MainGeek's Privacy Policy Statement
MainGeek's privacy policy statement demonstrates our commitment to your
privacy rights. Since we gather certain types of information about our
users, we want the user to fully understand the terms and conditions
surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy
statement discloses what information we gather, how we use it, and how
to correct or change it.
MainGeek supports and adheres to the
Principles for
Privacy Protection published by the Responsible Electronic
Communication Alliance (RECA)
MainGeek is also compliant with the Can-Spam Act of 2003.
This overall privacy
statement describes our policies. Below we inform you that this
website has agreed to notify you of:
1.
What information this site gathers/tracks about you.
2.
What this site does with the information it
gathers/tracks.
3.
With whom this site shares the information it
gathers/tracks.
4.
This site's opt-out policy.
5.
This site's policy on correcting and updating personally
identifiable information.
6.
This site's policy on deleting or deactivating your name
from its database.
7.
What security procedures are in place to protect the loss
or misuse of information.
If you have any
questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact
MainGeek at mailto:adm_help@maingeek.com
1. Information MainGeek Gathers and Tracks
MainGeek gathers information about our users, which they submit to our
registration page as well as registration pages of our partners. This
information enables us to better tailor our content to readers' needs
and to help our advertisers better understand the demographics of our
audience. Users may also elect to receive additional information from
our partners by opting-in to their offerings during our registration
process. The user's email addresses will then be provided to those
partners for their use in future email campaigns.
MainGeek gathers, or may gather in the future, user information
in the following processes:
Cookies
MainGeek
minimizes the use of cookies to only those necessary to properly route
users within our site. Refusing cookies will not affect members' ability
to act on or take advantage of our special offers and promotions.
MainGeek provides links to advertiser and partner websites.
These sites may choose to use cookies to better promote their products
and services.
Usage Tracking
MainGeek
tracks information related to overall user traffic patterns throughout
our site and with respect to our offers and promotions in order to make
decisions regarding future offers and promotions and other content and
services.
Clear Gifs
42Promtoions employs a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs),
that help us better manage content on our site by informing us
what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier,
similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online
movements of Web users. The main difference between the two is that
clear gifs are invisible on the page and are much smaller, about the size of the
period at the end of this sentence. Clear gifs are tied to users’ personally
identifiable information to allow us to keep track of the orders of users
that have entered our site via third-party advertising.
In addition, we use clear gifs in our HTML-based emails to let us know which
emails have been opened by the recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness
of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. If users
would like to opt-out of these emails, please see the Opt-out section.
Log Files
Log files are used to track and
monitor traffic patterns on our site for maintenance purposes. The logs
are not used to track or monitor personally identifiable
information.
Optional Registration
MainGeek
offers free voluntary registration to our users. During
registration the user is required to supply a username and email, plus other
optional information such as gender, date of birth, interest profiles etc. This information is required if the user wants to
participate in MainGeek services.
Electronic
Newsletters
MainGeek emails free promotional offers
to our members. We gather the email addresses of
users who voluntarily opt-in during a registration process. Users may
remove themselves from this mailing list by utilizing the unsubscribe
options at the end of each mailing or by using our web site
directly.
Tell A Friend
Users can choose to
electronically notify MainGeek of an individual who may be
interested in our services. Users must provide MainGeek with
the email address of the intended recipient. This information is not
retained nor used for any other purpose than the intent of promoting our
services to that individual one time.
User
Feedback/Inquiries
Users have the ability to contact
MainGeek to provide us with their feedback. MainGeek does
not retain this information for any purpose other than to respond to the
user.
Outside Links
This site contains links to other
sites. Users will be taken to a separate site if they click on one of
these links. MainGeek is not responsible for the privacy
practices or content of any secondary websites. We encourage all users
to review the privacy policy of any site they visit.
Other
Circumstances
From time to time, MainGeek may
sponsor sweepstakes, contests or other events that require the
collection, processing, and storage of individual contact and
demographic information to be used for the event. We do not require the
user to provide additional information to participate in the event.
