Privacy Policy

A Summary in Plain English

Below is a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo.  My attorney recommended/demanded it.  I'm usually not a fan of attorneys but I do think my guy is trying to keep me out of hot water.  So rather than paying him boatloads of money for advice and then ignoring it, I thought it would be wise to follow his advice and protect myself.

When I read the Privacy Policy myself, I immediately thought, "This is a legal template that all high paid attorneys must work off of and constantly strive to make longer, more complex and more difficult to understand."  There were many times where I didn't even know what the legal jargon meant.

The privacy policy throws in everything but the kitchen sink.  No, I just saw the kitchen sink was added as well...  Sorry about that. 

I just want a cool blog that allows me to write think pieces and where people could be come away with something of value.  That may be just entertainment.  It might be thought provoking concepts.  It might be a way to just pass time at work when you are bored out of your mind but don't want to ask your boss of something hard to do.

It talks a lot about collecting information and privacy.  In the end, my site is free.  You don't have to register if you don't want to.  You don't have to give me information.  Not everybody is welcome.  If you are a pest, a spammer or pollute my comments section, I'll take steps to find out who you are and ban you or return favor.  You don't have to tell me who you are.  If you leave a comment or personal information, I assume you did it as to your own free will and are willing to share it with the entire world on the world wide web.  Nothing is secret here.  What you put or enter becomes part of the internet cloud now and forever.

I'm not out to steal and share/sell your information.  I'm here to write a cool blog.  But it is better for me to disclose everything that is possible so I don't get into trouble.  I'm not sure my attorney would like that I put this summary ahead of the "official" policy.  I just thought it made sense.

 

DOKONANIE MEDIA CORPORATION

Privacy Policy

This site is owned by DOKONANIE MEDIA CORPORATION (“DOKONANIE” “THE COMPANY” “We”) and/or its subsidiaries.  DOKONANIE‘s privacy policy covers the collection, use and dissemination of personal information that may be collected by DOKONANIE anytime you interact with DOKONANIE on one of its websites, such as when you listen to audio streams, view video streams, visit our websites, when you purchase products, or when you contact DOKONANIE.  Please take a moment to read the following to learn more about our information practices, including what type of information is gathered, how the information is used and for what purposes, to who we disclose the information, and how we safeguard your personal information.

Why We Collect Information

DOKONANIE collects information to assist us in delivering a superior level of product.  We collect information to gain a better understanding of our customers and their needs and thus provide more valuable services.  This helps us to determine how best to provide useful information to customers and to understand which parts of our websites and Internet services are of most interest to them.

It enables us to give you convenient access to our products and services and focus on categories of greatest interest to you.  In addition, your personal information helps us keep you posted on the latest product announcements, updates, special offers, promotions, and events that you might like to hear about.

What Information We Collect

The information we learn from customers helps us personalize and continually improve your experience with our products and services, as well as more appropriate advertising.  We ask for your name, email address, and other personal information when you register to use certain features of our Web site, or if you sign up for special or personalized services, such as our community site or email newsletters.  We also may ask for this information at other times, such as when you enter contests or other promotions sponsored by DOKONANIE and/or our partners.  We sometimes conduct surveys as well, although you do not have to respond to them.

If you use our Website to email one of our articles to a friend, you will need to provide us with your friend’s email address and your email address as a return address.  We will automatically send this person a one-time email, with the recommended article attached, as well as invite your friend to visit and register with our site.  We will not use these email addresses for any other purpose.

We collect IP addresses for site security and to help us understand how people use our sites so that we can improve our sites and our users’ respective experiences.  For similar quality reasons, we use a feature known as a “cookie.”  Cookies contain bits of information that websites transfer to your computer’s hard drive for record-keeping purposes.  Cookies can make the Web more convenient by storing information about your preferences on a site.  Although we may assign your browser a cookie, the cookie does not tell us who you are.  Only you can tell us that.  We discuss cookies later in this Privacy Statement.

When you place an order for a product or service, we need to know the sort of information typically used for credit card transactions, such as your name, mailing and billing addresses (and shipping address, if different), telephone number, and credit card number and expiration date.  Gathering this information allows us to process and fulfill your order and notify you of your order status.  When you purchase an email gift certificate, we ask for the recipient’s email address in order to complete the purchase and send the certificate.  We will also use your information to contact you regarding your order if necessary. 

We may also collect your email address when you submit content to our sites (for example, a contest entry, or a review of a product or a comment on the Web site or blog component).  Your email address may be displayed if you submit in these capacities.

Besides cookies, we may also use tiny electronic images (called “single-pixel GIFs” or “Web beacons”) which allow us to count users who have visited specific pages or access certain cookies.  We may use single-pixel GIFs in the following ways;

• To count and recognize users.
• To conduct research on behalf of some partners on their websites, and for auditing purposes.
• To determine aggregate information about users, including demographic and usage information.
• To determine which email messages were opened and/or acted upon when we send HTML-formatted email messages (messages resembling Web pages that include graphics).

