General
Sterling Rice Group is committed to protecting your privacy when you visit its website or use its services ("Services") as further outlined in this policy. As a condition of using the Services of Sterling Rice Group, you agree to provide Sterling Rice Group with certain personal information. This information includes, but not limited to: full name, postal address, phone number and email address as well as your computer's unique IP address (if any), financial information (credit card number, etc., for orders placed) and demographic information (e.g., zip code, postal code, hometown, gender, purchase history information and age as well as IP addresses that are not unique to your computer). Please note that nowhere on the Site do we knowingly collect contact information or financial information from children under the age of 13. Please review this privacy policy periodically as we may update it from time to time. This privacy policy was last revised on _____________. Each time you visit our website, use the Services, or provide us with information, you are accepting the practices described in this privacy policy at that time. You agree that by using the Site you are expressly and affirmatively consenting to our use and disclosure of the information that you provide, and consenting to receive emails, as described below in this privacy policy.
Changes to Privacy Policy
This policy may be revised over time as new features are added to the Site or as we incorporate suggestions from our users. If we are going to use or disclose your personally identifiable information in a manner materially different from that stated at the time we collected the information, you will have a choice as to whether or not we use or disclose your information in this new manner. We will also post a notification that the Privacy Policy has been amended prominently on our Web site so that you can always review what information we gather, how we might use that information, and under which conditions we will disclose it to anyone.
How Your Information is Used
Order & Payment Processing, Customer Service, Credit Card Issuers & Quality Assurance
We use contact information to help us efficiently perform transactions, to deliver the services you have requested, to perform quality assurance, sales analyses and other business analyses, and to contact you in connection with any orders that you have placed with us. We may also provide your contact information to your credit card issuer or to credit card processors for their purposes. No other use of your financial information will be made except to satisfy any law, regulation, governmental request, or judicial order. When you make a purchase through the Site, or register with the Site, you will provide us with an email address where we, or these service providers, may contact you for the purposes described in this paragraph.
Contacting You for Offers and Promotions
You agree, in consideration for the use of the Services provided by Sterling Rice Group, to allow Sterling Rice Group to use your personal information to send you marketing and promotional materials. Sterling Rice Group may also send you marketing and promotional materials that promote third party products. Sterling Rice Group will not rent or sell your personal information for use by third parties. These materials may include, but are not limited to: newsletters providing you with additional information on how to use the Services, and promotional offers for goods and services from Sterling Rice Group or third parties.
Use of Demographic Information
Sterling Rice Group may use your demographic information to perform business analyses or to tailor the Site and communications to your interests. We may share anonymous, aggregated demographic information with advertisers and other third parties so that they can tailor their advertisements and communications to the appropriate audience. Any time that we are allowed under this privacy policy to share your contact information or financial information, we may also share your demographic information along with it.
Use of Cookies & Other Site Tracking Data
Cookies
A "cookie" is a small file that we save on your computer's hard drive that contains non-personal information. These cookies help to give you faster access to pages you have already visited. They also allow you to personalize your pages, and optimize your experience at our sites. We also use cookies to help us figure out how many people visit our sites, which of our web pages they visit, and how long they stay there. This information helps us figure out which of our web features are highly successful and which sites might need improvement. You can disable cookies on your computer by indicating this in the preferences or options menus in your browser. Most browsers accept cookies automatically, but allow you to disable them. Disabling cookies may prevent you from properly using the Services or accessing the site.
Session IDs
"Session IDs" allow us to identify a particular user across multiple web page requests. This Session ID is maintained within your cookie file, where possible. If cookies are not enabled, or if the user's internet browser program does not support cookies then Sterling Rice Group will place the Session ID in the requested web page. This allows the end user to avoid having to continually re-enter certain information such as account name and password for every web page request. This Session ID "expires" whenever the user closes their internet browser.
