COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY
This site is owned and
operated by Sommerville Funeral Services.
Your privacy on the Internet is of the utmost importance to us. At Sommerville Funeral Services, we want to make
your experience online satisfying and safe.
Because we gather certain types of information about our users, we feel you
should fully understand the terms and conditions surrounding the capture and
use of that information. This privacy statement discloses what information we
gather and how we use it.
Definition of the Information Sommerville
Funeral Services gathers and keeps track of.
Sommerville Funeral Services gathers two
types of information about users:
· Information that users provide through
optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to receive our
electronic newsletters, to participate in our message boards or forums, to
email a friend, and from participation in polls and surveys:
· Information Sommerville
Funeral Services gathers through aggregated tracking information derived
mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us
to better tailor our content to readers’ needs and to help our advertisers and
sponsors better understand the demographics of our audience. Because Sommerville Funeral Services derives its
revenue mainly from sponsorships and advertising, providing such aggregated
demographic data is essential to keeping our service free to users. Under no
circumstances does Sommerville Funeral Services
divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.
Sommerville Funeral Services Gathers User
Information In The Following Processes:
Optional Voluntary Information
We offer the following free services, which require some type of voluntary
submission of personal information by users:
1. Electronic Newsletters (Dispatches).
We will offer a free electronic newsletter to users. Sommerville Funeral Services gathers the email addresses of users
who voluntarily subscribe. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list
by following the link provided in every newsletter that points users to the
subscription management page. Users can also subscribe to the newsletters at
the time of registration.
2. Message Boards/Forums.
Users of the site’s Message Boards and Forums must register separately for
these services (both are free of charge) in order to post messages, although
they needn’t register to visit the site. During registration the user is
required to supply a username, password, and email address.
3. “Email this to a friend” Service.
Our site users can choose to electronically forward a link, page, or documents
to someone else by clicking “email this to a friend”. The user must
provide their email address, as well as that of the recipient. This information
is used only in the case of transmission errors and, of course, to let the
recipient know who sent the email. The information is not used for any other
purpose.
4. Polling.
We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions
with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues.
Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable to
any particular user. Sommerville Funeral
Services may use a system to “tag” users after they have
voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not
correlated with information about individual users.
5. Surveys.
Sommerville Funeral Services may
occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience.
We sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with
our sponsors, advertisers and partners. We never share any of this information
about specific individuals with any third party.
CHILDREN
Consistent with the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998
(COPPA), we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information
from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting parental consent.
USAGE TRACKING
Sommerville Funeral Services tracks user
traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do not correlate this
information with data about individual users. Sommerville
Funeral Services does break down overall usage statistics according to a
user’s domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information
from the browser string (information contained in every user’s browser).
Sommerville Funeral Services sometimes
tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function,
but this tracking is never associated with individual users. We use tracking information
to determine which areas of our sites users like and don’t like based on
traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather
how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better
service for you.
COOKIES
We may place a text file called a “cookie” in the browser files of
your computer. The cookie itself does not contain Personal Information although
it will enable us to relate your use of this site to information that you have
specifically and knowingly provided. But the only personal information a cookie
can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can’t read data off
your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Sommerville Funeral Services uses cookies to
track user traffic patterns (as described above). Our advertising system
delivers a one-time cookie to better track ad impressions and click rates.
You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you’ve set your
browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning
message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this
site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards,
forums, polling and surveys.
USE OF INFORMATION
Sommerville Funeral Services uses any
information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our
network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on
the sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our
users.
As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to
send out electronic newsletters and to enable users to participate in polls,
surveys, message boards, and forums. We send out newsletters to subscribers on
a regular schedule (depending on the newsletter), and occasionally send out
special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in
something we are doing. Sommerville Funeral Services never shares
newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers,
sponsors or partners.
When we use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users
like and don’t like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what
individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This
helps us continue to build a better service for you. We track search terms
entered in Search function as one of many measures of what interests our users.
But we don’t track which terms a particular user enters.
Sommerville Funeral Services creates
aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for advertisers,
sponsors and partners. This allows our advertisers to advertise more
effectively, and allows our users to receive advertisements that are pertinent
to their needs. Because we don’t track the usage patterns of individual users,
an advertiser or sponsor will never know that a specific user clicked their ad.
We will not disclose any information about any individual user except to comply
with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of
our users or the public.
SHARING OF THE
INFORMATION
Sommerville Funeral Services uses the
above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help
our advertisers better understand our audience’s demographics. This is
essential to keeping our service free. We will not share information about
individual users with any third party, except to comply with applicable law or
valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the
public.
SECURITY
Sommerville Funeral Services 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.
OPT-OUT POLICY
We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:
· Opting not to register to receive our
electronic newsletters.
· Opting not to participate in certain
interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need to gather any personally
identifiable information from our users
YOUR CONSENT
By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information
by Sommerville Funeral Services. If we
decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so
that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and
under what circumstances we disclose it.