G33kSpeak Privacy Policy
Commitment To Privacy
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. USE OF INFORMATION: G33kspeak 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.
This site is owned and operated by G33kspeak. Your privacy on the Internet is
of the utmost importance to us. At G33kspeak, 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.
INFORMATION G33kspeak GATHERS AND TRACKS
G33kspeak gathers two types of information about users:
1. 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.
2. Information G33kspeak 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 G33kspeak
derives some of it's revenue mainly from sponsorships and advertising, providing
such aggregated demographic data is essential to keeping our service free to
users. Under no circumstances does G33kspeak divulge any information about an
individual user to a third party.G33kspeak 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 may offer a free electronic newsletter
to users. G33kspeak 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/guestbooks - 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. G33kspeak 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 - G33kspeak 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: G33kspeak tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites.
However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users.
G33kspeak 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).
G33kspeak 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. G33kspeak uses cookies
to track user traffic patterns (as described above). Our advertising system
may deliver 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.
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. G33kspeak 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.
G33kspeak 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
G33kspeak 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
G33kspeak 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. YOUR CONSENT
OPT-OUT POLICY
We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:
1. Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters.
2. Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely
alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our
users.
By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information
by G33kspeak. 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.