The Friendly Brief’s Privacy Policy (effective 9/1/2006)
The Friendly Brief’s Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we collect and use the personal information you decide to share, and help you make informed decisions when using The Friendly Briefs located at www.friendlybriefs.com ("The Friendly Briefs" or "Web Site").
By using or accessing The Friendly Briefs, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact our privacy staff at privacy@friendlybriefs.com.
The Information We Collect
When you visit The Friendly Briefs you provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected by us and Web Site use information collected by us as you interact with our Web Site.
The Friendly Briefs asks for some personal information when you sign up including your email address and a password, which is used to protect your account from unauthorized access. Your birthday is used to verify age for the protection of minors.
When you enter The Friendly Briefs, we collect your browser type and IP address. This information is gathered for all The Friendly Briefs visitors. In addition, we store certain information from your browser using "cookies." A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. We use session ID cookies to confirm that users are logged in. These cookies terminate once the user closes the browser. By default, we use a persistent cookie that stores your login ID (but not your password) to make it easier for you to login when you come back to The Friendly Briefs. You can remove or block this cookie using the settings in your browser if you want to disable this convenience feature.
When you use The Friendly Briefs, write articles, subscribe to newspapers, invite people to your newspapers, perform searches and queries, and transmit information through various channels, we collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features. In most cases, we retain it so that, for instance, you can edit previous briefs or manage your subscriptions. When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.
If you post personally identifiable information in areas of the site accessible to other users, you should be aware that such information can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used improperly to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums or for others’ misuse of such information. Any misuse or improper collection of information provided on The Friendly Briefs is a violation of The Friendly Briefs Terms of Service and should be reported to privacy@friendlybriefs.com.
If you choose to use our invitation service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for your friend’s email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site. The Friendly Briefs stores this information to send this one-time email, to register a friend connection if your invitation is accepted, and to track the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us at privacy@friendlybriefs.com to request that we remove this information from our database.
By using The Friendly Briefs, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.
Children Under Age 13
The Friendly Briefs does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13 or knowingly allow such persons to register. If you are under 13, please do not send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address. No one under age 13 is allowed to provide any personal information to or on The Friendly Briefs. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at privacy@friendlybriefs.com.
Children Between the Ages of 13 and 18
We recommend that minors over the age of 13 ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet.
Use of Information
We may occasionally use your name and email address to send you notifications regarding new services offered by The Friendly Briefs that we think you may find valuable.
The Friendly Briefs will send you only service-related announcements from time to time through the general operation of the service. For instance, if a new article is posted on a newspaper to which you subscribe an email may be sent alerting you to that fact.
Generally, you may not opt-out of these communications, which are not promotional in nature. If you do not wish to receive them, you have the option to deactivate your account by contacting us at privacy@friendlybriefs.com.
The Friendly Briefs may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating usage statistics and topics discussed. We do this so we know how to improve the site, and where there are advertisements, they're more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you write about a favorite book, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting the book on sale. However, we don’t tell the advertiser who likes the book.
Sharing Your Information with Third Parties
We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you. For example:
- We may provide information to service providers to help us bring you the services we offer. Specifically, we may use third parties to facilitate our business, such as to host the service at a co-location facility for servers, to send out email updates about The Friendly Briefs, to remove repetitive information from our user lists, to process payments for products or services, or to provide search results or links (including sponsored links). In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for use for a limited time in connection with these business activities. Where we utilize third parties for the processing of any personal information, we implement reasonable contractual and technical protections limiting the use of that information to the The Friendly Briefs-specified purposes.
- We occasionally provide demonstration accounts that allow non-users a glimpse into the The Friendly Briefs world. Such accounts have only limited capabilities and passwords are changed regularly to limit possible misuse.
- We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the The Friendly Briefs service or using the The Friendly Briefs name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.
- We let you choose to share information with marketers or electronic commerce providers through sponsored newspapers or other on-site offers.
- We may offer stores or provide services jointly with other companies on The Friendly Briefs. You can tell when another company is involved in any store or service provided on The Friendly Briefs, and we may share customer information with that company in connection with your use of that store or service.
- If the ownership of all or substantially all of the The Friendly Briefs business, or individual business units owned by The Friendly Briefs, Inc., were to change, your user information may be transferred to the new owner so the service can continue operations. In any such transfer of information, your user information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy.
Links
The Friendly Briefs may contain links to other websites. We are of course not responsible for the privacy practices of other web sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected by The Friendly Briefs.
Third Party Advertising
Advertisements that appear on The Friendly Briefs are sometimes delivered (or "served") directly to users by third party advertisers. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. These third party advertisers may also download cookies to your computer, or use other technologies such as JavaScript and "web beacons" (also known as "1x1 gifs") to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. Doing this allows the advertising network to recognize your computer each time they send you an advertisement in order to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content. In this way, they may compile information about where individuals using your computer or browser saw their advertisements and determine which advertisements are clicked. The Friendly Briefs does not have access to or control of the cookies that may be placed by the third party advertisers. Third party advertisers have no access to your contact information stored on The Friendly Briefs unless you choose to share it with them.
This privacy policy covers the use of cookies by The Friendly Briefs and does not cover the use of cookies or other tracking technologies by any of its advertisers.
Individuals who wish to deactivate their The Friendly Briefs account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of The Friendly Briefs.
Where you make use of the communication features of the service to share information with other individuals on The Friendly Briefs, however, (e.g., writing an article on a shared newspaper) you generally cannot remove such communications.
Security
The Friendly Briefs takes appropriate precautions to protect our users' information. Your account information is located on a secured server behind a firewall. Because email and instant messaging are not recognized as secure communications, we request that you not send private information to us by email or instant messaging services. If you have any questions about the security of The Friendly Briefs Web Site, please contact us at privacy@friendlybriefs.com.
Terms of Use, Notices and Revisions
If you choose to visit The Friendly Briefs, your visit and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use, including limitations on damages, arbitration of, and application of law of the state of New York. We reserve the right to change our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use at any time. Non-material changes and clarifications will take effect immediately, and material changes will take effect within 30 days of their posting on this site. If we make changes, we will post them and will indicate at the top of this page the policy's effective date. We therefore encourage you to refer to this policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current privacy policy. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account.
Contacting the Web Site
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at privacy@friendlybriefs.com.