Advertising networks that serve ads on our site may also use single-pixel GIFs in their advertisements.  In general, any electronic image viewed as part of a Web page, including an ad banner, can act as a Web beacon.

How Do We Use Your Personal Information

We collect personal information to provide you, the user, with the best and most personalized experience possible, and to provide our advertisers with an efficient way to reach the right audience.  In short, by knowing a little about you, we can deliver more relevant content and advertisements to you.

We conduct research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behavior based upon the information you provide us when you register or participate in contests or other promotions on our site, or based upon the information on our server log files.  This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregate basis.  We may also notify you of products, services, or areas of our site that we think may interest you based on the information we’ve received.  If you would prefer us not to contact you for these purposes, simply go to our opt-out page and let us know.

In addition to helping us process your order, we use the information we collect from you when you buy a product or service from us so that we can provide you with an enhanced, more personalized shopping experience.  We will also send you occasional discount alerts and notices about products and services that we think may interest you.  If you would prefer us not to send you those notices, again, simply use our opt-out page to let us know.

Sometimes we ask for personal information when providing special features and services.  You do not have to give us that information, but without it, you may not be able to take advantage of those products or services.  For example, you will be unable to gain access to certain areas of our site unless you register and/or subscribe.

How We Use IP Addresses and Cookies

Your Web browser or email application automatically provides your Internet Protocol address (“IP address”) to other computers with which you communicate over the Internet, so that they know where to send you information.

We receive an IP address each time you view one of our Web pages, because the browser automatically reports it to us.  We also may store the IP address when you register with us, post a message, or buy something from us.

• We may use IP addresses for various purposes, including:
  Diagnosing service or technology problems.
• Assessing and maintaining system security.
• Displaying the most appropriate advertising or content.
• Studying how people use our site and how we can improve it.
• Reporting to advertisers about aggregate, but not individual, information derived from IP addresses.

Cookies

Cookies are used on our sites in the following ways:

• We use cookies to access your stored account information automatically when you log on to our site, in order to deliver a better and more personalized service.
• We use cookies to estimate our audience size and usage patterns.  The unique cookie that is given to each browser accessing our sites is then used to determine usage patterns and help us target content and ads based upon user interests.
• We use cookies to allow you to access your account information automatically, as well as make changes to your personal information.
• Our search engines may use cookies to expedite your search for content or products.
• In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our Web advertising partners may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.  For more on how to opt-out of these cookies, please see below.
• Some of our advertisers use third-party networks to serve their advertisements on our sites and in our HTML-formatted newsletters.  Often, these third-party advertising companies use cookies, Web beacons, and similar technologies to measure advertisement effectiveness.  We do not control, nor do we have access to, their cookies or the information they obtain.  Use of their tracking technology is subject to their own privacy policies.  If you would like more information about the privacy policies of third-party advertising networks, including information on how to opt out of their tracking methods, check out    http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp .

Disclosing Your Personal Information

We will not disclose any personally identifiable information about individual users, except as described in this Privacy Policy.  With the few exceptions that we explain here, we do not give, rent, lend, or sell individual information to our advertisers, although we do provide aggregate information.  For example, we might ell an advertiser that there are 20,000 users of our sites, but we will not tell them the specifics of any individual user, nor will we tell them that the users email address.  We may also use this aggregated information to help the advertisers reach the kind of audience they want.  They may give us an ad and tell us the type of audience they want to reach (for example, 25 to 40 year old users in the 30022 zip code).  We (or people working on our behalf, under contracts and confidentiality agreements) would then take the ad and display it to users who have told us they meet those criteria.  We may also disclose aggregate information (for example, information showing that 5,000 of our users clicked on a particular Web advertising banner last month), in order to describe our services, to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes.

As for individually identifiable information, we may disclose it only under the following circumstances:

