This NewsDay site is covered by the policies herein. Because this web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its privacy practices reviewed for compliance. If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should contact The Standard.

This privacy statement covers only information that is collected through this Web site, and does not cover information that may be collected through software downloaded from the site.

When does The Independent collect my personally identifiable information?

When you register for one of The Standard, or for services on any of our sites, we collect personally identifying information from you. During registration you are asked to provide your email address and some demographic information including such items as your gender, year of birth, and address. The more information you provide, the better we are able to customize our services and your experience to suit your needs and preferences. In addition to registration, we may collect personally identifiable information from you when you enter contests and sweepstakes (which may be done in conjunction with site registration), participate in promotions and special programs, register for premium or customized services, make a purchase at one of our merchants or partners, subscribe to one of our mailing lists, or download a software product or plug-in.

If you are making a purchase or enrolling in a premium service for which there is a fee, we, or a 3rd party working in partnership with us, will collect your credit card, billing address, and other verifying information. In addition, we may collect personally identifiable information from you when you provide content to us for display or use on one or more The Independent sites, including but not limited to, when you participate in user surveys, post messages to bulletin boards or chat areas, submit personals or other classified listings, build a home page, report a problem with one of our sites or services, or submit a letter to the editor.

If you use our referral service (“Email and Article to a Friend”) to tell a friend about our site, we will ask for your email address and theirs. We automatically send a one-time email to the address you provided. Neither your email address nor the email address you provide is stored or used for any other purpose.

How is my personally identifiable information used?

Our main goal is to provide you with a customized and more relevant experience on The Independent site. We review our users’ preferences, demographics, traffic patterns, and other information in aggregate so that we can better understand who our audience is, and what it is you want. Tracking user preferences also helps us serve you more relevant advertising. Please note that we do not share your personally identifying information with the advertiser.

We use a third party to serve ads when you visit our site. This third party ad server may use certain information about your visit to our site in order to provide advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you, but they are not allowed to collect or use personally identifiable information about you for their own purposes.

All credit card information is transmitted in an encrypted form, using SSL (secure socket layer) encryption, the industry-standard. 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. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. The Independent assumes no liability for disclosure of data due to errors in transmission or unauthorized third parties. If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can contact us.

The email address provided by you at registration, or as updated, may be used by The Independent and its affiliated entities, including The Standard, to contact you for any reason, including: (1) Your account status (including an email confirmation of registration), (2) Major changes to the Web site, the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, (3) Participation in user surveys, asking for feedback on the Web site and (4) notifying you of existing or prospective products and services offered by us or our advertisers and partners. This information helps us to improve our Web site. The information provided by you at registration may be used by The Independent and its affiliated entities, to contact you with special offers and promotions.

To update your personal information such as name, or mailing address, you can sign into your account and visit the Update Account page. To update your newsletter subscriptions you either a) visit your newsletter subscription page in your account, or b) unsubscribe by following the instructions within the email newsletter. If you opt-in to a third party offer on this site then your relationship with the third party will be governed by their respective Privacy Policies. If you no longer wish to receive communication from the third party, then you will need to contact them directly to opt-out. When you sign up for some third-party services on this site, such as free coupons, you will be taken to a co-branded site which may appear to be, however if the third party is collecting information from you, the use of this information is governed by the co-branded partner’s privacy policy.

What other information does The Independent collect and how is it used?

Cookies. The Independent uses cookies to store and track your preferences to provide you with a more personalized user experience. A cookie is a message that is sent to your browser from a Web server and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Most Internet sites use cookies. You can set your browser preferences to reject all cookies but then you will not be able to participate in most customized services, and you may be required to repeatedly log in to participate in various services, promotions, or product offerings. Cookies make your experience easier by saving your preferences and passwords.

