TRAILMEISTER.COM PRIVACY STATEMENT
Revised and posted as of: September 22, 2015
TrailMeister.com is committed to safeguarding your privacy online. Please read the following statement to understand how your personal information will be treated as you make full use of the TrailMeister.com website and services. The TrailMeister.com website is owned and operated by TrailMeister.com LLC.
Summary
Our primary goal in collecting user information is to enhance your experience on our website and the web. We use aggregated (gathered up data across all user accounts) information to develop content targeted to users’ interests and to better the website user experience. TrailMeister.com is committed to your privacy and other than as provided herein or after receiving your specific consent, TrailMeister.com will not share any personal information with any third party at any time, unless required by law.
What this Privacy Policy Covers
This privacy policy covers the website and activities of TrailMeister.com. Please be aware that TrailMeister.com sponsors, advertisers and partners or affiliates with co-branded modules or sections on TrailMeister.com may collect personally identifiable information about you while on our website. The information practices of those parties are not covered by this privacy statement. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies only to information collected by us.
TrailMeister.com users should also be aware that, when you voluntarily disclose personal information in chat areas or bulletin boards, that information may be collected by others and may result in unsolicited messages from others. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums.
Gathering of Information
Voluntary Submission
TrailMeister.com does not collect personally identifying information about any individual TrailMeister.com website user except when knowingly provided by such individual. For example, we may ask you for information, such as your e-mail address when you register to become a member of TrailMeister.com. You may also provide information to TrailMeister.com in other contexts, including, for example, on your member profile page and public profile URL or to enter into a sweepstakes or promotion. In the event you order something from TrailMeister.com or one of our co-branded websites, we may request additional personal information, such as your address, telephone number and credit card information, in order to complete the purchase. We also supplement the data you provide to us with data from data append services. You always have the option not to provide the information we request. If you choose not to provide the information we request, you can still visit most of the TrailMeister.com website, but you may be unable to access certain options and services. When you register or become a member of TrailMeister.com or provide information to TrailMeister.com in any other manner, you agree to provide only true, accurate, current and complete information.
Cookies
A cookie is a small data file that is written to your computer’s hard drive by your web browser. A cookie file can contain information, such as a user identification code, that a website will use to track the pages and number of times you have visited. TrailMeister.com uses cookies to track web and advertising analytics throughout TrailMeister.com and its affiliate websites and to remember your custom video playlists, preferences, job title, story ratings (if you have provided any), and membership status so that you don’t have to login each time you visit the website. The data read from these cookies may be linked to personally identifying (PII) and non-personally identifying (non-PII) information.
Business partners of TrailMeister.com, vendors providing hosting and other services for TrailMeister.com, third party analytics providers, as well as advertisers who contract directly with a third-party service to serve their advertisements on our website may set their own unique cookies through your browser. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually change your browser settings to display a warning before accepting a cookie, choose to accept cookies only from certain websites or to refuse all cookies. However, if you choose to disable the receipt of cookies from our website, you may not be able to use certain features of the site.
Web Beacons
We use web beacons (invisible images often referred to as pixel tags or clear GIFs) on our sites in order to recognize users, assess traffic patterns, identify preferred content and measure site engagement. We also include web beacons in our e-mail messages, including newsletters, in order to count how many e-mail messages have been opened.
TrailMeister.com also uses a reputable third party to collect information, including through the use of web beacons, browser cookies and other tracking technologies. We may collect via web beacons various data provided by your browser while you are on our site and elsewhere where we may be acting as a 3rd party. This data is collected in the aggregate, but may include or be associated with other non-PII or PII that users have voluntarily submitted.
Log Files
TrailMeister.com web and ad servers log information about a site user’s IP address, browser type and the current URL the user is requesting. This information is always provided by each and every user’s browser. These log files are stored in a secure location and used –in an aggregated, anonymous manner–in our internal analysis of traffic patterns within our website. This information is automatically logged by most websites.
Use of Information
Our primary goal in collecting user information is to enhance your experience on our website.
To Target Content and Advertising
To develop and provide content and advertising to you that is targeted to your interests, we use the analytics collected by the systems described above to determine which areas of our website you prefer based upon the frequency of your visits and engagement with those areas. We may make reasonable assumptions based on your browser provided data to target relevant content and advertising to you on our site and elsewhere where we may be acting as a 3rd party. We may also make reasonable geographic and demographic assumptions based on your presented IP address to target relevant content and advertising.
To Provide Interactive Communications From TrailMeister.com
To enhance your experience we may provide you with interactive communications, such as notifications of activity by topic or contributor to the e-mail address that you provide to us. Such interactive communications are provided only to those users who have expressly provided us with their permission to receive them as part of their user profile.
From time to time we may provide e-mails highlighting new features, promotions or contests on the website to those users who have expressly provided us with their permission to send such communications as part of their user profile.
