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Boater's LIFE Privacy Policy Statement
Boater's LIFE is strongly committed to protecting your privacy and providing a safe online experience for all of our users and subscribers while offering the highest quality information and service to them. Because we gather certain types of information about and from users and subscribers so that we can fulfill your requests and better serve your needs, we feel you should fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the collection and use of this information.
This privacy statement discloses what information we gather, how we use it, how to correct or change it, and what steps we take to safeguard personal information provided to us both online and offline. Please read the complete Online Privacy Policy below, as well as our Legal Information which includes Terms and Conditions of Content Use, and contact us if you have any questions.
WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU?
You can visit our web sites, read articles and other materials, and check on offerings without giving us any personally identifiable information. So that we can provide our users and subscribers with the most efficient and enhanced, personalized service, we request information about you in certain circumstances, and also collect certain information automatically. We also use contact lists and other information we may obtain from third parties. For the convenience of our customers and to better serve you, a customer account includes all the collected personal information we may have, but you can update or correct your contact information or change your preferences about receiving offers and information from us or third parties at any time.
Information Users Volunteer
We collect personally identifiable information, such as names, mailing addresses, and/or e-mail addresses, when you subscribe to one of our newsletters or place an order (see the section below for more information on subscriptions and orders), or through optional, voluntary registration at one of our web sites. Occasionally, we may also request demographic information, such as age, gender, hobbies or interests. Often this additional information is optional or requested anonymously in connection with a survey.
Web site visitors may register to receive one of our e-mail newsletters, or to enter online contests and sweepstakes, and we may offer offline contests and sweepstakes as well. Registration may also be required to participate in message boards, bulletin boards, or chat rooms at our web sites, and may be requested in connection with certain surveys.
Subscriptions and Orders
If you wish to subscribe to one of our publications or place an order for products or services online, you must generally establish a credit card account with us or our vendors. In addition to the customary information needed to fill your order (full name, address, ship-to name and address, gift information, etc.), subscriptions and orders necessitate collection of additional personal information, such as your credit card number and credit card expiration date. Most of our web sites and/or boating centers allow visitors to subscribe to our publications online, and some sites also offer areas where you may purchase items online.
Information Collected Automatically
We also may collect your IP address, browser type, domain name, access times and referring web site address. This helps facilitate your online experience at our web sites and/or boating centers. In addition, we use cookies to track usage patterns at our site and to control the display of information, as well as to offer other functionality (helping to track items in your shopping basket). See below for more detail on cookies.
Other Information
We conduct market research in an effort to continually improve our newsletters, publications and web sites and may purchase lists of potential subscribers or customers from third parties. Those lists may include information on current subscribers or customers. This information is included in our database. That helps us, for example, minimize multiple mailings and e-mailings, and provide information tailored to your interests.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH COLLECTED INFORMATION?
We use information you provide to fulfill your requests and improve our newsletters, publications, products and services. We may, from time to time, produce reports for partners, advertisers, sponsors and vendors containing anonymous, aggregate information about our users and subscribers, such as demographic, age and online usage information. This allows us to provide content and offers that are most relevant to our subscribers and users and to work more closely with supporting information partners. We do not include any personally identifiable information of our users in these reports.
We use personal information so that we may display or send custom, personalized content to our web site visitors and to send newsletters, mail, e-mails, features, promotional material, surveys and other updates, information or offers to our users and subscribers. A user may, at any time, opt out of receiving such information. We also use collected information to evaluate and administer our products and services, fulfill customer requests, like subscriptions and other orders, respond to any problems that may arise, such as newsletter or product delivery failures, difficulties in navigating our sites or accessing certain features, as well as to gage user trends to determine what products and services are most popular with users.
Of course, we use personal information to allow you to subscribe online or to make product purchases at certain areas of our web site. Both Boater's LIFE personnel and our technical and fulfillment agents and consultants follow careful procedures to safeguard credit card data in connection with your transactions.
HOW DO WE SHARE PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Personal information is available to Boaters LIFE and its technical and fulfillment agents and consultants who make this site and our publications, products and services available to you. This information is only available in order to provide customer support, account maintenance and other required functions in order to fulfill your requests and requirements and then only to authorized employees.
Anonymous information is available to our partners, advertisers, sponsors and promotional and business partners. This information is provided only when required to provide information about or in support of BoatersLIFE marketing and support programs.
We share your personal information with third parties only as described below.
Boater's LIFE and Its Agents. Boater's LIFE may access both anonymous, aggregate demographic data and any personal information you provide for internal marketing purposes, including sending you notices of subscription renewals, newsletter subscriptions, new publications, services or products we offer likely to be of interest, and filling subscription and other orders. To facilitate subscriptions and orders, Boater's LIFE may cache your order information, and create an authorization with a merchant account (i.e., your credit card company). There are many companies who may be required to assist Boater's LIFE in making its publications, products and web sites available to you. Web host firms, technical and database consultants, advertising agencies, and fulfillment firms, including firms assisting us in offering contests and promotions, may have access to personally identifiable information in the course of making our products and services available. All companies working for Boater's LIFE must comply with our information collection, use and disclosure policies, and are not permitted to use or sell your information to third parties or to use it except as authorized by us and you, or as permitted or required by law.
