ScienceBlogs

Privacy Policy

This website and the various content, features and services offered on this website (collectively, the 'Site') is owned and operated by Seed Media Group, LLC ('Seed Media' or 'we'). Seed Media is committed to respecting your online privacy and recognizes your need for appropriate protection and management of any personally identifiable information ('Personal Information') you share with us. Seed Media has established this Privacy Policy to let you know what information we may collect from you on the Site and how we may use and share that information. Please take a moment to review the terms of our Privacy Policy. By using the Site, you agree to accept the terms of our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Site. Except as provided in the 'Your California Privacy Rights' section below, this Privacy Policy applies only to information that we collect on the Site and does not apply to information which we may collect by other means.

Your California Privacy Rights

The following only applies to California residents who have an established business relationship with Seed Media.

If we collect your name or other Personal Information from you (whether online or offline), and you have given us permission to share your Personal Information by clicking on the appropriate box or button on the Site, we may occasionally make that Personal Information available to our parent or other affiliated companies, or to other third parties who have products or services that we believe will be of interest to you, for their direct marketing purposes. If you later decide that you do not want us to share your Personal Information with these companies for their direct marketing purposes, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Your opt out request will be processed within thirty (30) days of the date on which we receive it. For more information on how your Personal Information is collected, used and shared, please read the remainder of this Privacy Policy.

Personal Information

Information We May Collect

Personal Information means any information that may be used to identify an individual, including, but not limited to, a first and last name, a home or other physical address, a phone number, an email address, credit card information and billing address. In general, you can visit the Site without telling us who you are or revealing any Personal Information about yourself. However, in order to access certain information, services or features that may be contained on the Site, we may require you to provide Personal Information. For example, we will collect certain Personal Information if you choose to subscribe to a mailing list, register for an account, participate in special offers, sweepstakes or other promotions, sign up for our chat rooms, message boards or blogs, or send questions or comments to us via e-mail. If you would like to purchase a subscription to Seed Magazine, a paid membership on the Site (as available) or products or merchandise offered for sale on the Site using a credit card, we will also collect your credit card information.

We may also collect certain demographic information (such as gender or age) and information about your interests and preferences ('preferences information'). In many cases, such demographic and preferences information is optional. In other cases, such as online surveys, we collect this information on an anonymous basis. However, if we link any demographic or preferences information to any Personal Information, then such demographic and preferences information will be treated as Personal Information under this Privacy Policy.

For some features of the Site, you may be able to submit information about other people. For example, if you wish to e-mail an article from the Site or send an e-postcard to a friend, you will submit your friend's e-mail address, or if you purchase a subscription or product for another person on the Site and want it shipped directly to that person, you may submit the recipient's name, address and certain other contact information. We will use and store any such information that we collect from you about another person only to the extent necessary to carry out your request, and we will not use such information for any other purpose.

How We May Use Your Information

If you provide us with Personal Information, we may retain and use that information for several purposes. For example, we may use your Personal Information in order to process and fulfill any transactions or services that you request, such as delivering any magazines, products or merchandise that you purchase on the Site (including any customary follow-up or confirmation communications regarding such transactions), entering you into a sweepstakes, establishing an account for you, responding to your questions or sending e-mails to our mailing list subscribers. We may also use Personal Information to ensure compliance with our policies and applicable law. In addition, we may send you periodic communications by e-mail or regular mail, such as news updates, special offers or information on our products or services, if you have chosen to receive such communications. If you later wish to opt out of receiving such promotional e-mails from us at any time, simply follow the instructions for doing so in the e-mails that you receive from us. We reserve the right to send you certain communications relating to the Site, such as service announcements, e-mail related to purchases you have made, or similar administrative or transactional messages, without offering you the opportunity to opt-out of receiving them.

With Whom We May Share Your Information

We may sometimes use other businesses to perform certain services for us, such as maintaining the Site and our mailing lists, processing orders and delivering products, sending postal mail and providing marketing assistance and data analysis. We may provide Personal Information to those businesses when that information is necessary for them to complete a requested transaction or otherwise perform their duties. Seed Media will take reasonable steps to ensure that these third-party service providers are obligated to protect Personal Information on Seed Media's behalf.

In addition, if you have given us permission to share your Personal Information by clicking on the appropriate box or button on the Site, we may occasionally make your Personal Information available to our parent or other affiliated companies, or to other third parties who have products or services that we believe will be of interest to you, for their direct marketing purposes. If you later decide that you do not want us to share your Personal Information with these companies for their direct marketing purposes, please send an e-mail to [email protected].

As Seed Media develops, we may buy other businesses or their assets or sell our business assets. Customer information is generally one of the business assets involved in such transactions. Thus, in the event that Seed Media or all of its assets are acquired, customer information would be one of the transferred assets.

We reserve the right to disclose visitor information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property, other visitors, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities. We also reserve the right to disclose visitor information when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.

