GROOFER.COM Privacy Policy
Protecting your privacy is a serious matter and doing so is very important to us. Groofer has created this Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) to explain our information gathering and dissemination practices. This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect from you and what may happen to that information, and only applies to such information. This Privacy Policy applies to all sites and pages under the groofer.com domain, but not to any outside third party pages or content that is hosted outside the groofer.com domain even if linked from Content posted on our Site. This Privacy Policy is governed by, and included within, the Groofer Terms of Service Agreement (“TOS”) [[LINK]]. All capitalized terms not otherwise defined herein, shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the TOS.
NOTICE: The Federal Trade Commission has a number of publications concerning the use of the Internet, Internet “surfing”, and online privacy at the following address: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/tech/privacy.shtm
Section 1: Information Collection.
We collect the following information about you and your use of our Site and the Service in order to create a better, more personalized experience for you: a username selected by you, your email address, your name, a password selected by you, your location, and professional interests.
For purposes of this Privacy Policy, “Personally Identifiable Information” means information that could be used to identify you personally (such as your email address or IP address), which has not been previously or subsequently disclosed by you on the public areas of our Site or in messages you send on Groofer.
In compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/coppa1.htm), we do not intentionally collect any personally identifiable information from children. You must be at least 18 years of age to use the Service.
We automatically track certain basic information about our Users (such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, click patterns, ratings, comments, time spent on pages, etc.). We use this information to do internal research on usage patterns, demographics, interests and general behavior to better understand and serve you and the Groofer community, and to make the Service more useful.
Section 2: Use of Information.
We use the information we collect about you (including your Personally Identifiable Information) to create a better, more personalized experience for you based on your individual usage habits, information about the Content you view and contribute, the Groofer Groups you join, and to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, analyze site usage, improve our content and product offerings, and customize our Site’s content, layout and Services. These uses improve our site and allow us to better customize it to meet your needs. We also use the information we collect about you to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, and enforce our Terms of Service Agreement.
We may use for promotional, sales or any use that we consider appropriate, any text, images, video or other media posted or uploaded to our Site. Our use of such materials will be consistent with the restrictions on disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information set forth herein, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and other applicable law (see e.g. http://www.copyright.gov/).
Section 3: Disclosure of Your Information.
Opt-in requirement. WITHOUT YOUR AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT (ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS), WE DO NOT SELL, RENT OR OTHERWISE SHARE YOUR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES, UNLESS OTHERWISE REQUIRED AS DESCRIBED BELOW UNDER “REQUIRED DISCLOSURES”. TO THE EXTENT WE SHARE INFORMATION WITH OUR PARTNERS AND ADVERTISERS, WE SHARE ONLY AGGREGATED OR OTHERWISE NON-PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION, THAT IS NOT LINKED TO YOUR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION.
Aggregated information that we may share with our marketing partners includes, but is not limited to, information showing the relative popularity of one Groofer Group over another, or the popularity of certain links, Feeds, or other Content on the Site for different Users and Groofer Groups. We may also share the identities of the Groofer Groups that you have joined, but such sharing will not be linked to any Personally Identifiable Information (unless we ask and you give us your explicit affirmative consent), but rather to a unique and anonymous Groofer identifier that will enable us to relate and present any information or advertising content we receive back to your pages within Groofer or on the pages you visit on external partner sites.
You should understand that information you provide through the registration process or post to the public areas of our Site, including the public Groofer Groups, or through the use of our Service (including your name and location information) may be accessible by and made public through syndication programs and by search engines, metasearch tools, screen scrapers, crawlers, metacrawlers and other similar programs.
Required Disclosures. Though we make every effort to preserve member privacy, we may need to disclose your Personally Identifiable Information when required by law or if we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to (a) comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our Site, (b) enforce this Privacy Policy or the TOS, (c) respond to claims that your Personal Information violates the rights of third parties; or (d) protect the rights, property or personal safety of Groofer, its members and the public. You authorize us to disclose any information about you to law enforcement or other government officials as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringements, or other activity that is illegal or may expose us or you to legal liability.
Section 4. Integration with Third-Party Websites
The Service will periodically offer you the opportunity to integrate your Groofer Account with third-party social networking, information, entertainment and new websites (the “Integrated Service(s)”). You will always have the option whether or not to initiate and accept the integration of an Integrated Service. Before we integrate your Account with an Integrated Service, we will disclose to you the information that will be shared from your Groofer Account with the Integrated Service and ask you to review the terms of the integration. In addition, before we integrate your Account with the Integrated Service we will require you to acknowledge that the Integrated Service is governed by its own privacy policy and Groofer is not responsible for any of your actions or experiences on the Integrated Service.
For our Users’ convenience, we also use “cookies” to allow you to enter your password less frequently during a session and to provide for an easier registration process. A “cookie” is a piece of data stored on your computer that is tied to information about you. If you configure your browser or otherwise choose to reject the cookies, you may still use our site. However, to best experience our Site and most easily use our Service you must have cookies enabled.
Section 5: Communications/Email.
Communications among Users, Groofer groups and the Service are governed by our TOS. You may manage certain elections regarding subscriptions to all Groofer Communications on your Account settings page.
Section 6: Reviewing, Updating, Deleting and Deactivating Personally Identifiable Information.
After registration for our Service, we provide a way to update your Personally Identifiable Information. Upon your request, we will deactivate your Account and remove your Personally Identifiable Information from our active databases. To make this request, email deactivate@groofer.com. Upon our receipt of your request, we will deactivate your Account and remove your Personally Identifiable Information as soon as reasonably possible in accordance with our deactivation policy and applicable law. Nonetheless, we will retain in our files information you may have requested us to remove if, in our discretion, retention of the information is necessary to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, to enforce the TOS, or as required by law. Furthermore, your information is never completely removed from our databases due to technical and legal constraints (for example, we will not remove your information from our back up storage).
Section 7: Notification of Changes.
If we decide to change this Privacy Policy, we will post those changes on http://www.groofer.com/privacy or on the homepage (http://www.groofer.com ) and any other place we deem appropriate, so you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
In some cases where we post a notice we will also email you and other Users who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices. However, if you have deleted/deactivated your Account, then you will not be contacted.
If the change to this Privacy Policy would change how your Personally Identifiable Information is treated, then the change will not apply to you without your affirmative consent. Until such consent, your Personally Identifiable Information will be treated under the Privacy Policy terms in force when you began your Account.
Section 8: Dispute Resolution.
Any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to this Privacy Policy or previous Privacy Policy statements shall be resolved as provided under our TOS.
Section 9: Contact Information.
If members have any questions or suggestions regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact Groofer, at privacy@groofer.com, or by mail: MarketPlane Online, Inc., 2465 Centerville Rd, Suite #J17-711, Herndon, VA 20171..