Participating Vendors. Some of our site centers and pages offer opportunities to make purchases online from special participating vendors. On pages with online purchase opportunities for products and merchandise, we will also give participating manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers or distributors the order information and authorization for the merchant bank. Any time you order from a participating vendor, that vendor will automatically have all the information related to the order. Participating vendors may use that information to advise you directly of other products and offerings that they provide. Boater's LIFE is not responsible for their privacy policies, and urges you to inquire about their information practices.
Credit Card Companies. As in any transaction, your credit card company will have all relevant information about the name of the vendor, item(s) purchased, and date and total cost. Boater's LIFE will not otherwise provide any personal data to your credit card company.
Business Partners, Sponsors, Advertisers and Promotional. We share anonymous, aggregate demographic information (such as gender, age, income, hobbies, interests, etc.), and anonymous information obtained from cookies and similar technologies, with our advertisers, sponsors, promotional and business partners, and with participating vendors at sites offering online sales opportunities. No personally identifiable information is disclosed to any of these third parties in providing these reports. Credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and passwords are not shared with advertisers, sponsors or promotional partners, and are only shared with specific vendors with whom you place an online order on a secure server.
Offline and Online Contact Information may be Handled Differently. As is customary in the publications business, offline contact information is shared with third parties who may send you offers or information about their products or services. You must opt-out if you do not wish to receive information from us or third parties by mail.
Your e-mail address is not shared with third parties under any circumstance. If you opt-in to receiving special promotional opportunities, we may extend e-mail offers to users or subscribers on behalf of our business partners about a particular product or service that may be of interest to you, but only on a co-branded basis which will include the Boater's LIFE banner. If you opt-in to receive such offers, we do not share or disclose your name or e-mail address to those business partners, but will send you the information or offers on their behalf. As result, Boater's LIFE sends all the offers so that your personal information is never shared with any outside third party.
Our site content may give you the opportunity to opt in to receive e-mail offers direct from third parties not affiliated with Boater's LIFE. If you decide to accept these offers, you will provide, with your consent, your contact information to the third party directly. At our web sites, visitors will also have opportunities to sign up directly with certain advertisers and sponsors to enter contests or sweepstakes, receive e-mail updates, or to receive information directly from them. Third party vendors and advertisers will also use technical and other consultants. We urge visitors to carefully review the privacy policies of these firms. Boater's LIFE is not responsible for the privacy policies and procedures of any third party.
You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose information, personal or otherwise, online in any community area (whether through Boater's LIFE web sites or any other service available online), that information can be collected and used by others. For example, if you use chat, forums, bulletin boards or message boards, or if you post personal information online (such as your e-mail address), you may receive unsolicited messages from others. Boater's LIFE has no control over this use of your personal information.
Important Note
We reserve the right to use or disclose any information without notice or consent as needed to satisfy any law, regulation or legal request; to conduct investigations of consumer complaints or possible breaches of law; to protect the integrity of our site and our property; to protect the safety of our visitors or others; to fulfill your requests; or to cooperate in any legal investigation.
HOW DO WE USE COOKIES?
Your Web browser offers so-called "cookies" which, if you allow their use, store small amounts of data on your computer when you visit a web site. Cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information about you and therefore cannot be used to identify you personally. Cookies assist us in tracking which of our features you like best. Cookies also enable us to customize our content according to your preferences. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying your browser and our web sites are viewable even if you disable the cookie function on your browser. However, if you disable cookies, some advanced and customized features or offerings will not be available to you. It should be noted that any of the sites linked to and not part of Boater's LIFE could also use cookies. Please refer to their privacy policy to determine their usage of cookie information.
HOW DO WE USE WEB BEACONS or WEBBOTS?
Some of our Web pages may contain electronic images known as Web beacons or webbots, which are also called single-pixel gifs. These images allow us to count users who have visited those pages and to deliver information and services. We also may include Web beacons in promotional e-mail messages or newsletters in order to count how many messages have been opened and acted upon. Web beacons are not used to access your personally identifiable information but they are a technique we use to compile aggregated statistics about our web site. usage. Web beacons collect only a limited set of information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the Web beacon resides. Some of our Web pages may also contain Web beacons placed there by our supporting partners to help us determine the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns.
WHAT ABOUT THIRD PARTY BANNER ADS?
The majority of our banner ads at our site, highlight or feature content and offers that are contained within our site.
However, some of the banner ads displayed in our web sites may be provided by outside companies. These ads contain cookies and may also contain Web beacons. Unlike cookies and Web beacons used by Boater's LIFE in content it controls at its Web sites and/or boating centers, cookies or Web beacons received with banner ads are collected by our advertisers and we do not have access to this information.
