Privacy Policy
PRIVACY POLICY
Introduction
Your privacy is very important to us. We are The Barktender’s Guide, LLC (a Florida limited liability corporation), and we post this Privacy Policy so that you are aware of the information we collect, how it is handled, and with whom it is shared. If you need to contact us, please do so here.
The BarktendersGuide.com sites, are websites under THE BARKTENDER’S GUIDE, LLC control. The barktendersguide.com sites include community tools that allow users to comment on posts. We also partner with other companies, alert users about partner companies, and allow easy access to those company’s websites.
Protect your personal information by never providing social security, credit card, or bank account numbers to other parties without appropriate assurances.
Please note that when you link to sites from barktendersguide.com sites, this Privacy Policy does not apply, and we cannot control the activities on those other sites.
Who And What Are Not Covered By This Privacy Policy
If any of barktendersguide.com sites deal with information not specifically mentioned in this Policy, then such information is not covered by this Policy. For example, this Policy does not cover data that we collect offline, on businesses or legal entities, on our employees, or through other third-party sites.
Please realize that any personal information you might submit through email or drink recipe postings are not subject to this Privacy Policy.
Information You Provide To Us and That We Collect
Unless we otherwise described a situation about gathering information from you in this Policy, it will generally be obvious to you that you are providing information (as we generally seek only to collect personal information that you provide on a voluntary basis).
You are allowed to use many features of The Barktender’s Guide sites without any ‘registration’ or providing of any information, and therefore use such features on a mostly anonymous basis. For example, you can use recipes without signing in.
Please understand, however, that even when using the site without signing in, your web browser or client software may transmit certain geographic information, or information regarding your choices while on our websites.
For some activities, we may ask you to create a username and password, supply us with a valid e-mail address, and may allow you to provide associated personal and non-personal information. For some other activities, we may ask you for additional personal and non-personal information. Either set of information is considered “Bio Information.”
We collect and store any personal information you enter on barktendersguide.com sites or provide to us in some other manner, including through surveys that may be conducted on barktendersguide.com sites. We also may connect other information with your account such as user ratings and reviews.
We may periodically obtain both personal and non-personal information about other people that your use of barktendersguide.com sites provides to us. If you use barktendersguide.com sites to send others (e.g., friends, relatives, colleagues) information that may interest them or messages (such as invitations) through our system, we may store your personal information, and the personal information of each such recipient.
We use “cookies” (small pieces of data stored for an extended period of time on your computer, mobile phone, or other device) and other technologies to collect information. We use various technologies to collect information from your computer and about your activities on barktendersguide.com sites. Through the use of a cookie, we may automatically collect information about your online activity on barktendersguide.com sites, such as the web pages you visit, the links you click, and the searches you conduct on barktendersguide.com sites. Most browsers (i.e., the computer program that you use to access the Internet) automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies. If you choose to decline cookies, please note that you may not be able to use some of the interactive features offered on barktendersguide.com sites. Regardless of how you indicate use of general cookies, we may still use “session cookies” that track your activity for a given visit to our website.
We automatically collect information from your browser when you visit barktendersguide.com sites. This information may include your IP address, your browser type and language, access times, the content of any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us, and the referring website address.
We do not currently collect and maintain the IP addresses of registered users or users who do not sign in.
We may use standard Internet technology, such as web beacons and other similar technologies, to track your use of barktendersguide.com sites. We also may include web beacons in promotional or other email messages, RSS feeds, or newsletters to determine whether messages have been opened and acted upon. The information that we obtain in this manner enables us to customize the services we offer barktendersguide.com visitors to deliver relevant information and to measure the overall effectiveness of our online content, programming and other activities.
We collect additional information about your interaction with barktendersguide.com sites without identifying you as an individual. We may use certain analytical tool with barktendersguide.com sites to retrieve information from your browser, including the site you came from, the search engine(s) and the keywords you use to find barktendersguide.com sites, the pages you view within barktendersguide.com sites, your browser add-ons, and your browser’s width and height.
When you send email or other communications to us, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services.
Information You Provide Others Through barktendersguide.com Sites
We may allow third-parties, including but not limited to our authorized service providers and advertisers, to display advertisements or provide applications and services on barktendersguide.com sites. These companies may use tracking technologies, such as cookies or web beacons, to collect information about users who view or interact with their content or advertisements or use their applications and services. Such companies often use such information to measure the effectiveness of their ads, and to personalize advertising content. THE BARKTENDER’S GUIDE does not provide any personal information to these third parties. The information they independently collect allows them to deliver targeted content and personalized online experiences and gauge their effectiveness. You may use your browser cookie settings to limit or prevent the placement of cookies by advertising networks.
We provide the ability on our websites so you can post reviews of drink recipes, drink products, and the like, or upload content. Such postings are governed by our Terms of Use. In addition, such postings may appear on other websites (other partner websites) or when searches are executed on the subject of your posting (and then portions of such post may appear on the search-engine website). Also, whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information on publicly-viewable web pages, that information will be publicly available and can be collected and used by others. For example, if you post or email your email address, you may receive unsolicited messages. We cannot control who reads your postings or what other users may do with the information you voluntarily post, so we encourage you to exercise discretion and caution with respect to your personal information.
If you do not want us to store metadata associated with content that you share on barktendersguide.com sites (such as photos), please remove the metadata before uploading the content.
