When does use of this site result in collection of my personally identifiable information?

When you register at this site or one of its services, we may collect personally identifying information from you. The more information you provide, the better we are able to customize our services and your experience to suit your needs and preferences. For example, we may ask you for a username, password, e-mail address and zip code. Other sites and specific services may have different registration processes, and may require you to provide additional personally identifying information such as your address, phone number and gender. In addition to registration, we may collect personally identifying information from you when you enter contests, and sweepstakes, participate in promotions and special programs, register for premium or customized services, make a purchase at one of our merchants or partners, subscribe to one of our print papers or magazines, or download a software product or plug-in. If you are making a purchase or enrolling in a premium service for which there is a fee, we will collect your credit card, billing address, and other verifying information. In addition, we may collect personally identifying information from you when you provide content to us for display or use on one or more of our sites, including but not limited to, when you participate in user surveys, post messages to bulletin boards or chat areas, submit personals or other classified listings, build a home page, report a problem with one of our sites or services, or submit a letter to the editor.

How is my personally identifying information used?

Our main goal is to provide you with a customized and targeted user experience. For instance, your personally identifying information enables us to greet you when you return to a site or service, and provide you with news and services we think will be of interest to you. We may review our users’ preferences, demographics, traffic patterns, and other information in the aggregate so that we can better understand whom our audience is and what it is you want. Tracking user preferences may also help us serve you targeted advertising. Targeted advertisements are probably more interesting for you, and are more productive for our advertisers. If a local grocery market wants to advertise an upcoming sale, we can target the ad to registered users who live near that grocery market. Please note that we do not share your personally identifying information with the advertiser. We or third party ad servers acting on our behalf may act as the middleman between you and the advertisers that want to reach you. (Third party ad servers are not entitled to collect or use your personally identifying information). We may use the information we collect in non-intrusive common sense ways, like using your credit card number to provide you with products and/or services that you request. All credit card information is transmitted in an encrypted form, using SSL (secure socket layer) encryption, the industry-standard. Although, we will use all reasonable efforts to safeguard the privacy of your personal information, transmissions made by means of the Internet cannot be made absolutely secure. We assume no liability for disclosure of data due to errors in transmission or unauthorized third parties.

Finally, if you register for one or more of our sites or services, from time to time, we may send information to you via e-mail about our products and services, or third party products and services we believe may be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive these mailings, you can simply check off the appropriate box when you register, or update your profile at any time after registration so you no longer receive such offers and mailings. Please check the registration screens applicable to the service, promotion, or product offering for which you are signing-up for specific instructions on how to update your user profile and/or opt out of receiving offers and mailings. Also, please remember that third party vendors may also sell products and services on our sites, and their policies may differ from ours.

What other information do you collect and how is it used?

Cookies. We may use cookies to store and track your preferences to provide you with a more personalized user experience. A cookie is a message that is sent to your browser from a Web server and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Most Internet sites use cookies. You can set your browser preferences to reject all cookies (see below) but then you will not be able to participate in most customized services, and you may be required to repeatedly type in your personally identifying information in order to participate in various services, promotions, or product offerings. Cookies make your experience easier by saving your preferences, purchases, and passwords. We may also use cookies that contain no personal information at all. These cookies help us estimate our audience size, determine which areas of the site are the most popular, and serve targeted advertising.

IP Address. We may also collect IP addresses for the purposes of systems administration or to report information in aggregate form to our advertisers (e.g. how many visitors logged in to a specific site). An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer automatically when you use the Internet. When you visit a particular web page of ours, our servers may log your IP address. Your IP address is not linked to anything personally identifiable.

With whom do you share information?

In general, we will not disclose your personally identifying information to third parties except to the extent necessary to provide you with a requested product or service, or under circumstances required by law. We may disclose some of your personal information (such as an e-mail address) to third parties that provide services you elect to use, but we will notify you of such disclosure prior to transferring the data. If you make a purchase from one of our merchants, the information you provide in connection with that purchase is provided to that merchant in order to facilitate that transaction. Any personally identifiable information you provide online as part of an advertiser promotion (e.g. online coupons) may be provided directly to advertisers.

In general we will only disclose your personally identifiable information to the extent necessary to complete the transaction, administer the promotion, or fulfill the request. However, specific uses of personal information that vary from this Privacy Statement may be found the in the Terms of Service or privacy policies applicable to that particular service or offering. In addition, third party sponsors may administer sweepstakes, contests, promotions, and other programs. To the extent you are notified of uses of your personal information which are different from those described in this Policy Statement during your enrollment in any particular service, sweepstakes, contest or promotion, the uses of which you are specifically notified will govern that service, sweepstakes, contest or promotion. Please be on the lookout for terms of service and privacy statements applicable to the services for which you sign-up or participate in. In general, third parties that receive information about you from us will be obligated to notify you and provide you with an opt-out method before sending you direct communications. Please note, however, that we do not control the privacy policies of our advertisers and other third party sites to which we may provide banner ads and links. We assume no responsibility or liability for these third party policies or the actions of non-affiliated third parties.

We will disclose your personal information when we believe in good faith that any applicable law, regulation, or legal process requires it, or where we believe disclosure is necessary to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of another user.

We may disclose aggregated user statistics (for example, the percentage of our users who access our Service from work) in order to describe our services and reach to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties. However aggregate data is not traceable to you specifically.

What are my options to control the use of my personal information?

Most browsers can be configured to reject cookies or alert you when cookies are being sent. Keep in mind that if you refuse cookies, it is possible that some portions of our service may not work properly.

You may cancel your registration to any service and/or request the removal of your personal information from our user records by sending e-mail to bjd@thebeaconjournal.com. We will send an email to confirm your request. After you respond, we will remove your information from our database. Residual information may remain in our archives and records, but this information will not be used for a commercial purpose (however we may notify you of major changes to our service from time to time). We reserve the right to maintain information on registered users who have violated our Terms of Service or who have had their access to our services blocked in order to detect repeat offenders.

What else should I know about my privacy?

You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose personal information online in a public area, that information may be collected and used by others. We do not control the actions of our visitors and registered users. If you disclose personal information in a chat room, forum, on your home page, or any other publicly accessible place on our sites, you do so at your own risk and you understand that your submitted information may be collected and used by others to send you unsolicited messages, advertisements, or for other purposes.

Please remember that protection of your privacy begins with you. You are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any password you use to register, and you should always be careful and responsible whenever disclosing information online.

What about children’s personally identifiable information?

We feel strongly about protecting the privacy of children. We encourage children to involve their parents in any interactive activity they participate in online. Except where otherwise disclosed, we will not collect or use any personal information from children we know to be under the age of thirteen without obtaining express parental consent. All general information collected from users under the age of thirteen is used only for aggregate statistical analysis. Where users under the age of thirteen are permitted to participate in contests, they may be required to provide the e-mail address of their parent or guardian so that we can send notification and prices to the parent or guardian.

Acceptance of Privacy Policy. By using our sites and services, you signify your acceptance of this Privacy Statement. If you do not agree or are not comfortable with any policy described in this Privacy Statement, your only remedy is to discontinue use of our services. We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Statement at any time. Your continued use of any portion of our services following notification or posting of such changes will constitute your acceptance of those changes. If you have questions or concerns about our specific policies, please send e-mail to bjd@thebeaconjournal.com.