MainGeek may also co-sponsor these events along with other
companies in which case the user's individual contact and demographic
information will not be released to third-party or non-participating
organizations without the user's consent. MainGeek will
request that co-sponsors of such events uphold the privacy and
appropriate use of the registrants' information.
2. Use of Information
MainGeek
uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their
experience on our website, whether to provide interactive or
personalized elements on the site or to better prepare future content
based on the interests of our users.
We also use information,
which users voluntarily provide, in order to send out electronic
messages, newsletters and mailings. Users may opt-in on our registration
page if they choose to receive secondary correspondence. Users may
opt-out of receiving secondary mailings by editing their information on
our registration page or by selecting the unsubscribe link at the end of
each mailing.
MainGeek is able to offer its free services to interested parties,
in part, based on the willingness of our users to be reached by our marketing
partners; these include third party advertisers and marketers. By allowing
MainGeek to make the information you supply available, you will
receive free information on products and services, which may be of
interest to you. Notwithstanding, if you
register, all information provided to MainGeek may be used
to support our suppression, validation and enhancement services. See
"Sharing of Information" below.
MainGeek also
creates internal reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for
our advertisers and partners. MainGeek does not include any
personally identifiable information in our reports. This information
allows our advertisers to promote more effectively, and allows our users
to receive advertisements that are pertinent to their needs.
3. Sharing of Information
MainGeek
uses the information described above to tailor our content and help our
advertisers and third party marketers better understand our audience's
demographics. This is essential to keeping our services free and making
it useful and valuable. We share personally identifiable information
with our advertisers and third party marketers. MainGeek
does not control the practices of our advertisers or third party
marketers.
All information provided to
MainGeek by a registrant may be used to support our
suppression, validation and enhancement services to marketing companies,
advertising agencies, compilers, and data companies. For example, data
provided by a registrant, such as unsubscribe requests, will be used
by us and third parties to suppress or drop names from future
offerings and planned promotional campaigns. Our information may be used
by our partners to verify that existing data on the registrant lawfully
acquired by such customer is accurate. In addition, our customers may
use the data we supply to enhance or append demographic or lifestyle
data to such customer’s file.
MainGeek may
also participate in affiliate network programs and various co-marketing
partnerships to promote our site. For this purpose, we receive and share
information in order to analyze site traffic and pattern information so
we can evaluate the effectiveness of these programs.
MainGeek does not share or receive personally identifiable information
for these site-to-site traffic-building programs.
4. Opt-out Policy
At the time of
registration, MainGeek gives registered users the option to
opt-out from receiving information sent by third party advertisers or
from MainGeek sharing information with advertisers or third
party marketers for promotional purposes.
5. Correct/Update Policy
MainGeek
offers users the ability to correct or change the information collected
on our site. Users simply need to login and update their information.
Once changed, members will be sent a confirmation / renewal notice to
verify the changes (MainGeek uses closed loop confirmation
on changes in lieu of account passwords.). Users may change their
information at any time and as often as necessary. Users who are
experiencing problems or who have any questions about how our services
work can contact us at more_info@maingeek.com.
6. Delete/Deactivate Policy
Users may
unsubscribe to our electronic mailings at any time by following the
instructions contained at the end of every mailing.
Currently, MainGeek allows users to completely delete personal information
established at the time of registration by returning to the site and
updating their record with “blank” data.
Notification of Changes
Users will be notified of any changes to MainGeek’
privacy policy statement via our electronic mailings. If we change the
use of personally identifiable information, we will send you an email.
7. Security Policy
MainGeek has
created security guidelines to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration
of information collected from our website. Access to personally
identifiable information is only provided to authorized MainGeek employees via a password. MainGeek employees are
made aware of our security guidelines during our employee orientation
process. Our security guidelines are reviewed quarterly based on our
fiscal calendar.
MainGeek takes online privacy seriously, and does
not share the information users have submitted without their permission.
Updated January 29, 2004.
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