AMERICANTOWNS MEDIA

Privacy Policy

Last Updated: April 15, 2017

Privacy Policy

Dear Neighbors and Visitors,

AmericanTowns Media and AmericanTowns.com provides an environment on the Web for community members to find information about their local town as well as express themselves and share their ideas and interests by creating and participating in discussion-based virtual communities.

Through AmericanTowns.com, this community site is paid for by major advertisers and sponsors who are primarily responsible for allowing us to provide all of the services and features we offer and will offer in the future. We understand, and our sponsors understand, that our success and their success are dependent on the goodwill and loyalty of our members and visitors.

To promote trust and confidence in the Internet and in AmericanTowns.com, we are providing a full disclosure of our privacy practices and information uses.

One of the goals of AmericanTowns.com is to respect the privacy rights of anyone who joins or visits a member site. Except as set forth within this privacy statement and within the scope of our community and content guidelines, we do not release personally identifiable information about our individual members and visitors without their permission.

Our view is that our members and visitors are the ones who should generally control whether or not they share any personal information and how that information is used if it is shared. Furthermore, we believe that it is our responsibility to provide something of value in exchange for any information shared — in our case, discussion forums, email circles, and other free services.

We appreciate your interest in and support of the community site and pledge to you our continued commitment to make our services better and better while enabling you – our members and visitors – to be comfortable with respect to your online privacy.

To contact AmericanTowns.com about technical problems, to report a violation of our guidelines, to inquire about advertising within our domain, or any other item of interest or concern, please email info@americantowns.com.

AmericanTowns.com respects the privacy of all those who spend any amount of time in our communities. We do collect information from our members and visitors. This is a statement of the use of the information that we collect, and if or how any of it is disseminated.

The Staff of AmericanTowns.com

What information does AmericanTowns.com compile and use? And what methods does it use to collect information?

To allow communities to create an easy-to-use state-of-the-art participatory online community, AmericanTowns.com sites are a central repository of information and tools to engage and enhance the community.

AmericanTowns.com does not share any personally identifiable information with outside parties for commercial purposes, unless stated at the time of collection. The option is given, at the time of collection, not to allow AmericanTowns.com to share such information with outside parties. If such an option is taken, we will not share such information with outside parties; however, we do reserve the right to release that information concerning a member when the member partakes in an illegal activity, or for a member who we believe is in violation of our content guidelines, even without a subpoena, warrant, or other court order. AmericanTowns.com hopes that all third parties involved adhere to our policies regarding the privacy of our members; however, AmericanTowns.com does not assume any responsibility for any actions of third parties.

For everyone who visits the AmericanTowns.com domain, we log IP addresses, the type of operating system that the visitor’s computer uses, and the type of browser software used by the visitor. From the IP address, we can determine the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the geographic location of that ISP (but not necessarily of the visitor). If a visitor wants to simply use AmericanTowns.com in a generic way (i.e. reading, but no personalization and no posting), they can use the site without identifying themselves. However, if a visitor wants to enter or create private areas, save their own calendar, and post their opinions or events, they will need to identify themselves to the administrator by providing us with their name, a public “username” (which can be the user’s real name or email), valid email address, and password.

We use the aggregate data we collect to perform statistical analyses of the collective characteristics and behavior of our members and visitors, to measure overall patron demographics and interests regarding specific areas of the AmericanTowns.com domain and to analyze how and where to use our resources. We also use the aggregate data collected to inform our sponsors as to the number of people who have seen and/or clicked on their advertisements. We also use cookies to help us determine how long users view particular content, which particular content generates the most of least most least interest, which content or sites users link to, and which AmericanTowns.com services members and visitors use.

Currently, AmericanTowns.com is using cookies, and, as with all online companies who do, we are continually evaluating our use of this information. A “cookie” is a file transferred from a website to the hard drive of your computer so that the website may track your activities on the website. A cookie will not let a website know any personally identifying information about you, such as your real name, address, etc., unless you previously provided that information at the website or have set your preferences in your browser to provide that information. AmericanTowns.com does not collect personally identifiable information about any one person using cookies. Cookies are a way for us to track who has seen which ads, how often pages are visited, and what the most popular areas of AmericanTowns.com are, so that we can improve our site and services. Please note that AmericanTowns.com allows 3rd party advertisers that are presenting advertisements on some of our pages to set and access their cookies on your computer. Advertisers’ use of cookies is subject to their own