minorityrecords.us

Privacy Policy

Effective November 9, 2008:

Minority Records L.L.C. (“minorityrecords.us” or “we”) operates minorityrecords.us. This Privacy Policy describes minorityrecords.us’s use and sharing of personally identifiable information (“PII”-- your full name, email address, mailing address, telephone number, or credit card number) that Members voluntarily provide to minorityrecords.us when they register (also known as “Registration PII”). The Term “User” refers to a Visitor or a Member. This Privacy Policy applies to the services offered by minorityrecords.us, including any minorityrecords.us-branded URL (the “minorityrecords.us Website”), the minorityrecords.us instant messaging service, the minorityrecords.us application developer service and other features (for example, music and video embedded players), minorityrecords.us mobile services, and any other features, content, or applications offered from time to time by minorityrecords.us in connection with the minorityrecords.us Website (collectively, the “minorityrecords.us Services”). The minorityrecords.us Services are hosted in the United States.

The minorityrecords.us Website is a general audience site and does not knowingly collect PII from children under 13 years of age.

From time to time minorityrecords.us may modify this Privacy Policy to reflect industry initiatives or changes in the law, our PII collection and use practices, the features of the minorityrecords.us Services, or technology, and such modifications shall be effective upon posting by minorityrecords.us on the minorityrecords.us Website. Your continued use of the minorityrecords.us Services after minorityrecords.us posts a revised Privacy Policy signifies your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy. It is therefore important that you review this Privacy Policy regularly to ensure you are updated as to any changes. If minorityrecords.us materially changes its practices regarding collection or use of your PII, your PII will continue to be governed by the Policy under which it was collected unless you have been provided notice of, and have not objected to, the change.

COLLECTION AND SUBMISSION OF PII AND NON-PII ON MINORITYRECORDS.US

General. When minorityrecords.us collects PII from you it is because you are voluntarily submitting Registration PII to us in order to register as a Member of minorityrecords.us. minorityrecords.us may also collect PII from you if you choose to participate in minorityrecords.us Services activities like sweepstakes, contests, and surveys, because you want us to furnish you with products, services, newsletters, or information, or in connection with content or suggestions you submit to minorityrecords.us for review.

In addition, minorityrecords.us collects other non-PII including IP address, aggregate user data, and browser type. This data is used to manage and improve the minorityrecords.us Services, track usage, and for security purposes.

minorityrecords.us Members may also choose to provide or store non-PII information in their profiles, including but not limited to date of birth, interests, hobbies, lifestyle choices, groups with whom they are affiliated (schools, companies), videos and/or pictures, private messages, bulletins or personal statements (collectively “Profile Information”). The Profile Information in a Member’s profile is provided at his or her sole discretion.

minorityrecords.us Members can change their Registration PII and Profile Information at any time and can control how Visitors, other Members and minorityrecords.us communicate with them by controlling their account settings, available within the “Edit Profile” portion of their minorityrecords.us profile. Link to Privacy Settings.

Cookies. Cookies are small bits of information that minorityrecords.us places on your computer. minorityrecords.us uses cookies to identify your Internet browser, store Users’ preferences, and determine whether you have installed the enabling software needed to access certain material on the minorityrecords.us Services. Data in cookies may be read to authenticate user sessions or provide services.

Third party advertisements displayed on minorityrecords.us Services may also contain cookies set by Internet advertising companies or advertisers (known as “third party cookies”). minorityrecords.us does not control these third party cookies and Users of the minorityrecords.us Services should check the privacy policy of the Internet advertising company or advertiser to see whether and how it uses cookies. See the “Notice” section below for more information on customized advertising on minorityrecords.us. A pixel tag is a tiny image inserted in a webpage and used to record the number and types of views for that page. minorityrecords.us may allow third party pixel tags to be present on minorityrecords.us Services for purposes of advertising, providing services or data and statistics collection.

You can program your computer to warn you each time a cookie is being sent, block third party cookies or block all cookies. However, by blocking all cookies you may not have access to certain features on the minorityrecords.us Services.

