PRIVACY POLICY - COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY
This site is owned and operated by Park Bench Designs. Your privacy
on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At Park Bench Designs, 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 our
policy and 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.
INFORMATION Park Bench Designs GATHERS AND TRACKS
Park Bench Designs 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 Park Bench Designs 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 better understand
the demographics of our audience. Under no circumstances does Park Bench Designs
divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.
Park Bench Designs 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:
Electronic newsletters policy (Dispatches)
We will offer a free electronic newsletter to users. Park Bench Designs
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.
Message boards/forums policy
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.
"Ask a Question" forms and related forms policy
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.
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. Park Bench Designs 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.
Surveys
Park Bench Designs 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.
Usage tracking
Park Bench Designs tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of
our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual
users. Park Bench Designs 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).
Park Bench Designs 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. Park Bench Designs uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above).
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 need to have cookies turned on to use this site. You
do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, polling and
surveys.
USE OF INFORMATION
Park Bench Designs uses any information voluntarily given by our users
to enhance their experience in our website, 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. Park Bench Designs never shares newsletter mailing
lists with any third parties.
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.
SECURITY
Park Bench Designs employs 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 Park Bench Designs . 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.