Privacy Notice
Monsoon Media LLC and its affiliates (collectively referred to in this Privacy Notice as "we" or "MM") recognize the importance of protecting the privacy of all information provided by visitors of our web site, customers, forum users and registrants for our contests and polls. We created this policy with a fundamental respect for our visitor's right to privacy.I. Information Collection and Use
II. Shared Information
III. Correcting/Updating Personal Information
IV. Security
V. Links
VI. Notification and Changes
I. Information Collection and Use
MM collects information from our web site customers, subscribers and visitors. In this section of our privacy policy, we will describe the type of information we collect and how we use it to provide better services to these individuals.
A. Ordering and Registering
When using our web site and signing up in certain selected areas (ie.: the MM Mall and the media forum), visitors must first register. During this simple registration process, visitors may be required to give their contact information (such as name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.). We also may collect demographic information (such as job title and purchasing responsibilities or company information). For internal purposes, we use this information to better communicate with people and to provide a more personalized experience on our site. In turn, the information about our audience helps to improve our site offerings.
Items that require payment (such as classified ads, products and forum sponsorship), require us to also collect credit card information (ie.: cardholder's name, account number, expiration date and CVV code number), which is used for billing purposes.
B. Contests and Polls
From time to time we invite people to provide information via contests or forum polls. Participation in these contests or polls is completely voluntary and the person therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose requested contact information (such as name and mailing address) and demographic information (such as zip code). In addition to other persons set forth in this policy, contact information collected in connection with contests or polls is used to notify the winners and award prizes, to improve the use and satisfaction of the site, and may be shared with sponsors of such contests or polls.
C. Interactive Features
Our site offers interactive and community features such as the forums discussion boards. Note that all personal information sent or posted via such features becomes public information for which we are not responsible.
D. Communications to Us
We have features where users can submit information to us (such as our Contact/Feedback page). These requests for service, support or information may be forwarded to multiple departments at MM as needed to best respond to a specific request. We may retain e-mails and other information sent to us for our internal administrative purposes, and to help us to serve our customers and forum users better.
E. Communications from Us
In order to best serve our customers and forum users, we send updates that contain important information about our site and product/service availability. For example, we may communicate with a previous MM customer for account-related issues via e-mail, phone, FAX or standard mail. We also send new forum users a "validation" e-mail in order to verify username, password and e-mail address for our password-protected forums area.
F. Automatic Data Collection
Our web site has a few features that automatically collect information from users.
We use "cookies," a piece of data stored on the visitor's hard drive that contains information about the visitor. Cookies benefit the user by requiring login only once, thereby saving time while on our site. If visitors reject the cookies, they may be limited in the use of some areas of our site. For example, the user may not be able to participate in shopping or forum use. The use of cookies enables us to target the interests of our audience and enhance their experience on our site.
Some sites might use cookies on our site in ads and/or promotions. However, we have no access to or control over how these outside businesses set up and use cookies; we urge visitors to read their privacy policies for information. We are particular with regards to who places advertising and promotional materials onto the pages of our site. This protects customers and forum users and keeps the site from being overrun with excessive clutter.
For our internal purposes, we gather date, time, browser type, navigation history and IP address of all visitors to our site. This information does not contain anything that can identify a visitor, personally. We use this information for our internal security audit log, trend analysis and system administration, and to gather broad demographic information about our visitor base for aggregate use.
II. Shared Information
We do not share personally identifiable information with other companies. However, we will disclose information we maintain when required to do so by law, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena or other legal obligation, in response to a law enforcement agency's request, or in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property. Visitors should also be aware that courts of equity, such as U.S. Bankruptcy Courts, might have the authority under certain circumstances to permit personal information to be shared or transferred to third parties without permission.
III. Correcting/Updating Personal Information
If a customer or forum user's personally identifiable information changes (such as zip code), we provide a way for that customer/forum user to correct or update their personal data.
IV. Security
We use reasonable precautions to protect our visitor's personal information both on and off-line. Visitor's sensitive information is protected by SSL server technology during each visit to our web site. SSL encrypts the connection between a visitor and our web site located on the server. In addition to the on-line security mentioned above, access to all of our visitor's off-line information, not just the sensitive information, is restricted. Only staff members who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, a billing clerk) are granted access to personally identifiable information.
V. Links
Our web site may contain links to other sites. MM is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of such other sites. We encourage visitors to be aware of this when linking from our site and to read the privacy statements of each web site that may collect personally identifiable information.
VI. Notification and Changes
If we change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so our audience is aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under which circumstances, if any, we disclose it. Visitors should check this policy frequently to keep abreast of any changes.
Monsoon Media
Last Updated: Mon Jan 01, 2007
