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Meredith Corporation
Online Privacy Policy
Better Homes and Gardens Online
Welcome to our website!
bhg.com is a service provided by Meredith Corporation. Since 1902,
Meredith has been committed to providing our customers with products
and services characterized by outstanding quality, customer service
and value. Our Online Privacy Policy continues our commitment to serve
you and to protect your privacy online. PLEASE NOTE THAT OUR PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES ONLY TO OUR ONLINE COLLECTION AND USE OF INFORMATION.
Please read this Privacy
Policy carefully so that you understand our privacy practices regarding:
If you have questions about
this Privacy Policy, please contact us at privacy@mdp.com
Children
Under 13:
Meredith cares
about the safety of children. Kids under 13 are not allowed to register
with our website or to participate in public posting areas on our
sites. We won’t knowingly allow anyone under 13 to provide us any
personally identifying information. Children should always get permission
from their parents before sending any information about themselves
(such as their names, email addresses, and phone numbers) over the
Internet, to us or to anyone else. We encourage you to become involved
in your children's online experience, and to share your interest in
our sites with your young ones.
Information
We Collect:
The information we
gather on our sites falls into two categories: (1) information you
supply when you register or initiate transactions, and (2) tracking
information collected as you navigate through our sites. Third-party
providers featured on or linked to by our websites, such as vendors
of products and services offered through our sites, may gather the
same kinds of information.
Personally Identifiable
Information
To use certain features
on our sites, we ask you to register. When you register, we collect
personally identifiable information about you including your name,
mailing address, email address, user name and password. We may also
ask for some additional information, for example, hobbies, age, browser
type, and the like, but you're free to register without providing
this information if you prefer. In addition, at various other points
on our sites, we may ask you for personal information including when
you: place an order for products, complete a survey, and report a
problem with one of our sites. We use this information to process
your orders and to help improve our sites.
From time to time, we also
may offer contests or other promotions involving marketing or advertising
partners. If you choose to participate in one of these contests or
promotions, you'll have to provide some information about yourself
(such as name, address, and email address). We may share this information
with co-sponsors of the contest or other promotional partners, but
we will always identify the other parties involved (for example, in
the contest rules). We don’t control these third parties’ privacy
practices, and our Privacy Policy does not apply to their collection
and use of personal information. We urge you to review their privacy
policies and learn how they will use the information before participating.
If you don’t want us to collect the information requested in the promotion,
or to provide it to our cosponsors or partners, please do not participate
in the promotion.
Aggregate Information
To help us serve your needs
better, we use "cookies" to store and sometimes to track
user information. A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent
to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer's hard
drive. A cookie contains a unique number that allows our sites to
identify your computer. For example, cookies allow us to keep track
of your user name and password (if you are a registered visitor) so
you don’t have to re-enter that information each time you visit our
site. We also use cookies to make sure you don’t see the same ads
repeatedly when you visit our sites. The help function on most browsers
contains information on how to set your browser to notify you before
accepting cookies or to disable cookies entirely. However, if you
don’t accept cookies, you won’t be able to take advantage of various
features on our sites that are available to other visitors. In addition,
our advertising and marketing partners may use their own cookies.
We use the services of
a third-party advertising and email delivery company to serve and
target advertisements that you see on the pages of our sites and to
serve and target promotions or other marketing messages and to send e-mails from us. This advertising
company also collects "clickstream data," information about your visit
to our site and to other sites, that can be aggregated and used to
target advertising on this and other sites, and used for marketing
research and other similar purposes. This clickstream data does not
include personally identifying information such as your name, address,
email address or telephone number. This advertising company uses cookies
for many of the same reasons we do, and collects information directly
from our users. We share web site usage information about visitors
to our web site, who have received a targeted promotional campaign,
with this advertising company for the purpose of targeting future
campaigns and upgrading visitor information used in reporting statistics.
For this purpose, we and our third-party advertising company note
some of the pages you visit on our web site through the use of pixel
tags (also called clear gifs). If you would like to know more about
its information gathering practice and "opt-out" procedures, please
see the privacy statement on the DoubleClick website (http://www.doubleclick.net/us/corporate/privacy/default.asp?asp_object_1=&).
When you use our sites,
we may also collect your browser type, access time, and/or Internet
Protocol ("IP") address, and keep records of this information.
