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OzWebHotel Privacy Policy
This site is owned and operated by WHB Networks, LLC, a Delaware
limited liability company d/b/a OzWebHotel.com ("OzWebHotel").
Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At
OzWebHotel, 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 Policy, Terms and
Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy, set out our policies applicable to
your account and disclose what information we gather and how we use it.
OzWebHotel gathers and keeps track of:
. Information that users provide through optional, voluntary
submissions. These are voluntary submissions made by You in order to
receive our electronic newsletters, to participate in our message boards
or forums, to email a friend, and from participation in polls and
surveys:
. Information OzWebHotel gathers through aggregated tracking
information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites.
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 OzWebHotel 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 OzWebHotel divulge any information about an
individual user to a third party.
OzWebHotel gathers information about its users as follows:
OPTIONAL VOLUNTARY INFORMATION SUBMISSION
OzWebHotel offers the following free services, which require some
type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:
1. Electronic newsletters (Dispatches)
OzWebHotel offers a free electronic newsletter to users. OzWebHotel
gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe to this
service. At any time, users are free to remove themselves from this
mailing list by following the link provided in every newsletter pointing
the user to the subscription management page.
2. Message Boards/Forums
Users of the OzWebHotel's Message Boards and Forums must register
separately for these services (both are free of charge) in order to post
messages. Registration is not required in order to visit or otherwise
use OzWebHotel's other services and/or products. However, in order to
register for OzWebHotel's Message Boards and Forums, users are required
to supply a user name, password, and email address.
3. "E-mail this to a friend" Service
OzWebHotel users can choose to electronically forward a link, page,
or documents to someone else by clicking on "e-mail this to a friend".
In order to do so, the user must provide his email address, as well as
the email address of the intended recipient. This information is used
only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the
recipient know the identity of the sender. The information collected is
not used for any other purpose.
4. Polling
OzWebHotel occasionally offers interactive polls to users in order to
enable the users to share their experience with other users as well as
to improve OzWebHotel's services. The collected information, including
user opinions, testimony and other submitted information is aggregated.
This information is not identifiable to any particular user. However,
OzWebHotel may employ action "tags" (also known as single pixel gifs or
web beacons) to tag users after they have voted, in order to prevent the
same user from voting multiple times on the same issue. This "tag" is
not correlated with the subject user's individual information.
5. Surveys
OzWebHotel 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. However, in doing so, we will never share specific user
information with any third party.
CHILDREN
Consistent with the 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 first requesting
parental consent.
USAGE TRACKING
OzWebHotel tracks user traffic patterns throughout its various sites.
However, we do not correlate this information with specific data about
individual users. OzWebHotel does break down overall usage statistics
according to a user's domain name, browser type, and Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extension ("MIME") type by gathering such information from
the browser string (information contained in every user's browser).
OzWebHotel sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms entered by
users in our Search function. However, 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 improve our
services for our 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. The only
personal information a cookie can contain is information supplied by the
user. A cookie cannot read data from the user's hard disk or read cookie
files created by other sites. OzWebHotel uses cookies to track user
traffic patterns (as described above).
Our advertising system delivers a one-time cookie to improve tracking
of advertisement impressions and click rates.
You can refuse cookies by turning the cookie function off in your
browser. If your browser is set to provide a warning before the cookie
is accepted, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You
do not need to have cookies turned on to use OzWebHotel's site. However,
you will need to enable/accept cookies if you wish to actively
participate in our message boards, forums, polling and surveys.
USE OF INFORMATION
OzWebHotel uses information voluntarily submitted by our users to
enhance the user experience in our network of sites, whether by
providing interactive or personalized elements on the sites or by
improving future content in response to 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 regularly set schedule corresponding
with the frequency of the particular publication, and occasionally send
out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly
interested in something we are doing. OzWebHotel never shares newsletter
mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors or
partners.
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
track search terms entered in Search function as one of many measures of
what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a particular
user enters.
OzWebHotel creates aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic
patterns for advertisers, sponsors and partners. This enables our
advertisers to advertise more effectively, and allows our users to
receive advertisements that are tailored to their needs. Because we
don't track the usage patterns of individual users, an advertiser or
sponsor will never know which particular user clicked their
advertisement.
SHARING OF THE INFORMATION
OzWebHotel uses the above-described information to tailor our content
to suit your needs and help our advertisers better understand its
audience's demographics. This is essential to keeping our select
services free. We will not share information about individual users with
any third party, except in order to comply with applicable law or valid
legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the
public.
SECURITY
OzWebHotel 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.
Only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by
our customers.
Our sites contain links to other sites. OzWebHotel is not responsible
for the privacy practices or the content of such other websites.
OPT-OUT POLICY
We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices
include:
- The option to not register to receive our electronic
newsletters; and
- The option to not participate in certain interactive areas,
which completely obviates our 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 OzWebHotel. 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.
NECESSARY DISCLOSURE
We will not share your personal information except with a third party
to assist us in the processing or securing of your personal information
or when we are required by law unless we have given you notice and
choice, in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary in order
to conform to the edicts of the law, or we must comply with a legal
process served on our web site. We may also need to give out your
information if one of our partners requires it, but these situations are
rare.
PERSONAL INFORMATION FOLLOWING TERMINATION OF ACCOUNT
When your OzWebHotel account is cancelled (either voluntarily or
involuntarily) all of your personally identifiable information is placed
in "deactivated" status within our corresponding databases. However, you
should know that deactivation of your account does not mean your
personally identifiable information has been deleted from our database
entirely. We will retain and use your personally identifiable
information if necessary in order to resolve disputes or enforce our
agreements.
This document was last revised 5:09 PM on 21/11/2008
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