INFORMATION IBR FIRE GATHERS & TRACKS IBR Fire gathers two types of information about users: * Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions 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 IBR Fire gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to users' needs and to help our advertisers to better understand the demographics of our audience. Because IBR Fire derives its revenue mainly from the sale of our products, providing such aggregated demographic data is essential to keeping our service at the highest standard acceptable to our customers. Under no circumstances does IBR Fire divulge any information about an individual user to a third party. 1. Electronic newsletters policy (Dispatches) We will offer a free electronic newsletter to users. IBR Fire gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by following the link provided in every newsletter that points users to the subscription management page. Users can also subscribe to the newsletters at the time of registration. 2. Message boards/forums policy Users of the site's Message Boards and Forums must register separately for these services (both are free of charge) in order to post messages, although they needn't register to visit the site. During registration the user is required to supply a User Name, Password, and email address. 3. "E-mail this to a friend" policy Our site users can choose to electronically forward a link, page, or documents to someone else by clicking "e-mail this to a friend". The user must provide their email address, as well as that of the recipient. This information is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any other purpose. 4. Polling We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues. Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable to any particular user. IBR Fire may use a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users. 5. Surveys IBR Fire 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. We never share any of this information about specific individuals with any third party. 6. Children Consistent with the Federal Children's On-line Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting parental consent. 7. Usage tracking IBR Fire tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. IBR Fire does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser). IBR Fire sometimes tracks and catalogues the search terms that users enter in our search function, but 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 build a better service for you. 8. 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. But the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. IBR Fire uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above). Our advertising system delivers a one-time cookie to better track ad impressions and click rates. You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, polling and surveys. 9. Sharing of Information IBR Fire uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help our advertisers better understand our audience's demographics. This is essential to keeping our service free. We will not share information about individual users with any third party, except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public. 10. Security IBR Fire 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 and only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our customers. 11. Opt Out Policy We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include: * Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters. * Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users 12. Your Consent By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by IBR Fire. 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.