UPDATED AND REVISED AS OF MARCH 27, 2017
GBSG, LLC ("GBSG") publishes this Internet Privacy Policy to inform you of our practices concerning the collection and use of information you provide us through interactions with this website and other GBSG-affiliated websites. This policy is not applicable to information gathered by other methods or controlled by other agreements.
HOW WE COLLECT INFORMATION
Personal information is information about you that is personally identifiable like your name, address, email address, or phone number, that is not otherwise publicly available. GBSG collects personal information in a variety of ways, including when you register with GBSG on this website; when you subscribe to or use GBSG products or services; when you visit GBSG websites or the websites of certain GBSG partners; and when you enter Internet-based contests, promotions or sweepstakes sponsored or administered by GBSG; when you subscribe to receive GBSG e-letters, daily, news, supplier hot specials and similar e-mail notices; when you register for or participate in events, virtual tradeshows and educational programs such as seminars, webinars, etc., that GBSG conducts from time to time.
When you register on our website or for our products and services, we ask for and collect information such as your name, email address, birth date, gender, zip code, occupation, and industry. For some products and services we may also ask for your address and information about you or your business's assets or income. Once you register with GBSG and sign in to our services, you are not anonymous to us.
If you are purchasing something from a GBSG website, we need to know personal information such as your name, email address, mailing address, credit card number, and expiration date. This allows us to process and fulfill your order and to notify you of the order status. This information may also be used by us to notify you of related products and services. Credit card information will not be shared or sold to unaffiliated third parties for any purpose without your express permission, except as necessary to process the transaction.
COOKIES AND RELATED TECHNOLGIES
We collect information through technology, such as cookies, pixels, and Web beacons, including when you visit our websites. "Cookies" are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your computer's hard drive. GBSG or its advertisers may send a cookie to your computer through your browser. GBSG uses cookies to track page requests and the duration of each user's visit, and the use of cookies allows us to provide a user's browser with information tailored to the visitor's preferences and needs and to also streamline the user's visits to our website. You can choose whether to accept cookies by changing the settings of your browser. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or allow your browser to show you when a cookie is being sent. If you choose not to accept cookies, your experience at our website and other websites may be diminished and some features may not work as intended.
Pixel tags are tiny graphic images that tell us what parts of the website have been visited or measure the effectiveness of searches users perform on the website. We may also use pixel tags in email messages to tell us whether emails have been opened to assure that we are only sending messages that are of interest to our users.
In addition, GBSG automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, GBSG cookie information, and the website page you request. GBSG uses this information to help diagnose problems with our servers, for system administration, and to examine our website traffic in aggregate. The information may be collected and used to improve the content of our Web pages and to customize content and/or layout for each user.
Please note that GBSG may allow third party advertisers that are presenting advertisements on some of our pages to set and access their cookies on your computer. Among other things, these third parties may use cookies, pixel tags and other technologies to enable such third parties to record which ads your browser has loaded and which pages you may have been viewing when the ads were delivered or accessed. Advertisers' use of cookies is subject to their own privacy policies, not the GBSG Privacy Policy.
USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION BY GBSG
If you elect to provide us personal information, we use it primarily to deliver the service you requested. GBSG may use personal information in a variety of ways including the following:
GBSG may use personal information collected through its website to send out targeted email promotions on behalf of its advertisers and industry partners.
GBSG may combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from business partners or other companies in order to better deliver products and services that may be of interest and benefit to you.
GBSG may use personal information to contact users regarding renewing subscriptions to GBSG services and products and to send product announcements or special edition e-letters to online registrants.
GBSG may use personal information to send notification of GBSG's or our partners' products and services by such methods as email and/or postal mail.
If you provide financial information, we use that information primarily to verify your credit and collect payments for your purchases, orders, subscriptions, etc.
If you participate in a GBSG educational / informational program or other time-sensitive programs, we use personal information to contact you to remind you of upcoming deadlines or additional information concerning these programs.
GBSG occasionally conducts subscriber and/or user surveys to better target our content to our audiences. The aggregated information collected is sometimes shared with our advertisers, however, we do not share specific individual information with third parties.
GBSG operates several websites. GBSG may share personal information collected from users of its websites internally across these websites to better serve its users.
GBSG has numerous products and services and therefore numerous email and promotion lists. In an effort to allow users to tailor their participation in GBSG services and promotions, GBSG provides users the ability to choose specific lists or products of interest and opt-out options are product and use/list specific. All email promotions sent from GBSG provide an opt-out link at the bottom of the email pursuant to which users can opt-out of specific products and promotions. If you receive one of these emails and wish to unsubscribe please follow the instructions given in each email or contact service@gbsguide.com.
From time to time we may use customer information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our Privacy Policy. If our information practices change at some time in the future we will post the policy changes to our website.
SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES
In general, GBSG does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide products or services you have requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:
We may provide personal information about our users to trusted partners and vendors who work on behalf of or with GBSG under confidentiality and similar agreements prohibiting such parties' further use of the information. These companies may use your personal information to help GBSG communicate with you about offers from GBSG and our marketing partners. However, these companies do not have any independent right to use or share this information.
When you register for an educational program, contest, event, virtual tradeshow, or other promotion that is sponsored by a third party, the third party will be provided personal information unless otherwise posted in connection with the promotion.
We may share personal information where we have a good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a judicial proceeding, a court order, or legal process served on GBSG, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.
We may share such information where we have a good faith belief that it is necessary in order to investigate (or assist in the investigation of), prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of GBSG's terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
If GBSG is acquired by or merged with another company, we will transfer information about you to this other company in connection with the acquisition or merger.
GBSG may from time to time share limited personal information such as email addresses, company name, job title and state of business or residence with trusted third parties who deliver content that is likely to be of interest to you.
DISPLAY OF ADVERTISING
GBSG or one of our web-advertising partners may deliver ads appearing on the website to users of our website. Our web-advertising partners may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement. In this way, ad servers may compile information about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw their advertisements and determine which ads are clicked on. This information allows an ad network to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers only the use of cookies by GBSG and does not cover the use of cookies by any third party advertisers.
DISCUSSION GROUPS AND FORUMS
Discussion groups (including forums, chats and blogs) may be made available for our users on our websites. Participants should be aware that information disclosed in these discussion lists is made available to all members and thus becomes public information. We suggest that you exercise caution when deciding to disclose any personal identifiable information in such discussion groups. GBSG is not responsible for the personal information you choose to submit in these forums.
Users may elect to participate in user forums to exchange information relevant to and of interest to users of the website. To participate in the forums, users will be required to submit information such as a public username, identifying picture or image, areas of expertise, biographical information, and other similar personal information. Your forum username, number of posts, date and time of your post, areas of expertise, and uploaded picture or image will be publicly available to other users of the website. In addition, and other information designated by you in the registration process for public display will also be available to any user of the website. In some circumstances, such as comments to a wiki, your name may be displayed in connection with your comments.
SECURITY
This website takes commercially reasonable precautions to protect your personal information. When we transfer and receive certain types of sensitive information such as credit card and payment information, we re-direct users to industry standard SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encrypted servers. As a result, sensitive data you submit to our website such as credit card and payment information is transmitted securely over the Internet.
DISCLAIMER
GBSG is not responsible for any breach of security or for any actions of any third parties that receive the information. GBSG also links to a wide variety of other sites and contains advertisements of third parties. We are not responsible for their privacy policies or how they treat information about their users.
CHILDREN’S PRIVACY
This website is not intended for use by children, and GBSG does not knowingly collect information from children. You must be 18 years old to access or use this website.
UPDATE/CHANGE YOUR USER PROFILE OR PREFERENCES
To update your email address or change your email preferences please contact service@gbsguide.com.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
GBSG reserves the right, at any time and without notice, to add to, change, update or modify this Privacy Policy, simply by posting such change, update or modification on the website. Any such change, update or modification will be effective immediately upon posting on the website. Users will be informed of changes to this Privacy Policy via the "updated as of" notice on this Policy.
WHAT ELSE I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MY PRIVACY WHEN ONLINE?
The GBSG website contains many hyperlinks to other websites. The GBSG website also contains advertisements of third parties. GBSG is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such third party websites or advertisers. GBSG does not share any of the individual personal information you provide GBSG with the websites to which GBSG links, except as stated elsewhere within this Privacy Policy, although GBSG may share aggregate data with such websites (such as how many people use our website).
Please check with those third party sites to determine their privacy policy. When GBSG embeds third party content into one of it's GBSG web pages, GBSG will use reasonable efforts to advise our users that they have exited an GBSG operated website and are entering a third party controlled website. Customers/users should read and understand any privacy policy noted on all third party websites.
Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online - for example through email, discussion lists, or elsewhere - that information can be collected and used by others. In short, if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.
Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your personal information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you're online.
DO-NOT-TRACK
Our website does not respond to "do-not-track" settings in users' web browsers at this time. However, there are various ways to opt out of interest-based advertising, such as TRUSTe’s Ad Choices, the Network Advertising Initiative’s Consumer Opt-Out Page, or you can also visit Google's Ad Settings to manage the ads Google serves.
YOUR CONSENT TO THIS POLICY
By using our website, you consent to the collection and use of information by GBSG as specified in this policy. Please also note that your use of the website is governed by the GBSG Terms and Service. If you do not agree to the terms of the Privacy Policy or the Terms of Service, please do not use the website, products and/or services.
CONTACT US
Please send any questions about GBSG's Privacy Policy to service@gbscguide.com.