Gaypedia Privacy Policy

(last updated on 02 January 2008)

gaypedia has provided this Privacy Policy because we value your right to privacy.

This policy is effective as of August 1, 2007 and governs the collection of personal information gathered on this website .

This policy describes the types of information gaypedia collects from its users and how that information is used. Please read this policy carefully before providing us with any personal information.

If you have questions about this policy or would like a copy of a prior version of our privacy policy that is no longer available online, e-mail us at privacy@gaypedia.com.

1. Unregistered users

We encourage you to register with us in order to take advantage of gaypedia's many personalisation features. However, you may choose not to register and take advantage of any feature of our site where registration is not required.

If you do not register, then the information we collect from you is limited. We log your IP address in order to help diagnose problems with our server; administer the gaypedia website and track usage statistics.

Your IP address may vary each time you visit, or it maybe the same, depending on whether you access gaypedia.com through an always-on type of Internet connection (e.g. cable modem or DSL), or through a dial-up connection (e.g. AOL). Either way, it would be extremely difficult for us to identify you through your IP address, and we make no attempt to do so.

If you reached gaypedia.com by clicking on a link or advertisement on another site, then we also log that information. This helps us to understand the interests of gaypedia members. All of this information is collected and used only in the aggregate; that is, it is entered into the gaypedia database, where we generate an oveview of our visitors and members, these will not be reports about individual visitors.

We also place a small file known as a "cookie" on your computer's hard drive. A cookie may contain information that allows us to track your path through gaypedia and to determine whether you have visited before. However, unless you register with us, it contains no personally identifiable information that would allow us to identify you.

Cookies cannot be used to read data from your hard drive, and cannot retrieve information from any other cookies created by other Web sites. We use cookies in this manner to help us understand how visitors use gaypedia, and to improve the site. You may refuse to accept a cookie from us by following the procedures specific to your Web browser. Although you may do so, you may find that your browser reacts strangely when visiting not only our Web site, but other Web sites as well. Since cookies don't provide us with any information from which we can identify you, we suggest you allow us to place one on your computer.

If you visit gaypedia by "clicking-through" from a site operated by one of our partners, and you have registered with that partner, then certain information about you that you have provided to that partner may be transmitted to us. You should review the privacy policy of the Web site from which you reached gaypedia in order to determine what information was collected and how you agreed that our partner could use that information. Regardless of what information was transmitted to us, we do not keep it unless you register with us.

2. Registered users [‘Members’]

If you choose to register with gaypedia, you'll be able to add content to gaypedia. For example, you can post your own hotel, bar or event reviews and participate in our forum discussions. You may also be able to email gaypedia content to yourself and others. In addition, you will benefit from the ability to personalise your gaypedia site experience.

The benefits of registering will increase over time as we get to know you better and introduce new features. We encourage you to register so that you can experience everything that gaypedia has to offer!

If you register with gaypedia, we will collect personal information from you in addition to the non-personal information described above. That personal information may include your name, email address, mailing address, telephone number, travel preferences, user name and password, as well as contact information for other people that you provide.

The information we collect may vary, but we only collect the information that you manually enter into the forms or otherwise authorize us to collect. We may store all or some of that information in a cookie file on your hard drive, so that our system will recognize you each time you visit gaypedia. In that way, we can save your preferences from visit to visit and present you with a customised Web site, without requiring you to log into gaypedia every time you visit.

To improve services and enhance personalisation, we may periodically obtain information about you from other independent third-party sources and add it to your registration information. Additionally, authorised gaypedia personnel may update your registration information to accurately reflect any new information included in communications received from you.

As you will be offered the option to interact with other gaypedia members, you may decide to share personal information with such members. You are aware that gaypedia is not responsible for the usage of your personal information by any other member you share information with and that all legal proceedings possible under any jurisdiction cannot be directed to gaypedia.

If you reach our site through one of our partners (whether or not you have registered with our partner), and you choose to register with Gaypedia, we may be required to give our partner some or all of your registration information. We will only do so in accordance with this policy, but we cannot control how our partner uses the information. If you have questions about our partner's privacy policy, you should review their policy before providing information to us. Of course, you can ensure that the personal information you provide to us is not shared with our partners (except in accordance with this policy), by visiting Gaypedia directly instead of clicking-through from one of our partners.

