Privacy policy

Vindale Media, LLC has been awarded TRUSTe's Privacy Seal signifying that this privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with TRUSTe's program requirements including transparency, accountability and choice regarding the collection and use of your personal information. The TRUSTe program only covers information that is collected from this Web site, and does not cover information that may be collected through any software downloaded from this Web site. TRUSTe's mission, as an independent third party, is to accelerate online trust among consumers and organizations globally through its leading privacy trustmark and innovative trust solutions. If you have questions or complaints regarding our privacy policy or practices, please contact us at privacy@vindale.com. If you are not satisfied with our response you can contact TRUSTe here

Vindale Research collects user-submitted information including name, email address, and age to verify new accounts and send notifications regarding Vindale Research's services. Vindale Research collects additional optional data that is included in member profiles. This data includes but is not limited to: occupation, interests, school affiliations, gender, and address.

We also collect non-personally identifiable information including IP address and browser type to help run the site more efficiently.

Email addresses are used to send notifications related to the service(s) the user has signed up for, as a confirmation when a Vindale Research member has requested to add another member as a friend, and to invite new friends to join Vindale Research. A user may choose to stop receiving email notifications from Vindale Research at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. When the user sends email or other communication to Vindale Research, Vindale Research may retain those communications in order to process the user's inquiries, respond to the user's requests and improve Vindale Research's services.

Vindale Research provides members with the opportunity to upload a self-portrait and/or a testimonial of our service. We will not sell, share or publish your personally identifiable information, but reserve the right to use your first name, last initial, city and state for our testimonials. If you would like to your self-portrait and/or testimonial to remain confidential, please express your intention clearly when you submit your self-portrait and/or testimonial. The specific use of your personal information will be defined at the point of collection. Should Vindale Research wish to change anything regarding the use of your personal information, a prominent notice will be displayed on this website. If you want your testimonial removed please contact us at privacy@vindale.com.

Vindale Research offers publicly accessible blogs or community forums. You should be aware that these are public forums and any information you provide may be read, collected, and used by anyone, including non-members and third-party hosting services. Commenters may register anonymously. However, be aware that if a commenter posts something in violation of our terms, we may remove the comment, and if the comment violates US law, we may be required to disclose the commenter's contact information. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your personal information from our blog or community forum, contact us at privacy@vindale.com. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.

Our Web site includes Social Media Features, such as the Facebook Like button and Widgets, such as the Share this button or interactive mini-programs that run on our site. These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. Social Media Features and Widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

Vindale Research uses your IP address and browser type for the general administration of the website. Demographic information you provide such as age, postal code, gender and country of residence may be used to target surveys, advertisements and special offers. In cases where advertisements are being displayed by a third-party, non-personally identifiable information may be passed to the third-party to allow for targeting.

Except in cases where members are expressly informed otherwise, Vindale Research does not sell, rent, share, trade or give away any of your personal information unless required by law to do so. In certain circumstances, Vindale Research may share profile information and aggregate usage information in a non-personally identifiable fashion to advertisers or other third parties for the purpose of delivering more targeted advertising, products and services to members. In these instances Vindale Research will only disclose information that will be used to personally identify you if you grant permission through an opt-in process. Vindale Research reserves the right to transfer personal information to a successor in interest that acquires rights to that information as a result of the sale of Vindale Research or substantially all of its assets to that successor in interest.

When members choose to use Vindale Research's Invite-a-Friend service, the member is prompted to input their friend's email address. Vindale Research will automatically send an email to that address with a message inviting the recipient to join the Vindale Research community. Vindale Research stores these email addresses for the purpose of automatically adding the invitee to the member's friend list upon signing up. Vindale Research will not send more than one follow up email to an invitee for any given peer referral. Should the invitee explicitly decline to join Vindale Research and opt out of receiving any future emails, Vindale Research will cease to send the receiver any future emails, even if additional peer referrals are given.

Vindale Research uses cookies to manage sessions on the site, remember user preferences, and to ensure members do not continually see the same advertisements. Cookies must be enabled in order for members to use Vindale Research services. Information stored in cookies will never contain any personally identifiable information. Third parties also place scripts and cookies on our site such as analytics providers. This data is only collected in the aggregate.

Vindale Research contains links to other websites. Vindale Research is in no way responsible for the privacy practices employed by other sites. Such websites may independently collect data, solicit personal information, or send their own cookies to your computer. Vindale Research is not responsible for any use of the information, including click-stream data, and you may create and disclose when visiting such third party sites. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by Vindale Research.

Members can update their information at any time by logging in to Vindale Research and editing their information. The user may also request a copy of the personal information Vindale Research has on record for their account by sending a self-addressed., stamped envelope to the following address:

Vindale Research
Attn: User Privacy
243 Fifth Avenue, Suite 541
New York, NY 10016

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information to provide you services contact us at privacy@vindale.com. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site.

All Vindale Research member accounts are password-protected. Vindale Research goes to great lengths to protect the information our members have provided us. Our entire site is protected using information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). Access to this information is limited to only the employees who need it in order to perform their job function (e.g. Customer Service Representatives). Please note that while Vindale Research employs the best commercially reasonable measures of security, we do not guarantee account security. Hardware/software failure, unauthorized access, and other factors may lead to a breach in Vindale Research security. Should you have any questions regarding this, please contact us.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however.

Should a member of Vindale Research wish to stop receiving notification emails from the site, or cancel their membership to the site altogether, they can log on and make the required changes to their account profile, under "email preferences". There are also instructions on how to opt out of receiving future emails included at the bottom of every email sent from Vindale Research. Vindale Research will honor all requests for cancellation, and you will not receive any more emails within 10 business days of your request.

Requests for opting out of receiving emails or account cancellation may also be sent by mail or over the phone. Vindale Research will honor these requests within 10 business days. All such requests are considered final and the user will not receive any further emails from Vindale Research unless explicit permission is granted at a later date.

A portion of the advertisements seen on Vindale Research are delivered to users by third-party advertising partners. These partners may use cookies when showing ads to users. These cookies may be used to determine which site the advertiser's advertisement was displayed on and whether or not the user interacted with the advertisement. This information helps advertising partners deliver targeted advertisements that will be most relevant to you. These cookies are not linked to personal information. Vindale Research does not have access to the cookies placed by third parties. Vindale Research privacy statement applies only to Vindale Research and does not apply to use of cookies by any third parties.

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the home page, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page prior to the changes taking effect.

Under California law, individual customers who reside in California and have provided personal information to Vindale Research may request information about our disclosing of certain categories of personal information to third parties for direct marketing purposes. These requests must be submitted to privacy@vindale.com. Within 45 days of receiving such a request, Vindale Research will provide a list of the types of information disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes during the immediately preceding calendar year and the names and addresses of those parties.

Individual customers who reside in California may also choose to opt out of providing information to third parties for direct marketing purposes by canceling their account at any time.

If you have any questions or comments about Vindale Research's Privacy Policy, please contact us using one of the methods below:

Vindale Research
Attn: User Privacy
243 Fifth Avenue, Suite 541
New York, NY 10016

Telephone: 1-855-846-3253
Facsimile: 1-866-841-3898

LAST UPDATED 09/06/2012