Such outside banner ads will only be accepted from reputable third parties to serve some or all of the advertisements that are placed within our sites and they may use information (not including personally identifiable information) about your visits to our sites and other sites to assist in serving advertisements to you. They may share anonymous information with their clients such as date/time of the banner ad shown, the specific ad shown, the IP address, etc. In those cases in which outside banners our provided, they will be provided through a third party ad server. Each of these services will maintain their own privacy policies for your review.
HOW CAN YOU CONTROL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We believe that choice in how and when you are contacted is key to customer satisfaction, so we offer several ways for you to update your contact information or change your preferences.
If you subscribed to one of our newsletters, you may log-on and update or change your email, subscription and account information. Click here for an online Account Update form.
You may subscribe and unsubscribe to any of our online e-mail newsletters by following the instructions in the body of any message. Or, by clicking on the account maintenance link usually located at the bottom of the subscription form on most content pages at our site.
You may write to us and update your contact information or ask that we not send you specific newsletters or special promotions at: Boater's LIFE, Privacy & Subscription Coordinator, 21 Bridge Square, Westport, CT 06880. In those instances, we will retain your information in a "Do Not Promote" file in our subscription database. You must specify which of the newsletters you wish to receive or not receive along with your email address, zip code and name. You may simply indicate subscribe all or unsubscribe all.
You may also email us by using our Convenient Online Form.
We will take commercially reasonable steps to implement your opt-out requests promptly, but you may still receive information from us by mail for up to 60 days due to printing and mailing schedules, and up to 10 days for e-mail
SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
Please be assured that we have put in place appropriate security measures and procedures to protect you against the loss, misuse, and alteration of any information we receive from you.
We use Secure Servers and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt important information, such as your credit card data, in an effort to prevent unauthorized access during transmission of your orders over the Internet. We incorporate standard industry practices internally and with our service providers suitable to the degree of sensitivity of the information involved to maintain the security of your personal information and to avoid its disclosure except as described in this policy.
Although we use our best efforts to assure that your data remains secure when maintained by us, security during Internet transmissions cannot be assured. Our employees are made aware of its privacy practices through periodic communications and training. We limit access to personal data only to those Boater's LIFE employees or agents with a specific need to access or retrieve this information. We store data on multiple service systems, in controlled, secure environments. To maintain the highest level of security, we conduct internal reviews of our security measures on a regular basis.
CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
All of our newsletters, publications and web sites are intended for boaters and those interested in watersport activities. They are suitable from viewing by any indiidual of any age. Boater's LIFE is strongly committed to protecting the safety and privacy of children who visit our Web sites. We do not knowingly collect personal information online from children under 13 and have adopted techniques to age-screen users on our teen-oriented sites to ensure compliance with this Privacy Policy and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its accompanying regulations establish United States federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet.
Many of our sites may include chat rooms, bulletin boards and other features that we believe are unsuitable for children under 13 as such support areas can not be easily monitored. Although inappropriate or sexual discussions are prohibited, we require all participants to be over the age of 13. In addition, we encourage all parents to talk to their kids about online safety and to monitor their children's use of the Internet.
LINKS
Boater's LIFE may offer links to or from Web sites it controls to other sites operated by third parties. We also offer links to third party sites so that you can conveniently visit our vendors and advertisers or locate other content likely to be of interest. We are not responsible for the content, practices or policies of sites operated by third parties and urge you to inquire about them before providing any personally-identifiable information.
CHANGES IN OWNERSHIP & STRUCTURE
In developing our business, we might sell certain assets, or the company, or parts of it, may be sold, merged or otherwise transferred. In such transactions, user information, whether personally identifiable or otherwise, may be one of the transferred assets.
VISITORS AND SUBSCRIBERS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
Our web sites and the servers that make these sites available worldwide are located in the United States. All matters relating to these sites are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware in the United States. Any information you provide in subscribing to one of our newsletters, publications or registering or ordering at one of our web sites will be transferred to the United States. By visiting our sites and submitting information, you authorize this transfer, processing and use.
CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY
We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy as necessary to protect our users and to comply with a changing environment and legal requirements.
We recommend that you check the policy when you visit our site to be sure you are aware of and understand our current policy. If we make material changes to this policy or in how we will use or collect your personally identifiable information, we will revise this policy statement accordingly and post a link to these changes on our home page and boating centers so users are always aware of our current policy and disclosure practices.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Should you have other questions or concerns about these privacy policies, please send us an email or call us at the phone number also listed below:
This web site owned by Boat Marketing Corporation
We can be reached via e-mail by using our online form, or you can reach us by telephone at 1-203-226-4227.
Our postal address is:
Boater's LIFE, Inc.
21 Bridge Square
Westport, CT 06880
USA
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