About Women's Web

Privacy Policy

As of March 31, 2009

Women's Web is a woman-to-woman community offering information and support.

Women's Web would like you to feel comfortable reading and exchanging information on our web site. We realize the importance of feeling safe online and we acknowledge that online privacy is a growing concern among Internet users. We are committed to ensuring your privacy is respected and protected. This Privacy Policy outlines the type of information we request of you while you visit Women's Web and describes the ways in which this information is processed and occasionally disseminated.

You can, of course, use most of the Women's Web web site without having to provide any personal information. Demographic information about our users is occasionally provided to third-party advertisers or affiliates.

Significant changes to this Privacy Policy will not be made without our first notifying our users. We will not make use of any personally identifiable information gathered from our users prior to such changes without first obtaining our users' consent. Disclosures and opt-ins which override this Privacy Policy include:

1. instances where we ask for your personally identifiable information and we tell you the data we are collecting on that page will be shared with third parties; and
2. cases where a member, visitor or subscriber to Women's Web opts-in to share her information with third parties.

At any time and without any notice to you other than posting any such changes in a revised Privacy Policy, Women's Web reserves the right to make non-significant changes to our privacy policy that will not affect our use of a user's personally identifiable information. We encourage you to periodically review our Privacy Policy to be sure you are familiar with the most current version. The Policy will include the most recent date in which any revision has been made.

Information Women's Web collects

Women's Web collects two types of information.

Information provided to Women's Web

In order to use our message boards, we ask you to register and become a member. During this member registration process, we will ask you for personally identifable information such as your name, e-mail address, member name and password.

We may, from time to time, post user surveys (see below) and ask you to provide additional information including marital status, household income, education, and employment status.

Women's Web gathers this information in order to better understand more about our audience's interests. By developing this understanding, we are better able to personalize tools, content, services and e-mail messages. We also use this information to build new services and develop affiliate partnerships we believe are more valuable and important to you.

Women's Web will obtain your permission whenever personally identifiable information provided by you is:

1. collected by Women's Web; and
2. shared with an advertiser or affiliate.

Information collected by Women's Web

When you use the Women's Web website and the information herein, Women's Web and its affiliate partners may collect information on your actions. This type of information is generally collected from:

1. server log files; and
2. cookies

How information is collected, used and disseminated

Information collected by Women's Web is used to create profiles of our audience. These profiles present anonymous statistical demographic information but no personally identifiable information. Aggregated demographic information is used to determine user trends and needs. In addition, it is also used to supply market research to potential advertisers and affiliates in order to help them better understand the Women's Web audience. Let's say, as an example, that Women's Web creates a report telling advertisers that 90% of our members are women between 35 and 45. Such a report allows these advertisers to determine which products and services are most appropriate for our members.

Public message boards

Please remember that any information you disclose on our message boards becomes public information and is immediately accessible to the general public. It is therefore important that you exercise discretion and caution when deciding to reveal personal information in our online community. Women's Web may, in its sole discretion, decide to use this information in the formulation of articles, FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), and message board content. In such instances, we will endeavor to provide author credit by listing the author's member name. Therefore, we advise you to use care in choosing a member name. Please choose a name that protects your identity and keep your member name confidential.

Our Women's Web message boards are reserved for members who have registered with us. Although it is free, member registration is necessary so that Women's Web can assure the quality of its forums.

Membership registration requires you to choose a member name and password and to provide Women's Web with your e-mail address. This information will not be given to third parties without your consent.

Order forms and transaction with e-commerce advertisers and affiliates

You may wish to purchase goods and services from one of our advertisers or affiliates (i.e., Amazon.com). When you provide them with personal financial and other personally identifiable information, this transaction will occur on the affiliate's e-commerce website, not on the Women's Web website. As such, the financial and personally identifiable information you provide is collected by and controlled by the Privacy Policy of that e-commerce affiliate and not by Women's Web. It is important therefore that you become familiar with the Privacy Policy of the e-commerce site from which you are purchasing goods and services.

Surveys and polls

Polls and surveys appearing on the Women's Web website ask your opinions on various issues. These polls and surveys may be associated with our advertisers and affiliates. Most information obtained from surveys and polls is aggregated and presented to advertisers and affiliates in aggregated form.

Links to affiliate and advertiser sites

Women's Web uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. Women's Web cannot be responsible for the privacy policies or the content of third-party sites. We have no control over the practices of any advertisers or affiliates with whom we are linked. If you are leaving Women's Web through a link, we generally advise you to become familiar with the privacy policy(ies) of the external site(s).

In order to use services and tools provided by our advertisers and affiliates, you may be required to provide them with personally identifiable information. Each will request different information. Again, we advise you to become familiar with their individual privacy policy(ies).

Among the companies that serve ads on Women's Web is Google. Google offers a range of advertising services through our AdWords and AdSense programs to show you the most useful and relevant ads online. Some ads are based primarily on your search queries or on the content of the page you're viewing. Google uses cookies to improve your online experience, including the display of more relevant ads. When providing ads tailored to your interests, Google offers useful tools for you to view and manage the information that is being collected and used to serve ads. For more information about Google advertising and privacy, and to opt out ouf the DoubleClick cookie, see Advertising and Privacy at Google.com.

IP address and cookies

IP address

Your IP address is number assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. The IP address identifies the location of your computer. IP addresses are used to help diagnose problems with our servers and in the administration of the Women's Web web site. We will occasionally use IP addresses to communicate with users and we may ban those members who fail to abide by our Terms of Service.

Cookies

Our message boards use "cookies"—small text files stored on your computer. Women's Web can read these cookie files whenever you use the message boards. We use cookies to save your password so you do not have to re-enter it each time you visit our site.

You can modify your web browser preferences to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set, or to reject all cookies. You should note that if you reject all cookies, you may not be able to access the message boards and will have to re-register/re-login each time you visit the Women's Web website.

Protecting children on the Internet

Women's Web takes the protection of children and of their personal information very seriously. Women's Web does not encourage or solicit visits or membership by children and does not accept membership applications from those known to be under the age of 13. Women's Web acknowledges that sexuality is an inherent part of being a woman; nevertheless, we discourage those under the age of 18 from participating in message boards where sex or sexuality is openly discussed.

[ Back to Top ]