PTPN gathers two types of information about users:

Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions.
These are voluntary submissions to contact us through our order forms or from participation in polls and surveys;

Information PTPN 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 members and partners better understand the demographics of our audience. Because PTPN derives its revenue mainly from its members and partners, providing such aggregated demographic data is essential to keeping our service free to users. Under no circumstances does PTPN divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.

PTPN offers the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:

Contact us
Users are invited to share their contact information when contacting us for more information. This information is never divulged to a third party.

Polls
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. PTPN 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.

Surveys
PTPN 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 members and partners. We never share any of this information about specific individuals with any third party.

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.

PTPN tracks user traffic patterns throughout our site. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. PTPN 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).

PTPN sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms entered by users 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.

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. PTPN uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above).

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
PTPN 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 enable users to participate in polls, surveys, message boards, and forums. 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.

PTPN creates aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for members and partners. 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 your information
PTPN uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help our members and partners 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.

PTPN 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.

We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users.

By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by PTPN. 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.