Privacy Policy

Information Automatically Gathered About All Visitors

We collect aggregate and user-specific information on which pages consumers access or visit. This information is used to generate reports that help us assess the value of and interest in the web site we provide. We use the information we collect to improve the content of our web pages.

Our web servers automatically collect limited information about your computer's connection to the Internet, including your IP address (but not the e-mail address), when you visit our sites. Your IP address does not contain personally identifiable information, nor does it identify you personally. We use this information to deliver our web pages to you upon request, to tailor our sites to the interests of our users, and to measure traffic within our sites.

Information Gathered by Voluntary Submission

To make use of certain features on our web sites (such as story comments), visitors may need to register and to provide certain information as part of the registration or participation process. We may ask, for example, for your name, e-mail address, and the like. Supplying such information is entirely voluntary. But if you do not supply the information we need, we may be unable to provide you with services and content we make available to other visitors to our sites. Of course, even if you want to remain completely anonymous, you are still free to take advantage of the wealth of content that is otherwise available, without registration, on our Site.

What We Do with Information

We or one of our affiliated companies may perform statistical, marketing and demographic analyses of viewer patterns. In addition, we may generally inform our advertisers about our viewer patterns. When we present information to our advertisers, to help them understand our audience and confirm the value of advertising on our websites, it is usually in the form of aggregated statistics on traffic to various pages within our sites. We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information. In some cases, however, if required, we may provide information to legal officials as described in "Compliance with Legal Process" below.

Compliance with Legal Process

We may disclose personal information if we or one of our affiliated companies is required by law to disclose personal information, or if we believe in good faith that such action is necessary to comply with a law or some legal process, to protect or defend our rights and property, to protect against misuse or unauthorized use of our web sites or to protect the personal safety or property of our users or the public.

Site Links

There are numerous links to third parties contained on our site. Our Privacy Policy does not apply to those companies' web sites, so you should refer to each of those sites to obtain information on their privacy policies. If you cannot find the privacy policy on any of these sites once you have arrived at their site via a link from our site, you should contact that site directly for more information.

The web is an evolving medium. If we need to change our Privacy Policy at some point in the future, we will post the changes before they take effect if we believe that the change in the way we use your personal information is significant or material. Of course, our use of information gathered while the current policy is in effect will always be consistent with the current policy, even if we change that policy later.