NOTICE: MINORITYRECORDS.US WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH NOTICE ABOUT ITS PII COLLECTION PRACTICES

When you voluntarily provide PII to minorityrecords.us, we will make sure you are informed about who is collecting the information, how and why the information is being collected and the types of uses minorityrecords.us will make of the information to the extent it is being used in a manner that differs from what is allowed pursuant to this Privacy Policy.

At the time you provide your PII, minorityrecords.us will notify you of your options regarding our use of your PII (See “Choice” below). Except as described in this Privacy Policy, minorityrecords.us will not share your PII with third parties unless you have given minorityrecords.us permission to do so (See “Use” below).

minorityrecords.us Services may be linked to Internet sites operated by other companies. minorityrecords.us Services may also carry advertisements from other companies. minorityrecords.us is not responsible for the privacy practices of websites or other services operated by third parties that are linked to or integrated with the minorityrecords.us Services or for the privacy practices of third party Internet advertising companies. Once you leave minorityrecords.us Services via such a link, access a third party application (such as widgets) or click on an advertisement, you should check the applicable privacy policy of the third party or advertiser site to determine, among other things, how they will handle any PII they collect from you.

minorityrecords.us Services may also be linked to sites operated by companies affiliated with minorityrecords.us(i.e., that are part of the News America Group: “Affiliated Companies”). Although all Affiliated Companies adhere to the News America corporate Privacy Principles, Users who visit those Affiliated Company sites should still refer to their separate privacy policies and practices, which may differ in some respects from this Privacy Policy.

minorityrecords.us may use cookies and similar tools to customize the content and advertising you receive based on the Profile Information you have provided. Profile Information you provide in structured profile fields or questions (multiple choice questions like “Marital Status,” “Education” and “Children”) (“Structured Profile Information”), information you add to open-ended profile fields and questions (essay questions like “About Me,” “Interests” and “Movies”) (“Non-Structured Profile Information”) and other non-PII about you may also be used to customize the online ads you encounter to those we believe are aligned with your interests. For example, based on your music interests we might display an advertisement to make sure you are advised when your favorite band is coming to town. The information used for this feature does not provide your PII or identify you as an individual to third parties. If you would like to disable advertising customization for Non-Structured Profile Information, please log in and click here.

Some of the advertisements that appear on minorityrecords.us Services may also be delivered to you by third party Internet advertising companies. These companies utilize certain technologies to deliver advertisements and marketing messages and to collect non-PII about your visit to or use of minorityrecords.us Services, including information about the ads they display, via a cookie placed on your computer that reads your IP address. To opt out of information collection by these companies, or to obtain information about the technologies they use or their own privacy policies, please click here.

Third party applications (such as widgets) created by third party developers may also be available on the minorityrecords.us Services. Third party applications are small bits of software, often with interactivity, that can be installed into Members’ profiles or shared with other Users. However, minorityrecords.us does not control the third party developers, and cannot dictate their actions. When a Member engages with a third party application, that Member is interacting with the third party developer, not with minorityrecords.us. minorityrecords.us encourages Members not to provide PII to the third party’s application unless the Member knows the party with whom it is interacting.

CHOICE: MINORITYRECORDS.US WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH CHOICES ABOUT THE USE OF YOUR PII

Except as described in this Privacy Policy, minorityrecords.us will get your permission before we use the PII you provide to us in a way that is inconsistent with the purpose for which it was submitted or share your PII with third parties that are not affiliated with minorityrecords.us.

USE: MINORITYRECORDS.US'S USE OF PII

minorityrecords.us will only use the PII you provide under this Privacy Policy in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy. If minorityrecords.us obtains PII from a third party, such as a business partner, our use of that information is also governed by this Privacy Policy.

In order to locate other minorityrecords.us Members that you may already know in the physical world, minorityrecords.us allows Users to search for Members using Registration PII (i.e., full name or email address). minorityrecords.us also allows Users to browse for certain Profile Information in order to help connect with Members (i.e., schools and/or companies where Users may have attended or worked). minorityrecords.us may also enable Members to publicly display some Registration PII as an element of their Profile Information if they choose to do so via a profile setting under “Edit Profile.” Search engines may index the portion of a Member’s profile (including the Profile Information it contains) that is publicly displayed.

