Stonediver Privacy Policy

This site is operated by Stonediver. Your privacy on the Internet is very important to us. We at Stonediver want to make your online experience satisfying and safe. We respect your privacy and work diligently to ensure that any personally identifiable information you have submitted to us remains secure and confidential.

Because we gather certain types of information about our users, 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.

What Information we Collect

Stonediver gathers two types of information about users:

• Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to receive our electronic newsletters or to receive more information about our services. We may use this data to help us understand the demographics of our audience, but we do not divulge any information about an individual user to a third party for purposes of marketing or advertising.
• Information we gather through aggregated tracking information, derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our site. This information allows us to better tailor our content to visitors' needs. We do not use this data to identify individual users.

How we Gather User Information

Optional Voluntary Information

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

1. Request for more information

Stonediver gathers voluntary contact information from users who would like to receive more information about our services. We may periodically send e-mails to users who have voluntarily submitted their information and have indicated a preference for receiving such notifications.

2. Electronic newsletters (Dispatches)

We offer free electronic newsletters to users. We gather the e-mail addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe to our newsletters. Users may remove themselves from these mailing lists by following the links provided in every newsletter that points users to the subscription management page. Users can also subscribe to the newsletters when requesting information about our services.

Children

Consistent with the Federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), we do not knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting parental consent.

Usage Tracking

Stonediver tracks user traffic patterns throughout our site. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. We do break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type and operating system by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser).

We sometimes track and catalog the search terms that visitors use to find our site (or terms entered into our Search function), but this tracking is not associated with individual users. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our site users prefer 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 Web site for you.

Cookies

We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. We use 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. The cookie itself does not contain personal information although it will enable us to relate your use of our site to information that you have specifically and knowingly provided to us. 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.

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 our site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in newsletter registration and information requests.

Use of Information

We use any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our site, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the site 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 receive more information about our services and activities. 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.

We use tracking information to determine which areas of our site users visit most frequently, and we create aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns to tailor our site to visitors' needs. We will not disclose any information about individual users with any third party for purposes of marketing or advertising. However, we may share personal information with a third party for the following purposes:

• We may share personal information that you voluntarily provide with third parties who perform services to us or on our behalf. However, these third-party service providers are obligated to keep your personal information secure and confidential.
• We will share a user's personal information when it is required to comply with an applicable law or valid legal process, or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public. For example, we may disclose such information in response to a subpoena.

Security

Stonediver 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 users.

Our Web site and database may operate through the use of a third party hosting service, but any such service provider is similarly required to keep your information secure and confidential. Additionally, these third party service providers must maintain secure data networks and have physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in place to ensure the security and confidentiality of any personal information transmitted via those networks.

External Links

Stonediver occasionally publishes links to third party Web sites that we feel may be of interest to our users. However, any such external links should not be considered an endorsement or sponsorship of those sites, and Stonediver claims no responsibility for the content, information, products or services offered by them. We encourage you to review the privacy policies for any third party sites you access via our links.

Opt-Out Policy

We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:

• Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas (including all registration/information request forms), which completely alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users.
• Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters, or opting out of our mailing list for electronic dispatches by clicking the "unsubscribe" link included at the bottom of every message.

Your Consent

By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by Stonediver. 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.

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please send an e-mail to privacy@stonediver.com, or mail a written correspondence to:

Stonediver
Attn: Privacy Policy
28 E Jackson Blvd., Suite 988
Chicago, IL 60604

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Note: The use of any portion of this Web site, including communications sent to Stonediver via online forms or e-mail (or otherwise through our Web site), does not constitute a business relationship between Stonediver and any recipient or sender