We also use cookies that contain no personal information at all. These cookies, help us estimate our audience size, determine which areas of The Independent sites are the most popular, and serve targeted advertising. Third party advertisers may set and access their cookies on your computer in accordance with their own privacy policies. If you would like more information about the use of cookies by our third party ad server and your ability to opt out of receiving cookies from this third party, please click here: http://www.google.com/privacy.html and http://content.yieldmanager.com/privacy.html

Some parts of http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com site use cookies to collect information about visitors’ use of the Web site and to facilitate return visits. Information collected about user activity may be done in partnership using a third party tracking tool. The information collected from cookies is tracked to enhance security and to improve the functionality of the Web site by avoiding duplicate data entry, facilitating navigation, and increasing the relevance of content. Cookies on the site may collect the following information: a unique identifier, user preferences and profile information used to personalize the content that is shown, and membership information to access The Independent’s services. Some cookies used byhttp://www.thezimbabweindependent.com may remain on the user’s computer after they leave the Web site.

Most browsers can be configured to reject cookies or alert you when cookies are being sent. Keep in mind that if you refuse cookies, it is possible that some portions of The Independent may not function exactly as intended.

IP Address. The Independent may also collect IP addresses for the purposes of systems administration or to report information in aggregate form to our advertisers (e.g. how many visitors logged in to The Standard). An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer automatically when you use the Internet. When you visit a particular The Independent web page, our servers log your IP address. Your IP address is not linked to anything personally identifiable.

Who does The Independent share information with?

User information is shared within The Independent in order to provide you with a more integrated and customized user experience. We will not disclose your personally identifiable information to third parties except (1) to the extent necessary to provide you with a requested product or service, or (2) in order to provide targeted promotional offers during the registration process. If you do not accept any of the offers, your information will not be retained by our registration offers partner.

To the extent you are notified of uses of your personal information which are different from those described in this Policy Statement during your enrollment in any particular service, sweepstakes, contest or promotion, the uses of which you are specifically notified will govern that service, sweepstakes, contest or promotion. We may co-sponsor some contests on our site with other companies. If you enter one of these contests, our co-sponsor may receive the information collected. In such cases, we will tell you who the co-sponsor is and notify you the use of this information is governed by the co-sponsor’s privacy policy.

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 to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site

What else should I know about my privacy?

You should be aware that if you voluntarily disclose personal information online in a public area, that information may be collected and used by others. We do not control the actions of our visitors and registered users. If you disclose personal information in a chat room, forum, on your home page, or any other publicly accessible place on The Standard, you do so at your own risk and you understand that your submitted information may be collected and used by others to send you unsolicited messages, advertisements, or for other purposes.

Please remember that protection of your privacy begins with you. You are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any password you use to register, and you should always be careful and responsible whenever disclosing information online.

This Web site contains links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by The Standard. Please be aware that we, The Standard, are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites.

We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information.

This privacy statement applies only to information collected by this Web site.

Third-party advertising companies may be used to serve ads when you visit Http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com. 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, click here: (http://networkadvertising.org/consumer/opt_out.asp).

PRIVACY PROTECTION FOR CHILDREN.

In compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), we will not knowingly provide access to The Independent sites to persons under the age of thirteen (13). If The Independent later learns that any registered user is under the age of thirteen (13), we will take appropriate steps to remove the member’s information from the database and we will restrict this individual from future access to The Standard.com. We feel strongly about protecting the privacy of children. We encourage kids to involve their parents in any interactive activity they participate in online. Except where otherwise disclosed, we will not collect or use any personal information from children we know to be under the age of thirteen without obtaining express parental consent. All general information collected from users under the age of thirteen is used only for aggregate statistical analysis.

Acceptance of Privacy Policy. By using The Standard.com, you signify your acceptance of this Privacy Statement. If you do not agree or are not comfortable with any policy described in this Privacy statement, your only remedy is to discontinue use of Http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com. We reserve the right, to modify this Privacy Statement at any time. If we materially change how we use your personal information we will notify you either by email or through a prominent notice on the web site. Your continued use of any portion of The Independent following notification or posting of such changes, will constitute your accept of those changes.Questions or concerns about our specific policies, please contact us through our contact us form at: Http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com

Want more information? Check out these helpful links…

Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/) – a civil liberties organization working to protect your rights online.

Electronic Privacy Information Center (http://www.epic.org/) – established to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues relating to the National Information Infrastructure.

Privacy Issues Page (http://www.cdt.org/) – from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).

Cookie Central (http://www.cookiecentral.com/) – dedicated to provide full information upon Internet Cookies.

Google

Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.