If you have consented to receive promotional materials (e.g., newsletters) or notifications from minorityrecords.us, minorityrecords.us may periodically use your email address to send you such materials related to the minorityrecords.us Services, as applicable. If you want to stop receiving such materials from minorityrecords.us, you can change your profile settings under “Account Settings,” or follow the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.

minorityrecords.us employees, agents and contractors must have a business reason to obtain access to your PII. minorityrecords.us may share your PII with those who help us manage or provide minorityrecords.us Services’ information activities (for example, message board administration, order fulfillment, statistical analyses, data processing), or with outside contractors, agents or sponsors who help us with the administration, judging and prize fulfillment aspects of contests, promotions and sweepstakes.

These outside contractors, agents or sponsors may temporarily store some information on their servers, but they may only use your PII to provide minorityrecords.us with a specific service and not for any other purpose. minorityrecords.us may also provide your PII to a third party in those instances where you have chosen to receive certain information and have been notified that the fulfillment of such a request requires the sharing of your PII. minorityrecords.us also may share your PII with Affiliated Companies if it has a business reason to do so.

As described in “Notice” above, minorityrecords.us may customize the advertising and marketing messages you receive on the minorityrecords.us Website, or may work with outside companies to do so. Your non-PII and/or Profile Information may be shared with these companies so this customization can be accomplished. minorityrecords.us prohibits these companies from sharing your non-PII and/or Profile Information with any third party or from using it for any other purpose. Anonymous click stream, number of page views calculated by pixel tags, and aggregated demographic information may also be shared with minorityrecords.us’s advertisers and business partners.

There may be instances when minorityrecords.us may access or disclose PII, Profile Information or non-PII without providing you a choice in order to: (i) protect or defend the legal rights or property of minorityrecords.us, our Affiliated Companies or their employees, agents and contractors (including enforcement of our agreements); (ii) protect the safety and security of Users of the minorityrecords.us Services or members of the public including acting in urgent circumstances; (iii) protect against fraud or for risk management purposes; or (iv) comply with the law or legal process. In addition, if minorityrecords.us sells all or part of its business or makes a sale or transfer of all or a material part of its assets or is otherwise involved in a merger or transfer of all or a material part of its business, minorityrecords.us may transfer your PII to the party or parties involved in the transaction as part of that transaction.

When a Member who is located in the European Union chooses to post Profile Information that will be publicly disclosed, that Member is responsible for ensuring that such information conforms to all local data protection laws. minorityrecords.us is not responsible under the EU local data protection laws for Member-posted information.

SECURITY: MINORITYRECORDS.US PROTECTS THE SECURITY OF PII

minorityrecords.us uses commercially reasonable administrative, technical, personnel and physical measures to safeguard PII and credit card information in its possession against loss, theft and unauthorized use, disclosure or modification. In addition, minorityrecords.us uses reasonable methods to make sure that PII is accurate, up-to-date and appropriately complete.

ACCESS, REMEDIES AND COMPLIANCE: HOW TO ACCESS, CORRECT OR CHANGE YOUR PREFERENCES REGARDING YOUR PII AND HOW TO CONTACT MINORITYRECORDS.US ABOUT PRIVACY CONCERNS

Whenever possible, minorityrecords.us Members may review the Registration PII we maintain about them in our records. We will take reasonable steps to correct any PII a Member informs us is incorrect. If you are a Member, you can view and change your Registration PII, Member preferences and Profile Information by logging into your account and accessing features such as “Edit Profile” and “Account Settings.”

If you ask minorityrecords.us to stop using your PII, minorityrecords.us will honor that request while retaining any record of your PII that is necessary to comply with applicable federal, state or local law.