How we use the personal information we collect

We use the personal information we collect to help both of us! As we mentioned above, registering with us allows you to personalize Gaypedia so that it is most useful to you. It also allows you to log into our site automatically each time you visit, rather than manually typing your user name and password every time. We may also use your personal information to periodically contact you with news or important information from Gaypedia, to provide you with other information or invitations related to your membership or the Gaypedia community, and to request feedback on Gaypedia. In addition to these periodic updates, we may email you additional materials, but only if you specifically request them. These might include opt-in newsletters and other materials that you proactively request from Gaypedia.

In addition to these communications, if you have provided an email address, we may use your personal information to send you notifications about special offers or to tell you about opportunities available from our partners. You may opt-out of any or all marketing communications from Gaypedia in any commercial e-mail we send or at any time, as well as access and update your personal information, by visiting http://www.gaypedia.com/en/users/show/[username]

We may also use certain information that you provide in order to present you with advertising that you may find interesting. This benefits both of us. It benefits us because advertising helps pay the bills, and we can charge our advertisers more if they know that their ads will be seen by somebody more likely to find it useful. It benefits you because you see advertising that may actually be interesting to you.

You can cancel your registration with us by e-mailing cancel@gaypedia.com, and placing your email address in the subject of the e-mail. We will send you an e-mail to confirm your request. After we receive confirmation, we will remove your information from our active database, but some information may remain in our archives. We may not be able to remove your information from our partners' databases, if we have transmitted any information to them.

Disclosure of your personal information.

gaypedia does not sell or rent any personal information to any third party, other than our partners, as discussed in this policy. We may aggregate personal information from all of our users and provide that information in the aggregate to other parties, including advertisers, for marketing and promotional purposes. However, if we do so, that information will not be in a form that will allow any third party to identify you personally.

We may share some of your personally identifiable information with our sister companies around the world that are committed to providing you with a comprehensive array of information and services to meet your partying and travel needs. Sharing this information allows us to better understand the ways in which our various product and service offerings can assist our users. It also enables us to provide you with information about opportunities in which you might be interested. We do not place restrictions on the use of personal information by our sister companies or affiliates but they will treat it at least as protectively as they treat information they obtain from their other users. They also will comply with applicable laws governing the transmission of promotional communications, and give you an opportunity in any such email that they send to choose not to receive such promotional e-mail messages in the future.

We also may share your personal information with third-parties specifically engaged by gaypedia to provide services to gaypedia (such as market research firms, marketing services providers and advertising agencies), in which case we will require those parties to agree to use any such personally-identifiable data solely for the purpose of providing the specified services to gaypedia. As you might expect, gaypedia must cooperate with legal authorities, and may in some circumstances be required to disclose personally identifiable information in response to requests from law enforcement authorities, or in response to a subpoena or other legal process. We don't expect this to happen, but if it does, we will provide only the information required. In other words, we will not simply turn over our database in response to a specific legal requirement. We can also turn over information about you if we believe we must in order to prevent a violation of the law, and by accepting this policy, you consent to our doing so, in our sole discretion. You also consent to our disclosing information about you in the course of legal proceedings if we are legally required to do so, if we reasonably believe that doing so may mitigate our liability, or if doing so will assist us in enforcing our legal rights. We also may share your information in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, and in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.

Your profile on gaypedia will be publicly viewable and identifiable via your screen name. gaypedia will not share your email address with any other members nor display it in any public manner unless you either request us to do so or grant us permission to release such information. If you choose to participate in our member-to-member communications programs, you may be contacted by other gaypedia members, using Gaypedia as an intermediary. All Gaypedia members will have the option to turn off the member-to-member communication features at any time.

All profiles on gaypedia and the information stored on these can only be sourced through the Gaypedia member search function and not by any non-registered visitor or external search website. Search engines, (.i.e. Google, Yahoo, MSN etc) have no partnership and right to display any personal information or profile from Gaypedia.

You can review and update the personal information you have provided through the registration process by visiting http://www.gaypedia.com/en/users/show/[username].

Steps we take to protect your personal information.

gaypedia has implemented security procedures to help protect the personal information stored in our systems. For example, we limit access to personal information about you to employees who we believe reasonably need to come into contact with that information. We also employ processes (such as password hashing, login auditing, and idle session termination) to protect against unauthorised access to your personal information. There is at all times no guarantees for the full security of your personal information.

Children's Privacy

This website is for those aged 18 years and older, and we do not knowingly collect information about children. Should a child whom we know to be under 18 send personal information to us, we will delete that information.

Changes to this Privacy Policy.

We reserve the right to change this policy should we deem it advisable to do so. If we make material changes that will affect personal information we have already collected from you, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you of the changes and to give you the opportunity to amend or cancel your registration.