Privacy Policy

StartYourOwnBusiness.com Privacy Policy

Maintaining your privacy--online and off--is of utmost importance to StartYourOwnBusiness.com. This policy will tell you exactly what we will and won't do with the private, personal information you provide us. Please feel free to read it in full.

StartYourOwnBusiness.com will never share your personal information or your bookmarks with anyone without your permission. Only you can choose to share your bookmarks or your personal information with someone else. If you ever have any questions about your privacy, please email us immediately.

Personal Information Collection

Two kinds of personal information are requested during registration: personally identifiable information and demographic information. Personally identifiable information is required for registration, but other demographic information is optional and may be given at your discretion. During registration, StartYourOwnBusiness.com asks for your first name, middle initial, last name, an e-mail address, and a home page, if you have one. In addition, we ask you to provide a password. Personally identifiable information is not shared with anyone, nor is it sold to anyone. The demographic information gathered includes gender, approximate age, country, language, zip code, time zone, occupation and industry, etc.. You may update any of this information at any time (except your member name) from within your StartYourOwnBusiness.com account by clicking the "Demographics" choice within the "Preferences" tab and changing any information you wish. The more information you provide us with, and the more accurate it is, the easier it is for us to customize your use of StartYourOwnBusiness.com, as well as provide information to you that you will find useful. For example, your personal profile might help us connect you with other members who share similar interests to yours.

In addition to registration we may ask you for personal information at other times, such as when you report a problem with one of our sites or services. StartYourOwnBusiness.com may also occasionally ask members to complete surveys that we use for internal research. StartYourOwnBusiness.com also tracks information about web site visitation, on an aggregated basis. StartYourOwnBusiness.com calculates the total number of StartYourOwnBusiness.com members who have bookmarked a site. StartYourOwnBusiness.com calculates the aggregate number of visits to a site by all StartYourOwnBusiness.com members together. When you are viewing a link in a public folder, StartYourOwnBusiness.com also tells you the last time that link was visited by any member of StartYourOwnBusiness.com. You can choose not to have your links and visits counted towards these aggregate totals by checking no to the question: "Add my bookmarks to the StartYourOwnBusiness.com Search Engine, to help other Members find great sites?" found within the "General Settings" choice within the "Preferences" tab. This aggregate information is posted on the web site, and available to our registered members to view. This information can also be used to help you find communities of members with similar interests.

Personal Information Utilization

Your personal information is used only for demographic statistics and to display appropriately targeted advertisements. For example, StartYourOwnBusiness.com does internal research on our members' demographics, interests, and behavior based on what you tell us when you register, what links you keep on your StartYourOwnBusiness.com account, and from our server log files. In general, StartYourOwnBusiness.com automatically gathers certain usage information like the numbers and frequency of visits to StartYourOwnBusiness.com. This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregated basis, meaning your personal demographic information is never directly accessed. The collective data helps us determine how often StartYourOwnBusiness.com members use parts of the site, primarily so that we can improve our site to keep it as interesting and appealing as possible. StartYourOwnBusiness.com may disclose aggregated user statistics (for example, 20% of our users are between 33-40) so that we may describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes. By providing this information, you acknowledge that StartYourOwnBusiness.com may use members' profile information to improve or customize the StartYourOwnBusiness.com service or to provide demographic profiling to obtain advertising. Any use of profile information will be conducted in line with the guidelines set forth in this Privacy Statement.

StartYourOwnBusiness.com's main goal in collecting personal information is to provide you with the best-customized experience on our site. This includes communities of users, interactive communications, and many other types of services, all of which are completely free to you. For us to provide these services free of charge, we display advertisements, which cover the cost of operating this site. Our primary services are customized services - including link management, allowing access to your links from any location and any computer, as well as the ability for you to send lists of links to anyone at any time. In addition, we offer community services, such as allowing you to share any folder you want to with other members or groups of members. In addition, we can provide you with the most relevant advertisements and therefore better service by using the demographic information you provide and the links you choose to keep. Advertisers provide StartYourOwnBusiness.com with advertisements and tell us the type of audience they are hoping for, and in turn, StartYourOwnBusiness.com displays these ads to users matching the demographics and behaviors the advertisers are looking for. Therefore, advertisers never access any personal information. This kind of advertisement targeting is done with targeted banner ads, and targeted emails, but only if you agree to receive such email announcements.

Note that StartYourOwnBusiness.com will not send you any unsolicited information, including email, unless you have indicated your willingness to receive such information by clicking the box on the member profile page. Upon registration, new members will receive a StartYourOwnBusiness.com welcome letter explaining the features provided by our service.

When on the site, we provide an opportunity for you to tell a friend about StartYourOwnBusiness.com. If you provide the email address of a friend, then a brief note, sent from you, describes our services to your friend. StartYourOwnBusiness.com does not collect the email addresses of people whom you contact, and never sends solicitations of any kind to these addresses.

How Does StartYourOwnBusiness.com Use Cookies?

