Web Site Privacy Policy

MyStreetAdvisor.com (hereafter “MSA”) is committed to safeguarding your privacy online.  Please read the following policy to understand how your personal information will be treated as you make full use of our many offerings.  This policy may change from time to time so please check back periodically.

This policy will let you know:

1. What personally identifiable information is collected from you;
2. What cookies are and how they are used;
3. How your information is used;
4. Who is collecting your information;
5. With whom your information may be shared;
6. What choices are available to you regarding collection, use, and distribution of your information;
7. How you can access, update or delete your information;
8. How MSA treats your personal financial and health-related information;
9. The kind of security precautions that are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of your information;
10. How MSA protects children’s privacy; and
11. What else you should know about your online privacy.

1. What personally identifiable information does MSA collect from me?

MSA collects information in several ways.  Some personal information is gathered when you register.  During registration, MSA asks for your name, email address, address, and other personal and/or business specifics.  The more information you volunteer (and the more accurate it is), the better we are able to customize your experience.

In addition, we may ask you for personal information at other times, including (but not limited to) when you make conclude a transaction in connection with your usage of the MSA Web site; and when you report a problem with our services.  If you contact MSA we may keep a record of that correspondence.  MSA also occasionally asks users to complete surveys that we use for research purposes.  Wherever MSA collects personal information we make an effort to include a link to this Privacy Policy on that page.

2.  What cookies are and how does MSA use them?

As part of offering and providing customizable and personalized services, MSA uses cookies to store and sometimes track information about you.  A “cookie” is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer’s hard drive.  All sites on MSA where you are prompted to login or that are customizable require that you accept cookies.  (See “What are my choices regarding collection, use and distribution of my information?” for more information on cookies.)
Generally, we use cookies to:

1. Remind us of who you are and to access your account information (stored on our computers) in order to deliver to you a better and more personalized service.  This cookie is set when you register or “Sign In” and is modified when you “Sign Out” of our services.
2. Estimate our audience size.  Each browser accessing MSA is given a unique cookie which is then used to determine the extent of repeat usage, usage by a registered user versus by an unregistered user, and to help target advertisements based on user interests and behavior.
3. Assist merchants linked to MSA to track visits to and business at their stores, and to process the items in your shopping basket.  This information collected by cookies is sometimes called “clickstream” or “click trail” and may also describe which pages you have seen in each merchant’s store.
4. Track your number of postings on our Web site.  When a MSA uses such cookies, the information written to the cookie may indicate status as a consumer or business, and regarding Web site usage and postings.
5. Measure certain traffic patterns, and your visiting patterns in the aggregate.  We use this research to understand how our users’ habits are similar or different from one another so that we can make each new experience on MSA a better one.  We may use this information to better personalize the content, banners, and promotions that you and other users will see on our sites.

Advertising networks that serve ads onto MSA may also use their own cookies.
MSA also collects IP addresses for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers.

3.  How does MSA use my information?

The primary goal of MSA in collecting personal information is to provide you, the user, with a customized browsing experience.  This includes personalization services, interactive communications, online shopping and many other types of services, most of which are completely free to you.  In order to provide services free of charge, we display advertisements.   By knowing a little about you, MSA is able to deliver more relevant advertisements and content, and hence better service, to you.

In our role of delivering targeted advertisements, MSA plays the middleman.  Advertisers give us an advertisement and tell us the type of audience they want to reach (for example, males over 35 years old).  MSA takes the advertisement and displays it to users meeting those criteria.  In this process, the advertiser NEVER has access to individual account information.  Only MSA has access to individuals’ accounts.  This kind of advertisement targeting is done with banner ads.  You will only receive special offers via email from MSA if you have indicated in your account preferences that you would like to receive them.  You can change your account preferences at any time.

MSA does research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behavior based on the information provided to us upon registration, during a promotion, from our server log files or from surveys.  We do this to better understand and serve our users.  This research is compiled and analyzed on an aggregated basis.  MSA may share this aggregated data with advertisers or business partners.

4.  Who is collecting information?

When you are using MSA and are asked for personal information, you are sharing that information with MSA alone, unless it is specifically stated otherwise.  For example, some MSA services are offered in conjunction with a partner company.  In order to provide this cobranded service to you, it is necessary for us to share your personal information with our partner company.  If data is being collected and/or maintained by any company other than MSA, you will be notified prior to the time of the data collection or transfer.  If you do not want your data to be shared, you can choose not to allow the transfer by not using that particular service.

Please be aware that MSA advertisers or web sites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you.  The information practices of those web sites linked to MSA are not covered by this privacy statement.

5.  With whom does MSA share my information?

As a general rule, MSA will not disclose any of your personally identifiable information except when we have your permission or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it or under the circumstances described below.  The following describes some of the ways that your information may be disclosed.

Business Partners & Sponsors:  MSA may disclose your personal information to business partners or sponsors, but this is specifically described to you prior to data collection or prior to transferring the data.  Some or all data collected during a MSA promotion may be shared with a sponsor.  If personally identifying data about you will be shared, we will tell you before we collect or transfer the data.

Many promotions offer opportunities to request additional information from sponsors.  By requesting more information, you give MSA permission to transfer your personal information to the sponsor so they can fulfill your request.  In many instances, only your email address will be shared.  If more information will be shared with the sponsor, you will be notified prior to the transfer.

