Privacy Policy
(Updated as of 4/7/07)
Your security is a top priority and we are 100% committed to protecting your privacy online. This outlines the steps we've taken to ensure that you have a great experience, and also provides details on how we treat any personal information you may submit to us. Note: personal information is information about you that is personally identifiable, such as your name, address, email address, or phone number that is not otherwise publicly available.
Information Collection and Use
Our goal is to provide you with a safe and enjoyable experience when using our site. When we do ask you for information, it is used only for the following important purposes: to process and fulfill your requests for products and services; to solicit your opinions and other feedback; to conduct research; to customize the advertising and content you see; and to provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients. We may collect personal information at the following times, with your permission only:
. When you register to receive communications from the site.
. When you seek information or enter applications for products and services offered on the site.
. When you provide such information to us through surveys, feedback, or other forms hosted on our WebPages or the pages of certain partners.
In addition, we might receive information about you from other sources (such as service providers) for tracking purposes. We may add the information we receive about you to your existing account. Like other websites, we also automatically receive and record certain types of information every time you visit us. We use "Cookies" and the other information to enhance your experience and present you with personalized offers. Likewise, we sometimes use third-party advertising companies to serve and track advertisements appearing on our website. These companies may employ cookies and action tags to measure advertising effectiveness. Any information that these third parties collect via cookies and action tags is completely anonymous.
Information Sharing and Disclosure
We may rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or non-affiliated companies. We share customer information only with your permission or under the following circumstances:
. Processing Your Requests: Processing Your Requests: If you apply for a product or service offered through the site, we will share your information with certain business partners strictly to process and fulfill your request . Our business partners may contact you by telephone in order to process and fulfill your request even if you have opted into the National Do Not Call List administered by the Federal Trade Commission. If one of our
business partners contacts you by telephone and you wish not to be contacted again by that business partner with respect to your inquiry or application, then you should specifically make a request to that business partner to not contact you again. If the business partner disregards your request and contacts you again, please let us know
immediately by sending us an email. Our business partners may also contact
you by email or mail based on the information you have provided to us.
. Contracted Partners: We sometimes disclose the information we collect to companies that perform marketing or services on our behalf. These partners only have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, and may not share it with others or use it for any other purpose. These companies are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit using the information except to market the specified products or services. We may use the personal information that you supply to us and we may work with other third party businesses to bring selected retail opportunities to our members via direct mail, email and telemarketing . These businesses may include providers of direct marketing services and applications, including lookup and reference, data enhancement, suppression and validation and email marketing.
. Legal Protection: We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, and will establish or exercise our legal rights and defend against legal claims. We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our sites terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
. Business Transfer: As with any other business, it is possible that this site in the future could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition occurs, the successor company would have access to the information maintained by the site, including customer account information, but would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless you consent otherwise. Notice of a business transfer will be posted here for 30 days.
Anti-Spam Policy & Pop Up Windows
On occasion, you may receive advertisements for our site or from third parties. For instance, when visiting a third party website, you may receive a "pop up" window advertising our site. Please note that such advertisements are served by the third party website that you have visited and are not controlled by our site. In addition, you may receive emails that advertise our sites products & services from third party publishers. We have established firm ground rules for dealing with any third party email services to ensure that advertisements for our site are not sent out through a "Spam" mailing -- ensuring that our offers are sent only to those individuals who have given their permission to the third party email service to receive communications. If any third party email publisher refuses to abide by our sites anti-Spam policy, We will no longer use that publisher's services. If you want to stop receiving emails from a third party, you should follow the opt-out instructions included in the email so that you will not be included in any future mailings. An "unsubscribe" link should appear at the bottom of the email you received. However if for any reason it does not work, please bring that to our attention by emailing us.
Cookies
To serve you faster and with better quality, we use "cookies" technology. Cookies are small bits of code, usually stored on a user's computer hard drive, which enable a Web site to "personalize" itself for each user. We generally use cookies to reduce the time it takes for pages to load on your computer and to assist with customer tracking. Customer tracking (or "click-stream") data collected by us is used to optimize your experience by learning whether or not you successfully used the site. Additionally, we may capture click-stream data on some of our partner's websites, limited to the activity involved with the completion of offers listed on our website. This information is used to monitor the performance of our partners.
Clear Gifs
We may also employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs) that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movement of Web users. Clear gifs are not tied to users' personally identifiable information. We may also use clear gifs in our HTML-based emails to let us know which emails the recipients have opened. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. If users would like to opt-out of these emails, please see the Opt-out section.
Confidentiality and Security
The security of your personal information is very important to us and we take a number of steps to safeguard it. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard personal information about you. We limit access to personal information to those employees and agents who assist us in providing requested products and services to you. In addition, we use industry standard data encryption technologies when transferring and receiving consumer data on the website
Email Communications and Removal from Mailing List
You may register to receive communications directly on our website or through a third party. Upon registering, we will periodically send you email notices and other e-mails featuring special and exclusive offers, promotions and other members-only benefits. If you no longer wish to receive these communications. You may opt-out by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails). Our email database is updated weekly. Please note that we can only control our own mailing list and policies. Third party advertisers that maintain their own mailing lists may send communications that advertise our services, and you may need to contact these parties directly in order to stop receiving such communications. Also, please note that if you enter into a transaction through our website, we may send you a thank you notice, ask for a satisfaction rating, request a testimonial and give you periodic product reminders as part of your service.
Information Collected by Third Parties
This Privacy Policy applies to all information that you provide to us and all information that a third party provides to us in conjunction with any service offered on our site. However, when you visit websites to which we provide a link, keep in mind you will be interacting with a third party that operates under its own privacy and security policies. If you choose to obtain certain services through a third party site, the data collected by the third party is governed by that third party's privacy policy. A third party site will also have its own policy regarding the use of cookies and clear gifs.
If we receive personal information from a third party that is not in conjunction with a service offered on our site, the use and disclosure of such information is governed by the agreement (if any) between us and such third party.
Tell-a-Friend
If a user elects to refer a friend to our website, we ask for the friend's name and email address. We will automatically send the friend emails inviting them to visit the site.
A Special Note about Children's Privacy
You must be at least 18 years old to have our permission to use this website. We do not knowingly collect, use or disclose personal information about visitors less than 18 years of age. If you are a minor, you can use the services offered on our website only in conjunction with your parents or guardians.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may update or modify this Privacy Pledge from time to time. Any changes will be posted here and will become effective 7 days following its posting, unless otherwise stated