• We may disclose information to others when we have your consent.
• If you sign up for a special offer from an advertiser, we will provide your individual contact information (for example, name, mailing address, email address, and/or telephone number), so that the advertiser or its agent can fulfill the special offer.  Once the advertiser receives the information, it will handle the information under its own privacy policies.  Obviously, if you do not want a particular advertiser to have your personal information, then you should not sign up for that advertiser’s offer.
• If you sign up for a service that relies upon third parties for important elements, we will provide your personal information to the third parties so that they can provide you with their services, and those companies will treat the data under their own policies.  We will tell you about these service providers at the time you sign up for the service.
• We may disclose information to selected partners, under nondisclosure agreements, only for the purpose of marketing co-branded offerings.  Those partners will be able to use the personal information they receive from us only for marketing the co-branded offerings, not for marketing anything else.  If you then sign up for a co-branded product from our partner, the information you provide to that company will be subject to the partner’s own privacy policies.  If you would prefer not to hear about such products and services, simply go to our opt-out page and let us know.
• If you provide us with a physical mailing address, we may provide that information to advertisers so that they can send you mail about their own products and services.  If you do not want such mail, you can dispose of the mail immediately.
• If you buy something from us, we will disclose your personal information to the extent necessary to fulfill your order and charge your credit card (if applicable).  We may use a fulfillment company to fill and ship your order (excluding products you download directly from our site) and a credit card processing company to verify your card number and process the transaction.  We may also give your information to a delivery or postal service so that it can deliver your order to you.
• If you use our services to email one of our articles to a friend, we will automatically send this person a one-time email, with the recommended article attached.  The email address you give us will appear on the “From” line of the email, thereby disclosing this information to whoever opens and reads the email.  Similarly, if you send email from our site, by using “Reply to Author” or “Email this Post,” your address may appear as the return address of that email.
• If you post comments on the site or the related blog, the information you provide may be disclosed for public viewing.
• We may disclose your personal information as required by applicable law, or in response to legal process, to protect the rights or property of our company, or to protect the safety of our employees, our users, or others.
• We may sometimes conduct mailings to other people’s lists.  To make it easier for us to comply with the Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, we may share our email list of people who have requested not to receive promotional communications from us with the list providers (or contractors) solely so that we can avoid sending emails to people who have asked not to receive them (or, conversely, so that our advertisers can avoid sending emails to people who have requested not to hear from them).  We provide these lists only to list providers or contractors that we consider to be reputable, and only under strict nondisclosure/nonuse agreements.
• We may disclose personal information in some other limited circumstances, but we will specifically describe them to you when we collect the information, such as in the rules of a contest or a new service.  For example, if we are going to give personal information to a contest’s sponsor, we will disclose it when you sign up for the contest, so that you can decide whether to enter.
• We may employ contractors or other third parties to help with our operations.  We may give them access to databases of user information, so that they can perform their services for us, including performing system maintenance, displaying personalized content, or sending mailings from us from our advertisers.  These parties are all subject to confidentiality agreements that restrict their use and disclosure of information they obtain through their relationship with us.
• The ads appearing on this Web site are delivered to you by our advertising partners.  Information about your visits to our sites, such as the number of times you have viewed an ad (but not your name, address, or other personal information), is used to serve ads to you. 

Security Measures

We are committed to protecting your personal information.  We store information you provide us on our secure servers.

Personalized areas of our sites are password protected.  Only you have access to these password-protected areas.  Do not share your passwords with anyone.  We will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or email.  If you are using a computer to which others have access, such as one in a computer lab, Internet café, or public library, always remember to log out and close your browser window when leaving our site.

Information For Direct Mailings

If you register with us or sign up for or buy any of our products or services, we will send you information about our various products and services, or other products and services that we believe may interest you.  Our partners in co-branded products may also send you information, but only for those co-branded products.

Please note: If you purchase products or services from us, or if you register for an account with us, we may contact you to confirm your purchase, subscription, or registration, or to provide you with information about its terms and features.  You may wish to keep these transactional or relationship emails to help you use our products and services.

Children’s Privacy

Our sites are not directed at children under the age of 13.  We operate our sites in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and will not knowingly collect or use personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13.  Except for the limited circumstances listed below, we will automatically reject and delete the registration or entry of any person we believe in good faith to be underage.  Any false or fraudulent registration or entry from a minor will be deemed to be ineligible and will disqualify the minor from the receipt of a prize, benefit, or other participation.

Except to meet Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) regulations, as required by applicable laws, or other regulatory and legal purposes, we will not use, store, or disclose any child’s personal information to a third party without prior parental consent.

Other Information Regarding Your Privacy

When you post information on discussion boards, community sites, forums, blogs or other features within the site, that information, along with your name, is visible to the public.  Please remember that whenever you disclose personal information publicly that information can be collected and used by others.  In short, if you post personal information online where people can see it, people will know that information and you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return. 

This Privacy Statement applies to the operations of our

U.S.

sites.  Data handling practices and rules may differ from country to country. 

While we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk.  Protect yourself.

Many of our advertisers or partners, link from our site to areas on their own sites where they sell their own products and services.  If you follow links from our site to others, you should be aware that you are doing business with those other sites which have their own privacy and data collection practices.  We have no responsibility or liability for these independent policies (and we may not even know what they are).  For more information regarding a site and its privacy policies, check that site.

A Change To Our Privacy Policy

We may revise this Privacy Policy to keep it up to date with our current policies, practices, products, services and web pages.  We reserve the right to revise, change or modify this policy at any time for any reason.  “Updated” may be used to alert users to recent changes and to the date of the last update.

(Last Updated June 2008)