Effective Date: November 1, 2007
The Shepherd Express is committed to protecting your privacy. We know that you care about how information about you is used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will use that information carefully and sensibly in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully so that you understand our privacy practices. By visiting ShepherdExpress.com, you agree that your use of our site, and any dispute over privacy, is governed by this Privacy Policy and our Community Agreement.
Children’s Privacy
ShepherdExpress.com is not intended for children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly allow anyone under the age of 13 to register for the site or provide us with any personally identifying information. If you are under the age of 13, please do not attempt to register to use this site.
Because of the nature of this site, activities involving children, or a specific child, may be the topics of postings and comments on ShepherdExpress.com, and photographs posted on the site by parents or other community members may include images of children. Please respect the privacy of these children by not providing personal information about any child on the site unless you are the child’s parent or guardian or have the explicit consent of the child, parent or guardian. In any event, never use the site to demean children or a specific child in any way.
The Information We Collect and How We Use It
The information we collect falls into two categories: (1) personal information that you provide to us when you register to use our website, and (2) certain anonymous information that we collect as you navigate through the ShepherdExpress.com pages. Below is a description of each type of information we collect and how we use it:
• Registration Information
Anyone may visit ShepherdExpress.com and read its contents, but only registered users may post information or comments or use certain ShepherdExpress.com services. We require users to register to encourage responsible and courteous conduct that is consistent with our Community Rules. In our registration process, we require you to provide your name, e-mail address, zip code and age. We use this information to create a unique registration profile for you, to communicate with you regarding your registration, and to verify that you are not under the age of 13. We also may ask you to provide, at your option, your address and certain demographic information. This information will help us to better understand our audience, but is not required as a condition of registering; you may decline to provide any or all such optional information. Once you register with ShepherdExpress.com and sign in to our site, you are not anonymous to us, though you may use an assumed member name when posting to the site if you’d prefer to remain anonymous to other members of the ShepherdExpress.com community and other visitors to the site. Businesses that register with ShepherdExpress.com to place display or Yellow Pages advertisements will be required to provide some additional information during the registration process.
• E-mail Address
We require you to provide your e-mail address as part of the registration process. When you register with our site, we will send you an e-mail confirming your registration. We may use your e-mail address to send you administrative e-mails from time to time containing announcements and communications regarding the ShepherdExpress.com service. If you do not wish to receive administrative e-mails from us, please do not register to use our site. You also may elect to receive regular newsletters or information updates from us or to receive commercial e-mails from us that advertise our services and the products or services of our advertising partners. Even if you choose to receive commercial e-mails, we will not share your e-mail address with our third-party advertisers, though we may send you advertising materials on their behalf. Our newsletters, information updates and advertising e-mails will be sent to you only if you request them on an opt-in basis. Once you have opted in to receive such e-mails, you may unsubscribe from them at any time by following the simple instructions included in each e-mail.
Browser-Level Information and Cookies
When you visit ShepherdExpress.com, our web server automatically collects limited information about your computer configuration, such as the type of browser software you use, the operating system you're running and your IP address, and we also use “cookies” to track which pages of our site you visit. This information does not contain your personal information or otherwise tell us who you are. We use this information to make our site as useful as we can for as many users as possible. We use cookies to prevent you from having to re-enter your log-in information each time you visit the site. If you leave ShepherdExpress.com to visit our advertisers’ websites, some of those advertisers also may place cookies on your computer. We don't have access to those cookies or to any information they contain, and the use and collection of your information by such third-party advertisers is governed by the advertiser’s Privacy Policy, which may be different from ours. Because cookies are stored on your hard drive, not on our Web site, you can set your browser to decline cookies and can delete them from your computer. However, if you don't accept cookies, you may need to re-enter your log-in information each time you visit our site, and you may not be able to take advantage of various features on our site that are available to other visitors.
Aggregate Information Used to Serve and Target Ads
We may aggregate the information we collect from our users and use this anonymous, aggregated information to target ads on our site. (For example, we may use this information to tell advertisers the age range, gender composition, and geographic location of the audience the advertisers will be reaching.) When we aggregate your information, no specific personal information is included, and you cannot be identified from this aggregate information.
Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily make your personal information available for viewing by third parties on our site – for example, in a post, comment, classified ad, event listing or Yellow Pages review, or on other areas of our site – that information can be seen, collected and used by anyone who visits the site. We cannot control and therefore cannot be responsible for any unauthorized third-party use of such information. Please respect the privacy of others by not posting their personal information on our site without their permission.
Disclosure of Information
Information about our customers is an important part of our business, and we are not in the business of selling it to others. ShepherdExpress.com will not rent, sell, or share your personal information with unaffiliated companies or people except (1) as necessary to provide you with products or services you've requested, (2) when we have your permission, or (3) as follows:
• We may disclose your personal information to trusted partners who work on behalf of ShepherdExpress.com under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help us serve you. However, these companies are not allowed to share this information or to use it for their own purposes.
• We may disclose your personal information when release is appropriate to comply with law, to enforce our Community Agreement, or to protect the rights, property or safety of members of the ShepherdExpress.com community, other visitors to our site, our advertisers and other customers, the public, or ShepherdExpress.com and its employees.
• As our business grows, we may buy or sell various assets. In the event that ShepherdExpress.com or some or all of our assets are acquired by another company, information about our users may be among the transferred assets.
How To Make Changes To Your Personal Information
You can edit your ShepherdExpress.com registration information, including your e-mail address and options for receiving news and information and advertising e-mails, and can delete your registration and member name, at any time by going to the My Account page. If you delete your ShepherdExpress.com registration, certain personal information might remain in our archived records after your account has been deleted.
Links To Other Sites
ShepherdExpress.com, and users who post information on ShepherdExpress.com, may provide links to third-party Web sites whose privacy policies we do not control. When you access another site, use of any information you provide is governed by the Privacy Policy of the operator of the site you're visiting.
Archiving and Storage
All ShepherdExpress.com postings may be stored in our database, even after deletion from the site. Our web logs and other records may be stored indefinitely. In addition, search engines and other sites not affiliated with ShepherdExpress.com may cache or archive postings from ShepherdExpress.com, and may make such postings available for viewing on their sites. (For example, some search engines take a snapshot of each web page examined by the search engine as it crawls the web, and may cache these pages as a backup in case the original page is unavailable. Search engine users can view the cached pages simply by clicking on the “cached” link.) We have no control over this.
Security
ShepherdExpress.com has taken steps to protect the confidentiality of the personal information it collects from members of the ShepherdExpress.com community. Information we gather on ShepherdExpress.com is stored within ShepherdExpress.com-controlled databases (or databases hosted on our behalf) on servers maintained in protected environments, and we limit access to your personal information to ShepherdExpress.com employees who we believe need to see that information to provide you with services or otherwise do their jobs. However, no physical or electronic security system is impenetrable, and we cannot guarantee the security of our servers or databases, nor can we guarantee that the information that you supply to us won't be intercepted during transmission over the Internet. It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your ShepherdExpress.com account, especially on a shared computer, by logging out when you are finished using our site.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Because the web is an evolving medium, we may need to change our Privacy Policy at some point in the future, in which case we'll post the changes to this Privacy Policy on this website and update the Effective Date of the policy to reflect the date of the changes. By continuing to use the ShepherdExpress.com Web site after we post any such changes, you accept the Privacy Policy as modified.
Getting in Touch With Us
For more information, or if you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us.
Report Misconduct
If you see something on ShepherdExpress.com that you consider inappropriate or abusive, please let us know immediately. Click a Report Misconduct link on the post or comment. We will review the content to see if it meets our guidelines.