StartYourOwnBusiness.com uses "Cookies" to identify a member's session on StartYourOwnBusiness.com and thereby offer continuity as the member moves around the site. Cookies allow web sites to maintain user information across connections. They are small strings of characters used by many web sites (including StartYourOwnBusiness.com) to deliver data to your computer, and in certain circumstances, return the information to the web site. This is how we can "remember" information about members such as your password (if you choose to auto-login). Cookies contain only information that members volunteer, and they do not have the capability of infiltrating a user's hard drive and stealing personal information. The simple function of a cookie is that of helping the user navigate a website with as little obstruction as possible. Note that advertisers on StartYourOwnBusiness.com may also use their own cookies. If you set your browser to not accept cookies, then you will be unable to log on to StartYourOwnBusiness.com.

StartYourOwnBusiness.com Profiles

During the StartYourOwnBusiness.com registration process you have the opportunity to choose whether you want your profile information to be made available to other members. This profile information includes your name, email address, and the address of your homepage, if applicable. You can change or remove your profile at any time by clicking on the "General Settings" option in the "Preferences" tab.

Security

Personal information collected by StartYourOwnBusiness.com is stored and maintained in secure operating environments that are not available to the public. StartYourOwnBusiness.com does not sell or rent member information to anyone, although as discussed under the section on "Personal Information Utilization," certain demographic information is made available to other sites or advertisers on an aggregated basis. When we ask you for personal information, you are sharing that information with StartYourOwnBusiness.com alone, unless it is specifically stated otherwise. We do not share personal information with any third parties unless we have belief that such action is necessary to: either conform to legal requirements, protect the rights of StartYourOwnBusiness.com, or enforce the StartYourOwnBusiness.com Terms of Service.

Please be aware that StartYourOwnBusiness.com advertisers or web sites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you when you access their site or use their services. In order to participate, members may have to share additional information with Third Parties in the fulfillment. If you choose to not provide this information, which may be subject to their Privacy Policy. As stated below, the information practices of third party web sites are not covered by this privacy statement. Please be aware that you might also provide personal information through discussion sessions, email exchanges or shared link folders. Certain information that you choose to post is publicly available. For example, information posted in shared folders is accessible to all members, or groups of members that you designate. By designating a folder shared, and clicking on the add links button, you are giving consent to other members to add links to your folders. Private folders are accessible only to you. All shared link folders, chat sessions and bulletin board use is considered public and you are responsible for your actions in these areas. The StartYourOwnBusiness.com "Privacy Statement" cannot protect your personal information if it is transferred in this manner. We recommend that you be careful when distributing any personal information this way.

Your StartYourOwnBusiness.com information is password-protected so that only you have access to this personal information. We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. We will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or in an unsolicited email. StartYourOwnBusiness.com employees do not have access to your data, however certain technical staff need access to the data and are given password protected access. This security policy is defined in the employee handbook, and employees are regularly reminded of our privacy policy by circulating handouts and email reminders. Our web security is reviewed by running daily security scripts on the Web servers that report any abnormal behavior. Remember to logout and close your browser window when you have finished your work to ensure that others cannot access your personal information.

Third Party Advertisements

StartYourOwnBusiness.com contains folders composed of links to third-party web sites. These numerous linked sites are not under the control of StartYourOwnBusiness.com and are not affiliated with StartYourOwnBusiness.com. StartYourOwnBusiness.com cannot be responsible for the contents of any linked site or the contents of any link contained in a linked site. StartYourOwnBusiness.com provides these links only as an information service to our members, or our members have voluntarily listed their favorite sites for information purposes in folders maintained by StartYourOwnBusiness.com. Therefore, a web site contained in a member's link list folder, or group folders, on StartYourOwnBusiness.com does not indicate endorsement of the linked site or its contents by StartYourOwnBusiness.com.

In addition, StartYourOwnBusiness.com works with a third party to serve ads on our site. These ads may contain cookies. This policy only covers the use of cookies by StartYourOwnBusiness.comand does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers. StartYourOwnBusiness.com does not have control, nor access to the information contained in its advertisers' cookies. To find out more about how they manages the privacy of information in conjunction with serving ads on this site please feel to contact us anytime"

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site. Our third-party advertising company also separately places or recognizes a cookie file on your browser in the course of delivering advertisements to this Site. These companies may use information (not including your name, address email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please contact us anytime.

StartYourOwnBusiness.com Privacy Policy Changes

If StartYourOwnBusiness.com changes its privacy policy, these changes will be posted here so that you will always know what information StartYourOwnBusiness.com gathers, how StartYourOwnBusiness.com might use that information, and whether StartYourOwnBusiness.com will disclose it to anyone. If StartYourOwnBusiness.com makes any material change concerning how your personally identifiable information is used, then, in addition to including such revision in this privacy statement, StartYourOwnBusiness.com will post a notice on the StartYourOwnBusiness.com site that a change to the privacy policy has taken place. You are expected to review this Agreement periodically to ensure familiarity with the most current version.