Introduction
We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this privacy policy.
This privacy policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit our page. We encourage you to read this privacy policy carefully when visiting our Website. By using our Website, you are accepting the practices described in this privacy policy.
If you have any questions about our privacy practices, please refer to the end of this privacy policy for information on how to contact us.
Please read this privacy policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use our Website. By accessing or using the Website, or by clicking to accept or agree to the Terms of Service or the Terms of Use when this option is made available to you, you agree to this privacy policy. This privacy policy may change from time to time. Your continued use of the Website after we make changes to this privacy policy is deemed acceptance of those changes, so please check this privacy policy periodically for updates.
Information We May Collect About You and How We Collect It
We may collect several types of information from and about users of our Website, including information:
by which you may be personally identified, such as first and last name, mailing address, email address, billing information, IP or “Internet Protocol” addresses, demographics, passwords or other online contact information, telephone number, any other information the Website collects that is defined as personal or personally identifiable information under applicable law or other identifier by which you may be contacted online or offline (“personal information”)
about your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Website, usage details (such as the web pages you visit, the links you click, and the searches you conduct on our Website), your browser type and language, access times, and the content of any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us.
We may collect this information:
All information we collect on this Website is subject to this Privacy Policy. By using the Website, you consent to all actions taken by us with respect to your information in compliance with this Privacy Policy.
Information You Provide To Us
The information we collect on or through our Website may include:
Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes.
Details of transactions, if any, you may carry out through our Website and of the fulfillment of your orders. You may be required to provide financial information before placing an order through our Website.
This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our Website, subscribing to our service, posting material or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you enter a contest or promotion sponsored by us, and when you report a problem with our Website.
Your search queries on the Website.
We may also collect and store personal information about other people that you provide to us. If you use our Website to send others information that may interest them or messages through our system, we may store your personal information, and the personal information of each such recipient. Similarly, if you use our Website to upload, share or distribute content (including videos, comments or other submissions), and such content contains personal information about others, such information may be stored in order to allow for such uploading, sharing or distribution.
When you access our Website from a mobile device like a tablet or phone, we may receive information about your location, your device, including one or more unique identifiers for your device, and your mobile carrier. We may use this information to provide you with location-based services, such as advertising, search results, and other personalized content. Most devices allow you to turn off location services.
You also may provide information to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on public areas of the Website, or transmitted to other users of the Website or third parties (collectively, “User Contributions”). Your User Contributions are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. Although, we may limit access to certain pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Additionally, we cannot control the actions of other users of the Website with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.
Information We May Collect Through Automatic Data Collection Technologies
As you navigate through and interact with our Website, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns, including:
details of your visits to our Website, including any form of aggregate data, navigational data, tracking data, location data, click-stream data, or historical data, number of clicks and how you interact with links on the Website, domain names, landing pages, pages viewed, and other such information, log files and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Website; and
information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system and browser type and language, access times, the content of any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us. An IP, or “Internet Protocol”, address is a unique number associated with your computer that may be communicated to other computers and servers when you use the Internet. The information collected may include the domain name of your internet service provider, referral data (e.g., the address of the last page you visited prior to clicking through to the Website and the address of the exit page when you left our Website) and browser and platform type (e.g., a Firefox browser on a Macintosh platform). We use this information to track how users are accessing and using the Website.
We also may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services (behavioral tracking). See “Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information” below for information on how you can opt out of behavioral tracking on this Website and how we respond to web browser signals and other mechanisms that enable consumers to exercise choice about behavioral tracking.
The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:
Cookies are small text files that are stored in your web browser or downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognizes that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognize a user’s device. Cookies might be used for the following purposes: (i) to enable certain functions; (ii) to provide analytics; (iii) to store your preferences; and (iv) to enable ad delivery and behavioral advertising.
We currently use the following types of cookies:
Cookies that are strictly necessary: These are cookies that are required for the operation of our Website. These include, for example, cookies that enable a user to log into the members’ area of our Website and to check if a user is allowed access to a particular service or content.
Functionality cookies: We are always glad to see you back. This type of cookies allows us to recognize you when you return to our Website in order to greet you by name and to remember, for example, your choice of language.
Analytical cookies: These cookies allow us to recognize and count the number of users and to see how users use and explore our Website. These cookies help us to improve our Website, for example by ensuring that all users are able to find what they are looking for easily.
