or existence of this outside information. Opinions expressed on other sites are not necessarily those of the Institute, nor does ICI endorse, warrant, or guarantee products or services described or offered on other sites. Neither is ICI responsible for the contents of any websites that choose to link to the Institute's website.

Entire contents copyright © Investment Company Institute, 1997 - 2008