SIX APART PRIVACY POLICY

What This Privacy Policy Covers

• This policy covers how Six Apart treats personal information that Six Apart collects and receives. Personal information is information about you that is personally identifiable like your name, address, email address, or phone number, and that is not otherwise publicly available. Please note that your posting is not considered "personal information" and is not considered the type of information protected by a privacy policy.
• This policy covers how Six Apart deals with information about your children under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"), and how parents and legal guardians may request from us how they can review, delete or stop the collection of the personally identifiable information of their child.
• This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that Six Apart does not own or control, or to people that Six Apart does not employ or manage.

Information Collection and Use

General

• Six Apart collects personal information when you register with Six Apart to use Six Apart products or services or to post content on a Six Apart blog site as a guest with authoring rights, and when you enter into promotions or sweepstakes. Six Apart may combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from business partners or other companies.
• When you register we ask for information such as your name, email address, billing address, phone number, credit card information, and certain optional information such as birth date, birth place, mother's maiden name, gender, zip code, biographical information, ICQ/AIM/Yahoo/MSN user name, Amazon.com associates code, occupation, industry, and personal interests.
• Six Apart collects information about your transactions with us and with some of our business partners.
• Six Apart automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, cookie, and the page you request.
• Six Apart uses information for the following general purposes: products and services provision, billing, identification and authentication, services improvement, contact, research, and anonymous reporting. IP Address
• Six Apart receives IP addresses from all users because this information is automatically reported by your browser each time you view a web page.
• Your IP address is also stored in our user registration databases when you register with Six Apart.
  • IP addresses may be used for various purposes, including to:
  • Diagnose service or technology problems reported by our users or engineers that are associated with the IP addresses controlled by a specific web company or ISP.
  • Tailor advertising based on geographic area or other information derived from your IP address. Aggregate information derived from IP addresses may also be reported to advertisers.
  • Estimate the total number of users visiting Six Apart from specific geographical regions.
  • Help determine which users have access privileges to certain content, services or resources that we offer.

Cookies

• A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier, that is sent to your browser from a web site's computers and stored on your computer's hard drive.
• You can configure your browser to accept all cookies, reject all cookies, or notify you when a cookie is set.
• If you reject all cookies, you will not be able to use Six Apart products or services that require you to "sign in," and you may not be able to take full advantage of all offerings. However, many Six Apart products and services do not require that you accept cookies.
• Six Apart uses its own cookies for a number of purposes, including to:
• Access your information when you "sign in".
• Keep track of preferences you specify while you are using Six Apart's services.
• Display the most appropriate advertising banners, based on your interests and activity on Six Apart.
• Estimate and report our total audience size and traffic.
• Conduct research to improve Six Apart's content and services.
• Require you to re-enter your Six Apart password after a certain period of time has elapsed to protect you against others accidentally accessing your account contents.
• Six Apart lets other entities that show advertisements on some of our pages set and access their cookies on your computer. Other entities' use of their cookies is subject to their own privacy policies, not this one. Advertisers or other entities do not have access to Six Apart's cookies.

Information Relating to Children

• The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA") requires that we inform parents and legal guardians about how we collect, use, and disclose personal information from children under 13 years of age; and that we obtain the consent of parents and guardians in order for children under 13 years of age to use certain features of our Web sites.
• When your child attempts to register for our site, we will require a parent or legal guardian to complete the registration and to submit a credit card to verify that they are the child’s parent or guardian. Once the registration is complete, the information we collect will be the same as that described above for any other user of the site.
• If you would like to review, delete or stop the collection of the personally identifiable information of your child, see “Your Ability to Edit and Delete Your Account Information and Preferences -- How parents can access their children’s personal information” below.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

• When you post a message, your Six Apart ID or alias that you are posting under is visible to other users.
• When you post a message on Six Apart Blog Sites, you have the ability to post a message which may include personally identifiable information about yourself.
• If you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.
• Six Apart may disclose personally identifiable information under special circumstances, such as to comply with subpoenas or when your actions violate the Six Apart Terms of Service.
• Six Apart does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide products or services you've requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:
• We provide the information to trusted partners who work on behalf of or with Six Apart under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help Six Apart communicate with you about offers from Six Apart and our marketing partners. However, these companies do not have any independent right to share this information. We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.
• We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Six Apart's terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
• We transfer information about you if Six Apart is acquired by or merged with another company. In this event, Six Apart will notify you before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
• Six Apart displays targeted advertisements based on personal information.

Your Ability to Edit and Delete Your Account Information and Preferences

General

• You can edit your Six Apart Account Information at any time.
• We reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to the Six Apart service, such as service announcements, administrative messages and the Six Apart Newsletter, that are considered part of your Six Apart account, without offering you the opportunity to opt-out of receiving them.
• You can delete your Six Apart account by visiting our Account Deletion page; however, please note that your identification, billing and contact information will remain in Six Apart's record for a commercial reasonable time for archival purposes.

Confidentiality and Security

• We limit access to personal information about you to employees who we believe reasonably need to come into contact with that information to provide products or services to you or in order to do their jobs.
• We have physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect personal information about you.
• Your Six Apart Account Information is password-protected.
• In certain areas, Six Apart uses industry-standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions.

How Parents can Access their Children’S Personal Information

• In compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"), parents and legal guardians may request from us to review, delete or stop the collection of the personally identifiable information of their child. You may do so in one of two ways.
• If you know the user name and password, follow the instructions above under "General," or you may fill out and either fax or mail the form which you may access here. This form will allow parents to receive the personally identifiable information collected, have this information deleted, and/or request that no further information about their child be collected or used.
• If you request that no further information about your child be collected or used, we will be required to terminate your child’s ability to use Six Apart’s products and services that require a user to "sign in."

Changes to this Privacy Policy

• Six Apart may update this policy. We will notify you about significant changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your Six Apart account or by placing a prominent notice on our site.

Questions and Suggestions

• If you have questions or suggestions, please complete a feedback form.