Aggregate Information

From time to time, we may collect general, non-personal, statistical information about the use of the Site, such as how many visitors visit a specific page on the Site, how long they stay on that page and which hyperlinks, if any, they 'click' on. We collect this information through the use of 'cookies' and other tracking technologies, which are discussed in greater detail below. We collect this information in order to determine which areas of the Site are most popular and to enhance the Site for visitors. We may group this information into aggregate visitor data in order to describe the use of the Site to our existing or potential business partners, sponsors, advertisers or other third parties, or in response to a government request. We may also group demographic and preferences information and responses to surveys that we collect from visitors into aggregate data for the same purposes. However, please be assured that this aggregate data will in no way personally identify you or any other visitors to the Site.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

Some of our web pages utilize "cookies" and other tracking technologies. A cookie is a small text file that a website transfers to an individual's hard drive for record-keeping purposes. For example, we may use cookies to collect information about website activity and to maintain your shopping experience in our online store. We never save credit card information in cookies. Most browsers allow you to control cookies, including whether or not to accept them and how to remove them. You may set most browsers to notify you if you receive a cookie, or you may choose to block cookies with your browser. However, please be aware that some features of the Site may not function properly or may be slower if you refuse cookies. You may occasionally get cookies from our advertisers or other third parties with links on the Site. We do not control these cookies. The use of advertising cookies sent by third-party servers is standard in the Internet industry. We do not link the information we store in cookies to any Personal Information you submit while on the Site.

Tracking technologies may record information such as Internet domain and host names; Internet protocol (IP) addresses; browser software and operating system types; clickstream patterns; and dates and times that our Site is accessed. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the web. Web servers, the big computers that 'serve up' webpages, automatically identify your computer by its IP address. It is not our practice to link the information we record using tracking technologies to any Personal Information you submit while on the Site. However, we reserve the right to use IP addresses and other tracking technologies to identify a visitor only when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with the Site's policies, to protect the Service, our customers or others, or when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.

Links to Other Sites; Public Venues

Please be aware that when you are on the Site, you could be directed to other sites that are beyond our control. These other sites may send their own cookies to visitors, collect data or solicit Personal Information. The privacy policies of these other sites may be significantly different from this Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites and cannot guarantee the security of any of your Personal Information collected there.

Please keep in mind that whenever you give out Personal Information on a 'public' venue online (for example, in a blog, message board or chat room), that information can be collected and used by people you do not know. If you choose to voluntarily disclose information in any blog, message board, chat room or similar forum that may be available on the Site, the protections of this Privacy Policy will not cover such disclosure of information. We urge you to use caution when disclosing any Personal Information on these venues. We are not responsible and will not be liable for any opinions, content or other materials posted by users on any such venues, or for the use by other visitors or third parties of any information or content you may post to such venues.

If you use our chat rooms, message boards, blogs or other public venues, we will identify you by the screen name that you create. If you include your real name in your profile when you register in the 'community' section of our site, that information will be publicly accessible. You agree that you will not disclose Personal Information relating to any other person in a public area of the Site without that person's express consent.

Security

We intend to take reasonable and appropriate steps to protect the Personal Information that you share with us from unauthorized access or disclosure, other than the Personal Information you enter in the community section of the site, which is publicly accessible. When you transmit Personal Information from your PC to our servers, your information is protected by both a 'firewall' (a combination of computer hardware and software that helps keep unauthorized visitors from accessing information within our computer network) and industry standard SSL (secure socket layer) encryption. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your Personal Information and privacy, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you disclose or transmit to us online and cannot be responsible for the theft, destruction, or inadvertent disclosure of your Personal Information.

If you create an account on the Site, you may be asked to choose a password for your account, in which case your online account information shall be protected by your password. We recommend that you do not disclose your password to any other person. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password and account, and are fully responsible for all activities that occur under your password or account.

Updating Your Information

If you have registered for an account, you may view and update your account information at any time by logging into your account.

Children's Privacy

This Site is not intended for use by children under 13. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from anyone under 13 years of age, except for the limited circumstances described below. In the event a child under the age of 13 submits a question to us on the Site and identifies his or her age, we may use the child's e-mail address for the sole purpose of responding to the child's question on a one-time-only basis. However, we will not use the child's e-mail address to recontact the child and we will delete it from our records once we have responded. If we become aware that we have unknowingly collected Personal Information from a child under the age of 13, we will make commercially reasonable efforts to delete such information from our database.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

The terms of this Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes to this Privacy Policy by posting a notice on the homepage of the Site for a reasonable period of time after such changes are made that this Privacy Policy has been updated, and by changing the 'Last Modified' date at the top of this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to check this page periodically for any changes. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes.

Governing Law

This Privacy Policy and the privacy practices of Seed Media will be subject exclusively to the laws of the State of New York within the United States of America. Seed Media makes no representation that this Privacy Policy and such practices comply with the laws of any other country. Visitors who use the Site and reside outside the United States do so on their own initiative and are responsible for compliance with local laws, if and to the extent local laws are applicable. If you reside outside of the United States, by using our Site, you consent to the transfer and use of your information outside your country.

Contacting Us

If you have any comments or questions regarding our Privacy Policy, please contact us at [email protected] or at our contact information below.

Seed Media Group, LLC
12 W. 21st St, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10010
Phone: 646 502 7050
Fax: 646 502 7040