Your privacy on the
Internet is of the utmost importance to us. Because we gather certain
types of information about our users, we feel you should fully
understand the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of
that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we
gather and how we use it.
We
gather two types of information about users: Information that you
provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary
submissions to receive our electronic newsletters, to participate in
our message boards or forums, to email a friend, and from participation
in polls and surveys. This information allows us to better tailor our
content to readers' needs and to help our advertisers and sponsors
better understand the demographics of our audience. Because we derive
our revenue mainly from sponsorships and advertising, providing such
aggregated demographic data is essential to keeping our service free to
users.
We offer the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by you:
1. Electronic newsletters We
offer a free electronic newsletter to you. We gather your email address
of users if you voluntarily subscribe. You may remove yourself from
this mailing list by following the link provided in every newsletter
that points you to the subscription management page.
2. User Reviews Users
of the Review System must register separately for the services in order
to post reviews. During registration the user may be required to supply
one or more of the following: a username, password, and/or an email
address.
3. E-mail to a friend Service You can choose to
electronically forward a link, page, or documents to someone else by
clicking "e-mail this to a friend". You must provide your email
address, as well as that of the recipient. This information is used
only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the
recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any
other purpose.
4. Polling We may offer interactive polls to
you so you can easily share your opinions with others and see what our
audience thinks about important issues. We may use a system to "tag"
users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular
question.
5. Surveys We may occasionally conduct user surveys
to better target our content to our audience. We sometimes share the
aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our sponsors,
advertisers and partners.
We
track user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do
not correlate this information with data about individual users. We
break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name,
browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the
browser string (information contained in every user's browser).
We
sometimes track and catalogue the search terms that users enter in our
Search function. We use tracking information to determine which areas
of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas.
This helps us continue to build a better service for you.
We
may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your
computer. The cookie itself does not contain Personal Information
although it will enable us to relate your use of this site to
information that you have specifically and knowingly provided. But the
only personal information a cookie can contain is information you
supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read
cookie files created by other sites. We use cookies to track user
traffic patterns (as described above). Our advertising system delivers
a one-time cookie to better track ad impressions and click rates. You
can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser however this
means you may not be able to access the site.
We
use any information voluntarily given by you to enhance your experience
in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalised
elements on the sites or to better prepare future content based on your
interests.
We create aggregate reports on user demographics and
traffic patterns for advertisers, sponsors and partners. This allows
our advertisers to advertise more effectively, and allows our users to
receive advertisements that are pertinent to their needs.
From
time to time we may disclose your information to our advertisers,
service providers and contractors to help us to provide and market
our/their goods and services to you. We may also share your information
with third parties who provide prizes for competitions or special
offers. If we do this we generally require these parties to protect
your information in the same way we do.
We
operate secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall
and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are
periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorised
individuals have access to the information provided by you.
We
give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices
include: Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters.
Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which
completely alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable
information from our users
Please contact us to ask for access to any of your information or if you have a complaint concerning your privacy.
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