Privacy Policy
OKC.com and Converg Media LLC respects the privacy of visitors to our site. This privacy policy ("Privacy Policy") governs the use and collection of information from you by Converg Media LLC, and its subsidiaries ("we" or "us") through your use of our websites. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any information you may provide to us through other means; for example, at a live event or via telephone. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully so that you understand our online privacy practices. By visiting any of our sites, you agree that your visit, and any dispute over our online privacy practices, is governed by this Privacy Policy and our Visitor Agreement.
Questions regarding privacy issues should be directed to our contact form.
CHILDREN'S PRIVACY
Children should always get permission from their parents before sending any information about themselves (such as their names, email addresses, and phone numbers) over the Internet, to us or to anyone else. We generally direct our services to individuals that are over18. In any case, we won't knowingly allow anyone under 13 to register with any of our sites or to provide any other personally identifying information.
TYPES OF INFORMATION WE COLLECT
The information we gather falls into two categories: (1) information voluntarily supplied by visitors to our websites when they register or initiate transactions, and (2) information gathered on usage patterns and preferences as visitors navigate through our sites, read our email newsletters, or use our services, such as free email. In some cases, it is an agent or affiliate of ours that collects the information on our behalf. Third party providers featured on or linked to by our websites, such as vendors of products and services offered through our sites, may be gathering the same kinds of information.
Why Register? To make use of certain features on our websites (such as free email, classifieds, personal web pages, chatrooms and other interactive message boards) visitors need to register and to provide certain information as part of the registration process. We may also ask for information from those who buy products or services or conduct other transactions on our websites. (We may ask, for example, for your name, email address, sex, age, or zip code, and we might request information on your interest in sports, personal finance, the performing arts, and the like.) The information you supply will help us to offer you more personalized features, to tailor our sites to your interests and make them more useful to you, and to process e-commerce transactions. See "Shopping" below to learn more about purchasing products or services on our sites.
The more you tell us about yourself, the more value we can offer you. Supplying such information is entirely voluntary. But if you don't supply the information we need, we may be unable to provide you with services we make available to other visitors to our sites. For example, we can't offer you a personalized stock portfolio if you don't tell us which stocks you want to track. And we can't send you email alerting you to a new service we're offering, or breaking news that may interest you if you don't tell us what you're interested in and give us your email address.
Of course, if you do not want to register with us, you're still free to take advantage of the wealth of content available on our sites without registration.
Contests and Other Promotions. From time to time, we may offer contests, sweepstakes or other promotions on our sites. If you enter one of these promotions, you'll have to provide information about yourself (such as your name, address, telephone number and email address) so that we can contact you if you win. We may share this information with any co-sponsor of the promotion, which we will identify in the official rules. If you don't want us to collect the information requested in the registration form or to provide it to contest co-sponsors, please do not enter the contest or sweepstakes.
Email Newsletters. We may also offer you the opportunity to subscribe to email newsletters on topics that we believe are of interest to our visitors. If you have opted to receive a particular newsletter, you may always unsubscribe later if you decide not to receive further mailings of the newsletter from us. See "Opting Out" below.
Cookies. To help make our sites more responsive to the needs of our visitors, we invoke a standard feature of browser software, called a "cookie," to assign each visitor a unique, random number, a sort of user ID, if you will, that resides on your computer. The cookie doesn't actually identify the visitor, just the computer that a visitor uses to access our site. Unless you voluntarily identify yourself (through registration, for example), we won't know who you are, even if we assign a cookie to your computer. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply. A cookie can't read unrelated data off your hard drive. Our advertisers and the third parties that provide products or services through our sites may also assign their own cookies to your browser, a process that we don't control. We use cookies to help us tailor our site to your needs, to deliver a better, more personalized service. It is a cookie, for example, that allows us to deliver your personalized stock quotes each time you visit a site, even if you've been away for awhile. If you are shopping on our site, we may use cookies to help us keep track of your shopping cart. And we use cookies to avoid showing you the same ad, repeatedly, during a single visit. In addition, we may use cookies to track the pages on our sites visited by our users. We can build a better site if we know which pages our users are visiting and how often. Of course, you can set your browser not to accept cookies, but if you do, you may not be able to take advantage of the personalized features enjoyed by other visitors to our sites.
Other Methods of Collecting Information. Our web pages may contain electronic images (called "single-pixel GIFs" or "web beacons") that allow us and our vendors to count users who have visited particular pages or to access certain cookies. We may use these tools and other technologies to recognize which pages users visit, and which links they click on. These features are also included in our email newsletters so that we can learn which messages have been opened and acted upon. We may also be able to verify your online purchases from us or from third party sites that have agreed to share such information with us.