If you would like to communicate with us about this Privacy Policy or minorityrecords.us’s collection and use of your PII please contact Minority Records L.L.C. at:

Email: info@minorityrecords.us

Mail: P.O. Box 1832 Dept.# AR-15

Akron, OH 44309

ADDENDUM

What are cookies?

A “cookie” is a small text file containing a string of alphanumeric characters. There are two types of cookies: a persistent cookie and a session cookie. A persistent cookie gets entered by your Web browser into the cookie folder on your computer’s hard drive. A persistent cookie remains in that cookie folder, which is maintained and governed by your Web browser, after you close your browser program. A session cookie is temporary and disappears after you close your browser. DoubleClick’s ad-serving and paid search listing (“DART Search”) products utilize the same cookie: the DART cookie. The DART cookie is a persistent cookie and consists of the name of the domain that set the cookie (“ad.doubleclick.net”), the lifetime of the cookie, and a “value.” DoubleClick’s DART technology generates a unique series of characters for the “value” portion of the cookie.

What is the DoubleClick cookie doing on my computer?

If you have a DoubleClick cookie in your Cookies folder, it is most likely a DART cookie. The DoubleClick DART cookie helps marketers learn how well their Internet advertising campaigns or paid search listings perform. Many marketers and Internet websites use DoubleClick’s DART technology to deliver and serve their advertisements or manage their paid search listings. DoubleClick’s DART products set or recognize a unique, persistent cookie when an ad is displayed or a paid listing is selected. The information that the DART cookie helps to give marketers includes the number of unique users their advertisements were displayed to, how many users clicked on their Internet ads or paid listings, and which ads or paid listings they clicked on.

Why does your cookie keep coming back after I delete it?

When you visit any website or search engine on which DoubleClick’s DART technology is used, our servers will check to see if you already have a DART cookie. If the servers do not receive a DART cookie, the servers will try to set a cookie in response to your browser’s “request” to view that Web page. If you do not want a DART cookie with a unique value, you can obtain a DoubleClick DART “opt out” cookie. Alternatively, you can adjust your Internet browser’s settings for handling cookies. This is explained in the next question.

How can I adjust my cookie settings to accept or decline cookies?

To eliminate cookies you may have currently accepted, and to deny or limit cookies in the future, please follow one of these procedures:

IMPORTANT: IF YOU DELETE YOUR OPT-OUT COOKIE, YOU WILL NEED TO OPT-OUT AGAIN. IF YOUR BROWSER BLOCKS ALL OR THIRD-PARTY COOKIES, YOU WILL BLOCK THE SETTING OF OPT-OUT COOKIES.

* If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0, go to the Tools menu, then to Internet Options, then to the Privacy tab. This version of Internet Explorer is the first to use P3P to distinguish between types of cookies. P3P uses standardized privacy statements made by the cookie issuer to manage your acceptance of cookies. Under the “Privacy” tab, click on the “Advanced” button. Select “Override automatic cookie handling” and choose whether you want to accept, block or be prompted for “First-party” and “Third-party Cookies.” If you want to block all cookies coming from DoubleClick’s doubleclick.net domain, go to the “Web Sites” section under the “Privacy” tab and click the “Edit” button. In the “Address of Web site” field, enter “doubleclick.net,” select “Block,” click OK (menu will disappear); click OK again and you will be back to the browser. * If you are using Netscape 6.0+, go to “Edit” in the menu bar, click on “Preferences,” click on “Advanced,” and select the “Cookies” field. Now check either the box that says, “Warn me before accepting a cookie” or “Disable cookies.” Click on “OK.” Now go to your “Start” button, click on “Find,” click on “Files and Folders,” type “cookies.txt” into the search box that appears, and click “Find Now.” When the search results appear, drag all files listed, into the “Recycle Bin.” Now shut down and restart your Netscape. Depending on your earlier choice you will either be prompted by new cookie sets or no cookies will be set or received.

* If you are using Mozilla or Safari, please go to their websites to find out how to disable cookies in those programs.

What are Web beacons?

