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Privacy Policy

This website is operated by Commons Search. We work hard to protect your privacy. We treat your privacy as we do our own. This privacy policy lets you know how we treat your personal information -- and to show you all the ways we work to keep it safe and private.

We will never sell or rent your email address or private information ever. 

We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. 

These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit  networkadvertising.org .

When connecting or registering with Facebook, we use your data in our registration process. We use your name, email, birth date, location, gender and bio in our registration process. We NEVER display your email address to anyone. Your name, location, and bio do appear on your individual authors page on our site. Your bio appears on every article you submit. We do not sell or share your personal information with anyone, except as mentioned above.

Commons Search will send you updates by e-mail. You can remove yourself from the mailing list at any time.

We do not share the information you've given us with unaffiliated groups without your explicit permission. We may share some of your personal information with the following affiliated groups:

• Affiliated Third Parties -- for example, our database administrators. They do not share your personal information or use it for any purpose other than as instructed by us.

Under circumstances where we determine that members may be misusing our systems, such activities may be reported to law enforcement agencies. In such cases, Commons Search may release personally identifiable information, including name and address, to those agencies.

Please review this privacy policy periodically because we modify it from time to time. Each time you visit this Site or provide us with information through the Site, by doing so you are accepting practices described in the privacy policy.  You are also accepting our specific rules or terms of use (such as the Terms of Service) which may be posted on the Site.

Monetary Donations

If you choose to make a donation to Commons Search, your credit card information will be used only for this transaction through our secure online payment system. We do not retain credit card information.

Cookies

Some parts of the site are password-protected. We do use a cookie (cookies reside on your computer and are under the control of your browser) to enable you to return to password-protected areas of the website without having to re-enter your password. If you wish to disable these cookies, this will not allow you to login as our login process depends upon cookies. Thus, if you set your browser to disable cookies, you will not be able to access certain parts of this Site.

Advertising

We display online advertising with third-party vendors, including Google. In some cases, those third-party vendors may decide which ads to show you based on your prior visits to the Site. At no time will you be personally identified to those third-party vendors, nor will any of the information you share with us be shared with those third-party vendors. If you prefer to opt out of the use of these third-party cookies on the Site, you can do so by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt out page.

Data Tracking

In order to better serve our members, we use cookies and periodically analyze web logs. We may also use third-party services such as Google Analytics. This helps us understand traffic patterns and know if there are problems with our website. We may also use embedded links in emails to track open rates for our mailings, so that we can tell which articles appeal most to Commons Search members.

URLs contained in emails may contain an ID that enables us to correctly identify the person who takes an action using a web page. We use these URLs to simplify the process of signing petitions and filling out surveys. We may occasionally present a shortened URL that references a longer URL which contains an id -- we do this to simplify the display, to prevent links from becoming broken when copied, and to ensure compatibility with email programs which do not handle long URLs. When a shortened URL is displayed in an email, you will see the full URL in the browser's address bar when you access the page.

Links to Other Websites

Commons Search may provide links to third party websites, and other websites may provide links to the Site. Third party websites operate according to their own terms of use and privacy policies. Commons Search has no control over such third party websites, and by using this Site, you acknowledge and agree that Commons Search is not responsible for the availability of such third party sites, and does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, products or other materials on or available from such sites. You further acknowledge and agree that Commons Search will not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any content, advertising, products, or other materials on or available from such sites.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

Commons Search may revise or amend this policy at any time at our sole discretion. We encourage users to visit this page periodically to review our current policy.