Situations In Which We Share Your Information With Others
We share your information with third parties if we believe you have permitted us to do so, it is reasonably necessary to offer our services, or when legally required to do so. We highly regard your privacy, and will not share your information except as detailed here.
We may share your personal information with our authorized service providers that perform certain services on our behalf. These services may include processing credit card payments, delivering packages, providing customer service and marketing assistance, performing business and sales analysis, supporting our website functionality, and supporting contests, sweepstakes, surveys and other features offered through barktendersguide.com sites. These service providers may have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but they are not permitted to share or use such information for any other purposes.
We do not currently sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We retain the right, however, to change such policy at our discretion.
We may disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests (including criminal and civil matters) if we have a good faith belief that the law requires the response. We may also share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent threats against our web services, property damage, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, courts, or other government entities.
If the ownership of all or substantially all of our business changes, we may transfer any information we may have to the new owner so that the service can continue to operate. In such a case, your information would remain subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy.
How We Use Your Information
In order to offer you a more consistent and personalized experience in your interactions with us, we may combine information from various sources. We may also supplement the information we collect with information obtained from other companies. For example, we may use services from other companies that enable us to derive information in order to better customize services offered to you, provide you with a better experience, and improve the quality of our services.
We use your information to offer our services and features to you, to measure and improve those services and features, and to supply you with customer support. We may contact you with service-related announcements from time to time.
We look to detect and address anomalous activity that is an abuse of our system, or illegal. These efforts may on occasion result in a temporary or permanent suspension, or termination of some functions for some users.
Again, your web browser or client software may transmit certain geographic information, or information regarding your choices while on our websites. We may use this information, and other information that you provide us, to generate aggregate statistics about our user community, and may provide such information to advertisers and our partners. In addition, we may use such information for site security or system integrity (such as the prevention of hacking, bots, spiders, etc.).
We use this information to make predictions about your characteristics, interests or preferences and to display targeted advertisements that we believe may be of interest to you. We may also associate this information with your subsequent visit, purchase or other activity on participating advertisers’ websites in order to determine the effectiveness of the advertisements.
We may monitor use of the products and services on barktendersguide.com sites, and use such information for internal business purposes, or in accordance with the rules of any applicable regulatory, or self-regulatory organization. We reserve the right to offer third party services and products to you based on the preferences that you identify, and such offers may be made by us, or by third parties.
As a convenience to you, THE BARKTENDER’S GUIDE may provide links on barktendersguide.com sites to websites operated by other persons and entities.
At any time you can choose to no longer receive commercial or promotional emails or newsletters from us by logging in to your account and changing your preferences. You also will have the opportunity, in any commercial email that we send to you, to opt out of receiving such messages in the future. It may take up to 10 days for us to process an opt-out request. We may send you other types of transactional and relationship email communications, such as service announcements, administrative notices, and surveys, without offering you the opportunity to opt out of receiving them (unless you close your account with us). Please note that you will need to opt out of third-party-originated emails directly with those third parties.
Security of Data
THE BARKTENDER’S GUIDE makes no representation regarding the security of barktendersguide.com sites, including with respect to the ability of unauthorized persons to intercept or access information transmitted by you through barktendersguide.com sites.
We take appropriate security measures (including physical, electronic and procedural measures) to help safeguard your personal information from unauthorized access and disclosure. For example, only authorized employees are permitted to access personal information, and they may do so only for permitted business functions. In addition, we use firewalls to help prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to your personal information.
We store and process your information on computers located in the United States that are protected by physical as well as technological security devices. When we transmit highly confidential information (such as a credit card number or password) over the Internet, we protect it through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.
We want you to be confident using barktendersguide.com sites to transact business, however, no system can by completely secure. Therefore, again, although we take steps to secure your information, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information, searches, or other communications would always remain secure.
You should also take care with how you handle and disclose your personal information and avoid sending personal information through non-secure email. Please refer to the FTC’s website at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/data.shtm for information about how to protect yourself against identity theft.
If a password is used to help protect your accounts and personal information, it is your responsibility to keep your password confidential. Do not share this information with anyone. If you are sharing a computer with anyone, you should always log out before leaving barktendersguide.com sites to protect access to your information.
We make good faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete such data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate businesses purposes. We ask you to identify yourself and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information existing on backup tapes). Because of the way we backup our systems, after you delete your information, residual copies may take a period of time before they are deleted from our active servers and may remain on our backup systems.
Other Terms
We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we may notify you here, by means of a notice on our home page, another appropriate location, or by email.
If you ever remove information from your profile, or modify your postings, copies of that information may still remain accessible through third-party platforms through the use of caches, or other methods.
International users: barktendersguide.com sites are controlled, operated and administered by THE BARKTENDER’S GUIDE and its service provider from offices within the United States of America. THE BARKTENDER’S GUIDE makes no representation, except as expressly otherwise provided in writing to you, that materials on barktendersguide.com sites are appropriate or available for use outside of the United States, and access to them from territories where their contents are illegal is prohibited. If you access barktendersguide.com sites from locations outside of the United States of America, then you are responsible to insure that it complies with all local laws. The Terms of Use govern this Privacy Policy, and it will be governed by the laws of the state of Georgia, U.S.A. without regard to conflict of laws provisions, or principles.
This Privacy Policy was last updated on July 21, 2012.