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COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY
This site is owned and operated by Shaw &
Associates, Inc. Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance
to us. We want to make your experience online satisfying and safe.
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.
INFORMATION SHAW & ASSOCIATES, INC. GATHERS
AND TRACKS
We gather 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 we gather is 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. Under no circumstances
do we divulge any information about an individual user to a third
party.
We gather user information in the following
ways:
OPTIONAL VOLUNTARY INFORMATION
We offer the following free services, which
require some type of voluntary submission of personal information
by users:
ELECTRONIC NEWSLETERS (DISPATCHES)
We will offer a free electronic newsletter
to users. We gather 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.
MESSAGE BOARDS / FORUMS
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.
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. We 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.
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 never share any of this information
about specific individuals with any third party.
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
We track user traffic patterns throughout all
of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with
data about individual users. We do 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 catalog 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. 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. 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.
USE OF INFORMATION
We use 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. We never share newsletter
mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors
or partners.
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.
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. 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
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
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 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:
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
YOUR CONSENT
By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this
information by us. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we
will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware
of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances
we disclose it.
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