Our Privacy Policy

This version was posted on 18 October, 2010 and remains in effect until supplanted.

I. Overview: I/we recognize that privacy is important. This Privacy Policy applies to all of the products, services and websites owned or operated by Rich Van Winkle. I/we attempt to adhere to the US Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of Notice, Choice, Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity, Access and Enforcement. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact me through any of my websites or write to me at: Rich Van Winkle, P.O. Box 5413, Bellingham, WA 98227.

We (Rich and associates) offer a number of services that do not require you to register for an account or provide any personal information. In order to provide services, we may collect the following types of information:

II. Information You Provide: When you use any of our websites and request contact or a service that requires information, we may ask you for personal information (such as your name, email address and an account password) that we deem necessary to provide the requested service or offer the requested contact. For certain services, such as a store purchase, we request credit card or other payment account information which is maintained in encrypted form in secure systems. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of service.

III. Cookies and Server Logs: When you visit any of our websites, we may send one or more cookies – a small file containing a string of characters – to your computer or other device that uniquely identifies you, your browser, or other web traffic information. Cookies improve the quality of our service by storing user preferences, improving search results and tracking user trends. We may keep a record of what portions of our websites you’ve accessed and for how long. Whatever information we gather from our cookies and our served logs remains our property and we will not make that information available to you or anyone else. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some features and services may not function properly if your cookies are disabled and we reserve the right to deny service because cookies are disabled (or for any other reason we deem fair and legal).

IV. User Communication: When you send email or other communications to us, we may retain such communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services.

V. Links: We may present links in a format that enables us to keep track of whether these links have been followed. We use this information to improve the quality of our services and determine user preferences. This Privacy Policy applies to our services on our websites only. We do not exercise control over the sites displayed as search results, sites that we link to, or links from within our related services. These other sites may place their own cookies or other files on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information from you.

VI. Affiliated Services On Other Sites: We offer some of our services on or through other web sites. Personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent to us in order to deliver the service. We process such information under this Privacy Policy. The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.

We only processes personal information for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy and the following:

·         Providing our services, including the display of customized content and advertising;

·         Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;

·         Ensuring the technical functioning of our network;

·         Protecting our rights or property and that of our other users; and

·         Developing new services.

We  processes personal information on hosted servers in the United States of America. In some cases, our hosts may process personal information on servers outside of your own country. We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as our advertising partners.

VII. Choices for personal information: When you sign up for a particular service that requires registration or input of personal information, we may use this information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected. At our discretion, we may ask for your consent prior to such use. If we intend to use personal information for any purposes other than those described in this Privacy Policy and/or in the specific service privacy notices, we will either notify you of such, offer you an effective way to opt out of the use of personal information for those other purposes, or both. We will not collect or use sensitive or financial information for purposes other than those described in this Privacy Policy and/or in the supplementary service privacy notices, unless we have obtained your prior consent.

VIII. Information sharing: We only share personal information with other companies or individuals in the following limited circumstances:

1. If we have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.

2. If we provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf, we require that those parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

3. If we have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of ourselves, our company, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.

4. If we become involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will ensure the confidentiality of any personal information involved in such transactions and provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

5. If we share with third parties certain pieces of aggregated, non-personal information, such as the number of users who searched for a particular term or how many users clicked on a particular advertisement, such information will not identify you individually.

IX. Information Security and Integrity: We process personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected and in accordance with this Privacy Policy or any applicable service-specific privacy notice. We review our data collection, storage and processing practices to ensure that we only collect, store and process the personal information needed to provide or improve our services or as otherwise permitted under this Policy. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we process is accurate, complete, and current, but we depend on our users to update or correct their personal information whenever necessary.

We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where we store personal data.

We restrict access to personal information. Our employees, contractors, associates  and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop, or improve our services are required to know and accept this Privacy Policy (in writing). Where that information includes personally identifying data, the individuals with access are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.

X. Accessing and Updating Personal Information: When you use our services, we make good faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete such data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. We ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes), or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case where we provide information access and correction, we perform this service free of charge, except if doing so would require a disproportionate effort. Some of our services have different procedures to access, correct or delete users’ personal information.

XI. Changes and Challenges to This Privacy Policy: Please note that this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without providing reasonable notice and we expect most such changes will be minor. Regardless, we will post any Privacy Policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of Privacy Policy changes). Each version of this Privacy Policy will be identified at the top of the page by its effective date, and we will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive.

When we receive formal written complaints regarding privacy matters or personal information, it is our policy to directly contact the complaining user regarding those concerns. We will cooperate with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that cannot be otherwise resolved.

COPPA Compliance: We (this and all other associated websites) do not knowingly collect or store any personal information, even in aggregate, about children under the age of 13.

Technology on the Internet is developing at a rapid pace, and we need to maintain our flexibility in the online arena. If we need to change our policy in the future, we will post these changes as soon as they go into effect.

If you have any additional questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us any time through this web site or the other listed contact options (as above).

Click here to return to the Home page.