Web Site Tracking & Reporting
Many of our web pages also contain special electronic images (called a "single-pixel gif" or "gifs") that allow us to gather only non-personally identifiable traffic statistics and other aggregate information about visitors to our sites. Sterling Rice Group (through itself or third parties) uses this technology to collect and accumulate anonymous data that helps us understand and analyze the experience of people visiting our web sites and, along with other information you provide, customize your future visits and improve our web sites. For example, we capture data on the type of browser used, operating system software (e.g. Windows 95 vs. 98 or Macintosh), cookie preferences (whether the user has them turned on or off), and search engine keywords (what key words did a visitor use to get to our site). We also record number of visits, paths taken, and time spent on sites and pages within our web sites. Please keep in mind that none of this information is personally identifiable and that we only distribute this information to internal staff at Sterling Rice Group and to partners that have signed confidentiality agreements with us. Any information that we do share with partners reflects overall web site or Internet usage trends, not individual.
IP Address
Each time you visit the Site, we automatically collect your IP address and the web page from which you came. In order to administer and optimize the Site for you and to diagnose problems with our Site, we use your IP address to help identify you and to gather broad demographic information about you.
Banner Ads
The Services may include the use of ad banner partners for the serving and/or targeting of ads, promotions, and other marketing messages. These ads may be provided, in some cases, by a third party ad service provider. The ad service provider may place or utilize their own unique cookie on your browser, and may use non-personally identifiable information about your visit to our sites, such as the number of times you have viewed the ad. Sterling Rice Group is not responsible for the collection of these cookies and is not responsible for the actions of the ad service providers. Sterling Rice Group does not sponsor, endorse or guarantee any products or services advertised by third parties on its site.
Direct Linking URLs or Hotlinking
In order to provide more relevant advertising and monitor user bandwidth usage (as governed by the Sterling Rice Group Terms of Service), Sterling Rice Group may gather data from the referrer logs that identify where and how frequently user images being hosted by Sterling Rice Group are being displayed on third party sites.
Information from Other Sites
Sterling Rice Group may place links to other web sites operated by other parties and from time to time may include information and links to third party web sites in our promotional email. Some of these other web sites contain our brand names and trademarks and other intellectual property that we own; others do not. When you click on these links and visit these other web sites, regardless of whether or not they contain our brand names, trademarks and other intellectual property, you need to be aware that we do not control these other web sites or these other web sites' business practices, and that this privacy policy does not apply to these other web sites. Consequently, the operators of these other web sites may collect different kinds of information about you, and may use and disclose that information in different ways than we would if it were collected on the Site. We encourage you to review their privacy policies and remind you that we will not be responsible for their actions.
Non-US Users
If you are not a resident of the United States, you understand and agree that Sterling Rice Group stores and processes your information on computers located in the United States, and by providing any data to Sterling Rice Group, you consent to the transfer of such information to the United States.
Security Precautions
Sterling Rice Group has security measures in place to help protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. We use secure socket layer (SSL) technology to help protect the security of commerce transactions. We encrypt your contact information and financial information as it travels over the Internet and we store your financial information on our servers in encrypted form. Your information may be transferred to and maintained in whole or in part on computer networks which may be located outside of the state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction in which you reside, and may be stored on equipment or in facilities leased or licensed from third parties. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information and make all commercially reasonable efforts to do so, Sterling Rice Group cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk. However, once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. This privacy policy does not apply to any information, including such photographs, that you submit for use in publicly available areas. We ask that you do not submit any personal information, including contact information or financial information, for display in public areas, as other people who use the Services will see it. If you submit such information for display in public areas, Sterling Rice Group cannot prevent it from being used in a manner that violates the law, your personal privacy or your safety. By submitting such information for display in public areas, you assume the risks and sole liability arising as a result of such information being displayed.
How to Contact Us
If you have any questions regarding this privacy policy or information that you have submitted to us you can contact us at:
Sterling-Rice Group
1801 13th Street Suite 400
Boulder, CO 80302