Merchants:  If you make a purchase from a merchant (eg service provider) in connection with the MSA Web site, the information obtained during your transaction with that merchant that may be given to us by you, whether you are the consumer or the merchant, for posting and replies to any postings, may be published on the Web site.  This is to enable commentary and ratings regarding transactions to take place.  Although MSA makes no guarantee regarding review or editing of information supplied by the consumers and/or merchants, such information may be deleted from online at our sole discretion.

Merchants linked to MSA have separate privacy and data collection practices.  MSA has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies.  For more information regarding the merchant, their store, and their privacy policies, return to that service provider’s home page and click on their Information link.

From time to time, you may be offered the opportunity to receive materials or special offers from third parties.  If you opt-in to receive information from these third parties, MSA will (with your permission) share your name and email address with them.

Third Party Data and Data in the Aggregate: Under confidentiality agreements, MSA may match user information with third party data.  Also, MSA discloses aggregated user statistics (for example, 45% of our users are female) in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes.

Other: MSA may also disclose account 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 violating MSA’s Terms and Conditions of Use or may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) MSA’s rights or property, other MSA users, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities.  MSA may disclose or access account information when we believe in good faith that the law requires it and for administrative and other purposes that we deem necessary to maintain, service, and improve our products and services.

6.  What are my choices regarding collection, use, and distribution of my information?

MSA may, from time to time, send you email regarding our products and services.  In addition, if you indicated upon registration that you are interested in receiving offers or information from MSA and our partners, we may occasionally send you direct mail about products and services that we feel may be of interest to you.  Only MSA (or agents working on behalf of MSA and under confidentiality agreements) will send you these direct mailings and only if you indicated that you do not object to these offers.  If you do not want to receive such mailings, simply tell us when you give us your personal information.  Or, at any time you can easily edit your MSA Account Information to no longer receive such offers and mailings.  You will need your MSA ID and Password in order to access your MSA Account Information.

You also have choices with respect to cookies.  By modifying your browser preferences, you have the choice to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set, or to reject all cookies.  If you choose to reject all cookies you will be unable to use those MSA services that require registration in order to participate.

MSA does not sell or rent user information to anyone.  We will notify you at the time of data collection or transfer if your data will be shared with a third party and you will always have the option of not permitting the transfer.  If you do not wish to allow your data to be shared, you can choose not to use a particular service or not to participate in certain promotions or contests.

7.  What is the MSA policy on allowing me to update, correct, or delete my personally identifiable information?

You may edit your MSA Account Information at any time by using your MSA ID and password.  If you have forgotten your password, please click here to request a new password.  For all other problems signing in to MSA, please click here.

8.  How does MSA protect my personal financial and health-related information?

MSA does not intentionally solicit or maintain any of your financial or health related information.  In the unexpected situation where we would inadvertently receive any such information from consumers or providers, keeping any sensitive information about you or your company private is vitally important to us.  To this end, any user statistics that we may provide to prospective advertisers or partners regarding financial product or service usage on MSA are provided in the aggregate only and do not include any personally identifiable information about any individual user.

Please note that there are several places on the MSA where you can transmit business or consumer information in order to complete a review, registration, or for verification purposes.  Any time we ask for any identifying information, it is done through in an encrypted format.  We use industry standard, SSL (secure socket layer) encryption.

9.  What security precautions are in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of my information?

Your MSA Account Information is password protected so that you and only you have access to this personal information.  You may edit your MSA Account Information by using your MSA ID and password.

We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone, so that unauthorized comments, etc. cannot be made without your permission.  MSA will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or in an unsolicited email.  Also remember to sign out of your MSA account and close your browser window when you have finished your work.  This is to ensure that others cannot access your personal information and correspondence if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place like a library or Internet cafe.

As a global company MSA has international sites and users all over the world.  When you give MSA identifying information, that information may be sent electronically to servers outside of the country where you originally entered the information, such as to the United States or other countries.  In addition, that information may be used, stored and processed outside of the country where you entered that information.  Whenever MSA handles identifying information as described above, regardless of where this occurs, MSA takes steps to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with the relevant Terms and Conditions of Use and this Privacy Policy.

Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.  As a result, while we strive to protect your identifying information, MSA cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk.  Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.  However, we cannot guarantee against the usage of any information that you may supply to third parties (e.g. merchants, consumers, etc.) in connection with usage of this Web site.

10.  What about children’s privacy?

Naturally, the safety of children is very important to us.  MSA is a general audience web site. 

Unfortunately, we have no way of distinguishing the age of individuals who access our Website, and so we carry out the same Privacy Policy for individuals of all ages. If a child has provided us with personally-identifying information without parental or guardian consent, the parent or guardian should contact us to remove the information and opt out of promotional opportunities.

Children should always ask a parent for permission before sending personal information to anyone online.  MSA does not share personal information about users under the age of 18 with third parties and we do not sell or rent personal information about any of our users, regardless of age.  In addition, MSA will not send any direct email offers to users who indicate they are under the age of 18.

11.  What else should I know about my privacy?

Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online, for example on message boards, through email, or in chat areas 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 passwords and/or any account information.  Please be careful and responsible whenever you are online.

Additional Information

Questions regarding this statement should be directed to:  info@mystreetadvisor.com.

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