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This site is owned and operated by The
Boston Beanery®. Your privacy on the Internet is of
the utmost importance to us. At the Boston
Beanery®, we want to make your experience
online satisfying and safe.
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 the Boston
Beanery®
gathers and keeps track of.
Boston Beanery® gathers two types of
information about users:
-Information that users provide through
optional, voluntary submissions. These are
voluntary submissions to receive our
electronic newsletters, to participate in
our message boards or forums, to email a
friend, and from participation in polls and
surveys:
-Information the Boston Beanery®
gathers through
aggregated tracking information 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.
Because the Boston Beanery®
derives its revenue
mainly from sponsorships and advertising,
providing such aggregated demographic data
is essential to keeping our service free to
users. Under no circumstances does the Boston
Beanery®
divulge any information about an
individual user to a third party.
The
Boston Beanery®
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 will offer a free electronic newsletter
to users. The Boston Beanery®
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.
Users can also subscribe to the newsletters
at the time of registration.
2. Message boards/forums
Users of the site's Message Boards and
Forums must register separately for these
services (both are free of charge) in order
to post messages, although they needn't
register to visit the site. During
registration the user is required to supply
a username, password, and email address.
3. "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.
4. 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 identifiable to any particular user.
The Boston Beanery®
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.
5. Surveys
The Boston Beanery®
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
The Boston Beanery®
tracks user traffic patterns
throughout all of our sites. However, we do
not correlate this information with data
about individual users. The Boston Beanery®
does
break down overall usage statistics
according to a user's domain name, browser
type, and MIME type by reading this
information from the browser string
(information contained in every user's
browser).
The Boston Beanery®
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. The Boston Beanery®
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
message boards, forums, polling and surveys.
USE OF INFORMATION
The Boston Beanery®
uses any information
voluntarily given by our users to enhance
their experience in our network of sites,
whether to provide interactive or
personalized elements on the sites 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, surveys,
message boards, and forums. 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. The
Boston Beanery®
never shares newsletter
mailing lists with any third parties,
including advertisers, sponsors or partners.
When 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. We track
search terms entered in Search function as
one of many measures of what interests our
users. But we don't track which terms a
particular user enters.
The Boston Beanery®
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
The Boston Beanery® uses the above-described
information to tailor our content to suit
your needs and help our advertisers better
understand our audience's demographics. This
is essential to keeping our service free. 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
The Boston Beanery® 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
The Boston Beanery®. 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. |
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