Thank you for visiting www.websbn.com.  Your privacy is important to us, so to better protect it we provide this statement explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used at this site.  While providing small business information knowledge services is the cornerstone of our business, our most important asset is our customers' trust.  Keeping customer information secure, and using it only as our customers would want us to, is a top priority for all of us at WebSBN.

1.   We will safeguard, according to strict standards of security and confidentiality, any information our customers share with us.

2.   We will limit the collection and use of customer information to the minimum we require to deliver superior service to our customers, and to administer our business.

3.   We will permit only authorized employees, who are trained in the proper handling of customer information, to have access to that information. Employees who violate our Privacy Policy will be subject to our normal disciplinary process.

4.   We will not reveal customer information to any external organization unless we have previously informed the customer in disclosures or agreements, have been authorized by the customer, or are required by law.

5.   We will always maintain control over the confidentiality of our customer information.

6.   We tell customers on request and in plain language how they may remove their names from WebSBN lists. At any time, customers can contact us here to remove their names from such lists.

7.   Whenever we hire other organizations to provide support services, we will require them to conform to our privacy standards and to allow us to audit them for compliance.

8.   We will continuously assess ourselves to ensure that customer privacy is respected. We will conduct our business in a manner that fulfills our Policy in the many regions in which we do business.

Our Commitment to Security

We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online.

The Information We Collect

At someWebSBN sites, you can order products, enter contests, vote in polls, participate in a survey, or otherwise express an opinion, subscribe to one of our services such as our online newsletters, or participate in one of our online forums or communities. The types of personally identifiable information that you choose to provide and that may be collected at these pages include: name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, fax number, and information about your interests in and use of various products, programs, and services. WebSBN does not collect credit card information, and instead uses a secure, trusted third-party payment gateway system to process purchase transactions.

At some other WebSBN sites, you can submit information about other people. For example, you might purchase a product or service at a WebSBN store intended for another recipient, providing the recipients information so they may receive a notice and a claim identification code for the product or service.  The types of personally identifiable information that may be collected about other people at these pages include: recipient's name, address, e-mail address, and telephone number.

At certain locations on some of our sites, only persons who provide us with the requested personally identifiable information will be able to order products, programs, and services or otherwise participate in the site's activities and offerings.

We also may collect certain non-personally identifiable information when you visit many of our web pages such as the type of browser you are using (e.g., Netscape, Internet Explorer), the type of operating system you are using, (e.g., Windows '95 or Mac OS) and the domain name of your Internet service provider (e.g., America Online, Earthlink).

How We Use the Information

We may use the information you choose to provide about yourself to fulfill your requests for our products, programs, and services, to respond to your inquiries about offerings, and to offer you other products, programs or services that we believe may be of interest to you. 

We sometimes use this information to communicate with you, such as to notify you when you have won one of our contests or when we make changes to subscriber agreements, to fulfill a request by you for an online newsletter, or to contact you about your account with us.

We use the information that you provide about others to enable us to send them products and services you may have purchased for them. From time to time, we also may use this information to offer our products, programs, or services to them.

If you choose to submit content for publication (e.g., a posting on our Discussion Boards, or a "letter to our editors"), we may publish your screen name and other information you have provided to us.

The information we collect in connection with our online forums and communities is used to provide an interactive experience. We use this information to facilitate participation in these online forums and communities and, from time to time, to offer you products, programs, or services.

We sometimes use anonymous, or non-personally identifiable information that we collect to improve the design and content of our site and to enable us to personalize your Internet experience. We also may use this information in the aggregate to analyze site usage, as well as to offer you products, programs, or services.

We will disclose information we maintain when required to do so by law, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena. We also may disclose such information in response to a law enforcement agency's request.

Agents and contractors of WebSBN who have access to personally identifiable information are required to protect this information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Notice by, for example, not using the information for any purpose other than to carry out the services they are performing for WebSBN.

Although we take appropriate measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personally identifiable information that we collect will never be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Notice. Inadvertent disclosures may result, for example, when third parties misrepresent their identities in asking the site for access to personally identifiable information about themselves for purposes of correcting possible factual errors in the data.

Cookies

To enhance your experience with our sites, many of our web pages use cookies, which are small text files we place in your computer's browser to store your preferences.  Cookies cannot be read by a Web site other than the one that set the cookie.  Most cookies last only through a single session, or visit to our site.  You can set up your Web browser to inform you when cookies are set, or to prevent cookies from being set.

Cookies, by themselves, do not contain personally identifiable information that would enable anyone to contact you via telephone, e-mail, or any other means.  However, once you choose to provide personally identifiable information to us by, for example, registering at one of our sites, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie.

We use cookies to record session and user-specific information about the pages users access or visit, and to understand site usage and improve the content and offerings on our sites. For example, we may use cookies to personalize your experience at our web pages (e.g. to recognize you by name when you return to our site), save your password in password-protected areas, and enable you to use shopping carts on our sites. We also may use cookies to offer you products, programs, or services.

We may also use small pieces of code called 'web beacons' or 'clear gifs' to collect anonymous and aggregate metrics, such as counting page views, promotion views, or advertising responses. These 'web beacons' may be used to deliver cookies that conform to our cookie policy.