Privacy Policy
This Policy was last changed on May 23, 2018
Welcome to Takoma Park Alternative Care (“Takoma Park Alternative Care”, “we” or “us”). We operate this website (the “Site”) and other health, wellness, diet and fitness websites that are part of the Takoma Park Alternative Care Network (collectively the “Sites”), including the network’s flagship property at takomacare.com. The Sites provide a variety of online services and products, including articles, blogs, newsletters, tools, and social networking platforms (collectively, the “Services”). We are strongly committed to protecting the privacy of your information and providing a safe and secure environment for you, our users.
With this in mind, we provide you this privacy policy (the “Policy”) to help you understand the kinds of information we may gather about you when you visit the Site or use any of our Services, how we may use and disclose the information, and how you can control, correct and/or update the information.
To be clear about the terminology we are using, when we use the phrase “Personal Information” in this Policy, we mean information about you that is personally identifiable, like your name, address, e-mail address, or phone number, as well as other non-public information that is associated with this personal information. When we use the phrase “Anonymous Information” in this Policy, we mean information that is not associated with or linked to your Personal Information. Anonymous Information does not enable identification of or contact with individual persons.
By visiting this Site or using the Services, you are accepting the policies and practices described in this Policy. Each time you visit the Site or use the Services, you agree and expressly consent to our collection, use, and disclosure of the information that you provide as described in this Policy.
Your Personal Information may be processed by us in the country where it was collected as well as other countries (including the United States) where laws regarding processing of Personal Information may be less stringent than the laws in your country.
This Policy applies to all sites Services that are operated by us, including this Site. In addition to this general policy, each Site may have additional privacy provisions that are specific to the particular site. These supplemental disclosures are made in the site-specific addenda below or in a disclosure adjacent to the particular Service at the time we collect the information. These supplemental disclosures also govern the use of your information.
The Information We Gather
We collect information about you in three ways:Information You Voluntarily Provide Us
We collect and maintain information that you voluntarily submit to us during your use of the Sites and Services. For example:- when you register for a Site, you may provide us certain information including your name, email address, screen name, password, demographic information, and the health topics that interest you;
- to engage a Site’s social networking function, you may add to your profile by providing information about your interests or health topics. For example, your profile may list your favorite healthy foods or movie;
- if you are registering for a customized program, you may provide us answers to questions we use to provide you the program;
- if you sign-up to receive a newsletter, enter a contest or participate in social networking activities, we may require that you provide us contact information (e.g., email or physical address);
- if you purchase a product or service through the Site, we collect credit card information, and
- you may provide us with personal information in the course of email, customer support interactions, and surveys.
Information We Collect Through Your Use Of The Site
As you use the Site and Services, certain information may also be passively collected. Through technologies like cookies, pixels, beacons and log files, we may collect information about how you use the Site and the Services. For example, we may determine through your IP address that you are located in New York City and we may deliver advertisements promoting New York City-based businesses. By knowing about you, we can deliver more helpful information, programs, tools, and advertisements. Please see the sections below: To Target Advertising and Cookies, Web Beacons and Log Information for more information.Information We Receive From Third Parties
In addition to the information that you provide or we collect on the Site or through the Services, we may verify or collect certain information about you from third parties. For example, we may use your email address to determine your street address or we may use your street address to obtain demographic information about you or the 9-digit ZIP code (ZIP+4) in which you live. This information may include household income, presence and age(s) of children, and other census data. We may combine this third party information with the information we have already collected from you via our Sites and Services. We protect and use this third party information in the same way that we treat other information – in conformance with this privacy policy.How We Use Your Information
We will use your Personal Information in the ways described below or described at the time that the information is collected.To Target Advertising
We believe that advertising on the Internet is more interesting to you when it is relevant. Accordingly, we customize the advertisements that you see based upon (i) the information that you knowingly provide us (e.g., age, gender, stated health interests and other information in your profile); (ii) geographic location which we determine through your IP address; (iii) data we receive from third parties or (iv) your behavior on this Site or other Sites. To assist us with the last listed category, a practice known as “Online Behavioral Advertising”, we may engage third party vendors. With the help of a cookie that our vendors place on your browser when you visit a page of the Site, we determine your interests and target advertisements and promotions based on those interests. For example, if you read an article about a particular health condition on the Site, we may determine that you are interested in that topic and through the use of the vendor’s cookie, we may later serve you an advertisement for a product intended to help sufferers of the particular health condition. The advertisement may appear when you are visiting a different section of this Site, another Site or any other website on the Internet if the website also has a relationship with our vendor. We understand that some people prefer not to receive targeted advertising and there are a few ways that you can limit the customization of the advertising we deliver to you. You can limit the way that we target advertising based on your self-reported interests and some other information in your profile by clicking on the “profile” section of this Site and deleting or modifying the information. Please see the section below on Updating and Control of Your Personal Information for more information. Please note that if you have registered on multiple Sites, you’ll need to modify your profile on each site. In addition, you can delete the cookies that we have placed on your browser. Please see the section below on Cookies, Web Beacons and Log Information for more information.To Provide The Sites And Services
In general, we use your Personal Information as necessary or appropriate to:- administer your account;
- register you and provide you access to the Site or Services;
- respond to your inquiries or requests that you direct to us;
- send communications and administrative emails about the Site or Services;
- personalize and better tailor the features, performance, and support of the Site and Services for your use;
- send you promotional/marketing information, newsletters, offers or other information regarding opportunities and integrativeity that we think would be of particular interest to you (provided that we will not give your Personal Information to any third party advertising partner without your consent);
- improve the quality of the Site and the Services, and
- analyze, benchmark and conduct research on, user data and user interactions with the Site and Services
Cookies, Web Beacons, and Log Information
We use cookies, web beacons, log information and IP addresses in the ways described above and below. Please see the section below on Ad Networks and Third Party Cookies to see how third parties may use cookies on our Sites.- “Cookies” are small pieces of information that a website attaches to your browser when you visit a website. We may use both session Cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent Cookies (which stay on your computer until deleted) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience with the Sites and Services. For example, we may use cookies to control what advertisements you see, the sequence of advertisements and to make sure you don’t see the same advertisement too many times. For contests or sweepstakes, we may use cookies in order to track your progress and the number of entries in some promotions. For polls, we may use cookies to help ensure that an individual can’t vote more than once on a particular question or issue. We do not store Personal Information in any Cookies on your computer. Persistent Cookies can be removed by following your internet browser’s directions within the help tab. In order to use certain Services offered through the Sites, your web browser must accept Cookies. If you choose to disable Cookies, some aspects of the Sites may not work properly, and you may not be able to access our Services.
- We may also use Cookies, pixels, “Web Beacons” (which are usually small, transparent graphic images) and navigational data like Uniform Resource Locators (URL) to gather information regarding the date and time of your visit, the features and information for which you searched and viewed, the email you opened, or on which of the advertisements displayed on the Sites you clicked. This type of information is collected to make the Sites and Services more useful to you and to tailor the experience with us to meet your special interests and needs.
- An “Internet protocol address” or “IP Address” is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the Internet. We, or our service providers, may track your IP Address when you access the Sites or Services to assist with delivering geographically targeted advertisements.