Web beacons are small strings of HTML code that are placed in a Web page. They are sometimes called “clear GIFs” (Graphics Interchange Format) or “pixel tags.” Web beacons are most often used in conjunction with cookies. DoubleClick uses Web beacons in connection with its products and services, including ad serving and paid search listings (“DART Search”). Because a Web beacon is only 1 pixel high by 1 pixel wide, it appears invisible on your computer screen. If Web beacons were made larger (e.g., 100 pixels high by 100 pixels wide), it would take much longer for your Web page to load and would clutter up the page that you have requested.

In 2002, working with a broad spectrum of companies, including other technology companies, seal providers and websites, DoubleClick helped draft “Best Practice” guidelines for disclosing the use of Web beacons. Please click here to see these guidelines – and a list of the companies that participated in developing them.

What is “personally identifiable information” (“PII")?

“Personally identifiable information” is any information that can identify or locate a particular person, including but not limited to name, address, telephone number, email address, social security number, bank account number or credit card number.

What is “non personally identifiable information” (“non-PII”)?

“Non-personally identifiable information” is information that cannot identify a particular person. This type of information includes a user’s Internet Service Provider, a computer’s operating system and browser type, and a unique DoubleClick DART cookie ID.

DoubleClick’s ad-serving and search products utilize non-PII. Some of our clients may associate PII that you have given them (for example, a customer number, if you have registered at or purchased from their websites), with their advertising campaigns. Although this customer number may be passed from the client to DoubleClick’s ad servers during the ad delivery process, DoubleClick cannot recognize this information as PII and cannot link it to any person.

What is “sensitive information?”

To DoubleClick, “sensitive information” categorically includes but is not limited to data related to an individual's health or medical condition, sexual behavior or orientation, or detailed personal finances, information that appears to relate to children under the age of 13 at the time of data collection; and PII otherwise protected under federal or state law (for example, cable subscriber information or video rental records). DoubleClick does not use any “sensitive information” to target Internet advertisements.

What is ad serving?

In order to support their content without charging visitors, websites sell advertising space on their Web pages. Companies like DoubleClick provide technology for the websites and advertisers to use to display ads on the websites. DoubleClick’s ad servers work at the direction – and on behalf – of our clients.

When you visit a website, your computer’s Internet browser transmits a “request” to that website’s server, “asking” that server to send you the Web page that you are seeking. Most Web pages contain components that are pulled from different sources. For example, a Web page at a news site may get its weather section from one provider, its sports results from a different source, and advertisements from other servers.

If the website is using DoubleClick’s technology to display ads on its site, the Web page will contain coding that directs your browser to fill the ad space on the Web page with content from one of DoubleClick’s ad servers. DoubleClick’s clients select the format, content, and location of the ads, as well as the criteria for controlling which ads to show and when to show them. DoubleClick’s ad-serving technology uses a cookie to help clients determine what ads to display. When a “call” is received by DoubleClick’s ad servers, the server checks to see if the “calling” browser has sent a cookie with the request for advertising. If the server doesn’t “see” either a unique DoubleClick cookie or an opt-out cookie, after “testing” to see whether the browser will accept cookies, the server sets a unique DoubleClick ad cookie. If the browser already has a unique DoubleClick ad cookie, the server “recognizes” the cookie and uses the unique ID for targeting and reporting purposes as specified by the DoubleClick client. If the browser has an opt-out DoubleClick cookie, the server uses only the non-cookie related information that is automatically transmitted in the Internet environment (e.g., browser type, Internet service provider, and information about the general content of the site or page displayed on your browser) to determine which ad to show. Sometimes Web beacons are used in conjunction with the DART cookie when clients want more versatile targeting or reporting capabilities.

How does an ad-serving client use DoubleClick’s technology to target or select which ad to deliver?

Our clients store their ads on DoubleClick’s ad servers. When you visit a Web page on which a client is using DoubleClick technology to deliver ads, coding that the website publisher placed in the Web page tells your computer’s browser to send a request for an ad to the DoubleClick ad server. When the DoubleClick ad server receives a request, it will select an ad based on the criteria that the client has chosen together with any information logged against the unique cookie id.