To Provide Communications From Third Parties
We respect the privacy of our users and shall not disclose or distribute our user list to any third party, nor shall we permit anyone else to do so. However, we do make available for rental our list of those registrants who have expressly provided us with their permission to receive third party offers as part of their user profile. In those cases, your e-mail address will be transferred to the third party.
Control of Your Information
Registered users may change the information stored in their member profile such as image, full name, e-mail address, password, location, country and the topics and contributors they are following, and they may elect to stop receiving marketing material from TrailMeister.com or on behalf of external third party business partners. Users may choose to stop receiving such communications at any time.
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
Sharing of Information
When you are on an area of TrailMeister.com and are asked for personal information, you are sharing that information with TrailMeister.com as well as business partners and vendors providing hosting and other services for TrailMeister.com.
We use third parties to provide credit card processing, e-mail service providers and hosting services on our site. When you sign up for such services, we will share your personally identifiable information as necessary for the third party to provide that service. These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose. If you do not want your information to be shared, you can choose not to allow the transfer of your information by not using that particular service.
In addition, if you provide any personally identifiable information via an advertiser promotion, please be aware you are directly providing your personally identifiable information to that advertiser.
From time-to-time we may provide you the opportunity to participate in contests or surveys on our site. If you participate, we will request certain personally identifiable information from you, such as your name and e-mail. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information. We use this personally identifiable information to notify contest winners and award prizes.
We may use a third party service provider to conduct these surveys or contests; that company will be prohibited from using our users’ personally identifiable information for any other purpose. We will not share the personally identifiable information you provide through a contest or survey with other third parties unless we give you prior notice and choice.
You can log in to our site using sign-in services that bridge your social media login information with TrailMeister.com. These services will authenticate your identity and provide you the option to share certain personal information with us such as your name and email address to pre-populate our sign up form. These services give you the option to post information about your activities on this website to your profile page to share with others within your network.
Our website includes social media features, widgets and/or interactive mini-programs that run on our site. These features are small content modules that users can embed on sites and may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, or set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.
Aggregate, Anonymous Information With Advertisers
TrailMeister.com derives the majority of its revenue from advertising and sharing information is essential to keeping our services affordable to users. In order to attract and retain advertisers we use the aggregated, anonymous information that we gather (as well as information from third-party market researchers) to describe our services to partners and to assist our advertisers and sponsors to better understand our audience. We do not disclose personally identifying information about our users to these parties.
We partner with a third party ad network to either display advertising on our Web site or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our ad network partner uses cookies and Web beacons to collect non-personally identifiable information about your activities on this and other Web sites to provide you targeted advertising based upon your interests
As Necessary to Provide Services to You
We occasionally hire other companies to provide limited services on our behalf, such as handling the processing and delivery of newsletter mailings, processing transactions, or performing statistical analysis of our services. We will only provide those companies the information they need to deliver the service. In some instances these companies may collect information directly from you. In these cases, you will be notified of the involvement of the external service provider. In all cases, these companies are subject to agreements that require them to maintain the confidentiality of your information and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose.
In The Event of Sale or Bankruptcy
The ownership of TrailMeister.com may change at some point in the future. Should that occur, we want this site to be able to maintain a relationship with you. In the event of a sale, merger, public offering, bankruptcy or other change in control of TrailMeister.com LLC and/or TrailMeister.com your information may be shared with the person or business that owns or controls this site. Opting out of receiving information from third parties will not affect our right to transfer your information to a new owner, but your choices will continue to be respected regarding the use of your information. You will be notified as described below in “How will I know if the Privacy Policy is changed.”
As Required By Law
TrailMeister.com may disclose your personal information if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to conform to the edicts of the law or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order or legal process served on TrailMeister.com or to protect and defend the rights or property of TrailMeister.com.
Security
Your information is stored on TrailMeister.com’s servers located in the United States. We use industry standard procedural and technical safeguards to protect your personal information against loss or theft as well as unauthorized access and disclosure to protect your privacy. We treat data as an asset that must be protected against loss and unauthorized access. We employ many different security techniques to protect such data from unauthorized access by users inside and outside the company. However, “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet.
Privacy of Children
Kids under 13: Do not send any information about yourself to us–including information such as your name, address, or e-mail address. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. In the event that we learn we have collected any personal information from a child under the age of 13 we will delete that information from our database as quickly as possible.
How to Contact Us
If you have any questions regarding our privacy statement, please feel free to contact us by e-mail at privacy@TrailMeister.com. We read every message submitted and try to reply promptly to every one. Our mailing address is TrailMeister LLC PO Box 21071, Spokane WA, 99201.
How Will I Know if the Privacy Policy Is Changed?
If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the e-mail address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this website prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.