:: Diamond Sierra PRIVACY AND SECURITY ::

Privacy Philosophy
Anonymous Information vs. Personally Identifiable Information
What Information is Collected
What Choices are Available to You Regarding Use of Information
Information Security

Privacy Philosophy

Welcome to Diamond Sierra! The Internet is rapidly changing the way all of us communicate and interact with each other. These new online activities raise new challenges, such as the privacy issues addressed in this policy. Diamond Sierra is committed to working with public policy organizations, industry groups, and government institutions to understand and address these challenges as they arise. But most importantly, having a relationship with our customers that is founded on trust is not only good manners, it is also good business.

Depending on the service you are accessing, you could be asked at various times to provide information such as your name, email address, or information about what you like and do not like. On other occasions such as when we provide products for purchase online, we may request your credit card number to conclude the transaction, or your mailing address to ensure proper delivery. We request this information to provide our strongest value to you - a personalized online experience. Customers who personalize our service come back more often - and it's the customers that visit us often who make us successful.

Anonymous Information vs. Personally Identifiable Information

Anonymous Information refers to information that cannot be tied back to a specific individual. For example, 5000 people may visit this Privacy Policy today, but we do not necessarily know their names, where they live, or their date of birth. What we collect from transactions such as these constitutes anonymous information, much like how your hometown's bus service knows how many people take a given route - but does not necessarily know who those people are. Many of the individuals who access our services decline to use the personalization features that are available to them, and therefore those individuals are anonymous to us and the data we collect is similarly anonymous information.

Personally Identifiable Information refers to information that tells us specifically who you are, such as your name, phone number, or postal address. In many cases we need this information to provide the personalized or enhanced service that has been requested. Diamond Sierra will ask for some pieces of personal information in order to provide personalized and valuable free content and products that are of use to you personally.

The amount of Personally Identifiable Information that you choose to disclose is completely up to you. The only way we know something about you personally is if you register for a personalized service or you choose to download a product that needs to generate a license key to be emailed to you. In short - we will know Personally Identifiable Information about you only if you choose to share this type of information with us.

What Personally Identifiable Information is Collected

In our effort to provide personalization and opportunities for prizes and services, we may at times ask you to submit information such as your name or email address, or to share information regarding your industry profession with us. You never have to answer these questions, and you can decline this exchange of information on any site on the Internet - not just ours - at any time. If you should choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with some of the services dependent upon the collection of this information, such as an unlock code for our software for trial purposes.

When you surf the Internet, your Internet browser (such as Netscape Navigator® or Microsoft Internet Explorer®) automatically transmits some information to Diamond Sierra every time you access content on one of our sites. Examples of such information include the URL of the Web page you were just on (known as the "Refer"), the IP (or Internet Protocol) address of the computer you are using, or the browser version you are using to access our site. All of this information is collected and is used to help improve our offerings to you. All of the information that is automatically submitted to us by your browser is considered Anonymous Information.

To enable some of the features available at Diamond Sierra we will assign "cookies" to your Internet browser (such as Netscape Navigator® or Microsoft Internet Explorer®). A cookie is a small text file that contains a unique identification number stored on your computer. Cookies by themselves cannot be used to find out the identity of any user. This unique identification number automatically identifies your browser - but not you - to our computers whenever you interact on one of our Internet domains. When you visit our site, a cookie in effect says to our server computers "Hello, I'm browser #655. What do you do just for me?" Every Web page that you access that includes advertising or content served from Diamond Sierra will have the contents of your cookie reported in our server logs. But only when you agree to provide Personally Identifiable Information directly to Diamond Sierra such as through registration, will we be able to know anything about you other than the random number that our server computers originally assign to your browser.

Cookies are an essential part of how the Internet works today, and allow server computers to recognize your computer's browser when you return. If you have ever gone to a Web page that automatically provides personalized content without you having to "sign in," such as your own stock portfolio, this is almost certainly being accomplished with a cookie. Since cookies are only text files, they cannot "run" on your computer and have no ability to search your computer for other information, or transmit it to anyone.

Below is a description of the uses of the information that we collect and how our visitors and advertisers benefit from these actions. These imputed profiles (a profile of you based on information provided by you while using Diamond Sierra) are used to target advertising - primarily banners - to those anonymous customers.

Through the use of imputed profiles, Diamond Sierra can surface advertising to our customers that is more likely to be for products they would want, and sell that advertising in the marketplace for a higher price. This is essential to our ability to provide high quality content to our customers for free. Finally, imputed profiles present no privacy risk to our customers because they are worthless to third parties; since any potential third party would be unable to read the cookies that we set on our domains, only Diamond Sierra can create value from these imputed profiles.

We provide advertisements that support our customers' specific requests for information through keyword searches and editorial content.

Diamond Sierra's partners must make visible and accessible the scope of their privacy policies to users as they enter partner pages from Diamond Sierra. Diamond Sierra does business only with partners whose practices are consistent with the principles established within this policy. All of our partners help contribute towards many of the free services available at Diamond Sierra.

What Choices are Available to You Regarding Collection, Use, and Distribution of Information

At times, Diamond Sierra may enter into co-branding arrangements with other companies, and if so, an opt-in question may be present for contact from these firms as well. Their opt-out features are specific to each organization, but you should never receive email from these organizations unless you have indicated that it is acceptable. All email from Diamond Sierra or from co-brand partners who gain your permission to send you commercial email, will include an opportunity to opt out of future communications.

Diamond Sierra does reserve the right to send a one-time registration confirmation email, and infrequent Service Alert messages to its customers to inform them of specific changes that may impact their ability to use a service they have previously signed up for, regardless of email contact opt-in status. An example of a Service Alert message would be notification of a software revision of one of our products that would be considered a required update.

Information Security

Diamond Sierra 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. Any other particularly sensitive information, such as a customer's credit card number collected for a commerce transaction, it is also encrypted prior to transmission.