Privacy Policy: Our Commitment
This web site is owned and operated by GSS Group Inc. ("GSS Group" or "we" or "us"). Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At GSS Group we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe.
Because we collect certain types of information about our users, we feel you should fully understand our policy and the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we collect and how we use it.
Information Collected by GSS Group
GSS Group collects 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 e-mail someone, and from participation in polls and surveys.
- Information that we collect through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our site. This information allows us to better tailor our site content to readers' needs and to help us better understand the demographics of our audience. This aggregated information cannot be used to personally identify an individual user. Under no circumstances does GSS Group divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.
GSS Collects Information as Follows
Optional Voluntary Information
GSS Group may offer one or more of the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:
Electronic Newsletter Policy
We may offer a free electronic newsletter to users. GSS Group collects the e-mail addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe. Users may elect to 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.
Message Boards / Forums Policy
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 need not register to visit the site. During registration the user is reuired to supply a username, password, and e-mail address.
"E-mail this page" Policy
Our site's users can choose to electronically forward a link, page, or documents to someone else by clicking on the "E-mail this page" icon. The user must provide their e-mail address, as well as that of the e-mail recipient. This information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent the e-mail. This information is not used for any other purpose.
Polling Policy
GSS Group 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. GSS Group may use a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so that they can vote only once on a particular question or topic. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.
Surveys
GSS Group 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 and This Site
Consistent with the U.S. 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 Information
GSS Group collects information on users visiting this site. This information consists of user traffic patterns throughout the site. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. We do 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 browser request) submitted to our HTTP web server.
GSS Group also tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking is never associated with individual users.
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 yourself supply. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. GSS Group uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above). Our system delivers a one-time cookie to better track 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 actively participate in message boards, forums, polling and surveys.
Use of Information
GSS Group uses any information voluntarily provided by our users to enhance their experience at our site, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the site 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. We never share newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors or partners.
We use tracking information to determine which areas of our site 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 our Search function as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we do not track which termd an individual user enters.
We create aggregat reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for our internal use. We do not track the usage patterns of individual users. 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 Information
GSS Group uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help us better understand our audience's demographics. This is essential to keeping our content fresh. We will not share information about individual users with any third party except as described above.
Security
GSS Group operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security policy and this privacy policy are periodically reviewed and modified 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 newsletter
- Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need to collect any personally identifiable information from our users
Your Consent
By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of your information by GSS Group. If we decide to change this privacy policy, such changes will be posted 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.
Effective date: April 2, 2008 v1.0
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