|

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY
This site is owned and operated by Fone Forums, Inc., an Arizona
corporation. Your privacy on the Internet is imperative to us; we
want to make your online experience satisfying and safe. This is
our pledge to you: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or
address to anyone. Ever. Period.
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.
Definition of the Information Fone Forums, Inc. gathers and
tracks.
Fone Forums, Inc. gathers two types of information about users:
-
Voluntary: Information that users provide through
optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions
to register for our events (forums), receive our electronic
newsletters, to email a friend about an event, and from
participation in polls and surveys.
-
Aggregated tracking: Information Fone Forums, Inc.
gathers through aggregated tracking, 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 does Fone Forums, Inc.
divulge any information about an individual user to a third
party.
FONE FORUMS, INC. 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:
1. Electronic newsletters (Dispatches)
We offer a free electronic newsletter to users. Fone Forums,
Inc. 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.
2. "E-mail this to a friend" Service
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.
3. 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 identified with any particular user. Fone
Forums, Inc. 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.
4. Surveys
Fone Forums, Inc. 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
Fone Forums, Inc. tracks user traffic patterns within our site.
However, we do not correlate this information with data about
individual users. Fone Forums, Inc. does break down overall usage
statistics across all of our users, tallying users’ domain names,
browser types, and MIME types by reading this information from the
browser string (information contained in every user's browser).
Fone Forums, Inc. 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. Fone Forums,
Inc. 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 polling and surveys.
USE OF INFORMATION
Fone Forums, Inc. uses any information voluntarily given by our
users to enhance their experience with our site, whether to provide
interactive or personalized elements on the site 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, and surveys. 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. Fone
Forums, Inc. never shares newsletter mailing lists with any third
parties, including advertisers, sponsors or partners.
Fone Forums, Inc. 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
Fone Forums, Inc. uses the above-described information to tailor our
content to suit user’s needs and better understand our audience
demographics. This is essential to offering our free services. 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
Fone Forums, Inc. 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:
-
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 Fone Forums, Inc. 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.
|