Effective 5-30-09
We built VetsBook to make it easy for you to share information with your associates, co-workers, prospective employers or anyone else. We understand you may not want everyone to have the information you share on VetsBook; that is why we give you control of what information you make public and what information you chose to make private. Our privacy settings allow you to control the information displayed in your profile.
VetsBook follows two core principles:
1. You should have control over your information. VetsBook helps you share information with your associates, co-workers, prospective employers or anyone else. You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups or networks you join. And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings in your account.
2. You should have access to the information others want to share. There is an increasing amount of information available on the web, and you may want to know what relates to you and those with whom you want to share that information. We want to help you easily get that information and disseminate it.
Sharing information should be easy. And we want to provide you with the privacy tools necessary to control how and with whom you share that information. If you have questions or ideas, please send them to privacy@VetsBook.com.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact our privacy staff at privacy@VetsBook.com.
When you register with VetsBook, you provide us with certain personal information, such as your name, your email address, your zip code, your birth date and any other personal, professional or preference information that you choose to provide to us.
When you enter VetsBook, we collect your browser type and IP address. This information is gathered for all VetsBook visitors. We may provide information about your activity interacting with a member’s VetsBook profile and content to that member. In addition, we store certain information from your browser using "cookies." A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. We use session ID cookies to confirm that users are logged in. These cookies terminate once the user closes the browser. By default, we use a persistent cookie that stores your login ID (but not your password) to make it easier for you to login when you come back to VetsBook. You can remove or block this cookie using the settings in your browser if you want to disable this convenience feature.
When you use VetsBook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized and more professional features. In most cases, we retain it so that, for instance, you can return to view prior messages you have sent or easily see your contact list. When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.
You post Content (as defined in the VetsBook Terms of use) on the Site at your own risk. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your pages and content, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other Users with whom you may choose to share your pages and information. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content.
Any improper collection or misuse of information provided on VetsBook is a violation of the VetsBook Terms of Service and should be reported to privacy@VetsBook.com.
If you choose to use our invitation service to tell another person about our site, we will ask you for information needed to send the invitation, such as the person’s email address. We will automatically send the person a one-time email or instant message inviting him or her to visit the site. VetsBook stores this information to send this one-time invitation, to register a connection if your invitation is accepted, and to track the success of our referral program. The person you invited may contact us at info@VetsBook.com to request that we remove this information from our database.
VetsBook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the VetsBook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.
By using VetsBook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.
Profile information is used by VetsBook primarily to be presented back to and edited by you when you access the service and to be presented to others permitted to view that information by your privacy settings. In some cases where your privacy settings permit it (e.g., posting to your blog), other VetsBook users may be able to supplement your content.
Profile information you submit to VetsBook will be available to users of VetsBook unless you have blocked access through your privacy settings. Your name, network names, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the VetsBook network and those limited pieces of information may be made available to third party search engines. This is primarily so your business associates, co-workers, and customers can find you and send a contact request. People who see your name in searches, however, will not be able to access your private content unless they have a relationship to you (business associate, co-worker, customer, etc.) that allows such access based on your privacy settings.
VetsBook may send you service-related announcements from time to time through the general operation of the service. For instance, if a customer or colleague sends you a new message or had reviewed or downloaded content or someone posts on your blog or wiki, you may receive an email alerting you to that fact.
Generally, you may opt out of such emails in the privacy settings of your account, though VetsBook reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications.
VetsBook may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network are in similar businesses and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you VetsBook services. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they're more likely to be interesting to you.
We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, VetsBook Platform developers and other users of VetsBook, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links).
When you use VetsBook, certain information you post or share with third parties (e.g., a business associate or someone in your network), such as personal information, comments, messages, photos, videos, listings or other information, may be shared with other users in accordance with the privacy settings you select. All such sharing of information is done at your own risk. Please keep in mind that if you disclose personal information in your profile or when posting comments, messages, photos, videos, listings or other items, this information may become publicly available.
This privacy policy covers the use of cookies by VetsBook and does not cover the use of cookies or other tracking technologies by any of its advertisers.
Where you make use of the communication features of the service to share information with other individuals on VetsBook, however, (e.g., sending a personal message to another VetsBook user) you generally cannot remove such communications.
