PA e-Comm's Privacy Policy

This site is owned and operated by Pennsylvania e-Commerce Association, Inc. (PA e-Comm). Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. 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 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 PA E-COMM GATHERS AND TRACKS

PA e-Comm gathers two types of information about users:

• Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to receive our electronic newsletters, and from participation in polls and surveys.
• Information PA e-Comm 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. Under no circumstances does PA e-Comm divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.

Optional Voluntary Information

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

1. Electronic Newsletters (Dispatches)

We will offer a free electronic newsletter to users. PA e-Comm gathers the e-mail 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. Polling

We 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. PA e-Comm may use a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.

3. Surveys

PA e-Comm 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.

4. 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.

5. Usage Tracking

PA e-Comm tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. PA e-Comm 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).

USE OF INFORMATION

PA e-Comm uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the sites, 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 and surveys. 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. PA e-Comm never shares newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors or partners.

When 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.

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.

By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by PA e-Comm. 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.