Webhosting Star Privacy Policy

This site is owned and operated by Webhosting Star, Inc.

Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At Webhosting Star, we want to make your experience online satisfying and safe. Because we gather certain types of information about our users, we feel you should fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and use of that information. This Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy, set out our policies applicable to your account and disclose what information we gather and how we use it.

Webhosting Star gathers and keeps track of:

• Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions made by You in order to receive our electronic newsletters, to participate in our message boards or forums, to email a friend, and from participation in polls and surveys:
• Information Webhosting Star gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers' needs and to help our advertisers and sponsors better understand the demographics of our audience. Because Webhosting Star derives its revenue mainly from sponsorships and advertising, providing such aggregated demographic data is essential to keeping our service free to users. Under no circumstances does Webhosting Star divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.

Webhosting Star gathers information about its users as follows:

Optional voluntary information submission

Webhosting Star offers the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:

1. Electronic newsletters (Dispatches)

Webhosting Star offers a free electronic newsletter to users. Webhosting Star gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe to this service. At any time, users are free to remove themselves from this mailing list by following the link provided in every newsletter pointing the user to the subscription management page.

2. Message Boards/Forums

Users of the Webhosting Star's Message Boards and Forums must register separately for these services (both are free of charge) in order to post messages. Registration is not required in order to visit or otherwise use Webhosting Star's other services and/or products. However, in order to register for Webhosting Star's Message Boards and Forums, users are required to supply a user name, password, and email address.

3. "E-mail this to a friend" Service

Webhosting Star users can choose to electronically forward a link, page, or documents to someone else by clicking on "e-mail this to a friend". In order to do so, the user must provide his email address, as well as the email address of the intended recipient. This information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know the identity of the sender. The information collected is not used for any other purpose.

4. Polling

Webhosting Star occasionally offers interactive polls to users in order to enable the users to share their experience with other users as well as to improve Webhosting Star's services. The collected information, including user opinions, testimony and other submitted information is aggregated. This information is not identifiable to any particular user. However, Webhosting Star may employ action "tags" (also known as single pixel gifs or web beacons) to tag users after they have voted, in order to prevent the same user from voting multiple times on the same issue. This "tag" is not correlated with the subject user's individual information.

5. Surveys

Webhosting Star may occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience. We sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our sponsors, advertisers and partners. However, in doing so, we will never share specific user information with any third party.

Children

Consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 ("COPPA"), we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without first requesting parental consent.

Usage tracking

Webhosting Star tracks user traffic patterns throughout its various sites. However, we do not correlate this information with specific data about individual users. Webhosting Star does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension ("MIME") type by gathering such information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser).

Webhosting Star sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms entered by users in our Search function. However, this tracking is never associated with individual users. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to improve our services for our users.

Cookies

We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. The cookie itself does not contain personal information, although it will enable us to relate your use of this site to information that you have specifically and knowingly provided. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information supplied by the user. A cookie cannot read data from the user's hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Webhosting Star uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above).

Our advertising system delivers a one-time cookie to improve tracking of advertisement impressions and click rates.

You can refuse cookies by turning the cookie function off in your browser. If your browser is set to provide a warning before the cookie is accepted, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use Webhosting Star's site. However, you will need to enable/accept cookies if you wish to actively participate in our message boards, forums, polling and surveys.

Use of information

Webhosting Star uses information voluntarily submitted by our users to enhance the user experience in our network of sites, whether by providing interactive or personalized elements on the sites or by improving future content in response to the interests of our users.

As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to send out electronic newsletters and to enable users to participate in polls, surveys, message boards, and forums. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regularly set schedule corresponding with the frequency of the particular publication, and occasionally send out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in something we are doing. Webhosting Star never shares newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors or partners.

We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you. We track search terms entered in Search function as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a particular user enters.

Webhosting Star creates aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for advertisers, sponsors and partners. This enables our advertisers to advertise more effectively, and allows our users to receive advertisements that are tailored to their needs. Because we don't track the usage patterns of individual users, an advertiser or sponsor will never know which particular user clicked their advertisement.

Sharing of the information

Webhosting Star uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help our advertisers better understand its audience's demographics. This is essential to keeping our select services free. We will not share information about individual users with any third party, except in order to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.

Security

Webhosting Star operates secure data networks protected by industry standard firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary. Only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our customers.

Our sites contain links to other sites. Webhosting Star is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such other websites.

Opt-out policy

We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:

* The option to not register to receive our electronic newsletters; and
* The option to not participate in certain interactive areas, which completely obviates our need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users.

Your consent

By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by Webhosting Star. If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.

Ntctssary disclosure

We will not share your personal information except with a third party to assist us in the processing or securing of your personal information or when we are required by law unless we have given you notice and choice, in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary in order to conform to the edicts of the law, or we must comply with a legal process served on our web site. We may also need to give out your information if one of our partners requires it, but these situations are rare.

Personal information following termination of your account

When your Webhosting Star account is cancelled (either voluntarily or involuntarily) all of your personally identifiable information is placed in "deactivated" status within our corresponding databases. However, you should know that deactivation of your account does not mean your personally identifiable information has been deleted from our database entirely. We will retain and use your personally identifiable information if necessary in order to resolve disputes or enforce our agreements.

Contact us

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you can contact Webhosting Star at contact@WebhostingStar.com.