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Our Privacy Policy

My Little O’s Privacy Policy covers the collection, use and disclosure of personal information that may be collected by My Little O anytime you interact with us, such as when you visit our web site (the “Site”), make a purchase, or register and participate in membership activities such as My Little O’s forums and message boards. Please take a moment to learn more about our information practices, including what information is collected, how we may use that information, whom we may disclose it to, and the choices you have regarding these practices. Please note that My Little O’s Privacy Policy applies to use of the Site, and the terms described in this policy are made by this reference a part of the Terms of Use that governs interaction with the Site. This means that if you do not wish to consent to the practices described in this policy, you must not access the Site. Based on your ongoing acceptance of this Privacy Policy, My Little O grants you a limited privilege to access the Site. If you wish to continue to access the Site over time, it is your responsibility to keep abreast of any changes made to the Privacy Policy by subscribing to our RSS feed, where current amendments and modifications will be posted under the heading “Privacy Policy.”

In accepting the Terms of Use (of which this Privacy Policy is a part), you acknowledge and agree that Internet transmissions can never be completely private or secure. You understand that any message or information you send to the Site may be read or intercepted by persons for whom they were not intended, even when you are notified that the information at issue has been encrypted.

Why we collect personal information

My Little O cares about your privacy. We collect your personal information as one way to enhance our delivery to you of services and information that you may care about. Your personal information helps us keep you posted on neighborhood and world news, announcements, events, special offers, and issues of concern and enjoyment to your community. It also enables My Little O to make local social networks open to you without necessitating disclosure of your personal information on the Internet. Of course, if now or in the future you do not want to receive our e-newsletter and other mailings circulating news of commercial opportunities, as well as goods and services, available to you through the Site or its affiliates, please click here. There you can update your profile, including your contact preferences.

The nature of the information we collect and its possible uses

If you create an account to take advantage of some or all of the full range of services offered on the Site, we ask for and record personal information such as your name, email address, street address, and telephone number. We use your email address in various ways, including to send you updates and news, communicate with you about your posts, announce contests and promotions, respond to feedback, authenticate your user account, provide subscription email services, enroll you in special forums, and contact you on behalf of other users or third parties.

We may collect credit-card information if you make a purchase through the Site, as well as keep information about products you express an interest in. We may also ask for your personal information when you speak with a representative of the Site regarding technical or service support, or when you participate in voting or polling surveys, photo galleries, forums, blogs, and other interactive areas of the Site. If you purchase a gift or item for someone else, we will ask for personal information about that person relevant to your transaction, such as a mailing address. However, we do not sell information about you or those third persons to marketers.

We do not store credit-card information. Credit-card transactions are transmitted to a financial gateway, and we endeavor to protect the security of your payment information during transmission by making commercially reasonable efforts to use strategic partners who employ Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or other advanced technology.

It is possible we will seek to obtain background information about you for market-research purposes. Data such as occupation and sources of news consumption can expand our understanding of our customers and help us diversify our approach to fulfilling customer needs, and so we may keep this kind of data on file.

We collect information about Site users’ activities on our web site. This helps us make choices about the structure and organization of our web site and our communications with users -- choices designed with a view to creating more features and services you may want to take advantage of.

Content, photos, videos, reviews, comments, blogs, messages, and any other materials you submit to the Site (“UGC”) are stored indefinitely as part of your personal profile. We will not disclose UGC that reveals your identity other than in accordance with specific exceptions set forth in the Terms of Use. But please note that if your UGC contains personal identifying information, that information may be taken by third parties from the Internet and used to contact you. My Little O has no control over or responsibility for abuses of privacy that may occur because of your decision to publicly display this information.

When you interact with My Little O, we may use your personal information to offer products that you have requested. In addition, we may gather information on patterns of interaction with the Site, which we store in log files. We do this for auditing, research, and analysis purposes aimed at improving our Site and your user experience. The type of information collected might include information such as demographic information, IP addresses, web pages viewed, referral/exiting pages, requested URLs, browser types, purchasing histories, timestamps, interactions with advertisements, and other data. We may aggregate this collected information (the result being "Aggregate Information"). We use this Aggregate Information, which does not identify individual users, to perform statistical analyses of user behavior and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the Site. Aggregate Information and other records reside on our server indefinitely.

Apart from for reasons of legal compliance, My Little O also does not use collected information for any purpose other than that for which it was collected. My Little O does not sell or rent your personal contact information to marketers. My Little O does not use information collected from you about a third party to market to that third party. And My Little O does not separate out personal data about you embedded in Aggregate Information to sell or rent to behavioral marketers who would use the information to market to you personally.

Your username and related information

When you become a subscriber to the Site, My Little O assigns you a username in conjunction with a unique password. The system saves your information under your personal profile. Each time you access the Site, you need only input your username and password. If you update the information associated with your personal profile when and as needed, it will be available for all your transactions with My Little O. Please remember that if you use your legal name as your username, this could make your identity visible on the Internet.

