SDMB Privacy Policy

Confidential information. STM respects your confidential information. Confidential information is information you are required to submit in order to participate on the SDMB and that is not publicly available. We will not release confidential information about you except in the following circumstances: (a) we have your consent; or (b) we believe in good faith that we are legally required to do so; or (c) there is an emergency involving personal danger; or (d) you have vandalized our site or otherwise behaved in a manner that warrants our contacting the authorities or your Internet service provider.

Nonconfidential but sensitive information. From time to time we may acquire nonconfidential but sensitive information about you, some of which you may have posted yourself to our board. We won’t disclose or repeat such information except as (a) reasonable and necessary to manage our business, or (b) required by law, or (c) consistent with good citizenship, e.g., to prevent or report a crime or to respond to inquiries from law enforcement.

Disclosure of sensitive information. If you privately provide us with sensitive information related to the SDMB, we’ll act on it as we feel prudent, with the understanding that we’ll take reasonable measures to prevent your being identified as the source of the information without your consent, provided we’re not shielding a wrongdoer or acting against the public interest in doing so.

E-mail address. When registering on our site, you will be asked to enter your e-mail address, but you may visit our site without registering. Your e-mail address will be verified by an email containing a unique link. If that link is visited, we know that you control the e-mail address. Registered users are required to maintain a valid e-mail address. If you do not wish to receive e-mail from other SDMB users, you may so indicate in your user profile. However, we retain your e-mail address in our database and reserve the right to have SDMB staff contact you. We won’t give or sell your e-mail address to bulk mailers, brokers, or similar entities.

IP number. We log your Internet address (IP number) each time you post. The IP number tells us your Internet service provider. We reserve the right to reveal the IP numbers and e-mail address (but no other confidential information) of chronic SDMB rule violators to other bulletin board operators. We do this to identify guests registering under multiple screen names. One of our third-party advertising providers, Google, uses IP numbers to customize ads served up to SDMB users.

What we use your information for. Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

  • To personalize your experience — your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs.
  • To improve our site — we continually strive to improve our site offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you.
  • To improve customer service — your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs.
  • To send periodic emails — The email address you provide may be used to send you information, notifications that you request about changes to topics or in response to your user name, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.

How we protect your information. We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you enter, submit, or access your personal information.

Data retention policy. We make a good faith effort to:

  • Retain server logs containing the IP address of all requests to this server no more than 90 days.
  • Retain the IP addresses associated with registered users and their posts no more than 5 years.

Cookies. We use cookies, which are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). These cookies enable the site to recognize your browser and, if you have a registered account, associate it with your registered account.

We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business.

Disclosure of information to outside parties. We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our site, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act compliance. Our site, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older. If you are under the age of 13, per the requirements of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), do not use this site.

Your consent. By using our site, you consent to our web site privacy policy.

Changes to our privacy policy. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page. Changes become effective upon posting.

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