PRIVACY POLICY - COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY
This site is owned and operated by Brainstormedia Publishing.
Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to
us. At Brainstormedia Publishing, we want to make your experience
online satisfying and safe.
Because we gather certain types of information about our
users, we feel that you should fully understand our policy
and 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.
INFORMATION Brainstormedia GATHERS AND TRACKS
Brainstormedia gathers two types of information about users:
Information that users 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:
Information that Brainstormedia gathers through aggregated
tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views
throughout our sites. 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.
Brainstormedia Gathers User Information In The Following
Processes:
Optional Voluntary Information
We offer the following free services, which require some
type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:
Privacy Policy Sample
The following is a list of different policies which can
be edited to remove the parts of the policy that are not needed.
You should also add anything to this policy template that
you may have on your site.
1. Electronic newsletters policy (Dispatches)
We will offer a free electronic newsletter to users. Brainstormedia
gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe.
Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by following
the link provided in every newsletter that points users to
the subscription management page. Users can also subscribe
to the newsletters at the time of registration.
2. Message boards/forums policy
Users of the site's Message Boards and Forums must register
separately for these services (both are free of charge) in
order to post messages, although they needn't register to
visit the site. During registration the user is required to
supply a username, password, and email address.
3. "E-mail this to a friend" policy
Our site users can choose to electronically forward a link,
page, or documents to someone else by clicking "e-mail
this to a friend". The user must provide their 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 users so they can easily
share their opinions with other users and see what our audience
thinks about important issues. Opinions or other responses
to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable to any particular
user. Brainstormedia may use a system to "tag" users
after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular
question. This tag is not correlated with information about
individual users.
5. Surveys
Brainstormedia 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 never share any of
this information about specific individuals with any third
party.
Privacy Policy Template changes
The policy clause about children below is becoming more
important as it is nearly impossible to tell the age of any
visitor. We recommend adding this sample line to all your
forms that request information.
Children
Consistent with the Federal Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act of 1998 (COPPA), we will never knowingly request personally
identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without
requesting parental consent.
Usage tracking
Brainstormedia tracks user traffic patterns throughout all
of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information
with data about individual users. Brainstormedia does 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).
Brainstormedia sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms
that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking
is never associated with individual users. We use tracking
information to determine which areas of our sites users like
and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not
track what individual users read, but rather how well each
page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better
service for you.
Cookies
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. Brainstormedia uses 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.
If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies,
you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You
do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However,
you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards,
forums, polling and surveys.
Privacy Policy Use
How the information you gather is used if relevent.
USE OF INFORMATION
Brainstormedia uses any information voluntarily given by
our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites,
whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on
the sites or to better prepare future content based on the
interests of our users.
As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily
provide in order to send out electronic newsletters and to
enable users to participate in polls, surveys, message boards,
and forums. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regular
schedule (depending on the newsletter), and occasionally send
out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly
interested in something we are doing. Brainstormedianever
shares newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including
advertisers, sponsors or partners.
When we use tracking information to determine which areas
of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to
those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but
rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us
continue to build a better service for you. We track search
terms entered in Search function as one of many measures of
what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a
particular user enters.
Brainstormedia creates 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. Because we don't track the usage patterns
of individual users, an advertiser or sponsor will never know
that a specific user clicked their ad. We will not disclose
any information about any individual user except to comply
with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the
personal safety of our users or the public.
SHARING OF THE INFORMATION
Brainstormedia uses the above-described information to tailor
our content to suit your needs and help our advertisers better
understand our audience's demographics. This is essential
to keeping our service free. We will not share information
about individual users with any third party, except to comply
with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the
personal safety of our users or the public.
SECURITY
Brainstormedia operates 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 authorized individuals
have access to the information provided by our customers.
OPT-OUT POLICY
We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such
choices include: