Snarkish Privacy Policy

This site is owned and operated by Snarkish. Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At Snarkish, we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe.

Because we gather 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 gather and how we use it.

INFORMATION Snarkish GATHERS AND TRACKS

Snarkish gathers two types of information about users:

Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to participate in our forums
Information Snarkish gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our site. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers' needs and to help our advertisers and sponsors better understand the demographics of our audience. Because Snarkish derives its revenue mainly from sponsorships and advertising, providing such aggregated demographic data is essential to keeping our service free to users. Under no circumstances does Snarkish divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.

Snarkish Gathers User Information In The Following Processes:

Optional Voluntary Information

We offer the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:

1. Electronic newsletters policy (Dispatches)

We will offer a free electronic newsletter to users. Snarkish will gather the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe. Users may 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.

2. Forums policy

Users of the site's Forums must register separately for these services (both are free of charge) in order to post messages, although they needn't register to visit the site. During registration the user is required to supply a username, password, and email address.

3. "E-mail this to a friend" policy

Our site users can choose to electronically forward a link, page, or documents to someone else by clicking "e-mail this to a friend." The user must provide his email address, as well as that of the recipient. This information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any other purpose.

Children

Consistent with the 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

Snarkish tracks user traffic patterns throughout our site. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. Snarkish does 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 user's browser).

Snarkish sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking is never associated with individual users. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites 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 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 supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Snarkish uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above). Our advertising system delivers a one-time cookie to better track ad 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 participate actively in message boards, forums, polling and surveys.

Privacy Policy Use

SHARING OF THE INFORMATION

Snarkish uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help our advertisers better understand our audience's demographics. This is essential to keeping our service free. We will not share information about individual users with any third party, except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public. SNARKISH DOES NOT SHARE, SELL, OR TRADE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS OR PERSONAL INFORMATION OTHERWISE. We don't want to be spammed anymore than you do.

SECURITY

Snarkish operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced 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 newsletters.
Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users

YOUR CONSENT

By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by Snarkish. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes 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.