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Small-Business-Ideas.org, its director, its participating authors and contributors, and its staff, recognize that the foundation of our organization is maintaining your trust and confidence.
In order to provide you with the most effective and beneficial service, we must sometimes maintain information about you. Keeping that information secure and private is important to us. This notice is provided to you so that you may know: the type of information we collect; how we collect information; what we may disclose to our affiliates and non-affiliated third parties; and the steps we take to protect personal information about you.
A. What information we may obtain
Basically, we obtain any information that you share with us, or that you authorize others to share with us. This typically includes identifying information such as your name and email address. Please share with us only the information that you want us to obtain. Perhaps this seems like common sense to you, because it is. Always use caution and safe browsing habits, when using the Internet.
B. Where we may obtain information
We may obtain information from your communications with us and from anyone you have authorized to provide information to us
C. What we do with information we obtain
We use your information to provide services such as newsletter email lists. And, we maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect all the information we have obtained about you.
D. Distribution of Personal Information
All personal information that we may obtain is maintained in the strictest confidence. We do not sell, share, license, or otherwise distribute your personal information.
A. Security
We use security procedures and practices including the use of firewalls and passwords to protect the data that we store on our servers.
However, information submitted on the Internet is never totally secure. And, information sent to us through our online forms is not more secure than regular email. If you feel uncomfortable submitting any information through our website, you may call us toll-free at 1 (866) 633-1818, instead.
B. Links to Other Websites
This site contains links to other sites (our authors' and contributors' sites, for example) that are not under our control. These websites have their own policies regarding privacy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of other websites. For your own protection, you should review their policies upon visiting these other sites to make sure they respect your privacy.
C. Newsletter Policy
In order to subscribe to our newsletter, you must provide your e-mail address and name. You are not obligated to provide your legal name—nicknames and aliases are permitted for the purpose of newsletter subscription. Please note that site visitors who request information through our online forms will be eventually added to the newsletter email list, as well.
A confirmation email will be sent to the email address you provided, as a precaution against those who would maliciously or inadvertently subscribe with your email address. Additionally, subscribers may change or cancel their subscription at any time by sending us an email or by using the "newsletter service center" form that's linked from the bottom of every newsletter.
We may use your email address to send you additional email messages, as needed for maintenance of our email list and for alerting our email membership of pertinent news. We do not release subscriber names or email addresses to outside organizations.
D. Children's Guidelines
Although this site is intended for the use of adults, and is not of likely interest to children (under 13 years of age), the forms on this site are capable of collecting online contact information from children who furnish it without prior parental consent or parental notification. Upon discovery that any such information was supplied by children, such information shall be disregarded and deleted.
Our web site fully supports COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act). Visitors, who wish more information about COPPA, may visit this web site: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm.
E. Visitor Tracking and Use of Cookies
A "cookie" is a small text file that a web site can place on your computer's hard drive in order, for example, to collect information about your activities on the site or to make it possible for you to use an online "shopping cart" to keep track of items you wish to purchase. Most consumers do not know that cookies are being placed on their computers when they visit websites. If you want to know when this happens, or to prevent it from happening, you can set your browser to warn you when a website attempts to place a cookie on your computer.
Our web site uses a cookie to track information such as when and which of our pages you visit, your IP address, your domain name, and your referring URL (how you found our website—which search engine, for example). Your privacy is important to us, and this cookie assigns you an arbitrary, anonymous "Visitor ID" number for purposes of identification.
We use this information to perform statistical analyses of user behavior in order to measure visitor interest in the various areas of our site, to measure how visitors find our site, and to inform advertisers as to how many visitors have seen or clicked on their advertising banners. In performance of these analyses, we will disclose information to third parties only in aggregate form; individual information will not be given.
F. Public Areas
This web site may make public areas (such as chat rooms, forums, message boards, and/or news groups) available to its users. Please remember that any information that is disclosed in these public areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information. If you choose to use a public area, you are solely responsible for your own communications, the consequences of posting those communications, and your reliance on any communications found in the public areas.
We restrict access to non-public personal information about you to those staff members or service providers who need to know the information to provide requested products or services to you. The policies and procedures that we use are designed to: (i) ensure the security and confidentially of your information, (ii) protect against any anticipated threats and/or hazards to the security and integrity of your records and information; and (iii) protect against unauthorized access to, and use of your records or information that could result in any substantial harm or inconvenience to you.
A. Physical Records
Physical safeguards are in place that comply with federal regulations to guard non-public personal information about you that is maintained in hard copy.
B. Information Systems
1. Login identifications are issued only with specific access authorizations;
2. Passwords must be changed every ninety days;
3. Web site servers used to gather and transmit personal data are stored in secure locations.
C. Staff Members
1. Control procedures are in place together with the segregation of duties for staff members with the access to, or responsibility for, non-public personal information;
2. Staff members receive training as part of the orientation process, with respect to this Privacy Policy and the issuance of this privacy notice; and
3. Staff members are required to execute an acknowledgement form following review of this Privacy Policy.
A. Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may edit this privacy policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes in our use of your personally identifiable information, we will make a reasonable effort to notify you and offer you a chance to "opt out." We will also post a notice at the top of this page.
B. Contacting the Web Site
1. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, the practices of this web site, or your dealings with this web site, you can contact our webmaster by calling toll-free 1 (866) 633-1818, or by sending an email to webmaster@small-business-ideas.org.
2. You may also contact Steve Kobrin (Director of Small-Business-Ideas.org), by calling toll-free 1 (866) 633-1818, or by sending an email to webmaster@small-business-ideas.org. Alternatively, you may send a fax to (201) 796-8244 or leave a voice-mail message at (201) 487-3143.