Your IP address is a number that is used by computers connected to
the Internet to identify your computer so that data (such as the web
pages you request) can be sent to you. Your IP address does not tell
us who you are. Like the IP address, none of this other information
identifies you personally either; we collect it for aggregate reporting
on site activity that we, and our advertisers, may use. For example,
we may want to know how long the average user spends on our site,
which pages or features get the most attention, and the like. The
aggregate information helps to understand our audience and confirm
the value of advertising on our websites.
How
Your Information Will Be Used:
Our primary goal
in collecting information is to provide you with a customized experience
when visiting our sites and to make our sites more valuable to you.
We try to ensure that the banner advertisements we deliver to you
are consistent with your interests. We may also email you with messages
and advertising that we think may be of interest to you.
To make your online experience
more useful and enjoyable, our sites include links to other websites,
and provide access to products and services offered by third-parties.
We share with these third-parties such information as is necessary
to provide the products or services. We will not provide your email
address to such third-parties unless it’s necessary to provide services
you have requested, or to allow you to participate in a co-sponsored
promotion. For example, we will provide your name and email address
to a marketing partner from which you’re purchasing goods or services.
We also may provide links to other websites, and provide access to
products and services offered by third-parties, whose privacy policies
we don’t control. When you access another website or purchase products
or services or conduct other transactions through our websites, use
of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of
the operator of the site you’re visiting or the provider of such products
or services. When you provide information in the course of obtaining
products or services through our sites, use of any information you
provide may be governed by the privacy policy of the provider of those
products or services, even if it appears that you’re on our site throughout
the transaction. The provider’s privacy policy may differ from ours.
If you can’t find the privacy policy of any of our provider partners
via a link either from the site’s homepage or from the pages on which
the products or services are offered, you should contact the provider
directly for more information.
In addition, we may share
some personal information (but not your email address) with other
companies that offer marketing information or products that we think
will be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive such mailings,
please tell us. Send your request with your name and complete address
to Circulation Department, Meredith Corporation, 1716 Locust Street,
Des Moines, Iowa 50309-3023.
We may occasionally release
information about our visitors when release is appropriate to comply
with law, to enforce our Visitor
Agreement, or to protect the rights, property or safety of visitors
to our sites, the public, or Meredith Corporation. As our business
grows, we may buy or sell various assets. In the unlikely event that
Meredith Corporation, substantially all of our assets, or one or more
of our sites (or substantially all of its assets) is acquired by another
company, information on our visitors would be among the transferred
assets.
How
to correct or update your information:
Meredith Corporation
believes strongly in providing you with the ability to access and
edit the personal information that you have provided to us. To update
the information retained about you please visit our My
Account area.
Opt-out
Information for:
Newsletters:
If you no longer wish to receive e-mail newsletters, you can either
(1) follow the 'unsubscribe' link located near
the bottom of each newsletter or (2) go to My Account, select Unsubscribe from the Newsletter options, uncheck the boxes and press the Update button.
Promotional E-mails:
If you do not wish to receive email promotions from us, send an
e-mail to dropme@mdp.com with
"Opt-out of Marketing" in the subject line to "opt
out." Of course, you may change your preferences at any time.
We will make any changes you request as quickly as we can.
Security
and Passwords:
The personally
identifiable information we collect is securely stored within our
database, and we use standard, industry-wide procedures such as encryption,
firewalls and SSL (Secure Socket Layers) for protecting your information.
However, as effective as encryption technology is, no security system
is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our database,
nor can we guarantee that information you supply won’t be intercepted
while being transmitted to us over the Internet. And, of course, any
information you include in a message you post to any message board,
discussion group, or other public posting area on our sites is available
to anyone with Internet access. If you don’t want people to know your
name or email address, for example, make sure not to include it in
any message you post publicly. Please see our Visitor
Agreement for more information related to posting materials on
our sites, including our use of such materials.
Miscellaneous:
The Internet is an evolving medium. If we need to change our Privacy
Policy at some point in the future, we’ll post the changes before
they take effect. By visiting any of our sites, you agree that your
visit, and any dispute over privacy, is governed by this Privacy Policy
and our Visitor Agreement.
Please read both carefully before using or registering with any of
our sites.
Copyright 2001 Meredith
Corporation. All rights reserved.
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