How We Collect and Use Information
We may collect and store information, including personally identifiable information (such as your name or email address) or other information, that you voluntarily supply to us while on our Site. Some examples of this type of information include information that you electronically submit when you contact us with questions, information that you post on blogs, discussion forums or other community posting and social networking areas on our Site or that you link to from this site, and information that you electronically submit when you complete an online registration form to access and use certain features of our Site.
We also collect, through a variety of technologies and practices, and store non-personally identifiable information that is generated automatically as you navigate through the Site. For example, we may collect information about your computer's connection to the Internet, which allows us, among other things, to improve the delivery of our web pages to you and to measure traffic on the Site. We also may use a standard feature found in browser software called a "cookie" to enhance your experience with the Site. Cookies are small files that your web browser places on your hard drive for record-keeping purposes. By showing how and when visitors use the Site, cookies help us deliver advertisements, identify how many unique users visit us, and track user trends and patterns. They also prevent you from having to re-enter your preferences on certain areas of the Site where you may have entered preference information before. This Site also may use web beacons (single-pixel graphic files also known as "transparent GIFs") to access cookies and to count users who visit the Site or open HTML-formatted email messages.
If you want to limit the non-personally identifiable information that is automatically collected while you use our Site, most Web browsers allow you to disable certain functionality or set certain privacy setting. For example, to disable cookies using Internet Explorer, select "Internet Options" under the Tools menu and click on "Privacy." Select "High" or "Block All Cookies." To disable cookies using Mozilla Firefox, select "Options" under the "Tools" menu. If you choose to disable cookies or turn off other functionality, you may not be able to use or participate in some or all of the features offered through the Site.
The information we collect may be collected directly by us, or it may be collected by a third-party website hosting provider, or another third-party service provider.
We use the information we collect from you while you are using the Site in a variety of ways, including, for example, to process your registration request, provide you with services and communications that you have requested, send you email updates and other communications, customize features and advertising that appear on the Site, deliver our Site content to you, measure Site traffic, measure user interests and traffic patterns, and improve the Site and the services and features offered via the Site.
The use and collection of information by third-party advertising service providers is governed by the relevant third party’s Privacy Notice and is not covered by our Privacy Notice. If you would like more information about the information collection practices of a particular service provider, or if you would like more information on how to opt out of a service provider’s information collection practices please read the below information.
Data Collected in Connection with Ad Serving and Targeting
We may use cookies, web beacons and similar technologies, and/or a third-party ad serving software, to collect non-personally identifiable information about site users and site activity, and we may use this information to, among other things, serve targeted advertisements on this site. The information collected allows us to analyze how users use the site and to track user interests, trends and patterns, thus allowing us to deliver more relevant advertisements to users.
We also may use third-party service providers, including Google!, to target and serve some of the advertisements you see on the pages of our Site. We may share non-personally identifiable information, such as type of pages viewed and categories of interest, from our Site with these service providers for their use in displaying ads on our Site. These providers may use their own cookies, web beacons and similar technologies to collect non-personally identifiable information from our Site. These service providers may use that information, sometimes in conjunction with similar non-personally identifiable information gathered through other websites, to deliver advertisements on this Site, and on other websites that participate in our service providers’ advertising networks, that are tailored to match the perceived interests of consumers. In addition, Yahoo!, which is one of our third-party advertising service providers, may use information regarding its own users to select which ads to display on this Site. The non-personally identifiable information obtained by our third-party service providers also may be used to help measure and research an advertisement’s effectiveness, or for other purposes.
The data collected in connection with the ad serving and ad targeting on our Site does not identify you personally and does not include your name, address, email address or telephone number, but it may include the IP address of your computer.
The use and collection of information by our third-party advertising service providers is governed by the individual privacy policies of those providers.
Many of our advertising service providers are members of the Network Advertising Initiative ("NAI"). You can obtain more information about these advertising service providers' information collection practices, and opt out of such practices (and at the same time opt out of the collection practices of other, or all, NAI members) by following the opt out instructions on the NAI's website at http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.