IP Addresses. Our web servers automatically collect limited information about your computer's connection to the Internet, including your IP address, when you visit our sites. (Your IP address is a number that lets computers attached to the Internet know where to send you data -- such as the web pages you view). We use this information to deliver our web pages to you upon request, to tailor our sites to the interests of our visitors, and to measure traffic within our sites. For example, if you are shopping on our site, we may use your IP address to help identify you and your shopping cart. Your IP address does not identify you personally to us. But we maintain the right to use reverse IP address inquiry and to release information about our visitors as described in "Other Disclosures" below.
DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION
Vendors. To make our sites more valuable to our visitors, we offer some features in conjunction with other providers who may or may not remain unknown to you (our "Vendors"). Our chat, email newsletters and free email services, for example, are made available through arrangements with providers that specialize in operating such services. We share with these third parties only such information as is necessary to provide the products or services.
Third Party Provider Partners. We also make some products and services available through our sites through cooperative relationships with the third party providers ("Provider Partners") of such goods and services, where the brands of our Provider Partner may or may not appear prominently on our site. We may share with our Provider Partner any information you provide, or that is collected, in the course of visiting any pages that are made available in cooperation with our provider partner. In some cases, the Provider Partner may collect information from you directly.
Advertisers. When we present information to our advertisers - to help them understand our audience and confirm the value of advertising on our websites - it is usually in the form of aggregated statistics on traffic to various pages within our sites. From time to time, we may share more particularized information on visitors to our sites with those marketing products and services that we believe may be of interest to you.
Statistical Information. Much of the information we collect is in the form of aggregated statistics, such as the traffic that visits various pages within our sites, and the habits and preferences of our audience. Such aggregated information does not include any information that would identify you personally. We may use such aggregated information and disclose it to third parties as we see fit.
Sites to Which We Link. Of course, our sites include links to plenty of other websites, and provide access to products and services offered by third parties, whose privacy policies we don't control. When you access another website or purchase products or services or conduct other transactions through our websites, use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site you're visiting or the provider of such products or services.
Other Disclosures. We may occasionally release information about our visitors when release is appropriate to comply with law, to enforce our Visitor Agreement, or to protect the rights, property or safety of visitors to our sites, the public, or Converg Media LLC and its employees, agents, partners and affiliates. As our business grows, we may buy or sell various assets. In the unlikely event that Converg Media LLC, the bulk of our assets, or one or more of our sites is acquired by another company, information on our visitors would be among the transferred assets. And, of course, any information you include in a message you post to any chatroom, forum or other public posting area is available to anyone with Internet access. If you don't want people to know your email address, for example, don't include it in any message you post publicly.
PURCHASES
When you are ready to make a purchase on our site, we will ask you to provide us with certain information, including your contact details (such as your name, address, telephone and email), and your billing information (such as your credit card number and expiration date). We may also ask you to provide additional information such as unique identifiers (such as your date of birth), and registration information (login name and password). You will be able to review, update, or delete the information you have provided us (except, of course any information that we do not store) at any time by accessing your account on our site.
We will use the information you provide us to process your transaction and to contact you regarding your purchase if necessary. We will share this information with our Vendors to the extent necessary to facilitate your purchase (such as customer service, verification, fulfillment and billing purposes). We do not sell or rent your personal billing information to any third party. We may share non-financial information with our Provider Partners in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you so consent (e.g., by checking an unchecked box or by other means provided on our site), we will make your information available to third parties so that they, us, or both may contact you directly regarding special offers, promotions, products or services that may be of interest to you.
OPTING OUT
When you register with us, you will have the opportunity to review, update, or delete the information you have provided us at any time (except, of course, any information that we do not store). If you remove your registration information completely, you may not be able to continue using certain services that require registration. You agree that we may use your information to contact you for customer service, to inform you of important changes to or additions to services offered on our sites, to send you administrative notices or any communications relevant to your use of our sites, and to notify you of any changes to this Privacy Policy or our Visitor Agreement.
If you have subscribed to one of our email newsletters, you will always have the opportunity to unsubscribe from future mailings (e.g., by clicking on an unsubscribe link in an email newsletter or by going back to our site).
If you have submitted your information on a page provided in conjunction with a Provider Partner, the information you submit may be jointly owned by us and the Provider Partner. If you decide to opt out on our site, you may also need to contact the Provider Partner separately to request the service provider to remove your information from their database.
STORAGE OF INFORMATION
All information gathered on any of our websites is stored within a secure database operated by us or by a contractor on our behalf. Sensitive information such as your password is encrypted for storage. For secure commerce transactions, we will transmit your information using secure server software (SSL) encryption, the industry standard today. Encryption scrambles your credit card number and personal information. However, as effective as encryption technology is, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our database, nor can we guarantee that information you supply won't be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
A final note: The Web is an evolving medium. Accordingly, we may need to amend our privacy policy at some point in the future, and we will inform you if we make any material changes (e.g., by posting appropriate notices on our site or notifying you by email).
Last updated 7/16/2009