For example, a client’s website may attract an audience of mainly men, aged between 18 and 45, who are interested in sports, fashion and electronic gadgets. The client will therefore approach sports, fashion and electronic gadget retailers to see if they would like to advertise on the site. Those retailers will provide the client with ads, which the client will store on the DoubleClick ad servers. The client will assign those ads specific codes, such as sports = 1, fashion = 2, and electronic gadgets = 3. On the pages where the website publisher wants to show all three categories of ads, the website will install an ad tag that contains all three codes. On pages of the website that the client thinks attracts only men interested in sports, an ad tag that contains only the code for sports, code 1, may be installed.

DoubleClick does not tell clients which criteria to select or which advertisements to target against those criteria. Clients choose the categories they wish to attach to the advertising that they have contracted to show, what code(s) they wish to attach to those categories, and which code(s) they wish to include in each of their ad request tags. In their contracts with DoubleClick, DoubleClick’s ad-serving clients promise not to use information that DoubleClick could recognize as either “sensitive” or “personally identifiable” to target ads. What information is collected by a client using DoubleClick’s ad serving technology?

Each time one of DoubleClick's ad servers receives a request for an ad or for a Web beacon, information about the request received and the ad or Web beacon served – for example, the date, the time, the website to which the ad or image was delivered, the cookie ID to which the ad was shown, the operating system which the browser was using – will be recorded. Does DoubleClick itself do anything with this ad-serving information?

No. The information that is recorded on the DoubleClick servers by our clients’ use of our technology belongs to our clients. Although that information may be logged on a DoubleClick server, DoubleClick's relationship with the client is that of an agent or processor. Consequently, DoubleClick does not own that information and cannot, therefore, use that information for its own business purposes or in any way not authorized by the relevant client. DoubleClick clients do, however, give us permission to use statistical or aggregate information derived from their use of the technology – e.g., statistics about the number of ads served through the technology per month or analyses about, for example, what time of day is the best time to target certain types of ads.

Does DoubleClick sell the ad serving information to other companies?

No. The data that DoubleClick’s servers record during ad serving belong to DoubleClick’s clients, and DoubleClick cannot and does not sell that information to other companies. DoubleClick can, however, use its aggregate analyses about the effectiveness of ad campaigns to help clients develop more efficient and successful campaigns.

What are pop-ups and why do I see pop up advertising?

A pop-up is basically the opening of a new window in your browser.

DoubleClick provides its ad-serving clients with a means of choosing and reporting on ads. It is the website owners or the advertisers with whom they contract that make the decisions about the format of the ads. The advertisers choose whether they want to have banner ads or pop ups delivered, and they use our technology to make it happen. The website owners and advertisers choose the size and frequency of pop-up ads. DoubleClick has no control over which ad format website publishers or their advertisers choose.

Generally, there are a couple of different ways that you might receive pop up advertising:

1. The site you are currently visiting has sold an advertising opportunity to a marketer and that marketer has chosen to create an advertisement that opens a new browser window. This is a form of “traditional” Internet advertising.

2. You have some kind of ad-delivery software installed (intentionally or unintentionally, knowingly or unknowingly) on your computer. This type of software often comes bundled with freeware such as P2P (Peer-to-Peer) music sharing applications. It may track the sites you visit and scan their contents looking for triggers that match criteria identified by advertisers that purchased space from the software manufacturer. The software program will then display advertisements on your monitor.

What is spyware?

This term has been applied to a very broad range of technologies and activities -- from the mere setting of a cookie to the surreptitious installation of key-logging software on consumers’ computers. There are many anti-spyware programs on the market and they each have their own definition of “spyware”. For example, some programs identify cookies as “spyware”, while others do not. Some software programs that monitor the websites that consumers visit in order to deliver context-based advertisements have been categorized as “adware.” Many of these adware programs are responsible for the pop-up advertisements that you see.

DoubleClick does not consider its products either “spyware” or “adware.” We believe that consumers should be provided meaningful notice and choice with respect to information collected and used about them.