Privacy Policy

We respect your privacy

It’s important to us that you feel comfortable while using the Informify website and services. The best way to ensure that is to make a simple promise: We will not sell or share your personal information with outside parties.

The privacy policy below explains what information we collect when you visit our website, how we use that information, and under what circumstances we may disclose it.

Why we collect your personal information

The Informify website collects minimal personal information from you, and only if you choose to provide it, for the following services:

1. If you subscribe to the Informify E-News email newsletter, we collect your name and email address.

We do not share our mailing lists with other entities or organizations.
We will not send you email other than the subscription you signed up for and correspondence related to it.

2. If you post a comment to the “Your Insights” section of the Informify site, we collect your first name, city and state of residence.

Keep in mind that any information you disclose in your comment will appear in your post, and can be read by the public.
If you choose to share your contact info such as email address in your post, it is at your own risk. You cannot hold Informify liable. See our Terms of Use for more information.

You are not required to participate in either of the above services to use the Informify website.

3. We may also use your personally identifying information to:

respond to your email;
publish a question or comment you sent us via email that we feel other readers may benefit from;
manage contests, announce winners, and award prizes;
contact you for an optional online survey to improve our site; and
send you promotional communications from Informify about our new or improved services and features.

When we may share and disclose your personal information

If you send an email to Informify that we feel current or potential Informify readers may benefit from, we may:

print an excerpt from your email on the Informify site;
read it during a podcast;
place it in a promotional piece; or
publish it in any other medium together with your first name and location (city and state). We will NOT include your email address or your last name.

Informify reserves the right to disclose your personal information to:

comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our website (if you’d like to learn more, read the USA Patriot Act);

or when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect:

against misuse or unauthorized use of the Informify website, or
the personal safety or property of Informify website readers, the public, or Informify and its employees.

How we collect your personal information

1. Log files:
As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. These logs do NOT collect any personally identifying information. Instead, they gather generic information about your visit to our site, such as your:

internet protocol (IP) address
browser type
internet service provider (ISP)
referring/exit page
operating system
date/time
files downloaded or viewed
errors encountered
pages viewed

We then use this information to improve the Informify website. These logs help us analyze trends, administer the site, track readers’ movements around the site, and gather impersonal demographic information about our visitor base as a whole.

We do NOT link this automatically collected data to any of your personally identifiable information.

2. Cookies:
A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer when you visit a website. It allows the site to recognize you when you visit, and to remember your preferences for that particular website, such as your password or browser type. The only website that can access this file on your hard drive is the one that set it. No other data on your computer can be read.

Informify uses both session ID cookies and persistent cookies on our site. We do not link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information you submit while on our site.

Session cookies make it easier for you to navigate our site, and expire when you close your browser.

Persistent cookies help us enhance your experience on our site by tracking and targeting your interests. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your internet browser’s “help” file.

If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some areas of our site may be limited, such as contests, quizzes or surveys.

Some of our business partners and advertisers use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over their cookies. Please see the “Advertising” section below for more information. Please be aware that this privacy statement covers the use of cookies by Informify only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

3. Clear gifs/web beacons/web bugs
Clear gifs (also called web beacons or bugs) are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies. We do not employ clear gifs on the Informify website. However, we do use them in our HTML-based emails (such as the Informify E-News email newsletter) to let us know which emails have been opened by recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of these and other communications, including marketing messages.

In contrast to cookies, which are stored on your computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly in our email newsletter and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We do not tie the information gathered by clear gifs to our readers’ personally identifiable information.

4. Aggregation:
Informify aggregates non-identifying information to analyze how readers use our site and how we might improve it. We may also aggregate demographic information about our reader base and share that with our partners and advertisers. To do this, we lump many readers together anonymously. However, we do not disclose any information that could be used to identify who those readers are.

5. Profiles
We store information that we collect through cookies, log files, clear gifs, and/or third party sources to create a “profile” of your preferences. We do not tie your personally identifiable information to information in the profile. We do not share your profile with other third parties. We may share your profile in aggregate form only. (See #4 above.)

6. Advertising
Third-party ads appearing on our website are delivered to site readers by Informify. We collect data to track the number of times an ad is displayed or clicked on by a reader, and may share that information with the advertisers. None of this data is tied to your personally identifiable information.

Updating your personal information or opting out

At any time you may update your information or tell us you no longer want to receive email from us. Just follow the applicable step below. (Please allow up to 10 business days for the changes to be made.)

To correct or update any personal information we have collected from you in the past that is now erroneous, contact us.
To cancel your free subscription to the Informify E-News email newsletter, follow the instructions included at the bottom of each email, or contact us.
To opt out of all future communications from Informify, contact us.

When we may use your personal information to contact you

The Informify E-News email newsletter subscription

If you wish to subscribe to the Informify E-News email newsletter service, we will use your name and email address to send the email to you. Out of respect for your privacy, we provide you a way to unsubscribe in every issue of the Informify E-News. Please see the “Updating your personal info or opting out” section above for more information.

Service-related announcements

We may send you strictly service-related announcements on rare occasions when it is necessary to do so. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send you an email to let you know why your subscription to the Informify E-News is delayed.

Generally, you may not opt out of these communications, which are not promotional in nature. If you do not wish to receive them, you have the option to deactivate your subscriptions altogether. Please see the “Updating your Personal Info or Opting Out” section above for more information.

Security

We take the security of your personal information seriously. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, please be aware that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Other security considerations while using our site

Safety precautions for children

If you are under 13 years of age, please do not send any information about yourself (like your name, address, school or email) to Informify. If we find we have inadvertently collected any personally identifying information from a minor under the age of 13, we will remove it from our database immediately.

Visitors between the ages of 13 and 18 must obtain permission from their parents or guardians before submitting comments to the “Your Insights” page, or any other area of the Informify site where personally identifying information is collected.

If you are younger than 13, please ask a parent or guardian to send comments on your behalf. We want to hear what you have to say, but we also want to protect your privacy.

Unless otherwise specified, you must be at least 18 years old in order to participate in any of Informify’s online contests. (Anyone can play “Today’s Informify News Quiz.”)

Links to other sites

This website contains links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by Informify. Please be aware that Informify is not responsible for the privacy practices of other such sites. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies only to information collected by Informify.

Business transitions

In the event Informify goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personally identifiable information will likely be among the assets transferred. You will be notified via email and we will post a prominent notice on our website for 30 days of any such change in ownership or control of your personal information.

Changes in this privacy statement

We reserve the right to modify our privacy policy at any time, so please review it often. If we do change it, we will post those changes here on this privacy statement page, place a notice on our homepage, and/or send you an email.

Using the Informify website constitutes consent to any privacy policy in effect at that time. Please also read our Terms of Use policy to understand other conditions that may apply to using our site.