When we disclose your information

There are also times when it may be expeditious for My Little O to share certain personal information about you with companies who help the Site operate on your behalf and with our affiliates. These companies may help us process information, extend credit, fulfill customer orders, deliver products to you, manage and enhance customer data, provide customer service, assess your interest in our services, prioritize our offerings geographically, or conduct customer research and satisfaction surveys. My Little O expects these companies to respect the privacy of our users, and employs diligence in selecting its strategic partners. However, third parties, including our partners, advertisers, sponsors, affiliates, local government websites, local merchant web sites, message boards, news web sites and other content providers accessible through the Site, are likely to have their own privacy and data collection policies and practices. We have no control over these. Without these service providers, we would have to curtail the full gamut of services we were capable of delivering to you. Therefore, it is important that you check the privacy policies of these service providers beforehand, to satisfy yourself you wish to interact with them.

My Little O’s Site has links to other sites, as may content uploaded by users in the interactive areas of the Site. My Little O is not responsible for the privacy practices of any of these linked-to sites. Only by investigating them yourself can you reach a proper determination about giving them your information.

At times My Little O may disclose your personal information if we are required or permitted to do so by law, in response to governmental request, or during litigation. In addition, we may disclose information about you if for national security, law enforcement, or other issues that impact the public, such disclosure appears to us necessary or compelling.

How we protect your personal information

My Little O takes precautions to safeguard your personal information against loss, theft, and misuse, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. These measures include training its personnel in My Little O’s policies, providing secure physical facilities, and using market-tested encryption that helps protect the confidentiality of your personal and credit-card information while it’s transmitted over the Internet.

If a transaction requires your credit-card information to be processed by a third party, such as Paypal, My Little O uses providers of payment-processing solutions who maintain best practices in the area of online data safety.

You have already acknowledged that no security measures protecting the transmittal of data over the Internet are foolproof. You can help keep your information secure by maintaining a safe, accurate and complete profile. Periodically checking and correcting your personal profile can help avoid mishaps. Be cautious with your information while on the Internet; change your password often, using a combination of letters, symbols, and numbers; and make sure you use a secure web browser.

Cookies and other technologies

Like most company web sites, we collect information automatically and through the use of electronic tools that may be transparent to our visitors. For example, as already described, we may log the name of your Internet service provider or browser type, which is stored in log files. Or we may use "cookie" technology. Among other things, the cookie may store your user name and password, sparing you from having to re-enter that information each time you visit. We may use both session cookies (which expire once you close your browser) and persistent cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them). We use these to customize your contact with the Site and add convenience. By analyzing collective traffic patterns, we gain a better understanding of our user base and what they want from us. We do not use this information to market to you personally.

In certain cases, you can choose not to provide us with information, for example by setting your browser to refuse to accept cookies. Please note that in disabling cookies, you will be unable to gain access to certain parts of the Site.

In some of our email messages, we use a “click-through URL” linked to content on the Site. When subscribers click one of these URLs, they pass through our web server before arriving at the destination web page. We track this click-through data to help us assess subscribers’ interest in particular topics and learn about the effectiveness of our communications. If you prefer not to be tracked, simply avoid clicking text or graphic links in the emails.

Children

The Site does not knowingly collect or solicit Personal Information from or about children under the age of 13, except as permitted by law. If we discover we have received any information from a child under the age of 13 in violation of this policy, we will attempt to delete that information as soon as possible. If you believe the Site has any information from or about anyone under the age of 13, please contact us. Children under the age of 13 are specifically prohibited from registering as members of the Site.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right, at our discretion and at any time, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this Privacy Policy. We will post these amendments on this page. They will become effective as soon as they are posted. We will notify you of all material changes by prominently posting notice and specifics of them on our website and simultaneously on our RSS feed under the heading “Privacy Policy.” You are responsible for keeping current with the version of our Privacy Policy that is in force at any given time.

Changes to this Privacy Policy may affect our use of personal information that you provided us before our notification to you of the changes. If you do not wish to permit any of these changes in our use of your personal information, you must notify us that you wish to deactivate your account with us. Continued use of the Site following publication shall indicate your acknowledgement of these changes and agreement to be bound by the new set of terms and conditions that incorporate them.

E-mails and Opt-out

You may opt-out of receiving notifications from us by changing your notification settings in your personal profile. Unregistered users who receive e-mails from us may also opt-out of receiving future e-mails by following the instructions in our emails. Despite your indicated e-mail preferences, you are still responsible for checking our RSS feed for legal notices. You are also responsible for updating your personal information to provide us with your current e-mail address. In the event that the last e-mail you have provided us is not valid, or for any reason we are not capable of delivering to you certain important legal notices, our last dispatch of the e-mail containing such notice will nonetheless constitute effective notice of the contents described in the notice.

Privacy Questions

If you have any questions or concerns about My Little O’s Privacy Policy or data processing, please email us at mylittleo.com. We will attempt to respond to your message within thirty days.

Last updated September 1, 2009