Targeting cookies: These cookies record the visit of a user on our Website, the pages a user has visited and the links a user has followed in order to enable us to make our Website more relevant to the users’ interests. In addition, these cookies are used to identify the websites and the marketing materials you are accessing our Website from in order to target content (for example, to automatically show you our Website according to your language settings).
We do not require that you accept cookies and you may withdraw your consent to our use of cookies at any time by adjusting your browser’s privacy settings. However, if you decline to accept cookies, some functionality on our Website may be disabled and you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Website. Cookies can be either session cookies or persistent cookies. A session cookie expires automatically when you close your browser. A persistent cookie will remain until it expires or you delete your cookies. Expiration dates are set in the cookies themselves; some may expire after a few minutes while others may expire after multiple years.
Certain features of our Website may use local stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from and on our Website. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as are used for browser cookies. For information about managing your privacy and security settings for Flash cookies, see “Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information”.
Pages of our the Website and our e-mails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also known as clear gifs, pixel tags, single-pixel gifs and web bugs) that are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of web users or to access cookies. Unlike cookies, which are stored on the user’s computer hard drive, web beacons are embedded invisibly on the web pages (or in an email) and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Web beacons may be used to deliver or communicate with cookies, to count users who have visited certain pages or opened an e-mail, to understand usage patterns and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity). We also may receive an anonymous identification number if you come to our site from an online advertisement displayed on a third-party website.
When you use a mobile device like a tablet or phone to access our Website, we may access, collect, monitor, store on your device, or remotely store one or more “device identifiers”. Device identifiers are small data files or similar data structures stored on or associated with your mobile device, which uniquely identify your mobile device. A device identifier may be data stored in connection with the device hardware, data stored in connection with the device’s operating system or other software, or data sent to the device by the Website. A device identifier may deliver information to us or to a third party partner about how you browse and use the Website and may help others or us provide reports or personalized content and ads. Some features of the Website may not function properly if use or availability of device identifiers is impaired or disabled.
Metadata is usually technical data that is associated with User Contributions. For example, Metadata can describe how, when and by whom a piece of User Contribution was collected and how that content is formatted. Users can add or may have Metadata added to their User Contribution including a hash tag, comments or other data. This makes your User Contribution more searchable by others and more interactive.
We use analytics tools and other third party technologies, such as Google Analytics and Double-click Cookies, to collect non-personal information in the form of various usage and user metrics when you use our Website. These tools and technologies collect and analyze certain types of information, including cookies, IP addresses, device and software identifiers, referring and exit URLs, onsite behavior and usage information, feature use metrics and statistics, usage and purchase history, media access control address (MAC Address), mobile unique device identifiers, and other similar information. The third party analytics companies who collect information on our Website and other online products or services may combine the information collected with other information they have independently collected from other websites or other online or mobile products and services relating to your activities across their network of websites as well as online or mobile products and services. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies. In addition to our use of technologies as described herein, we may permit certain third party companies to help us tailor advertising that we think may be of interest to you based on your use of our Website and to otherwise collect and use data about your use of our Website. For more information about this practice, please see the “Third-party Use of Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies” section below.
The information generated by Google Analytics and Double-click Cookies about your use of the Website (including your IP address) may be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. In case of activation of the IP anonymization, Google will truncate / anonymize the last octet of a particular IP address. Only in exceptional cases, the full IP address is sent to and shortened by Google servers in the USA. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the Website, compiling reports on Website activity and providing other services relating to Website activity and internet usage to the Website. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
Third-party Use of Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies
The information they collect may be associated with your personal information or they may collect information, including personal information, about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. Some content or applications, including advertisements, on the Website are served by third parties, including advertisers, ad networks and servers, content providers and application providers. These third parties may use cookies alone or in conjunction with web beacons or other tracking technologies to collect information about you when you use our Website. They may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioral) advertising or other targeted content.
We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you should contact the responsible provider directly. For information about how you can opt out of receiving targeted advertising from many providers, see “Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information”.
How We Use Your Information
In general, we use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:
To perform research and analysis about your use of, or interest in, our products, services, or content, or products, services or content offered by others;
We may also use your information to contact you about our own and third parties’ services that may be of interest to you. For more information, see “Choices about How We Use and Disclose Your Information”.
We may use the information we have collected from you to enable us to display advertisements to our advertisers’ target audiences. Even though we do not disclose your personal information for these purposes without your consent, if you click on or otherwise interact with an advertisement, the advertiser may assume that you meet its target criteria.