At Merchant Management Systems, your privacy is a top Priority. We have put in
place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard
and prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the
information you provide to us.
We use the information you provide about yourself only to fulfill your request
for our products, programs, and services. Your personally identifiable
information will not be distributed or sold to third-party organizations
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COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY |
This site is owned and operated
by Merchant Management Systems . Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost
importance to us. At Merchant Management Systems , 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.
Definition of the Information Merchant Management Systems gathers and
keeps track of.
Merchant Management Systems gathers two types of information about
users:
-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:
-Information Merchant Management Systems 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 Merchant Management Systems derives its revenue mainly
from sponsorships and advertising, providing such aggregated demographic data is
essential to keeping our service free to users. Under no circumstances does
Merchant Management Systems divulge any information about an individual
user to a third party.
Merchant Management Systems 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 will offer a free electronic newsletter to users. Merchant Management Systems
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
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. Merchant Management Systems 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
Merchant Management Systems 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.
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.
USAGE TRACKING
Merchant Management Systems tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of
our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about
individual users. Merchant Management Systems 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).
Merchant Management Systems 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. Merchant Management
Systems uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above).
Our advertising system delivers 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.
USE OF INFORMATION
Merchant Management Systems 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.
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. Merchant Management Systems 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.
Merchant Management Systems 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
Merchant Management Systems 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
Merchant Management Systems 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.
OPT-OUT POLICY
We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:
· Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters.
· Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely
alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our
users
YOUR CONSENT
By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by
Merchant Management Systems . 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.
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